And yet the philosophers are guilty of the same superficiality as the man in the street. They do not go far enough into the matter to perceive that the morality of pleasure, of interest, and of duty, Hedonism, Utilitarianism and the Categorical Imperative, all lead in very slightly different ways to the same goal—Eudæmonism. The fulfilment of duty affords spiritual satisfaction, a pre-eminently pleasurable emotion which increases in direct proportion to the effort which its fulfilment demands. Interest also implies pleasure, for every interest ultimately comes to this, that it is an attempt to secure a pleasure. This aim lies at the bottom of all interests; it is the fundamental interest from which all seemingly different interests are derived; it is the universal goal to which all human effort tends, whether it be a question of making money to satisfy ambition, of winning love and friendship, of material, spiritual, personal or social values. Interest is self-assertion and the intensifying of the zest for life. But these are always accompanied by pleasurable emotions; thus interest is forthwith identified with pleasurable emotion, even though one has to work hard, even though at the moment it entails drudgery and discomfort. Hedonism makes no secret of its nature and its tendency. It openly admits what the Categorical Imperative denies and what Utilitarianism veils with vague phrases: that the aim and object of moral action is Pleasure and nothing else.
In our short survey of the immense field of literature dealing with moral philosophy we have learnt that, although the most various and divergent viewsare expressed as to the essence and source of Morality, nevertheless there is but one opinion, be it clearly or vaguely stated, be it the result of knowledge or surmise, as to the mechanism by means of which moral concepts determine action, and as to the conscious or unconscious aim of moral action: Moral concepts do their work by means of inhibition, and the aim of moral action is a feeling of happiness.
It is natural for man's thoughts to be concentrated on himself until he has learnt to rise from the deep and narrow well of his egoism to a higher and wider view of life and, free from the taint of self-love, to form an idea of his place in the world and his relationship to it. Not till the development of his intellect is far advanced does any doubt assail him as to the truth of his conviction that all his personal affairs, the least as well as the most weighty, are of the greatest importance to the universe, that every ache or pain he feels must wake an echo in the heavens, that the Earth shudders in anticipation when he is about to stumble and sprain his ankle, and that the stars in their courses mysteriously, though intelligibly to the discerning, foretell the hour of his birth and of his death. An Indian legend pours cruel scorn upon this childlike megalomania: A fox had fallen into a stream and was drowning. "The world is coming to an end!" gasped the animal in its agony. A peasant standing on the brink replied coldly, "Oh, no, I see only a little fox drowning."
Many moral philosophers, those of the Kantian school without exception, labour under the delusion of this same, egocentric view. In their eyes thephenomenon of Morality is a cosmic one. Morality is the law of human conduct, therefore it is the law of world processes, of the universe. Indeed, it is the law of the universe before it becomes that of human conduct. It would exist even if there were no men, no humanity, no human conduct at all. The solemn innocents who weightily give utterance to this doctrine are unaware how ridiculous they are. They do not hesitate to subject Sirius to the yoke of the Ten Commandments. They are convinced that the Milky Way practises virtue and shuns, or ought to shun, vice, just as we inconsiderable human beings do. The precept, "Thou shalt not steal," applies with binding force to gravity, and the warning, "Thou shalt not kill," to electricity, though the latter ruthlessly disregards it, as the results of being struck by lightning and accidents with high voltage installations frequently prove. If they do not threaten Nature with police and prison it is only because in their eyes Morality is independent of all sanctions, is superior to rewards and punishments, depends upon itself alone, constitutes its own aim, is by its very nature a compelling force, and therefore has no need of adventitious compulsion.
Such profound nonsense cannot lay claim to serious treatment. It is a counterpart to the belief that events in the history of mankind, like war and pestilence, are foretold by heavenly signs such as fiery comets. The stars revolve, the clockwork of the universe continues undisturbed, as though the earth were still uninhabited, as it was when it was a glowing fluid globe or, earlier still, a nebular mass; andthis although man's self-esteem be hurt by such a lack of consideration. If we care to call the (so far as we know) unalterable laws, according to which the forces of Nature act and the mechanism of the world works, the Morality of the Universe, that may pass. Only we must in that case clearly realize that we are speaking metaphorically, that we are making use of a poetic simile, that we are anthropomorphically attributing human traits to the universe. Morality is a phenomenon restricted to mankind, or, to be strictly accurate, a phenomenon which occurs only among living beings; for the beginnings of Morality may be traced in creatures of a lower order than man, and it develops simultaneously with the consciousness and the mentality of living beings. Morality is a function of life, dependent upon it, begotten and developed by it, to meet life's needs and serve its interests. The existence of Morality apart from life is as unthinkable as that of hunger, ambition, or gratitude.
Morality is a collection of laws and prohibitions which Reason opposes to organic instincts, by means of which the former forces the latter into actions from which they would like to refrain, or prevents them from carrying out that which they yearn to do. The existence of Morality, therefore, presupposes in the first place that of an intelligence sufficiently developed to form a clear idea of something that is still in the future, namely, an image of the consequences resulting from an action.
Guided by this inner contemplation of the image of the consequences of an action, Reason decidesto carry out or prevent the action. This gives us the lowest plane upon which Morality can occur as the cause of action and of abstention from action. It implies, above all things, foresight, and can therefore only exist in a consciousness which is sufficiently developed to grasp the idea of the future and form a picture of it. This consciousness must be capable of extracting the elements of a conception from memory according to the laws of the association of ideas, and be able to group them logically in a new order. In other words, as long as the mind cannot visualize the past and from it build up a picture of the future, Morality can find no place in it.
This statement requires no limitation, but it demands a short explanation. It is quite true that Morality is foresight, but it is only among the elect that the latter is developed to such a pitch that it is possible to form images of the consequences of action and abstention sufficiently clear and definite to exercise a restraining or encouraging influence.
The average man can act morally without first working out a clear picture of the future. It is enough that he has been trained to the habit of respecting current precepts, and of accepting the views obtaining in his circle as to what is good or bad, what is admissible or inadmissible. This morality, of course, is merely a matter of drill or training; it is unthinking automatism; it is inferior, and not to be compared with the living, creative morality of higher natures, which, as a sovereign law-giver, comes to an independent decision in every case and, like the guardianangel of childlike faith, guides man on his path through life, indicates the right course at the cross-roads, and warns him of pitfalls and stumbling-blocks. But for everyday use mechanical morality may suffice. In the uneventful existence of the average man, which passes in a stereotyped way, this mechanical morality is an acceptable guide and counsellor, but it remains an outside influence foreign to his inner consciousness; he is glad to deceive and outwit it, as a slave does his master's bailiff if he can do so without running the risk of a thrashing; but if his destiny unexpectedly rises above its accustomed dead level, then this dogmatic morality, which he has never really assimilated, leaves him in the lurch, and mournfully, in piteous tones, he utters the well-known cry, "It is easy to do one's duty; it is difficult to know where one's duty lies."
Reason, then, which is capable of foreseeing the results of actions, teaches a man what he must do and from what he must abstain, where he may follow his instinct and where he must resist it, according as it considers the presumptive results of yielding to impulse good or bad. But whence does Reason obtain the standard it applies to the actions of men and their results? How does it acquire the fundamental concepts Good and Bad, and what is their significance? Generally speaking, the answer will be as follows: Moral values are appraised by a standard supplied by a general consensus of opinion; Reason acknowledges as good that which meets with the approval of the community, that which the latter desires and therefore praises; the community, for itspart, echoes the pronouncements of influential personages, i.e. of the most respected, most powerful, and most aristocratic; Reason condemns as bad that which the community disapproves, and which it therefore censures and rejects. This definition does not solve the problem of good and bad, it only shifts it.
Later we shall have to show upon what grounds the community discriminates between acceptable and reprehensible facts, calling the former good and the latter bad. For the present it is enough to observe that Reason derives the laws, which it constantly impresses on man, from the opinion of the community.
It can happen that Reason rejects the opinion of the community and forms a conclusion opposed to it. This revolt of individual morality against conventional morality is the great tragedy of man. It can only occur in the soul of a hero, for mediocre and insipid people always bow to the opinion of the majority. There is clearly imminent danger of making a mistake. Not seldom, however, the individual is right in his opposition to the community, and then the latter is fired by his example to examine its traditional dogmas and to correct or reject them. This is not the only, but it is the most common means by which Morality is developed and changed. Its progress demands martyrs. Strong personalities must be sacrificed to force a revision of moral values. Socrates has to swallow the draft of hemlock so that unfettered thought may acquire the right to doubt the legend of the gods. Jesus has to incur the dangerousanger of the Pharisees so that the adulteress may be treated with indulgence and human sympathy instead of being punished according to rigorous law. But the opposition of a self-willed, subjective Morality to the accepted moral law is always exceptional; the general rule is submission to the moral law. This is indeed a necessary preliminary to revolt against the moral law of the community, for it is only by means of a vigorous social education that man develops such a nicely balanced and keen sense of Good and Bad, that he cannot prevail upon himself to carry out generally approved actions which his own intelligence does not recognize as moral. He whose moral sense has not been intensified by strict discipline will never be assailed by doubt, as long as he follows in the footsteps of the multitude.
Hence, as a rule, Reason exercises its control of the actions of man in conformity with the laws prescribed by the community. Before Morality develops into the practice of Good and the rejection of Bad it takes the form of consideration for the world at large, since it is the latter which has created the concepts of Good and Bad as well as the standard by which they are judged, and in order to avoid conflict with the community, and to maintain uninterrupted agreement with it, the individual exerts himself to persist in doing good and to refrain from doing evil.
The establishment of these facts gives deep offence to the mystics among moral philosophers. "What a debasement and belittling of Morality! What! It is supposed to be nothing more than a sortof obsequiousness towards the multitude? Its laws are observed for the sake of pleasing others? It is a comedy played to win applause and a call before the curtain? That is a libel and a calumny. The truly moral man looks neither to the right nor to the left. He does not condescend to ask, 'What will the world say to this?' There is but one judge in whose eyes he wishes to be justified: his conscience."
Quite right. But what is conscience found to be if we penetrate the fog of mystic words with which it has come to be surrounded? Conscience is the permanent representative of the community in the consciousness of the individual, just as public opinion may be termed the conscience of every member of society made manifest. Metaphorically, it wields the powers pertaining to society; it praises and blames, it condemns and exalts, it punishes and rewards, as society could do; and it actually pronounces judgment in the name of society, even though it does not preface such judgment with this formula which is tacitly implied and must always be mentally added. Conscience is the invisible link which unites the individual with a social group, just as speech, custom, tradition, and political institutions are the visible links. But the social origin and representative nature of conscience set limits to its power. Conscience is a respected authority with wide powers only in the consciousness of those individuals who have a highly developed social sense. I purposely do not say those in whom the instinct to follow the crowd preponderates, because this mode of expression might implyblame and condemnation which I do not intend to convey.
For social instinct comes natural to an individual born, educated and working in a community, who shares its feelings, views and interests, nay, even its prejudices and mistakes; and if he lacks it, it is a sign of a morbid deviation from the normal. Only the decadent man is uncannily lonely in spirit, alien, indifferent or definitely hostile to his human surroundings; he is, according to the violence and polarization of his instincts, the passionate anarchist or the born criminal; the public opinion of his circle is unintelligible to him and makes no impression on him; it has no significance for him; he attaches no importance to its approbation, and its anger leaves him cold; he would take no notice of it, were it not that he knows its power to destroy him, and fears its police, its prisons, and its scaffolds. Such a man, organically predisposed to crime, most urgently needs a conscience. It would arrest him on the downward path to which his evil instincts lead. It would warn him to resist the wicked impulses of his selfishness. But he, of all people, has no conscience. He can have none. He is anti-social, he is at war with society, diplomatic relations between him and it have been broken off, and it has no representative in his consciousness. A lively and active feeling of joint responsibility with the community is a necessary predisposition on the part of the individual before conscience can have any power. Where the former is lacking the latter is mute and paralysed.
The essence of Morality, as we have found, isthe subjection of instinct and direct organic impulses to the discipline of Reason. The latter exercises a censorship in pursuance of a law which it derives not from within, but from without, from the ordinances of the community which instructs Reason as to what it should permit, what it should forbid, and what it should demand. Conscience ensures respect for its commands, and may be called the executive power or police of Reason, acting as the authorized representative of Morality. It is the garrison which the community maintains in the individual's consciousness, which it arms and supplies with authority and instructions; the power of conscience lies in the strength of the community at its back, and is without influence only upon those who refuse admission to the troops of the community and yield to none but actual physical force. All this proves irrefutably that Morality is a phenomenon arising from the social life of man, and its power is a function of society.
If under the conditions in which humanity lives nowadays one could imagine a man totally detached from his species, leading a solitary life, Morality would be absolutely meaningless to him. The idea is one he could never conceive. It would have no significance. Good and bad would always retain their original meaning as labels for sensual qualities, for pleasant or unpleasant sensations of taste, smell, etc.; they would never be spiritualized or apply to the quality of actions. He would be unable to attach any meaning to the words duty and right. The terms virtue, vice, conscience, repentance would convey nothing to him. Morality can only originate whenthe individual lives united with fellow beings in a social community. It is a consequence of this union. It is the one condition on which alone this union can be permanent.
The solitary individual must, however, not be confused with the lonely one. Robinson Crusoe, shipwrecked on a desert island and forced to stay there without companionship, is not primitive man. He is a son of civilization who has fallen upon evil days. In his enforced solitariness he maintains the habits of thought of his original surroundings. He preserves the concepts of Morality even though he has no occasion to obey its dictates. He can, if not actually yet potentially, be a paragon of virtue or a sink of iniquity; he can have a very delicate or a very dull conscience. He continues to be a man of social instincts cut off from society, and goes on thinking and feeling in a social manner. By primitive man I mean man as he was before society originated. For, contrary to the sociological school which denies the individual and boldly refuses to allow him any existence, declaring society to be older and earlier than the individual, I think I have conclusively shown ("Der Sinn der Geschichte" [The Meaning of History]) that man is not by nature a gregarious animal, that he lived alone, being self-sufficing as long as the climatic conditions, under which he first made his appearance on earth, enabled him to exist by his own unaided efforts and capabilities, and that he banded himself together with others in gangs, troops and hordes—the earliest forms of subsequent society—when, after the first ice age following his appearance,the struggle for existence grew ever harder, ever more laborious, transcending the powers of the individual so that he could only overcome Nature, now grown hostile to him, by uniting with others of his kind.
This primitive man of the golden geological period before the Ice Age knew no Morality, and as far as human intelligence can tell he would never have known of it had there been a continuance of the paradisaic conditions obtaining at the time of his birth, and had the climate not deteriorated. The occurrence of murderous frosts, the necessity of seeking protection from them in natural caves or artificially constructed shelters, and of kindling and maintaining fires, the diminution or disappearance of vegetable food, and the need to replace it by the booty of the chase or fishing—all these forced him to unite his efforts with those of other men who shared his wretched lot on earth. But in order to maintain this community with others he had to learn a new science, one he had hitherto not known because he had had no need of it: consideration for his fellows. He might no longer think of himself alone, consider his own inclinations in all eventualities, give way to all his moods or yield to every whim; he had unceasingly to bear his neighbour in mind and take care not to annoy him, not to make an enemy of him, not to become hateful to him. Forbearance towards his neighbour was the necessary condition of their life in common, just as their life in common was the necessary condition of self-preservation. The penalty for selfish indulgence was stern persecution, punishment, perhaps death; in any case, expulsion from thecommunity. Man, therefore, stood before the choice of self-control or destruction, and this dilemma taught him Morality.
Such, we must imagine, were the beginnings of Morality. It was not prearranged or purposely sought; it grew naturally from the companionship of men and developed simultaneously with society. If the struggle for existence made life in communities a necessity, the first coercive law of the community was to enjoin upon its members a mode of conduct which alone rendered the existence of the community possible, and the fundamental rule of this conduct was mutual consideration. Without this two egoisms cannot exist side by side and develop. They either destroy or shun one another. This phenomenon may also be observed among the higher animals. Elephants, living in herds, expel quarrelsome individuals and force them to wander alone far from the rest. The natives of Ceylon and India fear these "bachelor elephants" as being specially savage and malicious. They think that they grow like this because of their loneliness. That is probably a false conclusion. It is much more likely that these animals have been driven from their herd because they were savage and malicious, because their characters were opposed to discipline. Here we come upon the first faint foreshadowing of the phenomenon of Morality in an animal community.
Now that we have introduced the idea of the growth and development of Morality, it becomes obvious that it must have begun with mere indications, and that from rude, dim, undeveloped beginnings it gradually grows more perfect, more refined, more nicely differentiated. At first man avoids only the most brutal injuries to his neighbour, such as hurting him, doing him bodily harm, threatening to kill him, openly robbing him. In proportion as he becomes more spiritually sensitive, as he learns to feel the insult and humiliation of injuries other than those inflicted with a fist or club, he is led to refrain from giving his fellow-men similar offence, which though it deals no gaping wounds, yet hurts his spiritual sensibilities. A series of values is developed, growing ever longer, ever more complicated, with more and more gradations, until, going far beyond the simple, artless commandments, "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife nor his goods," it reaches the pitch of agonized self-reproach, because of the slightest and most secret impulses to dislike, injustice, covetousness, dissimulation, etc.
Morality must be regarded as a support and a weapon in the struggle for existence in so far as, given present climatic conditions on earth and the civilization arising therefrom, man can only exist in societies, and society cannot exist without Morality. The chain of thought runs as follows: without morality no society, without society no individual existence; consequently, Morality is the essential condition for the existence of the individual as well as for that of the community. However, we must always bear in mind the reservation, "giventhe present climatic conditions on earth." Had the earth continued to be the paradise it must have been at the birth of our species (since otherwise the latter could simply not have originated), the necessity would never have arisen for the individual to band himself together with others of his kind, no society would ever have developed, and there would have been no Morality. Serious as the subject is, one cannot but smile at the thought of the comic figure the learned, professorial Neo-Kantians would cut with their dogma of the absolute and cosmic nature of Morality, if they propounded it among men whose wants Nature's bounty was able to satisfy as easily as the frog is satisfied in his puddle or the crow on his tree top. They would find no trace of absolute Morality among mankind, and would be reduced to seeking it among the stars.
The very nature of Morality, in that it is an aid to man in the struggle for existence, makes it easy to understand the origin and nature of the concepts Good and Bad. There are propensities and actions which facilitate life in a community which, indeed, alone make it possible: love of one's neighbour, helpfulness, liberality, consideration for the feelings of others, and amiability. There are others which make such a life difficult or absolutely impossible: uncompromising selfishness, violence, cruelty, rapacity, instinctive hostility to one's neighbour. Men recognized that the former were beneficial to them, the latter harmful. The former aroused their liking, the latter their disapproval, dislike and animosity. The quality of feeling which accompanied the perceptions of actions of the former kind was akin to that with which they responded to beneficial, profitable, useful and welcome sense impressions. The quality of feeling, which actions of the second category gave rise to, was akin to that due to harmful and repellent sense impressions. Following the law of analogy, they placed on an equal footing actions which were felt to be pleasing and pleasant sensations of taste and smell; similarly with disagreeable actions and unpleasant sense impressions; and finally they called the former good and the latter bad, using terms originally applicable only to the realm of the senses.
Not everything that is pleasant to the senses is beneficial. There are poisons which are pleasing to taste, but none the less noxious for that, such as (to give only one example) alcoholic drinks and impressions of a certain order, like voluptuousness, which man greedily pursues, even though they ruin his health. But these are exceptions. As a rule, not only man, but all living creatures, derive pleasant sensations from beneficial things; and it is probable that that category of sensations, which we are conscious of as being pleasant, is nothing but the state of cœnesthesis, when the organism functions particularly energetically under the influence of the absorption of food or of a special stimulus of the senses, when it feels its life processes carried on particularly vigorously, freely and harmoniously; just as we feel that state of cœnesthesis to be unpleasant, which occurs when the organism functions badly, slackly, and in a manner calculated to endanger the continuance of life. With the reservation that has been indicated we can say in general that Good is equivalent to beneficial and pleasant, Bad to harmful and unpleasant. This is true of the transferred and spiritualized as well as of the immediate and material meaning of these expressions of value. The significance of the words Good and Bad, the point of departure, development and change of conception they indicate, suffice to justify the Utilitarians and the Hedonists or Eudæmonists among the moral philosophers, and to confute the contentions of their critics, who deny all connexion between Morality and a practical purpose, profit or pleasure, and declare these to be unworthy humiliations of its majesty.
They wriggle, with the agility of a contortionist on the music-hall stage, to get over the obvious and palpable aim of moral conduct. They display all the cunning of dishonest sophistry in their arguments to prove that the element of subjective satisfaction which moral action yields is non-existent, and that, therefore, the Hedonists and Eudæmonists are wrong. They stir up an opaque cloud of words, phrases and formulæ to hide the fact, which nevertheless emerges clearly, that he who acts morally expects to derive pleasurable emotions from his action, or at least tries thereby to avoid probable painful emotions, and that moral conduct, just as it is designed to give the individual subjective satisfaction which is a kind of pleasure, is also meant to be a benefit, or at any rate a supposed benefit, to the community.
Morality must never try for a reward and never expect one. It must be absolutely disinterested. Ithas no business to pursue any aim outside itself. Thus say the mystics of moral philosophy, juggling with words; and they think they are doing especial honour to Morality and raising it to a particularly proud eminence. But Morality has no need of this artificial and false grandeur to maintain its lofty place among the phenomena of life, and it is derogatory neither to its authority nor to its influence to be recognized as a beneficial force conducive to happiness.
The opponents of Utilitarianism and Eudæmonism in Ethics, if they speak in good faith, may be excused on the grounds that their analysis of the phenomenon of Morality is shallow. For them Morality is something absolute, which exists by itself as an eternal and unalterable law of the Universe, but which is revealed in the individual and therefore must be conceived individually as a quality which has become human, as a human value. If anyone persists in looking upon Morality as an absolutely individual matter, without any connexion with anything outside the individual, if anyone obstinately shuts his eyes to the fact that Morality has not been developed by the individual out of his own immediate needs and in consideration of himself alone, but that it is, on the contrary, a creation of society and has no sense or significance except as a social phenomenon, then indeed he can with some show of justification deny Utilitarianism and Hedonism. For truly, looked at from the point of view of the individual, moral conduct appears neither pleasant nor immediately beneficial. On the contrary, it is, as a rule,directly opposed to his own apparent interest, and it is achieved with difficulty by sacrifice and renunciation, which are never pleasant and often very painful.
Once in a drawing-room, during a game of definitions, I heard a light-hearted young lady define Duty in the following terms: "Duty is that which we do unwillingly." A stern professor contradicted her at once with the solemnity he thought due to his position, and assured her reprovingly: "It is my duty to give lectures, and I do this duty gladly. If you were right, madam, expressions such as 'zealous in one's duty' and 'willing performance of duty' would have no meaning and could never have been coined." That seems convincing, but yet it is wrong. Expressions such as "zealous in one's duty" and "willing performance of duty" were not coined until society had developed its system of Morality and had educated its members to strive for its approval by conducting themselves in accordance with this system, to look on its approval as a flattering distinction and to fear its disapproval as a disgrace. Such phrases are Pharisaical, calculated to exercise a suggestive influence profitable to society. They are the sugar to sweeten the pill; but the young lady was honest and the professor conventional; the pill is bitter. Thinkers recognized and admitted this thousands of years ago. Antiphon, the sophist, says: "The law, the outcome of an agreement, coerces nature, the result of growth, and goes against the interest of the individual." The same idea is expressed by the tragic poet in the lines:"The gods have placed sweat before virtue." This was said in the very same words by Lao Tse, the disciple of Meng Tse, the pupil of Confucius and the reformer of his doctrine.
The law, not only the law of the state which Antiphon has principally in view, but also the moral law, "goes against the interest of the individual"; not in reality, but apparently, at the first superficial glance. Moral conduct is the reverse of natural conduct; it takes place in opposition to instinct by deflecting the original impulse; it is a subjugation of inclination, a victory over the real nature of the man. Virtue has to exert its utmost strength in bitter struggles, fought out within the individual, before it can reveal itself actively in deeds. That is a natural consequence of the manner in which Morality originated.
The point is that it was not created directly for the individual, but for the community, and for the former only in so far as he is a part of the community, and from its stability and well-being derives a benefit which he may, or may not, be conscious of; which he may, or may not, be able to appreciate; which he accepts as something natural and self-understood without further thought; for which he does not consider any return service to be due; but which is nevertheless of real magnitude, profiting the individual, facilitating his existence, or even alone making it possible; and for which, as for every other gift, he must make sacrifices. For within society there can be no gifts. It possesses nothing but what it has acquired from its members, and the latter mustpay full value for everything it provides, unasked or otherwise.
As the Moral law originated to meet the needs of the community, and was gradually formulated in definite precepts, it is comprehensible that the community never paused to inquire what subjective effect its law would have on the feelings of the individual. If you impose a law upon someone you hardly ever consider how great will be the emotions of pleasure or displeasure which its enforcement will entail. The order is, "Obey, whether you like it or not; that which deeper insight and more far-seeing wisdom prescribe is for your good." Thus the individual is forced to work laboriously for his own good, which in his purblindness he does not even recognize. It would be comprehensible if the individual, who does not see farther than his own nose and does not look beyond the present moment, formed the opinion that Morality is not perceptibly beneficial to him and gives him no pleasure, and that, therefore, the Utilitarians and the Hedonists talk nonsense. But the moral philosopher, who observes the individual in relationship to the community and surveys human actions, the way they are connected, and the way they interact upon one another, has no right to pursue the same line of thought as the individual, and deny that Morality aims at utility and pleasure, even though the individual, when he acts morally, does not perceive any personal advantage, nor feel any pleasure except the self-satisfaction which he has been trained to feel, since in the eyes of others he is so good and honest. That Morality aims at utility, and is at thesame time a source of pleasure and happiness, may seem dark and doubtful while we consider the individual, but it becomes clear as day and indisputable when we regard the community.
Among creatures of a lower order than man, indeed among all animals that live together in flocks or herds, we find the first beginnings of that mode of conduct which in man we call moral, and which is not intended to be of direct benefit to the individual, or to add to his momentary pleasure, but which subordinates or sacrifices these personal satisfactions to the good of the community.
Chamois, when they are grazing, set one of their number on guard upon a rocky eminence with a distant view, and this individual is responsible for the safety of the herd. While the others feed in peace and comfort, this guardian chamois forgoes the food which is doubtless just as attractive to it as to the others, and tirelessly keeps a sharp look out over its whole field of vision, warning its companions at the first approach of danger by uttering a shrill cry.
When the great herds of buffaloes still inhabited the North American prairies, they had at the head and on the flanks of the herd the strongest bulls, while the centre was occupied by the cows with their calves and the young animals. Before civilization came to trouble them, the grizzly bear was the only enemy that threatened them, and with him they were able to deal; one of them would meet the attacking bear in single combat, but did not always emerge from it unhurt. Often enough at the end of the fight both the bull and the bear would be terriblyinjured or even dead; yet by sacrificing his life the bull saved the rest of the herd.
The thrilling adventure of the Abyssinian baboon is well known; first told by Alfred Brehm in his "Tierleben" (animal life), it was afterwards quoted by Darwin and many other writers. On a hunting expedition Brehm surprised a party of monkeys in a clearing. They fled at once and had found shelter in the wood before the dogs could reach them. Only one young one had got separated from the rest and was left behind alone. It had scrambled up on to a solitary rock standing in the plain, round which the dogs were barking furiously, and in its terror the creature uttered piercing cries for help. A little male monkey, hearing it, detached himself from the group, turned back from the safety of the forest, made quietly for the rock and fetched away the trembling young baboon from among the pack, silent now and shrinking in amazement; and then stroking and caressing the little creature he carried it safely in his arms to its family in the wood, unmolested by the stupefied dogs and spared by the hunter, lost in admiration of this self-sacrificing courage.
In these three instances we see how the joint responsibility among gregarious animals develops in them an ever increasing sense of duty, which teaches the chamois to forgo its food during the hours it is on guard, rouses in the buffalo a savage lust for battle, and makes the baboon perform a premeditated deed of epic heroism. When men act as these animals did, we ascribe this to Morality. This is nothing but joint responsibility in action, the joint responsibilitywhich the species is forced by the conditions of life to adopt, if it is to survive.
Among the moral philosophers the mystics are prevented, by the haze which obscures all their thought, from seeing that Morality originates from this joint responsibility. Or rather, if they do see it, they think this origin too low. They demand a more exalted genealogy for the phenomenon of Morality. According to them the Moral law comes straight from God. The concepts Good and Evil are revealed. Commands and prohibitions are imposed upon the soul by that omnipotence which spiritualizes the universe and of which the soul is an immortal part.
If these phrases were anything but moonshine and tinkling cymbals they certainly would make any other explanation of this astonishing fact superfluous; the fact, namely, that man does what is repugnant to him, and refrains from doing what would give him pleasure, that he is content with himself when he has voluntarily curbed his impulses and made sacrifices, and that he feels the pricks of conscience if he chances to experience the pleasure of appeasement because he has satisfied his desires. "Man obeys divine commands." That suffices and obviates the necessity of seeking for explanations of this phenomenon, which shall satisfy Reason.
It is a mere mirage, the reflection of an earthly state of affairs in the heavens, to assume that the universe is governed by an authority devoid of responsibility, which imposes on its subjects, that is to say men, laws and instructions, discipline and order.
It is a form of anthropomorphism, the most widespread and stubborn of errors in thought among those men who try to understand the unintelligible, and are content with the most unfounded explanation which their naïve imagination freely invents for them. This same anthropomorphism, not even at a loss to solve the problem of the origin and essence of the universe, replies unhesitatingly that God by an act of volition created it out of nothing to prove to Himself His own omnipotence and omniscience; in like manner it has no scruple in ascribing the phenomenon of Morality to a creative act of God's, and makes Ethics, which properly speaking form the chief part of psychology, anthropology and sociology, a subdivision of theology, that is, of anthropomorphic mythology.
Critical Reason, which realizes that deceptive fictions are not true thought, but dreams—not the result of ripe intellectual effort, but of the childish play of the imagination, seeks the roots of Morality not in the air or in the ether, but in the solid earth; not in some indemonstrable, transcendental sphere, but in an obvious need of human nature. The biological necessities of the species, which can only survive by dint of living in communities, sufficiently explain the origin of the feeling of joint responsibility, of consideration for one's neighbour, of the concepts Good and Evil and of conscience; and we have no use for the dogmas of revealed Morality derived from some fabulous, supernatural source, or for the Kantian categorical imperative.
Morality, understood as a form of joint responsibility, determines the inner and outer relations of the individual to the community; that is to say, to as much of it as he comes in immediate contact with, to wit, his neighbour. Morality provides him with the notions of Duty and Right, of the consideration he owes his neighbour and of that which he may demand from his neighbour. It is customary to look upon Rights and Duties as opposites. This is mere indolence of thought. Right and Duty are supplementary, forming together one concept. They are in reality one and the same thing regarded from different points of view. My Duty is the subjective form of my neighbour's Right; my Right the subjective form of other people's Duty. That which is Duty, when I have to do it out of consideration for others, becomes my Right, when others have to do it out of consideration for me.
Respect for the personality of others, which is the feeling from which the concept of Right and Duty emanates, seems to be a late and noble product of Morality and a particularly praiseworthy victory of prescient intelligence over selfishness. This factor of our consciousness which determines our will and which gradually becomes an instinct, is really only a special application of the law of least resistance which governs all organic life. We have no selfless, ideal respect for the personality of another; but, made wise by experience and observation, we assume that that other has the power to resist and to retaliate if a wrong is done to him or he is injured; hence we avoid, to the best of our ability, actions to which he is likely to object, so as not to come into conflict withhim, because to overcome his opposition would require effort and expose us to danger. Respect for the personality of another and for his rights may be expressed by a mechanical formula which runs as follows: this respect varies directly as the real or supposed might of the other person, and inversely as our own real or supposed might.
The society of which he is a member, and which makes his existence possible, prescribes to the individual the laws governing his moral conduct. That which a community at any given time approves and demands, rejects or forbids, constitutes the precept whereby its members regulate their conduct, and offers ample security for their conscience.
The concepts Good and Bad originate simultaneously with society; they are the form in which its actual conditions of existence are conveyed to the consciousness of its members. The only immutable thing about them is the fact of their continued existence. Without the coercive discipline of a rule conducive to the common weal and governing the mutual relations between its members, no society could be imagined to exist, unless its members were all similar in nature, reacted in an identical fashion to all impressions and possessed the same feelings and sensations, the same inclinations and the same impulses of volition. In that case no difference could ever arise between one individual and another, or between an individual and the community, which would have to be smoothed over by the moral law emanating from the community and controlling the individual, or be suppressed by the community's order.Every individual could be left to the guidance of his own instincts, for he would know himself always to be in agreement with the community; no consideration for others need hamper or modify his actions; he could behave just as if he were alone in the world. But as individuals differ from one another, feel, think and want different things, collisions in which they hurt, cripple or even kill one another are the inevitable consequence of their opposing movements; and the interference of the moral law is absolutely necessary to polarize these movements and guide them into parallel courses, so that they do not run counter to one another.
But Good and Bad derive not only their existence but their measure and their significance from the views of the community. They are therefore not absolute but variable; they are not an immutable standard amid the ever-changing conditions of humanity, a rule by which the value of the actions and aims of mortals are indisputably determined, but are subject to the laws of evolution in society and therefore in a constant state of flux. At different times and in different places they present the most varied aspects. What is virtue here and now may have been vice formerly and at another spot, andvice versa. In the royal family of ancient Egypt marriage between brothers and sisters was the prescribed custom. We call this incest and it fills us with horror. To the sons of Egypt it seemed meritorious and constituted a claim to special veneration. The Babylonians and Canaanites burnt their first-born in Moloch's fiery furnace, and this sacrifice wasaccounted a highly praiseworthy act of piety and of the fear of God. The Spartans taught their sons, their future warriors, the art of stealing without being caught; and he who did this most cleverly achieved the most flattering recognition. The Cherusci butchered the Roman prisoners taken from the legions of Varus as a sacrifice to their tribal gods, and a noble-minded and brave man like Arminius considered this absolutely honourable and knightly. The Aztecs, who had undeniably attained an advanced degree of civilization, at high festivals used with obsidian knives to cut open the breasts of human sacrifices on the altars of their gods, and tear the heart out of their living bodies. That was an action finding favour in the sight of the gods, and the people watched it with awe and those mystic emotions which religious rites are intended to arouse.
Moral law in Europe, during the Middle Ages and almost up to modern times, permitted, and even ordained, the punishment by horrible torture and death of those whose religious convictions differed from the teaching of the established church; and with its consent supposed witches were sent to the stake. In feudal times the most terrible and revolting of crimes was felony—that is, a breach of faith on the part of the vassal against his overlord—and no torture was too cruel as a punishment. Nobles, who had so delicate a sense of honour that for a wry look or the accidental touch of an elbow they would draw their swords, enunciated the principle: "the king's blood does not defile," and vied with each other in forcing their daughtersupon the king as concubines. Until Wilberforce roused the English conscience at the end of the eighteenth century, and Schölcher did the same in France in the middle of the nineteenth, slavery was considered a state of affairs which a moral community could tolerate. The North American descendants of those Puritans whom no persecution and no martyrdom could prevent from leading a life consonant with the dictates of their conscience, did not scruple to exercise proprietary rights over human beings who, in the case of octoroons and even of quadroons, did not even differ from them in colour, supposing that difference of colour could be considered an excuse. The code, which began with the "Declaration of Rights," contained heavy penalties for those who helped a slave to escape. Men, whose uprightness no one could doubt, did not hesitate to set bloodhounds on the track of an escaped nigger, and four years of a bloody civil war were needed before refractory slave-owners were forced to acknowledge the immorality of forced labour.
These examples have been taken from the customs of civilized nations. Amongst races that have not attained the high degree of development to which the white man has risen, we meet with much more revolting deviations from the moral law obtaining among white men. Tribes are known in which the commandment, "Honour thy father and thy mother," is interpreted so, that the children kill and eat their parents as soon as the latter have attained a considerable age. The North American Indians, who had a well developed sense of honour, were capable of chivalrous feelings and kept their word with absolute loyalty, used to torture helpless prisoners and scalp their defeated enemies, even the women. Among the Dyaks, who are under Dutch rule and are familiar with the laws and customs of Christian Europe, a marriageable youth must first cut off a human being's head before he is allowed to wed. He need not overcome his victim in honourable combat; he may creep upon him surreptitiously, and even fall upon him in his sleep and murder him in cowardly fashion without danger to himself.
All these are instances which we unhesitatingly condemn. To our idea they are crimes and misdeeds which among us would make their perpetrators liable either to contempt and expulsion from decent society or to the extremest penalties of the law; yet at their time and in their place they were considered meritorious and virtuous, and were approved by public opinion and the conscience of their authors. But we can go farther and subject our own moral law to a similar independent consideration. We shall find that to us also deeds appear permissible, virtuous and even splendid, which do not differ essentially from the thefts of the Spartans or the head-hunting of the Dyaks. A company promoter who sells on the Stock Exchange shares that he must know to be worthless, can with Spartan cunning rob thousands of trustful victims of the fruits of their labour and economy, and reduce them to beggary; and not only does he go unpunished, but if by his knavery he becomes a millionaire and uses his wealth cleverly, he can attain the highest political and social honours and distinctions. We may admit that financial roguery of this sort can now no longer be classed among strictly moral actions, that public opinion is on the verge of placing it in the category of vice and crime, and that legislators are beginning to make attempts to inflict severe and humiliating penalties on its perpetrators.
But another series of deeds is still generally considered so undoubtedly virtuous and laudable, that it evokes the highest homage from the best intellects of the age, poets, musicians, scientists, teachers, sculptors and painters, and the leaders of the people—the deeds of war. The most horrible butchery of men, the theft of property and liberty, ill-treatment, destruction are not only permissible but obligatory and laudable, if they occur in war, and if their authors can point to the fact that they are acting in the service of their country at the order of a legitimate authority. Neither the soldiers nor their leaders are bound to inquire whether the authority, whether their mother country is waging war for a purpose that moral law can approve. "Right or wrong, my country." In the eyes of her sons the country is always in the right, even if it be objectively in the wrong, and by its orders every soldier murders, robs, burns and ravages, plays the executioner to harmless, unarmed, innocent strangers, compels prisoners to forced labour, steals letters that fall into his hands and prevents families who are cruelly separated from communicating with one another; and his conscience does not reproach him in the least, nor is he conscious of being a criminal deserving of all the penalties of the law. Every single one of these actions, if perpetrated byan individual on his own account and for his own purposes, would result in the death penalty, and it would be richly deserved, too. But in war, carried out collectively at the bidding of a government, they become deeds of heroism, filling the doer with pride, moving the community to tears of enthusiasm, and they are held up to youth as shining examples to be imitated. It is more than likely that future times will judge the esteem in which these deeds are held not otherwise than we do the value placed by other forms of society on human sacrifices, the slaughter of parents and head-hunting.
It is hard to determine the exact part which conscience plays in the changes undergone by the concepts Good and Evil. As conscience is the voice of the community in the consciousness of the individual, it approves on principle what seems right and praiseworthy to the community. Just as little as conscience prevented a Babylonian mother from sacrificing her child to Moloch, does it in these days stop the average citizen from doing a soldier's work of killing and destroying in time of war. If an individual knows himself to be in complete agreement with the general opinion, then he lives at peace with his conscience. No impulse to change the customs, to set up a new Morality, to condemn long-established usages, is to be expected from such an one.
The mechanism whereby changes are wrought in views on Good and Evil is quite different. Everywhere and at all times there are exceptional persons whose abilities render them specially fit to feel and think independently. To their idea the community has nodetermining but only an advisory voice. They reserve to themselves the right of decision in every case. In their consciousness there persists a clear recognition of the fact that the essence of Morality lies in consideration for others, and when the current acceptation of the moral law among the majority allows them, nay, commands them to disregard this consideration, they experience a feeling of discomfort which dull, unthinking imitation of the general example does not soothe. They meditate upon the deviation from the fundamental rule of considering one's neighbour, they test its justification, and they condemn it, if its difference with the general moral law cannot be adjusted. If the essence of Morality is consideration for one's neighbour, its purpose is the well-being of the community; its essence must be adapted to this purpose, that is to say, consideration for one's neighbour must be subordinated to the general welfare. The thief, the robber and the murderer have no claim upon consideration, and even a man with the most delicate sense of Morality will agree that coercion of the criminal is desirable. Tolstoy's warning: "Do not oppose the evildoer," is not Morality, but an exaggerated parody of it, which renders it nugatory. Thus the most moral person will not raise any objection to a war waged in defence of hearth and home when their safety is threatened by a ruthless attack.
But, if a mode of action which, though it be generally practised and approved, injures the individual and causes him to suffer, cannot be justified on the grounds of an obvious benefit to the community, then a small, sometimes an almost infinitesimal minority ofindependent thinkers will rise against the custom; they are not afraid of coming into violent conflict with generally accepted views; they defend the fundamental principle of Morality, namely, consideration for the individual, against the exception, namely, oppression of the individual for the ostensible good of the community; they brand as immoral what is generally accounted moral; they announce that the current acceptation of the goodness or badness of a certain order of actions must cease.
The intervention of such reformers always gives offence, and arouses anger which at times rises to murderous fury. But this wrathful indignation is just what makes a break in the automatic fashion in which the majority of average men act according to traditional custom; the attention of more and more minds is arrested, critically they examine the accepted moral law, they are penetrated first by the suspicion and finally by the clear conviction that it is contrary to the essence of Morality, and they swell the ranks of the innovators who inveigh against the tradition. The struggle lasts long and is carried on pitilessly. The preachers of the new Morality seem corrupt and criminal to the supporters of the old. They are persecuted and slandered and not seldom have to suffer martyrdom, but they always emerge victorious if their doctrine is in agreement with the logic of the fundamental principles of Moral law. That is the history of the abolition of human sacrifices, of the vendetta, of slavery, of legal torture, of religious coercion.
Whoever looks about him with open eyes will note that civilized men are at the moment adopting newideas with regard to the operation of state omnipotence, to war, to the right of the economically strong to exploit others, to the rights of women, to sexual morality, to the penal system. The advocates of a new Morality must still put up with the most humiliating abuse. He who wishes to defend the individual from coercion by the state is an anarchist and deserves to be hanged or broken on the wheel. He who maintains that war is immoral belongs to the rabble of vagabonds who own no nationality, for whom no contempt is too deep and no punishment too severe. He who refuses a duel is a dishonoured coward, and thereby cuts himself off from decent society. He who recognizes woman's right to motherhood is a dastardly purveyor of opportunities for prostitution. He who attacks the present relation between Capital and Labour as a hypocritical continuation of slavery is an ignorant agitator or an enemy of society. He who would like to see the idea of punishment excluded from the law, as being retrograde and unscientific, and who wishes only the point of view of the defence of society to be recognized as valid, talks sentimental nonsense, disarms justice and places the community at large at the mercy of criminals.
But the issue of the struggle is not in doubt. The present systems, which present exceptions to the moral law of consideration for one's neighbour, must go. Although they are considered moral to-day, are, in fact, Morality itself, to-morrow they will be felt to be immoral and be abhorred by all men of moral feelings. Thus the concepts Good and Bad gradually change their meaning; views onwhat is moral and what immoral are constantly in a state of flux; and the only permanent thing is recognition of the fact that man's actions must be withdrawn from the control of subjective choice and whim, and must be subject to a law set up by the community; the justification of this law lies in its being necessary to the existence of society. Every revision of Moral values originates in some vexation, and ends by refining and deepening moral sentiment. In this chapter only the scheme of development of moral views and of their changes has been indicated. The question of moral progress will be dealt with fully later on.
To sum up the arguments of this section, Morality is not transcendental but immanent; it is a social phenomenon and restricted to the sphere of living beings. Its beginnings may be traced in animal societies, it is developed among mankind. The preliminary condition necessary for this development is the ability to visualize future happenings, since moral conduct is determined by estimating its effects and results, that is, by conceiving something in the future. Morality has a positive, concrete aim. It makes the existence of society possible, and this, given the circumstances obtaining on our planet, is the necessary condition for the preservation of each individual, and it originated from the instinct of self-preservation in the species. Its essence lies in consideration for one's neighbour, because without this the communal life of individuals, that is, a society, would be impossible.
If individuals had been able to live alone,Morality could never have come into existence. The concepts Good and Bad characterize those actions which society feels to be beneficial or harmful to itself. As moral conduct implies consideration for one's neighbour, it is often, if not always, in conflict with selfishness, that is, with the immediate and instinctive impulses, and is, in the first place, accompanied by disagreeable sensations. The pleasurable emotion of satisfaction arises later through habit and reflection; it accompanies the thought of the merit and praiseworthiness of the victory over self. Conscience is the voice of the community in the individual's consciousness. The idea of Duty is the subjective conception of the Rights of our neighbour; the idea of Rights is the subjective conception of our neighbour's Duty to us. Morality is not absolute, but relative, and is subject to continual changes. To maintain that Morality is cosmic, eternal, immutable, that it aims neither at profit nor pleasure, but constitutes its own aim, is pure anthropomorphic superstition.
Morality is a restraint which the community imposes on each of its members. It demands from the individual the sacrifice of his transitory and momentary comfort in favour of his general welfare which is dependent on that of the community. It prohibits the pleasure of gratifying his desires in order that by this unpleasant renunciation his lasting well-being may be ensured. Subjectively experienced and viewed, therefore, Morality always implies the limitation of free will, the curbing of desire, opposition to inclinations and appetites, and the diminution or suppression of free, or let us rather say of unbridled, action. Before Morality can profit the community, it disturbs and incommodes the individual, it rouses in him disagreeable sensations which may reach such a pitch as to be intense pain. It is only after deep reflection, of which not everyone is capable, that the individual realizes that Morality is an essential condition of the life of society, and that the preservation of society is an essential condition of his own life; before he investigates, before he even meditates on Morality, the individual feels it directly to be unpleasant, laborious, stern—nay, hostile.
The control which Morality exercises over theactions, and indeed in many cases over the most secret thoughts of the individual, appears at the first glance to be somewhat paradoxical. It is by no means obvious why the individual should always take sides against himself and, adopting a defensive and disapproving attitude, hold his instinctive tendencies in check. Moral conduct would be intelligible if the community were always ready with means of coercion and could constrain the individual by brute force to place its interest before his own pleasure. But the individual does not wait for police intervention on the part of the community. He frowns upon himself with the awful severity of the law. He threatens himself with a cudgel. He divides himself into two beings, one of which wants to follow its instincts, while the other curbs them vigorously; one is a rearing, often a refractory, horse, the other a rider with bridle, whip and spur.
This reduplication of the ego, one-half of which establishes control over the other, one-half of which tries to remain true to itself, while the other divests itself of its identity and denies itself—this is the inner process, the outward manifestation of which is moral conduct. This demands investigation and explanation. We must show how the organism could develop from within itself the power to paralyse, or completely repress, its own elemental activities, and how Morality was able to become an integral part in the general scheme of life processes.
The mechanism whereby the mind, appraising, foreseeing and judging, checks the first movement ofimpulse, is inhibition or repression. Without inhibition moral conduct would not be possible. The mind would have no method of indicating the path and prescribing rules to the organism's instinct. It would have no means of making its insight prevail over the desires of the senses. It would have no weapon with which to force its being to actions opposed to its organic inclinations. Without inhibition the individual would never give precedence to the demands of the community and lay himself open to disagreeable emotions in order to please the community. Inhibition was the necessary organic preliminary to the phenomenon of Morality. It had to be pre-existent in the individual, so that Morality could make itself at home in his intellectual life, so that it could acquire creative, ruling and practical power among the elect, and become an unconscious and easy habit among the average. Morality took possession of a pre-existent organic aptitude and made it serve its own purposes. But organic aptitudes are not alike in all individuals. In some cases they are more or less perfect; in others they may be lacking altogether. Indeed only individuals with highly developed powers of inhibition are capable of that heroic Morality which liberates them from the weakness of the flesh and makes them independent of the demands of the body; those in whom this power of inhibition is scantily developed evade the influence of Morality entirely, and it has no authority over them.
That which is called character is at bottom the name we give to the power of inhibition. Whereit is weak we speak of lack of character, whereas by strength of character we mean that the power of inhibition is great. The will makes use of inhibition. With its help the will guides the living machine in a certain direction and urges it to perform given tasks. At the first glance it may not seem obvious that positive actions can come of repression, which is something negative. But if we analyse psychologically the actions demanded and promoted by the will, and trace them back to their organic origins, we shall find that, as a rule, the first elements consist in the prevention of impulsive movements, and that the impetus to positive effort is given by the will, which converts these movements into contrary ones. A few instances may make this psychic process clearer. Winkelried, at Sempach, cleaves a path through the cuirassiers while they bury their lances in his breast; he becomes capable of this great deed of self-sacrifice in that, by a mighty effort of will power, he suppresses the strongest of all instincts, that of self-preservation, and forces all his energies, which are naturally directed towards flight from danger, to challenge danger and yield completely to it. The lover who overcomes his passion and renounces its object, because his idol is the bride of his best friend, begins with the determined inhibition of the impulse which urges him towards the woman, and attains renunciation by the suppression of his desire; this renunciation finds expression in positive actions, in the rupture of relations which bring him happiness, the avoidance of meetings which would prevent the wound in his heart from healing, and so on. Thebrave rescuer who plunges into the waves to save a drowning man, or enters a burning house to save a fellow creature threatened by the flames, must first overcome his natural shrinking fear of the water and the fire; and not till after the suppression of strong impulses to avoid the uncanny adventure, does he succeed in making his muscles obey the impulse to save life.
Inhibition, therefore, is the organic foundation on which Morality builds, not only that Morality which consists in abstention from certain actions, but that which is manifested in active virtue. But inhibition is a faculty which the organism has developed for its own ends, the better and more easily to preserve its own life, and to render its power of achievement greater. Morality makes use of this faculty, which it finds ready to hand, for the ends of the community, and very often against the immediate interests of the individual for whose advantage it is nevertheless intended. Now the individual would not put up with this inexpedient use, one is tempted to say this clever misuse, of one of its organic capacities, if this yielding up of the mechanism of inhibition to Morality were not beneficial to life and therefore came within the sphere of the biological purpose of inhibition. By being grafted on a pre-existent organic faculty Morality becomes such itself; it forms a link in the chain of biological processes within the individual organism; it ceases to be purely a product of society forced upon the individual to his molestation and in spite of his annoyance; it acquires the character of a differentiation of inhibition in order to help the individual, oreven to make it at all possible for him to adapt himself to life in a society.
That under the present conditions obtaining on our planet the human individual can only live in society demands no proof. And as he can only live in society if he submits to its rules of good and bad, Morality, which urges him to this submission, aids and even preserves his life. We shall now show that inhibition, of which Morality is a differentiation making it easier for the individual to adapt himself to the conditions of social life, is of the greatest value to the individual from the biological point of view.
The lowest forms of life it is possible for us to observe show nothing which can be interpreted as inhibition. All external influences to which they are not indifferent invariably produce the same effects. They respond to every stimulus with a reflex action which reveals nothing that we should be justified in describing as an activity of the will. The reaction follows with strictly automatic regularity upon the stimulus, and nothing intervenes between the two which would permit the conclusion that in the simple organism there is any faculty that could delay, modify or change the reaction to the external stimulus.
Just as iron filings always respond to the attraction of a magnet in the same way, just as certain combinations of mercury at the impact of a blow flare up with an explosion, just as ice when warmed melts and becomes water, and water when cooled to a definite point freezes into ice, so do the simplest living things seek out certain rays in the spectrum, certain temperatures, certain chemical conditions and avoid others. Notonly unicellular organisms do this, but also comparatively highly developed animals, such as the daphniæ, for if light is sent through a prism into a vessel containing water, these little creatures collect at the violet end of the spectrum; such as the wood-lice, which hate the light and creep into dark crevices; such as gnats, which are attracted by the sun and dance in their hundreds in its rays. Moreover, we meet with a similar phenomenon in man. We, too, in winter and spring seek the sun and in summer the shade; in the cold season the warm stove attracts us; bad smells put us to flight, sweet scents of flowers allure us. The simplest automatic reflex actions are at the root of these attractions and repulsions, exactly the same as with the daphniæ, wood-lice and gnats. Only we are able to control and suppress these reflex actions which the lower animals apparently cannot.
Anthropomorphic modes of thought easily mislead us into thinking that the processes we observe in lower animals are due to an exercise of will power. We draw near to the fire in winter because it is pleasant, but we can quit it if duty calls us into the cold streets. One is apt to imagine that the simple organisms also experience pleasant and unpleasant feelings, that they try and avoid the latter, that the daphnia seeks the violet rays because it likes them, that the wood-louse flees the light because it dislikes it; in fact, that these creatures possess a consciousness which becomes aware of and distinguishes between pleasing and displeasing impressions, and that they possess a will which responds to these impressions with suitable reactions. Very distinguishedscientists have been unable to resist the temptation to assume in the lower animals, even in unicellular organisms, the existence of processes with which we are familiar in the human consciousness. William Roux introduces us to a "psychology of protista," and W. Kleinsorge goes so far as to maintain the existence of "cellular ethics," and to devote himself to research into its laws. The work of both these biologists is as fascinating as the most beautiful fairy-tale, but it is probably the creation of a lively and fertile imagination, just as the fairy story is.