%^ %.. %>^. Pjt, \^- o,. \t IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) / O 4if '(/. V. III 1.0 I.I 1.25 bi|^ 125 3U 1.4 ||2£ 1.6 V] SKETCH A - D- !'\ OF A NEW UTILITARIANISM; INCLUDING A CRITICISM OF THE ORDINARY ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN AND OTHER MATTER, BY W. DOUW LIGHTPiALL, M.A, B.C.L. I. ANALYSIS OF THE ALTRUISTIC ACT. II. THE MYSTERIOUS POWER. IIL THE TRUE FORM OF THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. IV. THE NEW UTILITARIANISM. MONTREAL : Witness " Printing House, St. James Street West. 1887. PREFACE. Of all things that are proper, the most reasonably so is to be diffident in offering a system of thought. And if this be true lor everyone, the only excuses the writer can make for his offer here are, firstly, some few words of encouragement from the circle of great thinkers — who indeed seem by nature to be the most liberal; the fact that he has not yet met any system exactly like his own ; and the belief that its solutions and proposals may be useful. The outlines of it were reached at first without any acquaint- ance with German philosophy, with the exception of Kant. It appears, however, as if what is here termed the Mysterious Power and the Universe-Soul is not altogether unlike the Will of Schopenhauer, the Unconscious of Hartmann, and the Absolute Ego of Schelling, in some broad respects. Yet the aspect in which it presents itself — rising from the quarter of pleasure-and- pain facts — is totally different from that of any such philosophy, and its genesis is of a source apart from everything German ; for the course of thinking which led to it is a strict descendant of British methods, and in nearest genealogy — as far as from any distinct author— from John Stuart Mill— *' St. Mill' as Paul Janet innocently styles him. The British spirit — " Seek the facts " — infuses it, though the statements in these papers are, for brevity's sake, docked of detail and illustration. Moreover, not only does it claim to be founded on facts, but it asks to be fol- lowed out further by inductive methods. If the system prove not too crude, it may have a certain interest for this reason of descent, if no other. ■ The first essay — which has appeared before — is an analysis of " the .\ltruistic Act," in which Act the main difficulties ot Ethical inquiry are gathered. The attempt is simply to arrive at and state the facts correctly, permitting inferences only so far as necessary to hold these facts consistently together. It is a product of actual difficulties in the writer's thinking pn ^he sub[ecjt, and rec-.^ris hi.s. way through them. The leading- nut .tO'bC'Cra'Qked was to iruce 1 U 1 J 1 J 3 * ' J 5 1 ' the connection between the three contradictory-looking facts, of reflex action, of tendency to act towards pleasure, and of volun- tary self-sacrifice. The other essays are developments of the chief part of this one. If the first does not seem clear in reading, it is hoped that the others will tend to explain it. The system arrived at is called the ** New Utilitarianism." It might almost as well have been called a modified Kantism. The schools of Pleasure and those of Reason ought not to stand apart. Each holds a portion of the common truth : Pleasure gives the content; Reason the form. There need be no denial that the comparing, classifying, uniting with the body of consciousness, and generalizing, of pleasure, and pain, are the work of this latter faculty. To speak of Pleasure itself as a principle, is to speak of a generalized idea; and, on the other hand, to speak of any "in- terest " pretended to be dissimilar to it, is to generalize upon the same elemental content, or else to mean nothing. Beyond this, the puzzle of Intuitionalism finds its solution in forces underly- ing man's consciousness and from which all of these elements proceed. ■ •• i ' « c » , ' <■ I • « •• . .,, ,• . .'•\'J/-^ ANALYSIS OP THE ALTRUISTIG AGT. I— GENERAL INTRODUCTION. a. THE VALUE OK FEELING. r. Man's mental being is made up of several kinds of powers, which have i\\&\r conscious result in two fundamental kinds— those of perceiving and those of feeling, i.e., feeling pleasures and pains. To those who question this statement and wish other operations of cognition to be added, I answer that these operations do not belong to pure consciousness ; and to others who ask why I do not include volition, my reply will be evident further on. 2. It is feelings alone which are of import to human beings. Objects, the world, God, our intelligence and even our existence we can care nothing about, except as they can cause or feel pleasure or pain ; without which we could not understand them as meaning anything. I do not say that we cannot rise above our personal feelings; but we could not rise above them without them. It is they which interpret all things to us and make them of import, little or tremendous. 3. The universe is very differently interpreted by the powers of feeling from what it is by those of perceiving. What is great according to extension or to vividness may stir us little as to in- tensity of pleasure or pain. Feeling ranges all objects, known and imagined, on a scale of its own. The great fact is, the pleasure of pleasure, the pain of pain ;* the general question, how * As the significance of pleasure and pain and their value, are that upon which the point of the following series of papers chiefly res^s, particular attention is asked to a realization by the reader o{ what pleasure is, and wiiat pain is— which can be only studied by experiencing and observing them ; a matter much misunderstood. 6 to increase the former and escape the latter. Resides lesser questions arising out of the general one, three great questions have been universally considered : I. What is the deepest happiness (and the deepest pain) ? II. Is the universe favorable to happiness (or unhappiness) ? III. How long will happiness last (or pain) ? These three are the real bases of the well-known problems of Morality, God and Immortality. 4. The ideal moral object is the perfect, eternal bliss of all l)0ssible feeling beings. Human limitations — the fatigue associated with the structure of nerves, chords, muscles, etc., make the human most blissful conditions attainable only by harmonies, — as of music, sculpture, athletics, imaginations, — depending on the rhythms, interplay and interrelief of powers. 5. The relations of man's various feelings to the universe may be called the soil from which spring all Ethical questions. Here grow the thistles of Hedonism, creeps the guilty weed of Vice, springs erect the spiritual plant Altruism. As he conceives the universe to be, so shifts the code of his morality : if he believes in a God he conceives it his duty to pray, to sacrifice, to fast, or to do higher service before Him ; if there are devils in his universe, he has to propitiate or avoid them. In his aspect towards men, sympathy, advantage and equity make differences. b. — OTHER GENERAL REMARKS. 6. Ethics is the science concerned with the knowledge of these relations as they involved conduct. Religion ar^d Law are the sciences concerned with the practice of the conclusions of Ethics. They are practical Ethical systems. Pure Law is the external practical system — using forces from without to procure the desired conduct. Pure Religion is the internal practical system, using forces from within. Actual systems of Law and of Religion are empirical attempts of more or less value. 7. Pleasure is the basis of good. When we predicate a thing as good, we think of it as a source of benefit ; which i.'' then dis- covered to mean the benefit of feeling beings ; and th nr benefit to consist in the greatest ultimate happiness which the hing can effect for them; which happiness will be a pleasure or a striccture of delicate but satisfying pleasures. This is the matter of Absolute Ethics. \ \ 1 When we predicate an action as good, we either look at it externally (without reference to the person by whom, or the circumstances under which, it was performed) in which sense we simply place it in the category of good thin^Sy and it falls within the division just mentioned. Or else we say it is good relatively to the intention of the actor, who does it with a beneficial aim. To act with moral merit, one must seek to act well. Intention comes in. Here we are within the province conveniently named Relative Ethics. Hetbert Spencer uses these terms in a somewhat different signification ; but they are older than he. 8. We judge of pleasures by our own general sense of pleasure; and consider that intention "best" which is of a character to produce the greatest happiness. And as we advance in intellectuality (farseeingness) we observe that the actions growing out of intentions are apt to be strung together, with others of the same character, into habit s^ so that one has a tendency to bring others. Furthermore, we observe that the example of an intention is apt to influence other people to imitate it. So that in two ways a good intention commends itself to our sense of pleasure, much more than a single action or thing. 9. The happiness of one man will readily be presumed to be less than that of two, or of ten, or of a city, class, nation, or man- kind in general. When a man acts with an intention looking towards his own benefit, his object is not so noble (to use a non- committal word) as would be the benefit of others. But when he sets aside his own for theirs under a general intention or principle of self-devotion, we class his act among the best of deeds. This kind of Act is called Altruistic — the Act for the benefit of others. The Altruistic Act is the most important subject of Ethical study, and involves all the problems of the science. For this reason, the present es; y limits itself to a consideration of it. There is an ever vigorous contention that such an Act is, in reality, impossible, because a man in seeking the happiness of others only seeks his own — that what he is really seeking is the reflection of theirs in his own soul — the pleasure of imagining their pleasures — because a man is incapable of being directly moved by the pleas- ure of any other person than himself. But, I think, it can be demonstrated that this argument is not correct, but that an analysis will show that there is such an Act, and that a practical 8 base can be found for the doctrine of Altruism which recommends it. However, let us range the facts and allow them to suggest their own deductions. 10. First of all, to be a moral action — to be intended — it must be done consciously and must be willed — that is to say, there must be Attention and what may be called Determination. To Atten- tion let us return later (§ 37 seq). But what is Determination ? II.— ANALYSIS OF WILLING. 'I. No theory of Ethics can be more than shallow which does not fully face and thoroughly examine the question of Willing. Two sets of facts present themselves for preliminary consideration. There are the facts of reflex action of which, out of many descriptions, the following by the physiologist, George J. Romanes, may be taken : " Nerve-tissue consists of two elementary parts, viz., nerve-cells and nerve-fibres. The nerve- cells are usually collected into aggregates, which are called nerve-centres, and to these nerve-centres bundles of nerve-fibres come and go. The incoming nerve-fibres serve to conduct stimuli or impressions to the cells in the nerve-centres, and when the cells thus receive a stimulus or impression, they liberate a discharge of nervous energy which then courses down the out- going nerve-fibres, to be distributed either to other nerve-centres or else to muscles. It is in this way that nerve-centres are able to act in harmony with one another, and so to co-ordinate the action of the muscles over which they p-f side. The fundamental principle of neurosis is reflex action All it requires for its manifestation is an incoming nerve, a nerve-centre, and an outgoing nerve, which together constitrte what has been called a nervous arc. Now there can be no reasonable doubt that in the complex structure of the brain one nervous arc is connected with another nervous arc, and this with another, almost ad infini- tum ; and there can be equally little dot A that processes of thought are accompanied by nervous disci^arges taking place now in this arc and now in that one, according as the nerve-centre in each arc is excited to discharge its influence by receiving a discharge from some of the other nerve-arcs with which it is connected." Such are the one set of facts : the other consists of the mentat phenomena of the Act of Will and the laws of their association. A man feels his fingers growing cold in a draft. He makes an effort and draws them away. There is in his mind a disagreable sensation— call it a pain. This is associated with an instan- taneous desire to escape the cause of pain. (I wish to avoid the term ''volition^) Then comes a determination to put forth effort. And the determination is followed by a sense of effort put forth. Lastly, the muscles of the arm move, and draw away the hand. It would seem at first blush as if mind had been working with a cr«;ual effect over matter, and that without mind no intelligent direction would have been given. But the other set of facts con- tradict this conclusion, and so do the facts of automatic, unconscious, and habitual actions, from which acts of conscious will jiily differ in being generally drawn from a fresh view of the circumstances for each act, and so are more varied; and likewise, does the consideration that consciousness is in no way analogous to physical force, and cannot be transmuted into forms of it, as can heat into light, or other forms of force into each other. The deduction, that consciousness and the physical changes rre concomitants, merely associated and not acting on one another, alone will suffice ; and is supported by the Law of Parcimony. The conscious states, therefore, in cases of Will, as in all others, appear to be merely passive, and look as if they were dependent on the fitness of the physique as a vehicle for bringing them to light. Up to this point it may be said that all action belongs to the physical world ; on whose movements also appear to depend the succession and order of suc^'^ssion of the mental phenomena concerned. The chain oi pain, desire, determi- nation, senst of effort — all are passive. 12. But, practically, they are not so. That is to say, con- sideration being made of the modifications of this truth by others, in average actual instances, the result is as if it were not so. Though not as far as absolute or final deductions are con- cerned, yet, for ordinary purposes, the facts of Will are just what to common-sense they have always seemed to be. The mental states concerned, while not -strictly active upon matter, nor taking any place is forces among other forces in the relation of true 10 cause and effect, nevertheless, almost invariably fulfil the cause- like conditions of antecedence in time to certain physical consequents. Why is this ? It ought to have a reason. We shall arrive at the grand reason later. Man's physique, in these acts, presents two fitnesses at the same time. It is of such a construction as : ist, to go through the series of purely mechanical operations composing the reflex act;* and, at the same time, 2nd, to reveal a particular series of mental states. f 13. The order of the mechanical series is, of course, essential. The order of the mental states concomitated with different steps of the mechanical series is not essential. ' The particular feeling which has been above called a Determination might, without making any difference, have been associated with any other step in the mechanical series beside that of the discharge of a nerve- current. The order of the mental states is thus of no importance to the present question. [The succession of mental states preceding a determination is not infallible. Dr. Bain, in h;s " Emotions and the Will," con- cludes that desires frequently move the mind which are not associated with any feeling appreciable as pleasure (or pain). But the association between the state of consciousness I have •called a " Determination" and some desire seems to be nearly, if not wholly, constant. Yet it is a matter of common observation, that there may be multitudes of desires not followed by any determination ; for example, desires impossible of attainment] 14. But two remarkable associations are to be found m the act. Why should a " self-preservative " act of Will follow con- ctructive or destructive states of the physique ; in the one case so acting as to continue them ; in the other so as to avoid ? This association receives an explanation m the theory of Evolution, ■t. e., those physiques alone survive which possess it. It is capable of explanation by mechanical theory. It is a purely mechanical affair. The body is a good self-regulating machine. * Perhaps it will be better to avoid tlie term "mental states" all through the essay, and say merely " states of consciousness." t It is only for convenience at this point that I say man's physique does the Jatter. It will appear further on that this revelation is guided by something other ithan the physique. ^ . 11 ic. But, again, why should not the physique go through all such acts unconsciously ? Why, when the physique becomes a fit instrument to reveal consciousness, should the conscious state be pleasure concomitated with preservative states of the mechanism ; and pain concomitated with destructive states. Why could not the body of a man proceed through life mentally in agony, while physically in perfect health ? No reason why not has been discovered. This is the really strong argument in Free-Will discussions for the domination of mind, not nerves. i6. The difficulty to consider is, that pleasure, in its strict acceptation, is a pure sensation'^ which, obviously, is impotent to set forces in motion, and which, conversely, mere forces are as obviously impotent to make or bring on. 17. Some bond, neither physical nor of consciousness, hut capable of interacting between the t^^io and forming a con. 'Action between them, zvorks here. It belongs to a realm other than the physical and the mental. There is, therefore, such a third sphere in tnan ; and out of it comes Ethical action. It is of use to investigate the nature of this bond.* In the history of life we find from first to last the physical order going on according to its own laws. As it arrives at a certain stage in organization, consciousness, and with it feeling, becomes more and more manifest in association with it, seeming to find the arena safer and safer as the self-preservative conditions increase. The mental (both "perceptive " and "feeling," apparently because the perceptive is only of use in the service of feeling) depends on the play of accidents to the physique- It is withdrawn when the self-preservative conditions are destroyed. The same kind of bond connects all thinking with the physique and its play. Here however, there is something more than a mere connection. There is something that acts with what are meanings to us (§ 2) ; for pleasure and pain are our essential meanings. Are these then also meanings to It, or that whence It proceeds } Can this Spring then comprehend consciousnesses } And by what means, and in what manner does It govern the feelings on our field of consciousness, as well as rule it and the * •' The link between feeling and action " — Bain. 12 physical ? Are the physical and the mental but aspects > f this great thing, and is that how they act in harmony— from being united in It ? Containing both the bond and the power working through it (if these indeed be different) is our deep unrevealed being— of which the physical and the mental seem but two spheres of mani- festation, and which, perhaps, is the Universe-Being, (but not necessarily God). It is not well to confuse the bond with the whole Mysterious Realm in which its existence is placed, nor with the Mysterious Power which seems to work through it as Force works through the spindle, nor with the First Cause of all, ncr to call it the Unknowable, when in reality there is not a little to be known concerning it. i8. The bond seems conditioned in time and place at least, (I reject a purely subjective ideal theory of these), and perhaps in precision of occurrence. It is in fact the same which is the nexus of not merely Ethical action, but all associations of mental with physical phenomena, including every occasion when a con- scious state occurs : the Power which works through it holds the difference. Its course here is, within certain limits, to bind pleasure and action together ; beyond that, to bind action with certain other conscious states (aims). 19. The Mysterious Power is not of the individual— though It indubitably acts for him at this point. 20. It was chiefly from omission to consider the third realm in man and Nature that the old discussions on freedom and necessity arose, the physical and the mental each claiming the initiative, but ignoring that in which it really lay. 21. The great point for Ethics is, that pleasure has a constant association with what tends to its own continuance. The association seems to be essential. Evolution explains nothing of it. It rests upon the " constitution of things." 22. "If, however," runs a question, "the cause of willing is something not individual, how can an individual be said to will >" The reply is, that a man is an organism— a complex of parts interworking for common ends, a compound being of body, mind and other. In so far as the power of willing— this association 13 between pleasure and action— enters the boundaries of his organ- ism and works like its other elements towards the common purpose, so far is it of the man. He, in fact, has taken this up into himself just as he has taken up his bodily mass from the world's mass, the general laws of which it still obeys. 23. It is not the cause, kit the stability of the association that really has the bearing. Our power of willing is a practical fact sufificiently stable for the usual relations of man,— so long as his organism lasts, and so far as it is perfect. We cannot penetrate into the hidden springs of his will, but it is given us to know its workings empirically. Why he can will is beyond us ; but Jicnv far he can, is not. (Moral strength must be studied in biography and by experiment.) Relative (or as I would prefer to name it, Essential) Ethics hence rests on a sound and real basis ; for the acts it discusses iire acts of individual Will. This branch of the science does not of course, deal with mere habits, which find no place among its matter, but the Altruistic Act falls within its limits. III.— THE RELATIONS IN CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CONSCIOUS ELEMENTS OF THE ACT. 24. At this stage we are prepared to more directly examine the position held by many that an Altruistic Act, in the true sense, is impossible — that when a man acts for others he is really doing so for his own happiness; and the minor allegation that even if possible it would not be preferable. 25. First analyze an instance. A man perishes for his race's good, believing his own possibilities of happiness to be doomed to everlasting destruction. Someone declares that he does so because the sacrifice brings him pleasure. There is little doubt that it brings him a noble satisfaction, but if one called his attention to this fact would he not spurn it ? Would he not reject the imputation, and seek to banish it, as a cloud upon his unselfish- ness ? There are at least many men who would. One of this character I desire to choose as my illustration. He is clearly not fully conscious of the underlying pleasure, which is taking some merely half-conscious place in his mind. But he is clearly con- scious of something — of the objective good of the others whom u Is I i he has in mind. If the pleasure were uppermost and their good subordinate, and regarded solely as the source of his pleasure then the criticism would be correct. We live in our conscious- nesses, and not in our unconsciousnesses, and we can claim to be so judged, for Nature has made our practical power generally coincident with our consciousness. 26. Let us elcicidate the elements further. First of all of what does the underlying pleasure consist ? The answer is • of the pleasures of sympathy.* By representation— our power of imagining things not present— we can call up both our own past and future pleasures, and the past, future and present of other persons. Action for a single other person, or a few, is not suffi- cientlyeasily separable from one's own immediate interest to choose as an example. But in calling up the happiness of all society imagmation may be likened to a mirror, whose face we can direct either towards the world or our own minds— receiving on the one hand, the large image of a single contracted spot, or,' on the other, the miniature of a vast and varied landscape, with all the intellectual delights special to greatness and variety of beauty— so that when a man recalls, however indistinctly, the hapuiness of all society, with whom he grows to connect every deed performed for others, he experiences a feeling of vastly finer quality and greater satisfaction, reaching more powers and not fatiguing any one, than when he turns his thoughts upon himself. But even when he looks upon the happiness of others, if he regards it as only as so much matter causing happiness to himself, he involun- tarily refers it to the smaller field (self), and it cannot help being made less. Hence, the Altruistic Act is always preferable, ie brings most complete and widest pleasures into the consciousness of the individual. 27. The reasons why the world-field thus should return more satisfactions than the field of self, are not difficult to analyze but would require a separate discussion. Sublimity, greater freedom, purity, finer quality," and external " sanctions," are the chief keys. To live within the self-field is to restrain the natural and ; Herbert Spencer's profound .emarks on the emotions excited in ethical act.on set out m h.s Essay on Morals and Moral Sentirneuts-must not be over, looked. , i 15 full development of cur powers, and to suppress the most intel- lectual. In an intellectual view, including consequences, egoistic conduct exhibits greater pains than pleasures ; the world-pleasure is viewed to be the greatest possible that we know considered in all its results. And that altruistic action thus brings its rewa 1 in attendant " sanctions," whatever additional recommendations it may have, is the testimony of the most thoughtful egoists, 28, If pleasures had effects on the Will in proportion to their amounts, the world-pleasures ceteris paribus ^ would be a stronger force than one's strictly personal desires. And in an indirect but pretty constant way they undoubtedly tend to have effects on the Will somewhat so proportioned, /.^,, through the two associations referred to. 29, This introduces a word as to motives. The motives or moving forces of a deed must be strictly distinguished from its end, however deeply a careless phraseology has entangled the two. The end in view, and nothing else, is what stamps the moral character of an act. Motives are nothing but a mechanism^ though in certain cases the two characters may attach to one thing. The end is frequently an intellectual symbol registering some previous judgment, and not, as pleasure is, an actual present experience — something like in fact, a harbor light, which is not itself the harbor. In Altruistic Acts a great change is taking place in the associa- tion of action with menfsl phenomena. It is beginning to be associated with that which is vivid in the perceptive conscious- ness rather than intense in the feelings. An intellectual end is that which is high m consciousness, and not one's personal pleasure, as in raw acts of volition. Personal pleasure is, it is true, present, but not high in consciousness. It occupies a half- conscious, or, better termed, a sub-conscious place. It is on the road to sinking entirely away from its association with action, as in the virtuous habit. 30, One's personal pleasure is not the end in an Altruistic Act, but it will be found on disentangling the elements, and putting what has been already said about associations into new terms, that it is present by virtue of {a) its general association with normal nerve discharj^es, {b) of an acquired association with intellectual ends, and (^) of the sympathy before mentioned; yet 16 every other end or good must have associations which can be translated into some terms of personal pleasure, in order to be understood as calling for action. The Egoists have confused these facts. "Pleasure," they say, "is inevitably present; therefore, just as in the animal acts, it is the inevitable end." 31. Another remark is: that the (i) real preferability of an end (independent of the agent's self) may be much greater than its reflected pleasure in the agent, which might be styled its (2) personal preferability, or sensational measure to him. In simpler words, an act may produce in the world a much greater quantity of pleasure than the agent is capable of feeling, while his reason may clearly perceive, and his action follow, this superiority of its real preferability. 32. The Mysterious Power— the cause of Willing— (our real and deeper self perhaps, in which we may all be one)— is acting here with the pleasure of others in view— pleasures to which it has adjusted the race physique in former experiences, i.e., the evolutionary adjustments which have made man a " social animal," acquired in the course of Evolution. The evolutionary association (§ 14) indeed is the added factor concerned in this change of base from personal to collective action. The bond between personal pleasure and action is being abandoned ; and the beneficent Power shifts its means by aid of the merely mechanical evolutionary association.* 32a. This last clue leads us to suspect that even when our per- sonal pleasures seem to be our moving forces, they are really reasons of action of an underlying Power. ^Z- The end acted towards by the Altruistic agent is always at some stage of advance towards the ideal moral object — the perfect and eternal bliss of all feeling beings (§ 4). Thus man, partly by his likeness to the Makrokosm, and partly by arrange- ments, which when they evolve to a perfected state defeat the tendencies of his differences from it (to wit, his individuality with Its small interests) is brought to act for the Makrokosm.— And this is the end that the Intellect points out, and perfected Desire recommends. The Power is therefore beginning to become characterized. * There are physiological changes taking place at the same time, but these are only accompaniments, not the causes of the mental changes. 17 34- But let us take care not to digress from the subject of this Part, — the Relations in Consciousness of the Conscious Elements •of the Act. The greatest source of confusion in all the examina- tion, is the position of pleasure in the agent's consciousness, or rather the relative clearnesses in which the mental elements — motive, end, etc. — stand in the mind. Our consciousness (in which it is important •to remark, our human selfhood reveals itself) exists in different shades ranging from what may be called darkness to clear light. It floats on the rest of our being as the light on a wave of the sea — a portion — a temporary construction, — out of the light on the ocean of the u iverse — having its shades and its foci and its prin- cipal focus, the Attention. The light is not all uniform. 35. When some complex states of mind emerge into a clearer plane of consciousness, very important differences take place in the relation of their constituents to the organism. To arrive at a true description, the relations and quantities of consciousness of the latter — their structure — are to be carefully considered. The word " subconscious " is a good term for conditions approaching unconsciousness. Questions purely of these subconscious grades of consciousness rest on a quite distinct problem from those purely of the mysterious bond. The former deal with the mental realm ; the latter with the recondite one. To remember this is of use in analyzing problems where their workings mingle. 36. As human beings we live in the conscious side only of our organism and what is beyond that is for the most part out of our grasp. As states becomes less conscious, they to that extent recede from the individual sphere. Generally speaking, our power of action increases in adjust- ability in proportion to the increase of clearness of consciousness. As to the reason why, all we can say is, that it is one of the characteristics of the association between our consciousness and our physiques — one of the characteristics of the Mysterious Bond — the second of the physique's fitnesses mentioned (§12). Conduct becomes in a like proportion more keenly influencible by delicate forces. 37. Hence the origin, meaning and use (and consequently the legitimacy — and the various degrees of legitimacy, — ) of blame and praise. They are social forces, and refer to the practical power of Willing as far as that extends in each agent. B 18 Hence also the agent's feeling of the legitimacy (the truth) of the praise and blame and his own responsibility. 38. Legitimate praise and blame are not really aimed at the feelings, which as mere sensations do no harm or good, but at the physique, and are intended to influence its actions. The rationale of punishment is : "If your physique is affected by a thing sufficiently to excite your consciousness to the degree of clearness, the deduction from average experience is that it can be made to act accordingly; and if you do not act so, the remedy I must apply to you is one associated with pain." The moral-suasionist will recommend the use of motives associated with pleasure ; and is right if those motives will do the work. 39. This supposes that your organization is in a normal con- dition. If it is not so — if there is some derangement — some change of method will be required.* 40. The mere degree of clearness, nevertheless, is not that which has to do with determining action under these circum- stances : that it is pleasure or pain, and that these, therefore, are subconsciously present in the conscious,ness is shown by the fact that there is discrimination — an acting forward (to pleasure) or backward (from pain). 41. In an Altruistic Act, then, the feeling of pleasure is sub- conscious. It rises partially into the field of consciousness, but not prominently. If moved up the scale into the full glare, its native desirability overshadows that lent by it to the intellectual end, and selfishness results ; but if moved down into unconscious- ness it leaves the field of the individual. f Most early action for others is selfish, and performed for personal delight, because intellectual ends are then few. The oft-repeated duty must, on the other hand, lapse into habit, pleasure disappearing down the scale. The truly Ethical act occurs between the two stages. * The Law of Pleasurable Activity comes in here. t Let it be particularly noted, that I am not dealing with moral acts after they have become " the virtuous habit " (where action follows an intellectual symbol— the conception of Right), but in their pure typical stage, where feelikig is present, and not merely represented by a conception. 19 This is not, however, to say that all Altruistic action tends to cease in the good man. Ever fresh combinations of circumstances, and our mortal tendency to retrogress, constantly open fields for new endeavor. Neither is it an ascetic doctrine. Only it is better both for mankind and the individual himself that he should not pay too much regard to the pleasure he is getting, 42- Questions of Relative Ethics— of responsibility, obliga- tion, praise, blame— are questions of the union of consciousness with action. They are studies of the bond of association between the two, and to this simple sphere of analysis must be referred all the disputes about them. IV.— THE PLACE OF REASON IN ETHICS. 43- I have stated my view of the office of Reason in the last paragraph of the Preface to these papers. Here is where all that is true in Kant's great Ethical theory (whose chief lack was insufficient analysis of the motive) comes in. 44. Kant's theory needs to be followed by two remarks : (ti) In reality Reason in "giving a maxim," -"s simply placing before us an object— d, thing— ]\x%\. as it leads us to the knowledge of any objective existence, and this object is the end and the chain of acts that will reach to it, {b) Ethical theory requires more than a maxim, that is the mere objective element : it requires that the mental machinery of action be explained. 45. Reason is always a Hypothetical, never a Categorical, Imperative. The only Imperative is the fundamental Impulse to Action underlying Desire *— or rather the general resultant of all the desires implanted in us. And these being referable once more to the mysterious Power, we are again led back to the nature of that. * Cf Hume as quoted in Sidgwick's Hist. Ethics p. 204. "Reason is no motive to action" except so far as it "directs the impulse received from appetite or inclination." 20 v.— RESULTS. 46. The result of our vieiv of the Altruistic Act is to show that our physique is not governed by our pleasure, or any absolute free-will of ours, but by something else practically incorporated into our organism, which acts for our pleasure as its general rule, yet with variations such that where a higher aim appears it is l)0ssible for us to escape this general law by the stepping-stone of a form of the law itself; that there is an actually structural difference between selfish and unselfish deeds ; and that the difference is an essential one to a race of conscious beings, because it operates with their very consciousness itself. In the highest acts certain limitations of their powers practically disap- pear from the sphere of their natures. The allegation that good acts are reducible to selfish principles is groundless. On the contrary, we are enabled to approach indefinitely near to Kant's " super-sensible " plane. There are, thank Heaven ! powers and arrangements through which we can not only think beyond ourselves, but act beyond ourselves. What the full meaning of this is and to what it leads has been hinted at, and will be further discussed in the essays succeeding. 48. A general word oi warning is very needful to a good many. No one can study the radical problems of Ethical action who is a materialist in the sense of considering consciousness to be only a phase of matter, for he has not yet taken the step in psycho- logy, very difficult apparently to some, of seeing the inconvertible difference between phenomena of the one kind and those of the other. Nor is he who only sees these two realms yet fit. It ig when he recognizes their parallelism, and that a bond is necessary to explain it, that he possesses the complete foundation. ' 21 II. THE MYSTERIOUS POWER." " The Earth goes on the Earth, glittering with gold ; The Earth goes to the I'^arth s()(»iier th n it wold ; The Earth builds on the Earth castles and towers ; The Earth says to the Earth, 'AM this is ours.' " — /« Melrose Abbey. It was a terrible spectre, during the ages of monastic gloom, this fact that the body had weight and shape and limitations of strength and was simply a material object. Nor has the notion lost its torce,Jiowever it may its ghastliness, to a great multitude of perplexed ones, since we have learned so much more clearly its mechanical nature, in the lever-action of its bone-and-muscle adjustments, the chemical operation of the digestive juices, the voltaic-battery structure of the brain, the similarity of nervous currents to electrical, and all that family of facts which show us that the body is simply an elaborate machine. But, surely, there are some differences between it and an ordinary machine ? Let us examine those differences, together with the likeness. The principal likeness between the body and the machine is that each is an organism, that is, a structure consisting of parts which intervvork for a common purpose or purposes. The machine may be a large printing-press: its common purpose, then, is to turn out prmted sheets, and perhaps to drop them, neatly folded, into a box. The parts of the body likewise interwork. One of their common purposes is to digest the substances we take as food. Another is locomotion. But the great general purpose, to which all subordinate ones contribute, in the uninstructed natural man is the preservation of the type ; that is, the preservation of the organism itself, and the transmission of its like. * Published as an article in the Boston Index, April 22nd, 1886, under the title " The ' Unknowable Power.' " This will account for its repetition of matters contained in the other Essays. oo This purpose the organism is adapted to effect mechanically. It might be done unconsciously just as well as it is done. Suppose a stone thrown at such an unconscious body. Its eye would be affected by the rays of light coming from the stone ; these would send a current to the optic centres ; the effects of similar previous occurrences would have opened thence certain arcs connecting with motor nerves leading to the muscles of the legs ; and the legs would leap out of the way, as those bodiless frog's legs leap in Galvani's experimeni. 7 bus, we have the principal likeness between the body and a "mere" machine. The principal differences are certain mental facts. One is that I am conscious of much that occurs in my body. Another is that I— or my mind— seem able to guide its special movements as I please ; in other words, that, ordinarily, it acts towards my pleasures and away from my pains. Now, how is this compatible with what was said before ? If the body is a machine, will it not move »vhere it tends and must not the mind merely follow its tendencies, no/em volens? Some- times, this occurs ; but take a case where it does not occur. For instance, you yourself can walk to the door if you please, or you can stay where you are if you please. There your body does not move in spite of your desire. Of that case,— and it exempli- fies most cases of willing,— one of two explanations is true : either the body is governed by your pleasure or else both body and mind here work together in simple parallelism. But pleasure is only a state of consciousness, a feeling. It is not a weight or a chair or a force or a nervous current. It is utterly unlike any of those external things, and cannot act upon them or upon what is like them,— the body.* Imagine in your mind some strong pleasure, if you wish to test this. Being a simple state of consciousness, it cannot as such stir anything. This is one of the most important points in psychology to under- stand thoroughly, and cannot beb'^ner put than by Dr. Alexander Bain, of Aberdeen : " Mental states and bodily states are utterly contrasted : they cannot be compared, they have nothing in common except the most general of all attributes,, degree and See note to Sec. 2, Ess i ' I. 23 order in time When I am studying a brain and nerve com- manity, I am engrossed with properties exclusively belonging to the object or material world : I am at that moment (except by very rapid transitions or alterations) unable to conceive a truly mental fact, my truly mental condition. Our mental experience, our feelings and thoughts, ha /e no extension, no place, no form or outline, no mechanical division of parts ; and we are incapable of attending to anything mental until we shut off the view of all that. Walking the country in sprmg, our mind is occupied with the foliage, the bloom, and the grassy meads, and pujely objective things. We are suddenly and strongly arrested by the odor of the May-blossom : we give way for a moment to the sensation of sweetness. For that moment the objective regards cease ; we think of nothing extended ; we are in a state where extension has no footing ; there is to us place and space no longer. Such states are of short duration, — mere fits, glimpses ; . . . but, while they last and have their full power, we are in a different world."* We come back, therefore, to the second explanation, that matter and consciousness here work together in parallelism. But something must cause this parallellism. What is that something ? It acts for man's pleasures and away from his pains. It cannot be a mere conscious state. And it cannot be mere unconscious matter, because it acts with an understanding of his pleasure and ihis pain. One thing is certain. There must be a deeper being than either the phenomena of matter or of mind somewhere concerned in the affair. It may be that man's own individual nature is the deeper being, and contains, unknown to him, capabilities of feeling and acting and coordinating the two. Or else the deeper being concerned in some greater, who knows him and knows what pleasure is, and that he can feel it, and can and does arrange for him. As to his individual nature, so far as he is conscious of it, being the agent required, that seems unlikely, because its area of power is so limited. Many of the acts which tells for his pleasure are •out of the reach of his will, — for instance, the operations of the * Paper on " The Correlation of Nervous and Mental Forces." 24 it heart and of the arterial muscles which equalize the circulation of his blood,— and most of the arrangements for him were made long before his birth. What, then, is this power ? Let us characterise it somewhat more. We have seen that it is a something which acts m much for the individual. Does it nob look as if mind and body — consciousness and matter — were here but different sides or phenomena of a reality which is the reality of both, and that his true self is not known to his ordinary con- sciousness ? -But a great part of the working of the power is not.directed to the individual's pleasure specially. It is directed to that of others,, even in the individual himself. For one thing, in the arrange- ments for the continuation of species, it looks beyond him to the race that is to come after him. Secondly, take that principle running through evolutionary history which constitutes the com- monest conditions of existence those which give most naturali pleasure, as the colors of the sky, the grass, the trees, ^he moun- tains, and the forms of one's own species. In intellectual altruis- tic action, again, the power impels the man to a voluntary self- devotion to the happiness of others, directly against his personal: pleasure, and often at much individual pain. The power, therefore, is not of the individual, but has a field of purposes including all pleasure-feeling creatures. (I am using- the word " Pleasure " as typical of feelings in general.) And the family of oUch creatures grades all the way down to simple proto- plasmic masses, and carries its analogies beyond these even lo colloids, as Graham * shows, and thus into the inorganic lifeless. world, so that no limit can be logically fixed where the latent feeling ends. Again, a curious conclusion can be drawn regarding all these creatuies which possess a like conscious nature. Their likeness and certain other circumptances, such as some of those above mentioned, point to a common base. Of course there is no difficulty in the light of evolution about their having a common origin,— that is to say, what might be called a common base in See appendices to Spencer's Biology, 25 time ; but there are reasons, also (which, however, might be cum- bersome here), why this ought to point to a common simultaneous base or if time be a merely human condition, then a common transcendental base corresponding to simultaneity. There is very great significance in the power's action for pleas- ure. In the first place, pleasure is the one thing we value, of all things. Furthermore, it and pain are the facts of our true internal being, so far as our self-consciousness pierces. V/hat strikes them strikes into our very core. Our powers of knowledge lead in to them; our will starts out from them ; and both subserve them. If the power had worked to produce some mere idea or some principle of m • matter, there would have been no special significance. We care nothing for those things except as they produce pleasures or pains. We can see no real design in them except as they do so. The only thing that will show a binding of the physical and the mental together in one united plan for one united purpose, as apart from a mere accidental principle of union, is the action of the physical for something mental; and this can only be thought of pleasures and pains. Furthermore, to act so persistently for pleasure, the power must understand pleasure. It does act persistently so. All the laws of feeling look toward a continuance of pleasure, — the Law of Pleasurable Activity, for example, which is the arrangement that pleasure is associated with the most frequently recurring conditions of our activities and those which tend to permanence of the material organism ; as also the laws of the withdrawal of consciousness from an injured frame. I use the word " understand " at once as part of the theory I am about to state. We find in the \'orid a tendency of the un- known to resemble the known in broad characteristics. J. S. Mill shows in fact that this is the basis of reasoning by inference.* We are more and more every day finding out that the universe known and unknown is a unity. The probability is, therefore, \xi favor of the power knowing pleasure is somewhat the way we know it rather than iu some totally unlike way. Why should not this power fall into a place in the unity of the universe.? How it System of Logic. Book III, Chapter III. 26 •originates is quite beyond us, but, as to location we act logically in tracking it where it displays itself, namely most conspicuously along the history of animal life. If our body and our conscious- ness are but outer shows of a deeper self of ours, that which wills through and in all matter and in and for all consciousness will be a being uniting the whole of these in its essence, they and our- selves being but parts and outer shows of it. If it acts so dis- tmctly for the pleasure of all, just as the individual tends to will for his own pleasure, then, on the same analogy, the inner fact of the whole universe, so far as our consciousness can conceive it, should be Feeling. And the rule of action of the whole universe, by a law as wide-spread as matter, should be toward pleasure. And if men are but parts of the general universe, so considered, they obey the biological laws of parts. Their individual con- sciousness will be to that of the whole as the consciousness, say, of the individual cells in their own brain substance. Mankind and all flesh upon this globe must obey, united, simply the laws •of development and function of an organ of the great Organism ; and the function of this organ is evidently ethical. And, finally we have the important deduction that man, so far as he goes, is an expression of the universe ; that the universe, therefore, is in- telligent and fatherly. Has not anthropomorphism, then, some truth, after all .? Our leading quest— next to the performance of our function, duty— ought surely to be the study of this great Power. Clearest of all is it to be discovered in the parallelism of states of physique with states of feeling,— a large field for exploration. This field leads on to all associations of states of physique with states of consciousness of every kind. And wherever chere is a different state of consciousness there is a different phase of matter. Thence, the call is onward to a study of the organic structures of the universe, and also of the phenomena of objective existence. Everything, in fact, contributes something. There is no lack of inaterial. The theologian theists have done much good work in the pleas- ure field, chiefly on the questions of Order and Design. They liave followed, however, rather instincts than any deep-reaching system, because hampered by traditional doctrines. On the other ihand, recent secular thinkers, while I think they neglect this field, 27 Teach the same conclusion iroin other directions. Herbert Spencer arrives at his " Unknowable Energy " by recognizing a single Sources behind all the phenomena of force, matter, and consciousness.— infinite, eternal, and either personal or higher than a personality, and unknowable in the sense of being *' no more representable in terms of human consciousness than human ■consciousness is representable in terms of a plant's functions."* Huxley has lately echoed him.f Fiske, the author of the Cosmic Philosophy, concludes the same : " There exists a Power to which no limit in time or space is conceivable ; of which all phenomena, as represented in consciousness, are manifestations, but which we can know only through the manifestations." Schopenhauer as- cribes all to Will permeating or informing the universe. Schel- ling reached the idea as a common reality including both Subject and Object in one. Hartmann and those from whom he draws his chief ideas approach it from an examination of unconscious and instinctive acts. Even John Stuart Mill, just before the development of evolutionary methods, was led to see some kind of such a power crudely given by ordinary induction, of which he was par excellence the master : *'A Being of great but limited power, how or by what limited we cannot even conjecture ; of great and perhaps unlimited intelligence, but, perhaps, also more narrowly limited than his power, who desires and pays some regard to the happiness of his creatures, bu«- who seems to have other motives of action which he cares more for, and who can hardly be supposed to have created the universe for that purpose alone."! A learned German-American§ has just given to the world a system, starting from the dualism found in Kant's writings, which evolves the idea from still a different point of view. Spencer and his fellows, though on the simplest track, have been properly criticised for laying too much stress on the " un- knowable " aspect. They would not have been so likely to do this, had they started from the tendency to act toward pleasure instCttu of that of the large quantities and more mysterious forces • Essays. First Principles. Controversy with Harrison. t Controversy with Mr. Gladstone. + Essays on Theism. :§ Dr. Paul Carus, Monism and Meliorism, New York, 18S5. 28 of physics. It is in the hope of calling attention to the neglect of this department that the present paper is written. Research in- it may yet reveal as striking facts and fruitful laws as physical research has done. We cannot, it is true, know the power direct- ly, just as we cannot know things in themselves ; but we can follow much of its effects among phenomena. Inference leads us as legitimately into that world beyond sense as into the inex- piored regions of the world of sense itself. Far in their extent beyond our power to grasp as are the attributes of the Great One, still science is demonstrating the directions of lines that lead to it ; and the fact that we may never comprehend more than a part of it is no sound reason for restraining our researches in those directions for partial knowledge. Why, for example, may I not ask such a question as this : " If the Universal Spirit be my true self and that of all my fellows, is not exact justice a necessary law of existence ? for, if I injure my neighbor, do I not hurt myself precisely so much ? " " On the same basis, What are rights ? " Or why may I not ponder on the apparent truta that different phenomena, when traced into the realm outside of consciousness, do not become confused at once (to use what I do not mean to press as exactly a time phrase) intO' one homogeneous ultimate.?— a fact which the constancy of the parallel associations between given states of mind and matter,, and the reappearance into consciousness in accordance with regular conditions, of states which had disappeared from it, ap- pear to prove. Besides its unseen unities, that world is a world of differences corresponding largely to the differences of this. How like are some of the suggestions of the subject to the (unscientific, however) doctrine of the Tao-te-king, the mystic book contemporary with Coniucius ! "Immaterial, unchangeable,, allpervading, unwearied, I have no name for it. If I would speak of it, I call it the Tao All things are born of Tao ; by its- power upheld, by its substance formed, by its forces perfected . . . " The origin of the world is the mother of all. Whoso has found his mother knows himself to be a child, and knowing this and returning to his mother, though the body perish shall not be harmed." * S.Johnson, Orisntal Religions : China, pp. 873, 874, Boston, 1877. ,^ 29 III. The True: Form of thi: Arcument from Ddsicn, Everyone who has studied is aware of how much result has often been obtained by the application of a central principle which simplifies a mass of facts. Simplifications of the sort, like the Copernican system, the theory of Evolution, and Newton's "bright idea of Gravitation have even created whole revolu- tions in departments of thought at times. Something of the kind is possible among the immense congeries of facts to which appeal is made in the proof of a governing Intelligence. And to show that there is a way in which their essence may be seized and stated shortly and surely— that in this problem of surpassing importance, a clear view and easily demonstrable proof can be adduced ; and that a revolution in the discussions on the argu- nu.nt from design and the great division of Natural Theology of which it is the core, is necessary— is the aim of the following remarks. The prefatory step is a proposition concerning the human Will,— namely that the essential and typical characters of a vol- untary act are :* The co-ordination of: A certain series of "mechanical movements " With A certain series of *' states of knowledge " Toivards pleasure (or away from pain). Very simple and very ordinary this looks. It is nevertheless, not altogether so superficial as it appears, and our friend who cries "That amounts towhat I have always learnt," is the party who IS not the least apt to slip up on some of the in-plications and ne- cessaries of the definition. There are few psychologists, indeed, who can really and wholly declare, in the face of every sort of Libertarian and Necessitarian and other inveiglement, that they feel certain this statement will carry through all the subtle prob- lems of conscious Willing, and lose nothing, but hold true so far See Essay I Part II, Analysis of Willing. ./' 30 as its materials apply, throughout the as subtle allied fields of Altruism, Instinct, Function and Evolution. To wholly under- stand its different terms, indeed, would be : " To know what God and man is." Weigh the elements of it. We shall need to go over some part of the ground of the foregoing essays once more. Phenomena of Matter are totally uninterconvertible into phenomena of consciousness. " Mechanical movements " are therefore uninterconvertible into ** states of knowledge." Yet in the voluntary act, here, they are bound together in a definite parallel flow. Something therefore different from either, and not phenomenon of either kind, not phenomenon at all, nor directly knowable, binds them thus together. Furthermore, they so flow in a direction full of meaning. Pleasure and pain— the feelings— differ absolutely from all other facts both mental and physical in their characteristic quality.* Let us repeat : " It is feelings alone, which are of import to human beings. Objects, the world, God, our intelligence and even our existence we can, in their last analysis, care nothing about, except as they can cause pleasure or pain ; without which we could not under- stand them as meaning anything. . . . It is the feelings which interpret all things to us and make them of import, little or tre- mendous. They are our essential being." A keen and thorough-going attention to the nature of feeling, and the range of feeling— facts is as well the clue, I believe, to questions of Design, as to those others in which we have been tracing them. The great Argument, which is our subject, rests on the proposi- tion that the structure of the known universe, and especially of certain particular things in it, carry proofs of the operation of a beneficent Intelligence. What is the mark of the work of an Intelligence ? All the writers %2.y purpose; and that that which we can assert to be purposed differs from what is accidental by being aimed at some end. So far is mere definition. * See Note to sec. 2 of Essay I. ■ema^^naMon^D ii^.i^iSfiSSiii^Ji^^iiJai. 31 I It will doubtless go for plain sailing, too, that the only kinds of ends we can legitimately bring forward as proofs of an Intel- ligence unknown to us must be ana'ogous to such as we hold to be proofs of intelligence in our own sphere. This is on the before-stated principle that we can only reason to the unknown by inferring from the known ; — or to use a geometrical metaphor, by " producing the lines " of tlie known. The next step is the proposition that in our sphere no " end " has any purposive value whatever which is not reducible to pleasure or pain. We may aim at other things, but the aims, unless merely mediate, will be senseless. Without the element oi feeling, one thing is as indifferent as another. Every end, on the other hand, which is reducible to pleasure or pain has pur- posive value.* If the universe, therefore, carries evidence of the operation of a power working distinctly towards pleasure and away from pain, that would be evidence of purpose, and consequently ot an Intelligen».e. The evidence, would, it is true, increase with the complexity and nicety of the arrangements and the universality of the pro- cess, — for that would be a multiplication of somethings instead of nothings — but I am constrained to hold that the last paragraph alleges all that is needed, and that the cumulation of evidence — which has always been made the stronghold of the Argument frofn Design is in reality but little essential to it, and more a useful accessory. And now our preliminary ground is over. The more special point of this essay begins with the question, ** Hov/ is it that the things in the world which are adduced as evidences of benevolent design come to bring us pleasure ? " Behold the wonderful con- struction of the skeleton which supports us in comfort and serves us in activity, the make and disposition of the muscles, the instinct of hunger, the marvellous science of the eye, the beauty of the sky, the grass and our fellow-men ! The clue lies latent in the ready-enough answer, *' Our evolutionary history : " As la man's physical structure, it is the result of long and slow here- ditary improvements, and survivals of the improved : And as to * There is no way, however, of proving this to any one who has not observed their nature closeJy and accurately. He will be simply out of the argument. 32 external things, like sky and grass, the reason is in our own make-up rather than in theirs. We derive our greatest natural pleasures from the oldest conditions of our ancestry. " Our eyes are delighted with the blue sky," many an evolutionist who goes no deeper says, " because it has shone above us for ages on ages and our structure has become modified to harmonize with it. Had the grass been gray instead of green, we should have by this time found the same restful pleasure in its grayness. These complex organisms of ours are the results of, so to speak, passing through a series of sieves, which have stopped all other forms. It is the survival of that which harmonizes best with the surround- ing conditions and has therefore escaped destruction." Just this aspect of Evolution has passed it into currency as an Argument against Design. "Design," some say, "is not necessary to •account for those things." Evolution, however, — the apparent cause — is only the outside wrapper of another, a real one. How is it that certain fecli,igs have become associated with certain tnaterial forms ! We saw before that the feelings are purely mental phenomena ; the material forms purely material phenomena ; — absolutely uninterconvertible. How can material forms operate changes in feelings ? As in the case of the volun- tary act, with which we started, there is no recourse except to reply that some other power which binds the two together must be present to do this, and that not being of either of the orders of phenomena, it cannot be directly k'lown to us, but must remain mysterious. But to arrive at a power which acts towards pleasure is, we •saw, to arrive at an Intelligence. And that is to establish the .Argument from Design. The Argument is thus very greatly simplified. By looking at its essential features only, it is " teles- coped " down to the limits of an act of Will ; and is made com- pletely demonstrable. The Argument has always been treated in a different and much less satisfactory way, to wit, by appealing to the mere complexity of the means. One phase of such treatment is : "The eye is so ingeniously contrived as a machine that the chances are infinitely against its being anything but the work of a Designer." Another phase passes beyond the merely mechanical : " The eye ^limUm ..UmiMaww S3 is made to sec; the ear to hcar^ Here the adjuKtinent of a mechanism to a consciousness is appealed to — but it is only per- ceptive consciousness and the reasoning is really no stronger. That form — any form which rests on the mere complexity of means and on calculation of cuances — on mathematics alone — is completely answerable, no matter how ingenious a shape it may take — for the answer to it grows with the same march as the argument — and it is of no value except as it may unconsciously include the one we have above offered, or suggest it to common- sense. But the true Argument — that from pleasure-facts — requires no cumulative evidence beyond sufficient to show a process. Its immense strength in itself causes this. The only reply affecting it is from pain-facts, but these are easily met ; for there is no doubt upon the tendency of evolution nor the general rule of voluntary acts. As to the lesser characteristics of the In- telligence involved, that is a matter of modification only. The likeness of Willing to Evolution, and its place under the Design argument are not usually observed upon. Not only are the tendencies of the race moved towards pleasure and away from pain; but this is likewise the rule of the ordinary voluntary action of the individual ; and thus the human will itself, taken in connection with the family of facts which show it to be referable to a power more extensive than that of the individual who wills, is an absolute proof of a benevolent universal Intelligence, and the best proof of it. The Argument from Design, as thus drawn, is (except a limited First Cause argument from human intelligence to a Greater as its source), the only true argument for Intelligence. Why .'' Because the arguments of an Immanent Order (that is to say, the proposition that there need be nothing extraordinary in orderly arrangements, because things are simply so constituted and noth- ing more) and of Chance, have a fair right to be opposed as a reply to all the others, — very potent replies to even the argument from Design itself as used in the manner of which Diman's "The Theistic Argument," and " Les Causes Finales " of Paul Janet are representative expositions; for obviously, where its supporters advance it on the strength of cumulative instances there is room for opposite judgment as to the quantity of those instances, the number of others contra, and the possibility of the former ones being mere results of some process like the " sieves of evolution" c 34 form of chance. There is, moreover, room for that assertion of the supremity of mechanical causes which denies even human freedom of purposing. And, worst objection of all, it can be urged (unless feeling-fat fs be introduced) that there is no real meaning in any end you can allege. Most of the other arguments which are brought forward to prove a disposing Intelligence are really but forms of the Argu- ment from Design and only to that extent possess any validity. The so-called Argument from Order, for example, is the pro- position that the rv}^ular and symmetrical arrangements of things which abound everywhere must be the work of an Intelligence. But by Order we may mean either of two things : in the first place, mere regularity of parts, which is an argument for an underlying Unity, but not for an Intelligence ; or secondly, a symmetry — or relation of parts which pleases or tends io happiness — or in a word, touches the chord of Pleasure. The latter is part of the Argument from Design. The Argument from Conscience and a Moral Order is also the same as the Argument from Design. For Conscience — the high and complex instinct implanted in us to act for the happiness of all — follows exactly the same rule towards all feeling beings in general that our lower instincts and our ordinary will does towards the individual self — the rule, namely, of action towards happiness and away from pain. The Argument from History and a Moral Purpose* is analyz- able in the same fashion. It, too, is but part of the Argument from Design. If the whole complex of this question be examinable thus in a nut-shell by means of the point of view of Feeling, may not man- kind lock for a bright era in the history of religion.'* Has not Science rself given us anew, portion by portion, those elements of the .(iea of a Deity, which we had thought from time to time lost in the fire of inquiry ? — the Unity, the Power, the Intelli- gence and the Benevolence. Religion and Science let them ever go forward, hand in hand, confident, the one in the ultimate truth of Goodness, and the other in the ultimate goodness of Truth, trustful sisters, who have led each other so often into magnificent paths. Tliis nomcnclaUuo is from Diman. ''.UJ-Uli„ 35 IV. THE NEW UTILITARIANISM. ! ! It is now possible to state the results of the foregoing papers in thp form of a proposal; the proposal, namely, thai Ethics— the science with which we began, and which, because it is the one that teaches how to measure the true value of all things, is the most transcendently important of sciences— should be founded upon a new basis. Having started with an analysis of the facts, as conceived in altruistic action, we were led to examine the characteristics of the bond between feeling and action, and have adjudged it to be probable : — That there is a mysterious underlying Power at the base of all conscious Nature, and also, in the greatest likelihood, of all un- conscious Nature also ; of which, Evolution, resanied as one fact with IVWintr, is the manner of action. That a purposiveness, of which our individual purposivcnesses are r-vealed and specialized segments, exists and works through the universe, and is one characteristic, among others, of that Power. That the phenomena of the Ethical sphere in and through us are part of that Power's universal action. That its essential object of action is decidedly //.w«a-^,— not as Schopenhauer and others assert— " /^ //w " for in frequent cases it wills noi " to live." Its guiding principle is the greatest happiness of the whole— the Utilitarian principle. It is itself the basis of that principle. The reason why the system is named here a New Utilitarianism is obvious. It offers to complete the work of Bentham and Mill. For the old Utilitarianism as developed by them, and as stated by many more imperfectly, lacked something. An objection stood in its way which they never seemed able to meet adequately, and which is put as follows by Cousin : " Le bonheur comme le 36 plaisir, est relatif h celui qui I'eprouve ; // esi essentielleinent per- sonnel. C'est nous-memes, c'est nous seuls que nous aimons en aimant le plaisir et le bonheur.* Utilitarianism, which had so much to recommend it— which seemed so noble, so simple, so theoretically true f hesitated and stopped short for a means to escape this objection. It was an objection of which Associationalism prevented explanation. This means of escape our view supplies in a working basis deeper than Associationalism, but really as positive. The indi- vidual man, as generally regarded, is not a complete expression of his real self. While the isolation of the individual conscious- ness (which, nevertheless, is but an imperfectly coagulated "mass" of consciousness-stuff) is still to be explained, his real fundamental being lies far deeper than that fleeting revelation, and is the same single self as that of and underlying all other conscious life. Action for others is therefore a deep-lying pro- cedure of the same comprehensible kind as action for himself: The Supreme Ethical Principle is that the feeling-subject as indivi- dual is to subserve himself entirely to the Universal Feeling- Subject ; and the less in feeling everywhere to the greater. Such is the duty of the Universe—the Universal Duty .'—the proposed New Utili- tarianism. A word or two is proper concerning the difficulty which ham- pered the Utilitarianism of the past. The distinctive principles of that system were : That Pleasure (a generic name covering all from agreeable sensations to happiness) is the only real good. That what one ought to regard in an aim is its ultimate value in pleasure — its "utility." That each ought to seek the greatest good of the greatest number :— or, in better phrase, to produce the greatest quantity of happiness (impersonally considered). * Du Vrai, du Beau et du Bien.— Xlle Lefon. t Of the vulgar nonsense which manufactured objections out of the mere term "utility," it is to be trusted we shall hear little in the future. This term, like "Pleasure," is used in Ethics in a special, a scientific, a generic sense! " L'.igreable generalise c'est I'utile ; et la plus grande scmme de plaisir possible... c est le bonheur," (Cousin.) -'-'»ne^aam im m m sK..im 37 The objection above given, as stated by Cousin, demanded of the Utilitarian to find in the constitution of the individual a prin- ciple or pri.iciples sufficient to explain why, if the pursuit of pleasure be the only intelligible principle, he was ever bound to prefer that of others to his own, as he feels that he is in Altruistic action. Sympathy could only account for it partly. Bentham tried the introduction of sanctions, such as the pains of law, the esteem of fellow-men, etc. Mill, after reviewing the sanctions, concludes to ''a-natunilhash of sentiment for Utilitarian morality," a " desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures." * He adr its all that is claimed for the noble character of the facts of disin- terested action, and says of the martyrs, f " Their impulse was a divine enthusiasm,— a self-forgetting devotion to an idea." In admitting this, however, his own case is gene. His arguments from sanctions (indirect calculations) migl t hold good up to a certain point ; but Martyrdom is the crucial test. For if a man allows any moment of exaltation to destroy all the goods of living, he should be from the personal point of view the chief- est of miscalculators, the most unreasonable of men. Even if you suggest that had he lived, his life afterwards would have been too painful to be a good : we have to reply that if he were a reasonable man, neither he himself nor any other could reproach him. Something was wanting, and this Mill's associates and follow- ers have never succeeded in supplying. The reason of the failure is, that they held a doctrine in psychology which pre- cluded their doing so— the doctrine that the complex mental phenomena were sufficiently explainable by mere associations of the simpler, in other words, the doctrine of Associationalism, which had descended from Hartley. Associationalism claimed J "to be neither materialistic nor idealistic, to have nothing to do with mind or matter, in them- selves, or with metaphysical problems of any sort, but only with facts, i.c.^ with phenomena." * Essay on "Utilitarianism." t Essay on Tiie Utility of Religion. t Appendix by Benjamin E, Smith to Julius II. Seclye's Tr. of Sclnveglcr's Hist., Phil.— New York, 1886. 38 i Adequate explanation of Ethical facts requires some deeper psychological basis. The admirable Butler, long before had felt that necessity though perfectly willing to accept the principle of benevolence as alone sufficient, but finding it only partly correct, and he tried to supply the hiatus by his " moral rule of action inter- woven in our nature.^ Indeed, much of Intuitionalism consisted of half-conscious attempts of one kind and another to supply the background required. Last of all, Spencer, and some of his coadjutors, have gone further back than mere Associationalism, and posited a hereditary basis. But this does not go to the root of the objection, though it lays bare part of a field which sug- gests more. And in the Data of Ethics I notice a passage which very significantly concentrates the weaknesses of his position (i) . . . ''''from the dawn of life Altruism has been no less essential than Egoism." (2^ " Though /;"mar//v it is dependent on Egoism, yet secondarily^ Egoism is dependent on it." I simoly break the passage into two statements. As a matter of 1 ct. "*^her Altru- ism nor Egoism can be dependent on the other, Ltut both must be produced by something else. This, at least is a safe state- ment in general. English Ethics, in fact, has been in an impotent condition since Mill ; and this is a pity, for Ethics is the very soul of the sciences. Now a few discursive remarks upon the system the writer offers. First, its claim is only to be the preferable among theories. True science demands much research before it consents to be even mildly dogmatic. This new Utilitarianism proposes many patient investigations before its fixed establishment. It points to a tangible object, calling for examination by expe -w-A and observation. The operations of the Mysterious Pc > r .)r Universe-Soul are, it advances, as within the methods of ^ v chology and biology — two of the most practical of sciences — as are the operations of the human will and the human mind. Men who deal with scientific matter will appreciate for instance how much carefulness and labor would be necessary in an inquiry into the withdrawal of consciousness from injured organ- isms, whicK Essay II is compelled to pass with a single remark. * Of ihe Naliuc of Virtue (1736). ••I 39 -"^1 % Yet we may hope in time perhaps to throw some light upon other sciences. I^ pleasure or happiness be truly the universal aim of the Universe, the conditions of them ought to be clearly taught in our schools and universities. Let the science of Edu- cation take heed of them. May not biology, too, receive from us as well as give .-' The principle that the Universe-Soul feels the whole of the pleasures and pains that individuals feel, that it acts in view of them, and that its action is according to certain laws, yet to be more fully ascertained, and of which what we term "vital laws " are a part, may it not supply an experimental principle towards testing that great proposition which bright minds are everywhere broaching, that consciousness is spread throughout all matter, — and help to show where and how it dwells therein — where and how concen- trated and where spread thin ? Will it be no service to psychology to discourage the manufac- turing of artificial '* Moral Faculties," and of the illusions and unmeaningnesses, such as " ends of Reason," " increase of the quantity of life," "realization of the Absolute," "self-objectifica- tion of the Will," and so forth, which many — (the chief part from attending solely to the partial office of Reason in Ethics) set up as the supreme end of Nature ? Another pertinent psychological problem is the relationship of pleasure to pain, in the light of the question whether the pain of this life may not be an element of the pleasure of the co-existing larger existence. So, likewise, the relationship of ihe feelings to the plane of human consciousness, considering both as possibly independent planes. So, again, the question of a complete scale and scheme of the ideal possibilities of pleasure and pain. May we not perhaps even expect in these sciences to lead to new discoveries of value by opening a way to broader fields than are yet penetrated ? Teleology can have a new life before it. What kingdoms may not lie along the path we have been exploiting into, the third realm co-extensive with those of consciousness and matter ! That individuals are caused to work for pleasures they do not feel, and even for those they do not kow, seems to hint the possibility that they may be working for the pleasure of other creatures we cannot even conceive. It is truth worth looking closely at, that while Evolution — the action of the Power — con- 40 nects us with the past and lower, the more material, the less evolved ; it likewise points ahead and lays claim for us with as steady an index finger to an ineffable future, to nobler relatives, spiritual and free, to vistas of more wonderful evolutions yet. These are real, and we must make them of our purposes. Ethics, in fine, must ground even its subjective explanation universe-wide, instead of man-wide or even race-wide. It is im- possible to explain its facts satisfactorily by anything bounded in the man or the race. As to the nacure of the Universe-being it will be seen that no more than a rude sketch has been attempted. There are many questions. Is the rate of evolutionary progress Its time of willing under certain conditions ? Has it a measurable rhythm of life .'' What are Its degrees and conditions of feeling.'' And of intelli- gence ? And their relations to our ov-n } How can the problems i .s limitations, and of Pain be solved "i etc. score of metaphysical questions, too, offer themselves — but with these I do not wish to contend. Only on Free-Will a word. As there is one underlying purposiveness in Nature, of which the man's purposiveness is a part; — as his willing is but a mani- festation of the will of the Universe-self; — his nature depends on the nature of that. That can act towards pleasures ; it has been able or been enabled to make the original choice of these ; it therefore has the faculty of pursuing what is an undoubted good to it, and thus has what true freedom is. In directer words, the Universe-Soul is free. Man's deeper self is therefore free. His individual consciousness is, on the contrary, not free — it has not made the original choice of its goods or pleasures, but must be admitted to completely follow the course of mechanical causes — the course decided by the original freedom. The extent, rela- tions and conditions of this freedom in both its broader sphere and that of the individual, are matters of more detailed study, observation and statement. These remarks may fitly end with a thought of Marcus Aurelius : " Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul ; and observe how all things have refer- ence to one perception — the perception of this one living being ; and hoiv all things act with one movement. ..." %;^-«i |"«; "•s ,.#.jt,