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^VWSft*yWW*<»».*»i»!**»s>fB,«^. 
 
KANTIAN ETHICS 
 
 AND THE 
 
 ^ 
 
 ETHICS OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 i 
 
Ao^eu6au ia-co, ^^Xrcov ehac Ka\ Secu eVi acorvp^a ye 
 r-n^ aXvOeia, kuI rh oUela ?.va.pdv, dXXco, re\al 
 <f>c\o<To<f>ov, 6vra,- d^^olv y^p Svrocu <f>CKo,v Sacov 
 vpoTtfiav rrjv dXijOeiav. 
 
 Aristotle : Eth. Nic, I. 4. 
 
KANTIAN ETHICS 
 
 AND THE 
 
 ETHICS OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 A CRITICAL STUDY 
 
 BY 
 
 J. GOULD SCHTJEMAN 
 
 M.A. (LoND.), D. Sc. (Ediij.), 
 Professor OF Logic and Metaphtsics in Acadia College 
 WovA Scotia, nd late Hibbeet Travelling Scholar. ' 
 
 Publtsfjrt 62 tfie J^ihhtxt Exmtm. 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 
 14. HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN,' LONDON- 
 AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. ' 
 
 1881. 
 
 Owys, r<. ^ »i«>. , ^X 
 
 nupuiiy ui iiitj Liurary 
 University of Waterloo 
 
m^ "■'• •-'"■' "'-f' ^■'.^'"^-'"^mmm^mmmgmmmillllllfli 
 
 1 
 
 LON-DON : 
 
 0, NIIRMAN AND SON, PRlrnEHS. 3Q, MAIDEN LANE. 
 
 COVENT GARDEN. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following Easmj, which is now published by the 
 Hibbert Trustees, was written in Germany about a 
 year ago, during the author's tenure of a Hibbe.^t 
 Travelling Scholarship. 
 
 The Essay is a critical study of the two represen- 
 tative systems of Ethics, with one or other of which 
 the names of most thinkers in England and America 
 are at present associated. Mill and Hamilton, the 
 philosophical leaders of the last generation, have chiefly 
 f historical interest for ours; and the undying dualism 
 of metaphysical thought is propagated in Critical Idealism 
 and Evolutionistic Realism. Kant laid the foundations 
 of the one, just a hundred years ago; Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer, in our own day, has laid the foundations of the 
 other. The present Essay attempts an estimate of the 
 ethical philosophy of each of these teachers. The author 
 has not assumed the infallibility of either system, and 
 then proceeded to refute the other from this dogmatic 
 standpoint: he has, on the contrary, made an honest 
 
 ^1 
 
 » 
 
 i. 
 « 
 
VI 
 
 TREPACE. 
 
 endeavour to discriminate between the truth and the 
 error which his studies led him to believe each system 
 contained. He can sincerely say he has sought nothing 
 but truth. And, in the quest of it, he hopes ho has not 
 been disrespectful towards either of the eminent thinkers 
 whose principles ho hero criticizes. 
 
 In addition to the obligations acknowledged in the 
 Essay itself, the author naturally owes much to the dis- 
 tinguished professors of philosophy, in Great Britain and 
 Germany, whose lectures he had the privilege of attending. 
 But to one man, whose friendship it is an honour to have 
 enjoyed,-to the broad scholar and the keen, discerning 
 critic,-to the classic historian of Greek Philosophy and 
 the foremost thinker of modern Europe,-to Professor 
 Eduard Zeller of Berlin, the author desires to express 
 special obligations for much that need not here be 
 specified, but not least for his constant exemplification 
 of the candid, truth-loving spirit described in the 
 Aristotelian motto of this Essay,-a spirit of which it is 
 hoped some reflex may be found in the following pages. 
 
 Acadia Colleqk, 
 
 VVoLFviLLE, Nova Scotia. 
 July, 1881. 
 
^ed in the 
 bo the dis- 
 Jritain and 
 
 I 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 1. Intelliqiblb and Empirical Character 
 
 2. Freedom of the Will 
 
 3. The Moral Principle 
 
 4. EvoLUTioNiSTic Hedonism . 
 
 PAGE. 
 . ] 
 
 . 20 
 
 , 49 
 
 9 
 
 i 
 
K 
 
 1 
 
 Liir 
 asti 
 mei 
 earl 
 oft 
 fact 
 in a 
 whii 
 
 COU( 
 
 in c 
 
 the 
 ance 
 wer( 
 sens 
 hoM 
 Intu 
 Subs 
 sensi 
 that 
 expe 
 act 
 
KANTIAN ETHICS AND THE ETHICS 
 OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 1. Intelligible and Empirical. Character. 
 
 ^ The reform ivhich Kant inaugurated in Philosophy ho 
 
 himself has likened tr ;he work of Copernicus. As the 
 astronomer found himself unable to explain the pheno- 
 mena of the heavens without attributing motion to the 
 earth, which till then had passed for the motionless centre 
 of the world; so the philosopher could give no satis- 
 factory account of the fact of human knowledge, until, 
 in association with a receptivity for v pressions of sensed 
 which Empiricists rep.arded as the only condition, he 
 conceived a spontaneity of intellect that manifested itself 
 in combining and arranging those passive elements into 
 the unity of an orderly experience. The laws in accord- 
 ance with which this synthesis of thought was carried on 
 were called Categories j and the forms into which the 
 sensations fell, ere the Categories were applied to them, 
 ho; ling partly of sense and partly of thought, were called 
 Intuitions. Space and Time are Intuitions ; Causality and 
 Substance are Categories. As distinguished from the 
 sense-given elements of our knowledge, both are a priori: 
 that is, they are constitutive of, and not derived from, 
 experience; they are brought forth by the mind in the 
 act of knowing, and not imposed upon it by the object 
 
 1 
 
 
 i 
 
 i\ 
 
^--■■■^ '"•'■■- - - -'I i'imiii<iiii'i'# 
 
 Kantian EtMcs and the 
 
 m 
 
 liil 
 nil 
 
 known. But in themselves they are barren and inca- 
 pable of producing knowledge. Not till their empty 
 possibilities have been quickened into life by a sensuous 
 content does there arise the world of our objective and 
 subjective experience. This filling that sense supplies is 
 given from without and points to a world of things-in- 
 themselves, whereof ours is merely a copy— a copy, too, 
 more or less distorted by the media through which it has 
 passed in becoming known. If the world we know be 
 called phenomenal, that other world, of which we know 
 absolutely nothing, may be distinguished as noumenal. 
 It is the former that Kant explained with his Copernican 
 notion. It emerged from his investigation as a system 
 of thought-relations, specialized in the forms of space and 
 time— theniselves the product cf thought— and realized 
 or actualized in a manifold of sensuous content. 
 
 But if the object is thus constituted it is evident that 
 mind is legislative for nature. Accordingly causality, 
 which has hitherto met us as an a priori category or form 
 of thought, must now be regarded as a relation of things. 
 In passing from the pure ether of thought, through the 
 medium of perception, into the palpable reality of things, 
 it has taken a sensuous colouring, and appears as a law 
 of necessary succession in time. On this law all nature 
 is built up. Not merely in the objective, but, according 
 to Kant, in the subjective sphere as well, are events 
 bound together by the causal nexus. Everything that 
 happens in time is causally related with preceding events 
 in time, be it the conscious volition of a human being or 
 the blind movement of a rolling stone. The phenomenal 
 man is no exception to the laws of the phenomenal world. 
 His conduct is as necessarily determined as the processes 
 uiid events of nature. 
 
 '><!»»*i««*»>W»?»!«»»jeS»«^Bp»j^^ 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 3 
 
 Thus far of the Critique of knowledge, which is, how. 
 ever, not the only problem of philosophy. The fact of 
 morality also ne^ds an explanation, and Kant, as if pre- 
 paring the way for his ethical investigations, endeavoured 
 to show in his first Critique that the interpretation he had 
 given the notion of causality did not necessarily conflict 
 with the conception of human freedom.* He insists on 
 the distinction between the practical and the theoretical 
 sphere without attempting to diminish the claims of 
 either. The "ought," he remarks, expresses a kind of 
 necessity and connexion which meets us nowhere in 
 nature. The moral law prescribes something that should 
 be; the physical laws formulate what is, what has been 
 and what must be. That enjoins a translation of thought 
 into being; these are a rendering of being in terms of 
 thought. Further, every event in nature is the effect of 
 another event, which, like it, is a phenomenal appearance. 
 Nowhere does a mere notion bring forth anything exis- 
 tent. But the "ought" expresses a possible action, of 
 which the ground is nothing but a mere conception 
 (p. 379). It is true that the dutiful action must be one 
 that is possible under the conditions of nature, but these 
 concern only its appearance in the outer world, not its 
 origin in the will. Hence reason asserts the necessity of 
 cortam actions, which have not yet happened and which 
 perhaps never will happen, but of which nevertheless it 
 assumes it has within itself the causality. This assump- 
 tion is even more conspicuous in the disapprobation we 
 express regarding immoral acts already committed. We 
 condemn the liar, no matter hov completely his offence 
 be explicable from his nature and surroundings. We see 
 that he would not have told this purticular lie at this 
 * Werke, iii. 374-386 (Edition Hartenstein). 
 
 1 * 
 
 is 
 
 s 
 
 i 
 
 
irIillMi' ^imiiifii''jiiBij 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 ii ■ 
 
 III i 
 
 particular moment but for imperfect education^ evil com- 
 panionship, a nature little susceptible to shame, a cha- 
 racter light and unreflecting, and the peculiar temptations 
 and circumstances in which be then found himself. 
 Nevertheless the liar is condemned, not because of these 
 or even of his evil life in the past, but because we assume 
 that the man might have acted as though they had never 
 been, because we believe that his action was wholly 
 unconditioned by his previous life aisd habits, and that 
 he might at that instant have begun, entirely from 
 himself alone, a series of events in whicn lying would 
 have found no place whatsoever. Our blame is grounded 
 on a law of thought,, in accordance with which we regard 
 reason as a cauae that could and should have determined 
 a different course of conduct, even though all sensuous 
 motives were in opposition. The liar in the moment of 
 lying is guilty, even though the lie be determined by 
 foregoing conditions, from which it might have been 
 predicted with the certainty of a solar or a lunar 
 eclipse. 
 
 Every human action has accordingly two sides, from 
 which arise contrary determinations regarding its causa- 
 tion. Hence, in Kant's words, "the only question is 
 whether it is possible, if- merely natural necessity be 
 recognized in the entire series of all events, to regard 
 that series, which, on the one side, is a mere product of 
 nature, on the other side as a product of freedom.'* 
 (p. 377.) An affirmative answer to this question Kant 
 grounds on his distinction between phenomenon and 
 noumenon. If we denote by " character " the law by 
 which a cause operatec, then causality of the noumenon 
 will have an intelligible character, that of the pheno- 
 menon an empirical character. By the latter we mean 
 
 «f*5»W«!''W«Wl«lw» ■ 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 that every action of the subject stands in connexion with 
 other actions and events, according to laws of nature, 
 whence, as from its conditions, it may be deduced, and 
 that it constitutes with these a single series of events in 
 the order of nature. By the former we mean that the 
 noumenal ego, which is not subject to the conditions of 
 sensuous experience, may be the self- originating cause 
 of actions which appear under those conditions. Man, as 
 having an empirical character is determined, as having 
 an intelligible character he is free. 
 
 The exact relation between the empirical and the 
 intelligible character is far from clear in Kant's account, 
 which perhaps only reflects the confusion in Kant4 
 thought. We are, however, not left without one distin- 
 guishing mark. As the noumenon is not subject to the 
 conditions under which we know, its intelligible character 
 indicates a -ausality that differs from that of the empirical 
 character in being unconditioned by time. " It commences 
 from itself its eff'ects in the world of sense, but in such a way 
 that the action does not begin in itself." (p. 376.) This 
 relation is described in various terms, without, however, 
 receiving further elucidation. The empirical causality is 
 called an eff-ect {Wirkimg) of the intelligible causality 
 (p. 377) ; and the empirical character the manifestation 
 (Erscheimmg), or the sensuous schema {sinnliches Schema) 
 of the intelligible character (p. 376 and p. 383) . In virtue of 
 this relation, Kant maintains that, though human actions 
 are unchangeably determined in the empirical character 
 of each individual, they are nevertheless free; for that 
 empirical character, whence they flow, is itself the fi-eely- 
 originated product of the intelligible character. Nor 
 
 must frefiflnTTi ho (^onrpi^-prl n" ^^ --^A "■ « 
 
 _„ „„ij, ^^, ^ y^^j ^^ iunic; inuupcnaence of 
 
 empirical conditions; it is the faculty of beginning 
 
 Is 
 
 I 
 
 •SI 
 
 i 
 
 r 
 
^^^ttiHtt^M^^I^KiK,, 
 
 6 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 :!»(. 
 !'!" 
 
 from itself alone a series of events in the phenomenal 
 world. 
 
 This then is the hypothesis by which Kant seeks to 
 show the possibility of morality under the Critical Philo- 
 sophy. No better criticism can be made upon it than to 
 trace its historical development. For, in general, it may 
 be maintained that the full implication of any theory is 
 not perceived by the age in which it appears, but is 
 brought out only in the course of succeeding generations. 
 Ihe abstract notions of Socrates must await the dis- 
 cerning eye of Plato before they can manifest them- 
 selves as the archetypal ideas of our unreal material 
 universe. So Cartesianism full-grown becomes Spinozism. 
 bo the Empiricism of Locke, become conscious of itself 
 passes into = the Scepticism of Hume. And so, as we 
 venture to think, the Determinism of Schelling and 
 fechopeuhauer is the logical outcome of Kant's doctrine 
 of intelligible and empirical character. This transition 
 we must now briefly sketch. 
 
 Schelling follows Kant in relegating freedom to the 
 intelligible character which is subject to no relation 
 either of causality or of time.* It can, therefore, never 
 be determined by anything that has gone before, inas- 
 much as It precedes, not in o^der of time, but according 
 to Its notion, everything else which is or which happens 
 in It. Free actions issue directly from the intelligible 
 character. But this, did it determine itself from Le 
 terminateness without any ground whatever, would not 
 diifer from caprice, and freedom could have no other 
 meaning than contingency or chance. It must, therefore 
 before determining itself to any definite act, have in itself 
 
 * Ueber das Wesen der memcJdichen Freiheit ■ Werkc v\\ 
 ;iai.4l7 (Ed. Cotta, 1860). ^'^^ff, vn. 
 
 «tmimi>*>mm0mmmimiftimmm\ht- 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 a certain determinatiou ; and this cannot be anything 
 else but its own essence, its own inmost nature, which is 
 no indefinite universal, but the definite character of this 
 particular individual. The intelligible essence can, accor- 
 dingly, so certainly as its actions are absolutely free, as 
 certainly act only in accordance with its own inmost 
 nature ; for that alone is free which acts according to 
 the laws of its own being, and is determined by nothing 
 else either within or without. Individual action is 
 accordingly the consequence of the inner necessity 
 of a free being. But what is this inner necessity? 
 According to Schelling, it is the product of freedom, 
 man being what he is in virtue of kis own act. In the 
 original creation, when the eternal yearning gave birth 
 at once to God and nature, man, who now appears deter- 
 mined, was an undetermined being, and by an act of his 
 own he took to himself the definite character with which 
 we now find him here. What he was to be, he alone could 
 and did decide. The decision, however, does not fall in 
 time : the act by which his earthly life was determined 
 belongs to eternity. Everyone feels that he is what he is 
 from all eternity, and that he has not merely become such 
 in time. Hence, although the necessity of all our actions 
 is undeniable, our moral conceptions prove that this 
 necessity is the outcome of our own freedom. That Judas 
 betrayed Christ neither he himself nor any other creature 
 could have prevented ; nevertheless the betrayal was not 
 a necessity, but an act of perfect freedom. The radical 
 evil in human nature is in this life wholly unalterable by 
 any exercise of freedom ; though it is, originally, man's 
 own act— an act of which, though all memory be 
 vanished, a consciousness yet remains in his self-accu- 
 sations and his repentance. 
 
 
 I 
 
 S3 
 
 
8 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 Ml 
 
 This is the essence of Schelliug's doctrine, in which, 
 notwithstanding a cunning interweaving of the myths of 
 Plato and the effusions of Jacob Bcihme, the thought of 
 Kant will be seen to have undergone a development that 
 has carried it almost, if not quite entirely, over into its 
 opposite. Only a Schopenhauer is needed to deduce and 
 formulate the system of necessity with which the doctnne 
 is already big. And Schopenhauer showed himself equal 
 to the task.* 
 
 The central point of his philosophy is the treatment of 
 the will. Kant had set over against the phenomenal 
 world we know, as ground and source of it, a noumenal 
 world of which we know nothing. By the help of this 
 distinction he was able to maintain the freedom of the 
 will— the ffeedom of the intelligible character as opposed 
 to the necessity of the empirical character. Schopen- 
 hauer, undoubtedly following hints that had already 
 appeared in Schelling, converts the entire noumenal 
 world into an all-pervading will, which, in its blind 
 movement towards existence, flings the unreal shadow 
 of our seemingly real universe of thought and things. 
 The intelligible character is this will in so far as it 
 appears in a particular individual in a definite degree ; 
 the empirical character is this appearance itself as it is 
 seen in the mode of action in time and the bodily con- 
 figuration in space. But this wiU is not inseparable 
 from knowledge ; on the contrary, it exists and manifests 
 itself in all nature, from the animal downwards, without 
 it. Knowledge is a secondary phenomenon accompanying 
 its higher objectivation ; and, being dependent for its 
 appearance on an animal organism, it is physical rather 
 
 * D/e TFcK als Wil/e and VorsteUung, Bks. ii. and iv.j Lie 
 heidcn Grunilivohhmc der lit 'tin;. 
 
 !-tfi>xm'mfmmm«>»»ii^t^ 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 than metaphysical. Knowledge is therefore conditioned 
 by will, not will by knowledge. But the intelligible 
 character is the manifestation of will; our character 
 therefore precedes our knowledge, which is only the 
 glass that shows us what we are. 
 
 Our notion of will is the only one among all possible 
 notions that does not arise from our perceptions, but 
 from an immediate consciousness of our own being 
 before as yet the forms and conditions of knowledge 
 have any existence, when the knowing subject and the 
 known object still retain the unity of their primitive 
 condition. This will is the only reality in a world of 
 appearances and mere images of the brain. Natural 
 causes are, to use Malbranche's term, only the occasion 
 for a manifestation of the one reality. Nothing in the 
 world has an absolute cause of its existence, but merely 
 a cause of its existence now and here. Such causes are 
 of three kinds : forces in the inorganic world, irritation 
 m the organic world, and motives in the animal.world. 
 In all these cases the causation is essentiallv the same. 
 Here as there it is the one groundless will, which, 
 appearing hi different degrees of manifestation, is itself 
 subject to no laws or conditions. No cause can deter- 
 mine the character of anything, but only the manifesta- 
 tion of the character already there. Thus motives may 
 nifluence the outer form of a man's life, but thoy leave 
 untouched its inner meaning and content. Our acts may 
 be determined by our surroundings, so far as their 
 specific nature is concerned ; but their source and their 
 general character are changelessly the same. Dir kannst 
 du mcht entfliehen is, as Goethe assures us, the oracle of 
 sibyls and prophets. 
 
 The notion of freedom is negative. When we say the 
 
 h 
 S 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 
10 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 'III 
 
 wil 18 free, we mean merely that the one indivisible 
 reahty which manifests itself in all phenomena, is not 
 subject to the causal relation by which these are neces- 
 sanly determined. Man, like every other part of nature, 
 IS objectivation of the one blind and groundless will. He 
 IS stocked with forces and qualities, which react definitely 
 when acted upon. This series of reactions makes up his 
 empmcal character, which is as inexorably determined 
 by the mtelligible character as this by the groundless 
 will. Beneath the changing hull of his years and rela- 
 t^ons of his knowledge and opinions, lies, like a crab in 
 Its shell, the identical individual self, changeless and 
 unchangeable. His actions indicate both to himself and 
 to others what he really is. Oj^erari sciuitur esse. A 
 change in his actions follows a change in his motives: 
 and as these work through the medium of knowledge, in 
 that alone is given the possibility of a better life. No 
 other change is conceivable: the heart of stone cannot 
 become a heart of flesh. The moral consciousness, how- 
 ever, does not excuse the transgressor or cast the blame 
 on his motives; it sees th.t objectively regarded a very 
 different action was quite possible, indeed would have 
 occurred, if he had been only another person. But that 
 he IS such an one as the action shows him, and no other 
 -that IS what is inexcusable : here, in his esse, is the 
 spot which the sting of conscience pricks. The operari 
 IS the occasion for self-accusation, the esse the ground 
 of it. ° 
 
 Woe is me, that I am me and not another ! 
 
 With this vain lamentation we may not unfitly 
 characterize the death-wail of the intelligible freedom 
 It was excogitated by Kant to rescue the will from the 
 causal necessity of the world of phenomena; it becomes 
 
 *-■';" '^mw^^*mi§m'ff^^ii^^t^^ 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 11 
 
 indivisible 
 lena, is not 
 3 are neces- 
 t of nature, 
 s will. He 
 it definitely 
 ikes up his 
 determined 
 groundless 
 
 and rela- 
 3 a crab in 
 jeless and 
 iniself and 
 >' esse. A 
 
 motives ; 
 fledge, in 
 
 life. No 
 ne cannot 
 less, how- 
 the blame 
 ed a very 
 »uld have 
 But that 
 10 other, 
 '6, is the 
 3 operari 
 ) ground 
 
 unfitly 
 "reedom. 
 from the 
 becomes 
 
 in Schopenhauer's hands the foundation of a system of 
 Determinism, in which, if the name freedom is still 
 preserved, it is only to express the groundless mani- 
 Testation of a blind force, that discloses itself in the 
 thought and life and being of the world we know, 
 establishing always, whether in man or in matter, a 
 determinate character, which intellect may bring to light 
 but which it can neither alter nor destroy. This so- 
 called will is a one-sided development of the intelligible 
 world in the Kantian system. It lacks the rational 
 element, in virtue of which the noumenal character is a 
 law unto itself. But it is not only in opposition to Kant's 
 philosophy, it is also contradicted by the facts of our 
 own consciousness. We are conscious of a will that is 
 accompanied by ideas, which, considered in relation to a 
 volition, may be called its motives. But an unknown 
 force that moves at random into determinate existence, 
 blindly manifesting itself now in this direction and now 
 in that, without the guidance of knowledge or any light 
 of reason, has nothing in common with that which we 
 call will, and the application of that name can only lead 
 to confusion of thought, which no apparent comprehen- 
 siveness of treatment can escape or conceal. A will that 
 precedes intellect is no will ; it can be at best but blind 
 desire. 
 
 But if Schopenhauer's additions to Kant are of a 
 suspicious character, his developments of Kant are 
 essentially logical and consistent. He brought out clearly 
 all that lay in germ in the doctrine of intelligible and 
 empirical character. And, as we have seen, it turns at 
 his touch into a system of Determinism. The stai-ting- 
 point with him as with Kant is the assertion that the 
 intelligible or noumenal will is not, like the empirical 
 
 s 
 
 1 
 
 if! 
 
 W*P^^^«siK- 
 

 12 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 will, subject to the conditions imposed by the intuition of 
 time. Empirical volitions, as falling in time, constitute 
 a succession, the members of which, according to Eant, 
 are causally related to other events in time. Taking a 
 concrete case, it may bo said that the resolve of tho 
 Ilussian Nihilists to blow up the Winter Palace was as 
 necessarily determined by the preceding acts and events 
 of their lives, as the explosion itself by tho lighting of 
 the match, the firing of tho train, and the other cir- 
 cumstances which made up the totality of its causation. 
 ,^nd as the like must hold of every act of will, from the 
 first of their volitions up to the moment of that fatal 
 resolve, it would seem apparent that the theory makes no 
 provision for freedom, however desperately it clings to the 
 name. Tho case is clear : everything that falls in time is 
 caused by what has already happened in time ; volitions 
 occur in time; ergo, volitions are determined. From 
 this conclusion there would seem to be no escape ; and 
 Schopenhauer maintains that Kant was not in earnest in 
 his attempt to evade it.* Certain it is, that Kant at 
 times assigns a role to the empirical character that ex- 
 cludes the possibility of freedom. "It is according to 
 this alone,'' he says, " we regard man, when we wish 
 merely to observe, and, as in Anthropology, to inquire 
 physiologically into the moving causes of his action." 
 (ill. 381.) If the moving causes of man's actions are 
 thus determined, what place have we left for an in- 
 telligible causahty? Even more explicit is the following: 
 " The real morality of actions (desert and guilt), even 
 that of our own conduct, remains wholly concealed from 
 us. To the empirical character alone can we refer our 
 accountahiUty." (p. 881, note.) Accordingly, not only 
 * Grundprohhmc tier Ethik, p. 71. 
 
 ****?^(M^™^S»ta5,. , 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 13 
 
 our observation but our judgment of conduct as well 
 must proceed upon the empirical basis. The judge on 
 the bench, not less than the physiologi cal psycho Fogist 
 must Ignore the intolligiblo character. But then, when 
 the ono has analyzed a crime into its detormiuants, it is 
 not easy to see why the other should sentence the culprit, 
 whoso only guilt is the misfortune of having been the 
 meeting.point of the contending forces, tlie" successive 
 developments of which were determined by their ante- 
 cedents, and by these alone. Kant sought to turn the 
 edge of such objections, and doubtless succeeded, but 
 only by involving himself in contradiction. Rather than 
 surrender freedom, as his doctrine of causality requires, 
 he predicates of some acts at least a causation partially, if 
 not wholly, originating in the intelligible character. This 
 view we may briefly examine before passing to others ; 
 for Kant attempted, in more than one way, to form a 
 conception of how freedom or the causation of the in- 
 telligible character was really operative. 
 
 That the view just stated was not altogether in con- 
 sonance with his critical results Kant seems to have 
 been aware, if we may attach any significance to the 
 unusual caution with which he expresses himself: "Some- 
 times we find or think that we find," he circumspectly 
 observes, "that the ideas of reason have a real causality 
 m the phenomenal conduct of men, and that their actions 
 are determined not by empirical causes, no, but by 
 grounds of reason.'- (p. 381.) In the note from which we 
 have already quoted he virtually surrenders this exclusive 
 causality of reason, remarking that no one can fathom 
 how much is due to the action of freedom, how much 
 merely to nature and to favourable or unfavourable 
 temperament and constitution. But if, as Kant is never 
 
 Cv'wU' 
 
 
 
 I 
 
34^^b>iiJ^>«^M^ 
 
 *Mr*^'«*f»'« 
 
 14 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 wearied of remii-aing us, "all human actions are detor- 
 ra'ned according to the order of nature by the empirical 
 character and the co-operating conditions/' and if from 
 these they "might with certainty be foretold and 
 necessarily deduced". (p. 380), is it not a work of super- 
 erogation to seek any other causality for them, a contra- 
 diction to assign it to a sphere above " the order of 
 nature," and an impossibility to conceive its action upon 
 what is already unchangeably determined without it? 
 Yet it is just this that Kant attempts. Surely a curious 
 task for the criucal philosopher ! 
 
 It might, however, have been avoided had Kant at the 
 outset only made clear to himself the full import of his 
 Coperuican notion. For if the mind legislate for nature 
 and create; f^om its categories, intuitions and feelings 
 the world we know, is it not evident that the mind itself 
 cannot be conditioned by the conditions it imposes on 
 things ? As you cannot predicate of the spider the 
 geometrical relations he has spun in net-work round him, 
 neither can you apply to mind the categories it has 
 set in the loom of .time as warp for the weaving of an 
 intelligibly-patterned world. Causality is a relation of 
 things,— a thought-bond between two objects, but it has 
 no meaning when applied to thought itself, by which 
 things are made and constituted what they are. And- 
 this view, which is implicit in Kant's principles, though* 
 dnmbly articulated by Kant himself, is also the view of 
 tb- rr.tural coH^ciousness of mankind. Unbiassed men 
 do not identify, as Schopenhauer did, volition and causa- 
 tion. Whoever reflects that a motive is merely an idea, 
 and that an idea has no existence aj t from the subject 
 that has it, must object to the comparison of man and his 
 
 motives to a balance and its weights. 
 
 J- he lOrmcr is a 
 
 W^rmtmif^mmim 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 luivr IS a 
 
 — ___^ "* 
 
 merely idoal the latteTTT^duality. Man is nothing 
 apart ^rom h,s .dea, ; but the weights and the bulanc! 
 ha e each an independent ,.xistence. Thus vohtion or 
 w,ll,ng according to motives is by no means neeessitatic ■. 
 And ,t was here that Kant failed to.see the (nil signifi. 
 cance of h,s fundamental notion, whilo contending for an 
 empty shadow which was scarcely even tue ^host of our 
 hvmg freedom. If freedom be not found in our voil- ion 
 ^Uh motives and not without them, it dwell, not with 
 man, it is nowhere to bo found. 
 
 But to return from this digression. Wo have seen 
 tha the intelligible character cannot co-operate „Z 
 pi^duetion of actions, which are wholly gro„„ded in the 
 empirical character. There is, however, a second eon! 
 ception of their relation by which Kant hopes to save the 
 freedom of the will. Grant that human .^tions are the 
 necessary consequences, of the empirical character, deter- 
 mined by it as uniformly as any effect in nature by its 
 cause, what then is this empirical character itself ? May 
 ^ not be the freely-caused product of the intelligible? 
 Andlvant, as we ha.e seen, calls it the manifestation 
 
 the effect of the intelligible causality." But from this 
 account Schelhng and Schopenhauer have drawn the only 
 admissible mference, which, as is well known, was 
 dlrecriy the reverse of Kanfs. At every moment ;f our 
 hves we have an empirical character which determines 
 our conduct and excludes freedom. To protect freedom 
 we excogitate an unconditioned causality of the intel- 
 ligible character, but that carries us out of this life for 
 which alone morahty, and therefore freedom, have'any 
 woHh or interest Kant would of course remind us that 
 the intelhgiblu character is not subject to the conditions 
 
 
 L 
 
 
fmm^m0»m:/miiiim^^^m:. 
 
 16 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 of time, and cannot therefore be assigned to a life that 
 precedes this life. To which there is but one reply : the 
 logic of facts thrusts it out of this life. So long as we 
 have an empirical character, which is the ground of all 
 our actions, so long must we assert they are determined ; 
 and as the empirical character is ours from the beginning 
 of our lives, so must its supposed cause— the freely-acting 
 intelligible character— fall without the limits of our 
 earthly life. And Schelling, who also maintains that the 
 intelligible character precedes the empirical merely 
 according to its- notion and not in order of time, really 
 draws no other conclusion ; for he transfers freedom from 
 the earthly sphere back to the creat^n of the world, at 
 which time we, by an act of our own volition, determined 
 the character of our being and the course of our lives. 
 To add that creation is a timeless act, an eternal now, is 
 merely to play with words. Besides, if, as Schelling 
 asserts, neither Judas himself nor anyone else could have 
 prevented his betrayal of CHrist, is it not manifest that 
 the creation, in which Judas took to himself his definite 
 character, was not the work of that moment, must have 
 preceded that moment, and in so far, therefore, was not 
 timeless and eternal. This unavoidable inference from 
 Kant is clearly stated by Schopenhauer, though with him 
 ^ too we ai-e asked to believe that our character was deter- 
 mined by the manifestation of a blind will, which, as 
 preceding inte'.ect, falls outside the conditions of our 
 knowledge, and hence is not in time. But worthless as 
 the metaphysic of Schelling and Schopenhauer may be, 
 both agree in one important truth, that Kant's distinc- 
 tion between intelligible and empirical character cannot 
 deliver this earthly life from the bonds of necessity. 
 A third view, though not independent of the preceding, 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 1^ 
 
 -PPears^7^Z~7r^^~;;;;ii^ble character'^;;^3 
 we have seen, descend from its transcendental height to 
 aid in the determination of specific actions; and if 
 turther. Its causation of the empirical character, whence 
 our actions flow, must fall outside this present life, with 
 which alone ethics is concerned, might not freedom still 
 find a sheltered place on the ''other side" of actions, 
 which in themselves are phenomenally necessary ? In 
 short what in the empirical character is precisely deter- 
 mined and absolutely necessary may be in the intelligible 
 character free and unconditioned. The necessity of the 
 one may not exclude the freedom of the other The 
 action, m so far as it is to be attributed to the intel- 
 hgible character or pure reason, does not follow the 
 empirical laws in accordance with which both condition 
 and consequence appear in our experience; but it takes 
 Its place in the series of our actions, while its conditions 
 remain unchangeable in the transcendental sphere 
 beyond The change has been brought forth by the 
 mtelhgible character without implying any change in it. 
 For the condition, which has its seat in reason, is not 
 sensuous and does not therefore begin .o be. Accord- 
 ing y we here find, what we miss in all empirical series, 
 tha the condition of a successive series of events, can 
 Itself be empirically unconditioned. Without under- 
 going change in itself, it is the cause of the sensuous 
 condition by which a series of actions is brought on the 
 scage. 
 
 Now without denying the possibility of this causation 
 we have only to remark that there is no field left open 
 lor It If as Kant has shown, all actions are/.% and 
 completely determined by their antP.edento in tf- 
 Oniy when our inquiry into the causes of an action stoj.." 
 
 
 I 
 
 »Sfc 
 
[Bp ,?* " ^i^3^ ™Vi " 
 
 ■'mu%vi!^mm''> 
 
 18 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 with its conditions, and does not press back into their 
 causes, can such a view gain any plausibility. On 
 extending our investigation it would be seen that the 
 ''sensuous condition," which is supposed to mediate 
 between the empirical events and the transcendental 
 ^ causality, is the product of certain events that precede it 
 in time, — the product, that is, of the empirical character, 
 and no more connected with the intelligible sphere than 
 the action it was excogitated to explain. And if we are 
 not too slothful to follow back the course of our lives, we 
 find, from the present time to the first beginnings of 
 action, a like causal relation between our conduct and 
 our empirical character. 
 
 Freedom was to be saved by the union of the intelli- 
 gible and empirical character in every action, and yet we 
 find it impossible to conceive such a combination ! 
 
 Nevertheless, Kant clings to his notion of freedom. 
 But it is after all only a barren abstraction. A will that 
 begins from itself a series of events, without motives, 
 does not difier from caprice, and it is scarcely conceivable 
 that anyone should attach much worth to it. But 
 Kant's age was an age of Blumination, of one-sidod 
 abstractions. It was an epoch of transition, and Kant's 
 philosophy has not escaped the contradictions immanent 
 to all Becoming. As it attempted to cancel the Idealism 
 that emerged from the Critique of Knowledge by bindino- 
 the phenomenal world we know to a noumenal worl of 
 which we know nothing, not even that it exists, so it 
 endeavours to save human freedom, which it had hunted 
 out of the actual world, by sheltering it behind an 
 iutelligible character, which has no other foundation for 
 its being than that fiction of a noumenal world. An 
 object can be analvzed into a manifold nf ppiise -"dcred 
 
Ethics of Evolutlnn. 
 
 19 
 
 A human acfon is shown to be the determined result of 
 
 Kant .s that the end of the matter. Yon must reld 
 the object as produced by something behind it,-fs a 
 man.festat.on or effect of a thing-in-itself. A;d ho 
 «ct.on, wh,ch the empirical character determined, you 
 must regard as freely caused by an unconditioned reas'on 
 Now without denying that Realism and Idealism 
 BVeedom and Necessity, are as amattor of fact ca t rf 
 
 hat Kant has faded to accomplish this. His world is an 
 deal world, and his attempted passage to Realism is a 
 leap and net a necessary or even natural t™nsition. 
 S.:n,larly ,s Determmism the logical consequence of his 
 Metaphysics, and Indeterminism is introduced only a 
 the sacnace of unity and consistency. Doubtless our 
 na ural behef m the reality of the objective world, and our 
 not less firm conviction of our own freedom, are facts that 
 eq-e e.p anaMon , but that is not given by a system 
 ha elegates both reality and freeaem to a transcen- 
 dental sphere, which has no conceivable connexion with 
 W..S actual world in which we believe they both exist, and 
 which can enter into no connexion with it, without 
 mvdying the whole system in hopeless contradiction. 
 
 This leads US to the last objection we have to make to 
 Kant s doctrine of the intelligible and empirical character 
 -an objection that applies to each and all the interpre- 
 tations that may be given it. In every case freedom is 
 supposed to be saved by attributing a causality to the 
 mtelbgible character or pure reason. But the centml 
 point of Kant's philosophy is that the Categories ha" t 
 «d.d„y beyond the sphere of phenomena. It is therefore 
 
 2 * 
 
 i^bs, 
 
 
 44 
 
 
'-■^J''*S^f^*r^-7'r' 
 
 20 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 nieiuiiiij,'losH to raaintaiu tliat the intclH^iblo character 
 has any causality, wliother in relation to the empirical 
 character in general, or to the specific acts that are deter- 
 mined by it. Kant here falls into the same contradiction 
 as when he postulati'S a noumenal world as canso of our 
 sensations, though the category of causality has no appli- 
 cation till the sensations have been constituted by 
 thought into the phenomenal world of our knowledge. 
 In both cases the quest of an Absolute, — of an uncon- 
 ditioned first cause is fruitless. 
 
 The distinction between the iutelligible and empirical 
 character fails of the end for which it was made. It is, 
 however, the natural issue of the Critique of Pure Reason, 
 —but the issue of its weakness and not of its strength. 
 Its source is the dualism of phenomenon and noumenon ; 
 its dynamic impulse the theory of causation. It is these 
 that doomed Kant's Critique to Determinism; — these, 
 and not the immanent principles of the Critical Philosophy. 
 To them we must attribute the result at which we have 
 now arrived. That result is, that for Kant no transition 
 was possible from the theoretical to the practical philo- 
 sophy. Necessity is the outcome of the one, freedom 
 the burden of the other. And it is impossible to effect a 
 reconciliation between them. 
 
 2. Freedom of the Will. 
 
 When the bond of connexion between the theoretical 
 and the practical philosophy has been broken, two courses 
 are open to speculation. It may fasten on one part of 
 the system to the exclusion of the other, or it may hold 
 by both, though seeking beyond Kant the principle of 
 their union. In the last case the contradiction subsisting 
 between causality and freedom would be set aside by a 
 
*»*«»*(«-■ 
 
 Mhics of Evolution. 
 
 21 
 
 juster conception of these categories themselves. It 
 would be seen tliat the ego, which legislates for nature 
 IS Itself above the reach oi' natural laws. Thought cannot 
 be caught in the diaraond-net it has thrown for things 
 A sound theory of knowledge will show that the laws of 
 Kature are not the laws of Spirit. And if Kant failed 
 us hero, wo shall nevertheless find that Kant's principles 
 when duly developed, free us from the contradictions 
 nito which Kant himself fell. 
 
 But this course has not always been followed; and 
 there have not been wanting thinkers who, staying them- 
 Belves on the Critique of Knowledge, entirely reject the 
 Critique of Morality and Religion. This is the general 
 attitude of the so-called Neo-Kantians, of whom Lano-o 
 may be taken as the representative. Professing to huM 
 on the theoretical philosophy of Kant (though, as we 
 think, without its foundation), Lange asserts that - the 
 entire practical philosophy is the changeable and perish- 
 able part of the system.* Between the Critique of 
 Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason he 
 sees nothing but contradiction. The one moves in a 
 world of appearances, the other in a world of realities • 
 the one binds phenomena in the changeless bonds of 
 necessity, the other sets noumena under a self-given law 
 of freedom. In that our scientific knowledge is placed 
 on a firm foundation; in this it is exposed to the 
 caprices of the will. Here the limits which were there 
 set to knowledge are overstepped; the death-warrant 
 signed against metaphysics is countermanded. 
 
 The existence of contradiction we do not deny. We 
 have already hinted how it may be avoided. But grantinc^ 
 everything for which Lange contends (though much 
 * Gcschir/itc des Matcrialismus, ii. 61 (.3rd edition). 
 
 ^2 
 
 
 
22 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 might be refuted from Kant himself), does it therefore 
 follow that the ethical philosophy must be rejected ? 
 Does the truth lie exclusively in one Critique ? Or may 
 there not be truths in both parts of the system, which, if 
 well understood, are perfectly accordant ? But even 
 though we are unable to detect this inner harmony, we 
 are not on that account released from the claims of either 
 on our reason. Lange makes this possible for himself by 
 relegating the facts of the moral and religious con- 
 sciousnesss to a " world oi fiction," which, as we are told 
 to our surprise, constitutes at once their "worth and 
 dignity."* But this is no philosophy, it is sheer despair 
 of philosophy. Kant attempted to explain all the facts 
 of our consciousness, while Lange has contented himself 
 with a partial survey, which leaves unexplored one large 
 sphere, that, on his own shov/ing, is " the source of all 
 that is high and holy" in humanity.f He may, if he 
 choose, call that world a fairyland of fiction and find it 
 strange that Kant had not fallen on so happy a name ; 
 but the world itself will still need a philosophical ex- 
 planation, just as much as that other world of nature, 
 than which perhaps it is rather more than less real. And 
 Kant's explanation cannot be affected by the dogmatism 
 of the new school. Indeed we believe the Neo-Kantians 
 to be grossly inconsistent. For does not the philosophy 
 which leads to causality lead as inevitably to freedom ? 
 Both notions stand on precisely the same level; the 
 deduction of the one is as valid as the deduction of the 
 other. The method of the practical philosophy is the 
 method of the theoretical philosophy. In the first place, 
 each sets out with an accepted fact, — here the fact of 
 
 * Geschichte des Matcrialismus, ii. 61 (3rd edition). 
 t Ihid. 
 
Ethics of Evolution.. 
 
 28 
 
 duty, there the fact of knowledge. Secondly, each eeeks 
 a general formula for the concise expression of the fact. 
 Thirdly, each proposes to explain the possibility of the 
 fact as contained in the formula. Fourthly, each finds 
 that the universality and necessity of the fact are inex- 
 plicable from experience. Fifthly, each is accordingly 
 obliged to posit an a priori element, which, not preceding 
 experience in order of time, is yet not given in experience. 
 Sixthly, each having shown this a priori factor is the 
 only possible hypothesis, delivers a result that we cannot 
 refuse to accept, without showing a fallacy either in the 
 premises or in the argument. Accordingly, to accept 
 the notion of causality and to reject that of freedom is 
 only possible to a one-sided system, such as that which 
 Lange gives. Instead of closing the path to the practical 
 philosophy, he simply passes by it, and offers certainly no 
 resistance to our entrance. Here we are to seek the 
 freedom which the theoretical philosophy necessarily 
 excluded, but which it nevertheless discerned as the 
 " substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things 
 not seen." 
 
 For the thorough understanding of Kant's treatment 
 of the question a brief sketch of his ethical philosophy is 
 necessary. We must of course confine ourselves to the 
 merest outline. 
 
 In the analysis of morality as of knowledge he sets 
 out with a truth of universal and necessary validity. In 
 the one case it is the body of mathematical proofs, in the 
 other ^'t is the moral law. In both the inquiry turns on 
 the possibility of such propositions, which are at once 
 synthetic and a priori. Confining attention to the moral 
 law, it is evident that it cannot be constituted by practical 
 principles which prescribe action for the attaininent of an 
 
 y 
 
 till 
 
 t 
 .1 
 
■^•mmmmr 
 
 24 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 111 
 III 
 
 end. For the maxim of conduct would then be merely 
 the desire of an object, or the pleasure in the existence of 
 it. But since this pleasure in an object, which must be 
 presupposed as a condition preceding our volition, cannot 
 be known a priori, it would follow that the maxims of 
 our conduct were always ci posteriori, and therefore in- 
 capable of becoming law for all reasonable beings. Op, 
 in Kant's words, " a material principle can never yield a 
 practical law."* Such material principles, however 
 different in other respects, agree in this, that they belong 
 to one general system of Eudaemonism and rest on self- 
 love. But a system, the principles of which turn on 
 one's own happiness, no matter how intellectually soever 
 the understanding may be employed on it, can nev^er 
 furnish any further motives to moral conduct than such 
 as excite and stimulate the inferior powers of desire. 
 Either then a superior power of desire is to bo abandoned, 
 or else reason must itself be a practical or active faculty, 
 i.e.i such a one as can by the bare form of its rule 
 determine a volition, and that abstracted from all f eelin'^s 
 of the agreeable or disagreeable which may follow or 
 compose the matter of choice. But to deny man this 
 higher power of reason is to degrade him to the level of 
 the brutes, which are guided by the light of instinct 
 alone. The only question, therefore, is, how we can 
 conceive of reason as determinator of the will. Only 
 one way is possible. "If a rational being cogitate his 
 maxim<? as practical laws of universal validity, he can do 
 so only when his maxim is not by its matter but by its 
 form the determinator of the will/'f Were the will de- 
 termined by the matter, i.e., by the end or oljcct desired, 
 it would be dependent on the relation subsisting between 
 JFcrke, V. 22. f y. 28. 
 
Ethics of Evolut'mi. 
 
 25 
 
 the feelings of pleasure and pain and the end represented. 
 But since this is difTerent in different individuals, and 
 even in the same individual at different times, since, in a 
 word, it is h poderiori, it is unfit for a practical law 
 binding on all reasonable beings. Hence, as has been 
 stated, only the form remains as determinator of the will. 
 If, then, the subjective principles or maxims of a rational 
 being are to fit themselves in a code of moral legislation, 
 they must be capable of adaptation to universal law, or, 
 what we have now seen to be equivalent to this, they 
 must determine the volition not by their content but by 
 their form. 
 
 Thus the first condition of the moral law has been 
 found; it is a will that is determined by a formal, as 
 distinguished from a material principle. But what now 
 is the character of such a will ? It is clearly independent 
 of the causal law by which phenomena in the external 
 world are connected. For, since the abstract form of 
 law / • genere is cogitable by the force of reason alone, it 
 is in no way presented to the senses, and so no pheno- 
 menon occurring in space and time ; and the idea of it, 
 considered as a determinator of will, is wholly different 
 in kind from the determination of phenomena in the 
 physical world, where the determinator of a phenomenon 
 is, by the law of the causal nexus, itself also a pheno- 
 menon. Now this independence of the law of cause and 
 effect and of the mechanism of the physical system is 
 freedom in the strictest sense of the word. Hence a 
 will, whose only law is the legislative form of its maxims, 
 is a free will. The converse is similarly demonstrable,' 
 namely, that a free will cannot be determined by any' 
 thing but the legislative form of the law. 
 
 Thus li-cedom and unconditional practical law re- 
 
 wBt 
 
 I 
 
 :;3 
 
 
26 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 ciprocnlly point to one another. They may indeed be 
 merely two sides of the one thing. An unconditional law 
 may be regarded as the self-consciouaness of a pure 
 practical reason, and this is quite identical with freedom. 
 But our knowledge begins with the practical law and not 
 with freedom. If it be asked, how we arrive at the 
 consciousness of the moral law, vhe answer is the same as 
 in the case of any other proposition a priari, namely, that 
 we are conscious of a practical law a priori as we are 
 conscious of theoretical ones, by attending to the necessity 
 with which reason obtrudes them on the mind ; and, by 
 separating from them all a posteriori conditions, we 
 arrive from the first at the idea of a pure viii, as from 
 the last at the idea of a pure understanding. Thus 
 freedom \% the ratio essendi of the moral law, and the 
 moral law the ratio cognoscendi of freedom. Man judges 
 he can do this or that act because he is conscious he 
 ought to do it. The law says : " So act that the maxims 
 of thy will might become law in a system of universal 
 moral legislation." Our consciousness of this fundamental 
 law is an ultimate fact of reason, thrust upon the mind 
 directly as a synthetic a priori proposition, without basis 
 in any perception whatsoever. It is given as an apodictic 
 certainty, even though in actual experience no example 
 of its perfect observance 'can anywhere be met with. 
 This universal law is the spontaneous product of practical 
 reason or will. Autonomy of the will is, therefore, the 
 only possible foundation of morality. Every other 
 principle (Heteronomy) not only cannot found laws of 
 necessary obligation and universal extent, but is in fact 
 subversive of all morality. The only escape from hedon- 
 istic egoism is through the autonomy of the will. To 
 satisfy its universal law I extend ray private selfish choice 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 I 
 
 27 
 
 of happiness and make .he happiness of all a principle of 
 conduct. This satisHes the demand of reason, and gives 
 to what would otherwise be a merely selfish maxim a 
 qualification fitting it for law. A law requiring mo to 
 promote universal Lippiness is therefore quite inde- 
 pendent of the supposition that happiness is the choice c ^ 
 all sentient creatures, for it rests on its own formal 
 universality. 
 
 The analysis of morality has led to the discovery of 
 the autonomy of the will. The moral volition is deter- 
 mined by a law which issues spontaneously from the 
 practical reason. ^^ must now be added that the essence 
 of all worth in acting consists in this, that the moral law 
 be the immediate, the only determinator of the will. 
 But how that is possible we must at the same time 
 express our inability to explain. However, if the deter- 
 minative force of the moral law be granted, it may be 
 ehown a priori what it effects, or rather, what it must 
 eifect on the mind. The characteristic of the determi- 
 nation of will by the moral law lies in this, that it, as 
 free will, be determined not only without any co-operation 
 from sensitive excitements, but actually in defiance of 
 these whenever they infringe upon the law. Now what 
 weakens feeling must itself be feeling: hence we see 
 a priori that the moral law, the ground determining the 
 will, must produce a feeling when it circumscribes or 
 discards such sensuous solicitations. The aggregate of 
 appetites against which the moral law makes its way may 
 be brought under the general appellation of selfishness, 
 which consists either in self-love or self-conceit. The 
 law limits the former ; it totally excludes the latter. The 
 general result is to make self-esteem depend on morality. 
 And the law by contrast with the appetite it invades and 
 
 i 
 
 M 
 
 S 
 
28 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 weakei,3, or cvon entirely destroys, becomes an object of 
 reverence, that is, it is the ground of a positive feeling, 
 which is derived from no empirical source, and which can 
 bo recognized a priori. " itevorenco for tho moral law 
 is thus a feeling, caused by an intellectual ground, and 
 is tho only feeling capable of being recognized a priori, 
 or whoso necessity we are able to comprehend."* It is 
 not a motive to morality, but morality itself considered 
 subjectively as a motive; inasmuch as by it tho practical 
 reason silences tho sensuous appetencies and makes an 
 inlet for advancing the authority of the law. 
 
 After this explication of our moral conceptions, duty 
 may be defined as " the necessity of an act out of rever- 
 ence for the law."f It contains, as subordination to law, 
 no pleasui^, but rather dislike to that extent to the act 
 itself; while yet, on the other hand, since this restraint 
 is enforced solely by the legislation of man's own reason, 
 it brings with it a feeling of exaltation. It connects us 
 with an order of things unapproaclied by sense, into which 
 the force of reason can alone pierce. Beneath this super- 
 sensible lies the phenomenal system, wherewith man has 
 only a fortuitous and contingent connexion. As an 
 inhabitant of both systems he cannot fail to venerate his 
 higher nature, and to regard its laws with the profoundest 
 reverence. He is no doubt unholy enough, but the 
 humanity inhabiting his person m.ust be holy; and in 
 submission to this consists his duty. In virtue of this 
 duality in man's nature, the moral law has the form of 
 an Imperative. Eeason commands sense. Man as phe- 
 nome.non receives the law, man as noumenon gives it. 
 
 But the pure will or practical reason, which is deter- 
 mined solely by the moral law, aims at the realization of 
 * Wii'h; V. 79. t iv. 248. 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 29 
 
 tho highest good. Now for beings that aro at onco 
 rational and sentient tho highest good must consist, not 
 only in virtue, but in happiness as well. These, sinco 
 they aro both objects of the moral will, cannot bo con- 
 tradictory. They must bo capable of union. Sinco, 
 however, they aro not identical, as from very different 
 standpoints Stoics and Epicureans maintained, their union 
 mi'st be synthetic and not analytic. Either then the 
 desire of happiness must produce tho maxims of virtue, 
 or the maxims of virtue must produce happiness. The 
 first supposition is impossible, because, as wo have seen, 
 maxims that place the motives of the will in tho desire 
 of happiness aro not moral, and supply no basis for virtue. 
 The alternative, at first sight, appears not less impossible, 
 for as the moral agent is not the c.-uise of the world, on 
 the laws of which his happiness is dependent, how 'can 
 he be assured that his virtue shall meet with its appro- 
 priate reward— with the happiness proportioned to it? 
 And yet he is charged by practical reason with the realiza- 
 tion of the highest good, which implies precisely this 
 adjustment. Now as reason cannot lay upon us a task 
 for the fulfilment of which the conditions are wanting, 
 we are obliged to posit a ground for the harmony of 
 nature and morality, which, it is manifest, can be none 
 other than the author of them both. We beco^ -hus 
 morally certain of the existence of God. Similarly the 
 immortality of the soul must be postulated as a condition 
 to the attainment of that perfect virtue which constitutes 
 the supreme factor in the " highest good." 
 
 This brief outline of Kant's practical philosophy, how- 
 ever imperfect, will have shown the chief features of the 
 system, and the solution ofi-ered for the perennial pro- 
 blems of moral speculation. Its worth we must now 
 
 
 :5 
 
awBi'iiii. 4ew«»iw*^tei*«»fe 
 
 30 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 ■ 
 
 attempt to appreciate. That it is not in harmony with 
 the theoretical philosophy, that its very possibility is 
 excluded by this, we have already seen in considering 
 the doctrine of intelligible and empirical character. At 
 present, however, we are not to deal with its compatibility 
 or its incompatibility with any other part of the Kantian 
 system ; we have merely to examine into its validity as a 
 theory of the facts of our moral consciousness. For that 
 purpose we may tui^n first of all to the account given of 
 the freedom of the will, and then to the moral principle 
 itself as formulated in the Categorical Imperative. 
 
 To ascertain exactly what Kant means by will is a most 
 perplexing problem. Among the numerous faculties into 
 which the critical philosophy has analyzed our mental 
 activity, this has sometimes an independent position, 
 though at other times it is almost, if not wholly, identified 
 with reason. Perhaps, in general, reason might be 
 defined as the faculty of principles or ideas j practical 
 reason as the faculty that determines the will by these 
 principles or ideas ; and will as the faculty of acting 
 according to them.* But though there is abundant 
 ground for such a distinction, the evidence against it is 
 not less convincing. Undqubtedly it is asserted, that 
 nature has endowed us with reason to the end that we 
 may produce a good will; and that reason determines 
 the will immediately by a practical law, not mediately 
 through an emotion.f And Kant would even seem to 
 have pictured to himself the relation between the two 
 faculties by the aid of an illustration from mechanics. 
 "The will," he says, "lies in the middle between its 
 formal a 'priori principle [cc .tained in reason] and its 
 
 
 QQQ 
 
 ■^■'* 'tK K^ • 0*»/1 IT 
 
 t iv. pp. 241-244; and v. pp. 25-26. 
 
Ethics of Evolution, 
 
 31 
 
 material motives, as it wore on a cross-road."* Or if W 
 be the point in which two lines F and M meet, then we 
 may, by the foregoing, conceive W to be the will and F 
 and M the two forces of reason (or form) and sense (or 
 matter). But in spite of this graphic representation by 
 which reason and will are so sharply distinguished, Kant 
 does in other passages really identify them. Thus he 
 speaks of a "pure will, or, what is just the same, pure 
 practical reason.'^f And though he had said that the 
 will took its law from reason, hi^ first ethical treatise 
 ends with the autonomy of the will, i.e., "the faculty of 
 will by which it is a law to itself.^f Still more wonderful 
 is the following: "A reasonable being has the faculty of 
 acting according to the representation of laws, or accord- 
 ing to principles, that is to say, a reasonable being has a 
 will. Since for the deduction of action from laws reason 
 is required, it follows that will is nothing else than prac- 
 tical reason. "§ In the one of these two sentences a dis- 
 tinction between will and reason is implied, in the other 
 their identity is explicitly stated. And as it is not con- 
 ceivable that so consistent a thinker as Kant should con- 
 tradict himself in a single passage, we must expect to 
 find here the key to the solution of our problem. 
 
 It will be seen that the identification of reason and 
 will is mediated by the notion of action. Will is the 
 
 + iv. 288. 
 
 * Werke,iv.24S. ■ f v. 58. 
 
 § The confusion reaches its climax in the following Jas'sage of the 
 Critique of Practical Reason (v. 58) : "Apart from the relation 
 m which the understanding {Verstand) stands to objects (in 
 theoretical knowledge), it has also a relation to the faculty of 
 desire {Begehrungsvermogen), which, on that account is called 
 will, and pure wiU, in so far as the pure understanding (which 
 -p. ......R ^„^^ ,o x:a.dt:^ rcasuu) IB Dj the bare representation of a 
 
 law constituted practical." 
 
 Is 
 
 
 ■*.. 
 f 
 
82 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 ■i&i.ii„«ii 
 
 frtculty of acting according to the idea of law ; reason is 
 required for the derivation of action from laws ; hence, it 
 is asserted, will is nothing else than practical reason. 
 Inasmuch as the action and the law of reason are the 
 only perceivable elements in the process, Kant seems to 
 have regarded it as entirely gratuitous to postulate a 
 faculty standing between them as a cause of the action, 
 especially as we cannot any better understand how a law 
 should determine this imaginary will than that it should 
 immediately and directly produce an action. We have 
 the law, and we have or should have the action ; but their 
 connexion presents a difficulty which the postulating of a 
 will only hypostatizes but does not explain. Hence 
 though he detains the name of will, it is only to express 
 the fact of acting according to reason ; and if, as some- 
 times occurs, " faculty" is substituted for '' tact," that 
 can only be regarded as a return to popular conceptions. 
 Will, for Kant, is nothing more than the correlate on the 
 active side of the law on the theoretical side. It could 
 have no existence without reason, but reason is not in 
 any way conditioned by it. We might easily enough 
 conceive that reason was only theoretical, i.e., that it was 
 merely passively conscious of itself and of its object; 
 will indicates that it is practical or active as well, i.e., that 
 it realizes itself in its object. Kant, in his definition of 
 will, carefully confines the name to such appetition as is 
 determined by reason alone.* And, elsewhere, he calls 
 it " a kind of causality oi living beings in so far as they 
 are rational ;" and again, summing up all we have said, 
 lie names it " a causality of reason."! 
 
 The essential correctness of this interpretation of 
 Kant's doctrine of the will is confirmed by the develop- 
 * Werke, vii. 11. f iv. pp. 294, 306. 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 33 
 
 ment of his philosophy. Hegel, who, according to 
 Dr. Stirling, is generally an ious to hide the sources of 
 his system, confesses in this respect his obligations to 
 Kant; and Hegel defines will as a "peculiar kind of 
 thinking."* Now if we recollect that thought in the 
 Kantian system cannot be peculiar to any individual 
 (though Kant himself may have conceived it thus), but 
 that it must be a transcendental self-consciousness, that 
 makes the individual a universal, it will appear that 
 Hegel has drawn for us the consequences of Kant's 
 identification of reason and will in the following pas- 
 sage :—" Whether man know it or not," he says, ''the 
 essence of self-consciousness realizes itself as an inde- 
 pendent power, in which the single individuals are only 
 moments."! If the individual will has shrivelled into 
 nothingness at the grasp of universal reason, then it is 
 true, as Hegel affirms, that while "the Spirit has reality 
 the individuals are its accidents.''^ 
 
 But such a result following from Kant's account of 
 will and reason cuts away the only ground there was for 
 postulating a will or supposing that reason was practical. 
 For if reason develops itself in the world, whether 
 through human beings or apart from them, but at all 
 events without their co-operation, then they as mere 
 moments and accidents cannot be charged with the 
 execution of an unconditioned duty, which is at once 
 futile and absurd. Thus the Categorical Imperative or 
 moral law falls away, and with it the ground on which 
 that Hegelian inference was based. Kant's conception 
 of will is accordingly not consonant with the foundations 
 of his system. We have now to add that it is at variance 
 
 Hegel's Werke, viii. pp. 33, 173. 
 " p. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 215. 
 
 t Ibid. p. an. 
 3 
 
 i 
 
 id 
 
 w 
 
 
 ;3 
 
 
"j^ASWWaks-insHita^plWs^&i-. Mteet* 
 
 34 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 with common sense. For the natural consciousness of the 
 unphilosophical, will is no more practical reason than 
 it is practical imagination or practical senuation. It is 
 the faculty of consciously choosing among motives, from 
 whatever source they come, an^ of acting upon them. 
 " The will of man," says Schiller, with a side-glance at 
 the Critical Philosophy, " is a sublime conception, even 
 when abstraction is made of its moral use. The mere 
 will alone raises man above the brutes, the moral will 
 elevates him to the Divinity.*'* It is desire with full- 
 orbed eye of reason. It is thus the ground for distinc- 
 tion between acts that we perform and events that meiely 
 happen. It belongs to the inmost centre of our being, 
 and, as it is the pledge of our individuality, so is it the 
 primal energy, of which we are directly conscious, but 
 of which we can give no more description than of a 
 colour or a sound. Now in the Kantian system this will 
 appears as twain. So far as it is determined by reason it 
 is the pure will ; so far as it has other springs it is the 
 empirical will, and stands on the same footing as any 
 other object in the phenomenal world. In spite of some 
 ambiguous passages, it must be maintained that neither 
 of these wills is the seat of energy or causative force of 
 any kind. The one is moved by reason, or still better, 
 the one is reason ; the other is impelled by sense, just as 
 a ball is driven by a blow. And as the former robs us 
 of our individuality by transmuting us into passive 
 moments of the Absolute, so the latter does violence to 
 our personality by assimilating us to the things of the 
 material world. A will that ivills anything is no part of 
 the system. 
 
 * Ueber Anmuth und Wiirde : Werke, xi. 278 (Edition Cotta 
 1867). 
 
Ethicfi of Evolution. 
 
 35 
 
 If tli'"s be Kant's conception of will, we cannot be 
 surprised by the assertion that "freedom must be postu- 
 lated as a property of the will of every rational being."* 
 For since will is nothing else than practical reason, and 
 since reason cannot receive any foreign bias in forming 
 its judgments without becoming the creature of extra- 
 neous impulse and as such ceasing to be reason, it must 
 regard itself as the sole author of its own principles, or, 
 as practical reason, must regard itself as free. Neverthe- 
 less, Kant's position with regard to this subject is not 
 beyond criticism. 
 
 Will, it has been seen, is a causality of reason; and it 
 is on this category that the conception of freedom is also 
 based. In the material world an effect is produced when 
 the cause is determined to put forth its efficiency by the 
 operation of an agent acting upon it. After a ball has 
 been struck by the bat, motion follows as effect. Since 
 the ball cannot of itself change its position, but must 
 wait for the impinging force to move it, this may be 
 called heteronomy of causation. On the other hand, 
 autonomy of causation implies an activity which begins 
 ^rom itself alone a manifestation of its energy. A ball 
 that sets itself in motion may be taken as a physical 
 illustration. And it is well to insist on a material image, 
 for Kant had evidently some such before his mind. By 
 a free will he means a self-active will. The difference 
 between the causality of will and mechanical causality, 
 regarded from this standpoint, is that the former lacks 
 one of the elements or agents of the latter, the place of 
 which is taken by the self-originating power of will. 
 But in addition to the elements that make up any specific 
 case of causation there is alwayb to bo added the law 
 
 * Werke, i?. 295. 
 
 
 SI 
 
 y 
 
 
 o 
 o 
 
36 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 of their operation. For any given body, the relation 
 between motion and impinging force bears always a 
 constant ratio, which may be determined with the accu- 
 racy of a mathematical law. If, now, the impinging force 
 be set aside and the ball supposed self-active, as in 
 autonomy of causation, it might still be conceived to 
 move as regularly as before. By analogy, therefore, will 
 might be described as a self-originating causality acting 
 after definite laws. And Kant really gives this defini- 
 tion,* which not only follows from the foregoing analogy, 
 but is merely the obverse side of the identification of 
 reason and will. When these are one the law is merely 
 regarded as the registration of a rational volition, whose 
 origin and process admit neither of explanation nor com- 
 prehension. When, however, reason is distinguished 
 from will, the law is figured as the product of reason and 
 the determinator of the will. The energizing of the 
 ego, which had just been taken for an inexplicable 
 uncaused causality of the rational self, now appears as 
 the effect wrought upon it in some more mysterious way 
 by the moral law. The change of attitude is significant, 
 and indicates very strikingly the perplexities brought 
 about by applying to mind categories that are valid only 
 for matter. The will is now to be conceived, not as self- 
 active, nor yet as determined by motives, but as swayed 
 by a law, which, according to the analogy with physical 
 causation, should only express, but raver influence, its 
 mode of action and volition. And the new definition is, 
 " a free will is just the same as a will subject {unter, not 
 nach) to moral laws.^f 
 
 Between these two definitions Kant must be said to 
 waver. On the one hand, lie pictures freedom as the 
 * Werke, ir. 275. , f i^- 295. 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 37 
 
 ora aa the 
 
 active self-originating power of reason or will; on the 
 other, as passive subjection to a self-given law ; or, since 
 the law is self-given, freedom may consist rather in the 
 autonomous legislation than in the obedience to the law. 
 
 I. As to the first, it is manifestly dependent on the 
 results of the Critique of Pure Reason. There, above 
 and beyond the phenomenal world of our conscious 
 experience, Kant postulated as source and ground of it a 
 noumenal world, of which this was in some way the 
 appearance. But, as we have pointed out, this distinction 
 is made on an old dogmatic assumption at variance 
 with the fundamental notion of the critical philosophy. 
 There is no ground for separating the phenomenal from ihe 
 noumenal world, when we decline, as the Kantian principle 
 requires, to regard as existent what can only be described 
 (in Mr. Spencer's language) as unknown and unknowable. 
 If any distinction is then conceivable (though of course 
 it cannot be actual), it will be between the formal transcen- 
 dental unity of self-consciousness and the world which it lias 
 projected from itself. And it is in fact by the help of this 
 distinction, as it were, of the noumenal creative from the 
 phenomenal created element that Kant essays to efface 
 the contradiction between freedom and necessity. Our 
 phenomenal {i.e., our known) world is subject to the law 
 of necessary causation, which is not merely verified in 
 experiencie, but also constitutiv ;i> of it, and therefore as 
 certain aii the existence of the universe itself. By a law 
 of reason, however, men think themselves free with 
 regard t'^ Iheir volitions, which, as part of the pheno- 
 menal sphere, must nevertheless be subject to the causal 
 nexus. In such a collision, as the notion of necessity 
 stands secure, the objective validitv of the idea of reason 
 — that is, of freedom — becomes extremely doubtful. In 
 
 9 
 •J 
 
 a 
 
 IS 
 
 y 
 
 •to. 
 
38 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 any case it is entirely incomprehensible how freedom is 
 possible. To explain that would be equivalent to solving 
 the insoluble mystery of pure reason becoming practical. 
 One thing, however, is certain,— its impossibility cannot 
 be demonstrated. If the moral law requires that free- 
 dom be postulated, though neither its possibility nor 
 impossibility be susceptible of proof, philosophy has no 
 other task than that of showing its true relation to the 
 causal nexus, with which it seems to stand in direct 
 opposition. And this is what Kant attempts. " Every 
 rational being reckons himself, on the one hand, as intel- 
 ligent in a world of reason, and only as efficient in this 
 system does he call his causality a will. On the other 
 hand, he is conscious of being a part of the physical 
 system in which his actions can only be appearances or 
 phenomena of that causality. As, however, the possi- 
 bility of deriving them from it cannot be understood, we 
 must regard them as determined not by it, but by other 
 phenomena, namely, appetites and desires, which belong 
 to the physical system.^'* 
 
 But this explanation, far from throwing any light on 
 the difficulty, only brings it into greater prominence. 
 As efficient in the supersensible system man has a cau- 
 sality of will, but as it cannot be seen how this produces 
 his actions, they are simply ascribed to the causality of 
 sensible phenomena. What need then of that pure will, 
 on the activity of which freedom has been staked ? Or 
 how is it a causality at all ? It may be granted with 
 Kant that, were we merely members of the intelligible 
 world, all our actions would tally with the autonomy of 
 the pure will; or that, were we but pieces of the sensible 
 world, all our actions would take place according to the 
 
 * Werke, iv. 301. 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 39 
 
 physical law of appetites and desires. It is further con- 
 ceivable that the difference between these two spheres 
 might give ground for an " ought " — for the legislation 
 of the higher over the lower. But how that " ought," 
 and the freedom it implies, can have any practical meaning, 
 we are unable, on this theory, even to imagine. If every 
 human action and volition is necessarily determined by 
 other phenomena, as Kant uniformly asserts, is it not 
 futile to maintain a freedom of the will that can express 
 itself only in a protest against the necessity by which it 
 is encompassed ? But Kant argues that this freedom ia 
 in reality an active factor, on the ground that the intelli- 
 gible world, to which it belongs, is the ultimate ground 
 and condition of the sensible world, in which the volition 
 occurs. What happens in the phenomenal self, under the 
 condition of time, is necessary ; but the noumenal self, on 
 which that other depends, is above the conditions of time, 
 so that nothing precedes its voluntary act, and the entire 
 series of the causally-related sensible existences is in the 
 consciousness of its intelligible being nothing but the 
 sequent of its free causality as noumenon. In cr? rela- 
 tion, therefore, the action may be fixed by meonanical 
 necessity, but in another it is the direct product of reason, 
 or it is free. 
 
 This hypothesis, which in another form we have already 
 met in the doctrine of intelligible and empirical character, 
 will be found, on closer examination, to offer no safe- 
 guard for human freedom. Because the noumenal world 
 contains the last grounds of the phenomenal world as 
 well as of its laws, it is argued that man, though con- 
 ditioned in this, is in that free. Now, as already observed, 
 the only noumenon which Kant, in accordance with his 
 Copernican notion, was entitled to maintain, was the 
 
 mm 
 
 ;3 
 
40 
 
 Kantian Ethics and tlu 
 
 w 
 
 ilM 
 
 transcendental unity of apperception, the permanent "I 
 think/' which through the categories laid the foundations 
 of our known world. And this is not peculiar to me or 
 to any other individual; it is universal thought itself. 
 But the foregoing argument only shows that this uni- 
 versal, smce it cannot in reality be conditioned by the 
 laws It has established, is above the reach of the causal 
 nexus, and so unconditionally free. And this is the 
 irference which Schopenhauer drew. Of the individual 
 ego, nothing whatever is asserted. With its content of 
 feeling, volition and knowledge, it is, on the one hand 
 no mere empty thought, nor, on the other hand, is it 
 Bimply a concrete thing in the physical system. And it 
 IS the recognition of this that is wanting in Kant's prac 
 tical philosophy. His system would suffice were wo either 
 pure matter or pure thought; but, since we are neither 
 It never touches our case, and only seems to do so by 
 swinging alternately from the one extreme to the other 
 without ever reaching a firm halting-place between them! 
 If constitutive thought have set motives and volitions in 
 the same category as force and motion, then the freedom 
 of the will does not differ from the freedom of an im- 
 pelled ball. And Kant does not in truth distinguish them 
 m the phenomenal sphere. But as the causal relation is 
 given by thought, he claims for man, along with sub- 
 mission to It, at the same time an exemption from it. 
 
 In such case Kant always conceives individual 
 
 ego as constitutive, each for itself, of ... .,ws of the 
 known world. Such a system of subjective Idealism, 
 however, ,s not tenable; for it is impossible that indi- 
 viduals, with their manifold idiosyncrasies, should have 
 created, each for itself, the world it knows in comuon 
 with every other. And thus it was that the 
 
 first develop- 
 
Ethicii of Evolution. 
 
 41 
 
 ment of Kant's system began with the transcendental 
 ego, which, after being universalized by Fichte, passed 
 finally into the Absolute of Schelling and Hegel. If now 
 the noumenal world, as thus understood, contains the 
 grounds and conditions of the phenomenal world, it is 
 not easy to see how the individual man, any more than 
 the individual thing, can escape the grasp of necessity. 
 It is true that, in so far as his will is rational, it would 
 be in harmony with the laws of absolute reason, but that 
 does not distinguish in any way cases of ordinary volition 
 from causation. In short, no individual can break the 
 causal bond in which, according to Kant, he as well as 
 nature is bound. To say with Hegel that freedom con- 
 sists not in liberty of choice but in willing the rational, 
 may be a right enough usage of terms, but it throws no 
 light on the problem before us. We want to know if the 
 man who, incited by a greed of gain, steals his neigh- 
 hour's purse, was as much impelled to that action by that 
 motive as a ball, when struck, to move. The answer of 
 critical philosophy must be considered an affirmative; 
 although it adds, by way of solace, that man is free when 
 he wills according to the universal laws of morality. It 
 might, perhaps, be more correct to say that the man who 
 wills the universal law, which reason gives, is one with 
 reason, and that no higher goal can be set for humanity. 
 But that offti-s not the slightest explanation of how man 
 could come to that stage, how he could advance fvom 
 what Kant would call the ty]-anny of motives to the free- 
 dom of perfect obedience. It is in this process that we 
 suppose freedom to be operative, it is this that we cannot 
 explain without freedom. The goal is worthy for its own 
 sake, but not because we are then first free. Rather to 
 usL Schelling's phrase, are we then sweetly bound by a 
 
 
 9 
 
 ill 
 
42 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 im.:, 
 
 f 
 
 ft ■ 
 
 'holy necessity," from which we would not willingly be 
 free to fall away. Meantime the goal has not been 
 reached, and wo are still striving towards it. The notions 
 of guilt and desert, merit and demerit, responsibility and 
 accountability, bear w..aess at once to our feebleness and 
 our strength. That the theory we hare examined can 
 explam them, we are unable to see. It does indeed 
 attempt to explain our conception of duty. But in re- 
 garding it as the voice of creative reason to the creature 
 it has set among the things of the phenomenal world, 
 dictating that something "ought" to be done, where 
 already, in virtue of the laws it has established, some- 
 thing else must inevitably take place, it presents an 
 hypothesis which, however meritorious in other respects, 
 certainly does not show that freedom of the will is 
 possible along with an all-embracing application of the 
 law of causality. Doubtless the "ought" implies the 
 " can," and our only objection to Kant's ethical philosophy 
 is that it makes this implication impossible of realization. 
 Even when Kant's metaphysic be taken in the unde- 
 veloped form in which he left it, the result is practically 
 the same. Suppose that I, the individual, have estab- 
 lished the causal relation in the.world I know, in particular 
 that between motive and volition and that between force 
 and motion. Does, e.g., theft now follow necessarily a 
 certain complex of motives, as the theory requires, then 
 It 18 argued that this connexion, however necessary, is at 
 the same time, since it has been made by me, really free 
 and unconditioned. But this freedom, unless it implied a 
 constant creation on the part of the subject-which in 
 a completed Cosmos is impossible-has already been 
 daposited with the groundwork of the existent world, by 
 tiie forces of which nr, - conduct is now alone determined. 
 
Ethics oj Evolution. 
 
 43 
 
 At *;he dawn of consciousness, when the mind began to 
 perceive, that is, to lay its categories in things, freedom 
 may have been one of its attributes, but after tha iage 
 every act r^ust be originated by the relations then estab- 
 lished. Hence Schelling, with strict consistency, banishes 
 freedom to a timeless creation, and delivers this life 
 wholly over to necessity. As practical reason the ego 
 issues an "ought,'' but as pure reason it . is already 
 grounded an * ." which no "ought" can alter or 
 destroy. The j!.). (rsensible world has already legislated 
 us into the causa^ nexus, it cannot by a moral law legis- 
 late us out again. On this theory freedom must be held 
 as a mere idea of reason, which, however valuable for the 
 speculative thinker, has no worth or validity for the moral 
 agent, and can have no bearing on our life and conduct, 
 which follow necessarily the laws of the natural world. 
 And in some striking illustrations Kant decidedly indi- 
 cates this standpoint. Thus he says that the hardened 
 ruffian, who, moved by some shining example of virtue 
 desires to become a good and honest man, finds he cannot, 
 in consequence of the appetites and desires by which he 
 is slavishly impelled. It is only, therefore, in idea that 
 he wafts himself into another order of things, where 
 motives have lost their sway, and the good will is all in 
 all. Thither his fancy may soar, but he remains what 
 natural causes have made him I It is, as Kant elsewhere 
 tersely observes, only "as t/ through our will a system of 
 things was to come into being.''* 
 
 II. Along with the foregoing elucidation, which may 
 be called metaphysical, Kant has a practical explanation 
 of freedom, in accordance with which it consists in sub- 
 mission to the moral law= Or since the moral la™ "s 
 
 * Werke, v. 47. 
 
 W\ 
 
 i 
 
 S) 
 
 ¥ 
 
 lit; 
 
44 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 given by the ego itself, freedom may be conceived to 
 consist rather in the autonomy than in the subjection. 
 Each aspect alternately comes to the foreground in Kant. 
 At one time he says that " a free will is just the same 
 thing as a will that is subject to moral laws/' and defines 
 practical freedom as "independence of the will from 
 everything else except the moral law."* At another he 
 maintains that "with the idea of freedom that of autonomy 
 is indissolubly attached/' and that the positive constituent 
 in freedom is "the self-legislation of the pure and, as 
 such, practical reason.^f These different statements, 
 however, are only two sides of the one fact. For true 
 freedom, the theory requires both the self-given law and 
 the obedience' to the law ; and if, at times, only one of 
 these conditions is expressly stated, the other must be 
 considered as tacitly as'^umed. There would be no 
 freedom if the self-given .u,w did not determine the will, 
 none, if the law determining the will were not self-given. 
 Kant'f, theory is impregnable so long as both these 
 positions are secure ; it falls when either has been sur- 
 rendered. Eegarding the autonomy of the will, some- 
 thing may be said when we come to treat of the moral 
 principle; meantime, it may guffice, assuming the law, 
 to inquire into its determination of the will. The theory 
 requires that the bare form of the law, its adaptability to 
 a system of universal legislation, shall be the only deter- 
 minator of the moral will. But it will not need much 
 consideration, as we think, to show that this condition is 
 never fulfilled. 
 
 " The essence of all determination of will by the moral 
 law lies," says Kant, " in this, that it as free will, be 
 determined, not only without any co-operation from 
 * Werkc, iy. 29£i ; v. dP. f iv. ;300 ; v. 3a. 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 .45 
 
 sensitive excitements, but that it even cast all such 
 behind-back and discard them, in so far as they may 
 infringe upon the law, and be determined by it alone."* 
 But how tliis is at all possible, Kant confesses we aro for 
 ever unable to understand. If, however, it be possible, 
 Kant can describe, a priori, the process by which the law 
 humbles self-love and casts out self-conceit, till it win for 
 itself absolute possession of the field as sole determinator 
 of the will. But can we, however, grant the antecedent 
 possibility ? Kant of course would maintain we must, 
 because on his theory morality is not otherwise explicable. 
 Still, if the admission involves an absurdity, as we venture 
 to think it does, it cannot be made ; and the validity of 
 a theory of morals requiring it must, to say the least, 
 become suspicious. Now, is it not absurd to suppose 
 that the rich and varied content of our moral life can be 
 identified with the effect supposed to be produced upon 
 us by the Categorical Imperative, since that effect could 
 never, by any possibility, rise above the level of a mono- 
 tonous uniformity ? The law of duty as interpreted by 
 Kant makes no provision for difference of any kind, and 
 yet the substance of our moral conceptions is far from 
 identical. The variety of their hues and colours is to be 
 accounted for, not by mere matter, which in itself is 
 colourless, and not by mere form, which alone is 
 invisible, but by the reflexion of the one in and through 
 the other. Kant too admits as undeniable, that "all 
 vohtion has an object, that is, a matter;" but he 
 straightway cancels the import of this admission by 
 affirming that the object is not therefore " the ground of 
 the detfsrmination of the will.^f Now this addition is 
 simply unintelligible: for wpi mean by an object of 
 
 IS 
 
 »!* 
 
 
 fc 
 
 * Werl-e, v. 77. 
 
 t V. 37. 
 
46 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 
 volition that which in some way, directly or indirectly, 
 supplies a motive to the will, that is, in Kant's language, 
 determines the will. It would, therefore, be more 
 correct to say that the object in every case determines 
 the will, and that the morality of the action is tested by 
 its form, or its adaptability to universal law. 
 
 Kant himself, in a notable passage, concedes all that 
 we require for the rejection of his view of freedom. It 
 is, he says, "absolutely impossible to make out with 
 certainty a single case in experience, in which the 
 maxims of an otherwise dutiful action have rested solely 
 on moral grounds and on the idea of duty.''* That is to 
 say, it is absolutely impossible to find a single instance 
 in which occurs that transcendental determination by the 
 moral law, without which freedom, on Kant^s theory, is 
 impossible ! 
 
 The theory, further, is at variance with the moral 
 notions and beliefs it was designed to explain. We are 
 free, it is said, in obeying, solely for its own sake, a self- 
 given law of reason; but since, confessedly, no human 
 being ever does satisfy such condition, the freedom which 
 it would secure him is never attained, and man must be 
 regarded, like any material object, as the necessitated 
 product of nature. A being that is pure reason alone is 
 the only free being, according to the theory. The least 
 intermixture of sense and imagination, as in man, is at 
 once the mark and the cause of necessitation. But for 
 the explanation of such moral notions as responsibility 
 and punishment, merit and demerit, it was above all 
 things essential to show that the agent is free in the very 
 act for which he is blamed or approved. Were he deter- 
 mined, the good or bad act might have been admired or 
 
 * Werkc, iv. 254. 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 47 
 
 disliked, but never rewarded or punished. Of moral 
 conduct and moral principles Kant's practical philosophy 
 gives, and can give, no explanation. His ethical system 
 has two sides, one of which is applicable to pure reason, 
 which is above duty, and the other to material things, 
 which are beneath it. But for man, the only moral 
 being we ^^now, and for whom alone we need a philo- 
 sophy of othics, Kant's system has neither application 
 nor validity. 
 
 After this somewhat lengthy examination of Kant's 
 
 account of freedom, it cannot be difficult to appreciate its 
 
 value. In so far as it is constructive, it fails in the 
 
 attempt to reconcile ethics with a view of causality, 
 
 which, to say the least, cannot be shown correct or even 
 
 well-founded. Doubtless if the category of causaHty is 
 
 valid for mind, it must be admitted that volitions and 
 
 actions are inexorably determined. But v/hat ground is 
 
 there for applying to persons what we know only as true 
 
 for things ? There is in fact none whatsoever, except the 
 
 unifying impulse we follow in our scientific research. 
 
 That everything should stand under one category is 
 
 doubtless an ideal for knowing, but it is not on that 
 
 account a condition of being. The universe is under no 
 
 obligation to adapt itself to a mere postulate of our 
 
 cognitive method, even though it be, as it well may be, 
 
 a system of rational relations. What is, even though its 
 
 sole essence be reason, may nevertheless be richer and 
 
 more varied than what we actually know. And from our 
 
 ignorance of how freedom can be possible, it cannot be 
 
 interred that it is impossible. Indeed, in the present 
 
 case, it is nothing less than a violation of the logical 
 
 method of procedure, to deny that freedom, is existent, 
 
 when it is nevertheless the presupposition of the moral 
 
 mm 
 
 IS' 
 
 
48 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 
 law, of which we are immediately conscious. The masterly- 
 exposition of this relation between *' ought" nnd "can" 
 is perhaps the only permanent contribution which the 
 critical philosophy has made to the problem of freedom. 
 Man ''judges he can do something because he is con- 
 scious he ought, and so recognizes in himself freedom, 
 which, without the moral law, would have remained 
 unknown to him." * Beyond this it will perhaps now be 
 clear that Kant did not get in the solution of the problem ; 
 and, as we may venture to add, beyond this no one has 
 yet advanced. 
 
 But even this position, it must be openly con- 
 fessed, is not irrefragable. If duty, which according 
 to Kant is the* ratio cognoscendi of freedom, be denied or 
 explained away, there is absolutely no other ground for 
 asserting that the will is free. If anyone can believe, 
 with Professor Bain, that our morality is merely a system 
 of police regulations, or, with Schopenhauer, that duty 
 is " a notion for children and for nations in their infancy, 
 but not for those who have made their own the culture 
 of a maturely developed epoch,"— and experience shows 
 
 that even this is not incredible to some acute thinkers, 
 
 then there is no ground for setting a limit to the unifying 
 tendency of our cognitive method, seeing that spirit has 
 renounced the characteristics by which we had supposed 
 it exalted above the categories of nature. But to those 
 who rejrudiate the unscientific procedure of Schopenhauer, 
 and reject the hypothesis by which the Empirical School, 
 after emptying morality of its contents, easily deprives 
 the will of its freedom, the implication of duty, as de- 
 veloped by Kant, will remain the ground for belief in a 
 freedom, which, if not further explicable, is not therefore 
 
 * Wcr^e, v. 32. 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 49 
 
 of doubtful existence, inasmuch as explanation is possible 
 only through causal connexions, which by the hypothesis 
 are here excluded. Freedom may be maintained, as wo 
 think, on this old and solid, but certainly unpretentious 
 foundation ;— assuredly on no other whatsoever. 
 
 If it is said that " the will only as thinking intelligence 
 is free will,"* we have nothing to object, except that it 
 in no way concerns the freedom of our popular con- 
 sciousness or of our ethical systems— the freedom re- 
 quired for the explanation of duty and responsibility, of 
 merit and demerit, of guilt and punishment. It is not a 
 conception explanatory of morality— and it is that which 
 we require— but a more or less probable view of the 
 nature and dignity of man, "-hom it figures as fully 
 adequate to his idea, when volition has been permeated 
 with thought and the potential reason of the individual 
 has been actualized into unity with the divine reason that 
 develops itself in the world. But such a theory, whether 
 advanced by Hegel or by the ancient Stoics, can gain 
 nothing by slurring over the question of the freedom of 
 the will, which remains untouched by the dictum, in regno 
 sumus, Deo parere libertas est. 
 
 3. The Moral Principle. 
 Though the freedom of the will is the ratio essendi of 
 our morality, and as such constitutes the supreme question 
 of ethical speculation, morality, as Kani so emphatically 
 reiterates, is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom. "Without 
 a consciousness of the former there would never have 
 been a belief in the latter. Our next inquiry must 
 accordingly be into the nature of the moral conception, 
 for the realization of which freedom has been postulated 
 * Hegel's Werke, viii. 55. 
 
 J* 
 
 le: 
 
 mm 
 
 
50 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 ''1^" 
 
 m 
 
 as an indispensable condition. What is duty ? What ia 
 the moral law? Is it rightly formulated in Kant's 
 Categorical Imperative ? These questions lead us from the 
 conditions of morality to its inmost essence and content. 
 iKant's interpretation of the moral law has already 
 been given. To the dogmatic Eudaemonism of his con- 
 temporaries he opposed with overpowering energy a 
 critical conception as clear and simple as it was new and 
 startling. He maintained that the good will was the only 
 absolute good, and that such a will was that, which had 
 for its content and its spring an unconditioned law of 
 universal validity. Put such a law, it was argued, must 
 be one from which all reference to the obiect or matter 
 
 4l 
 
 of our volitioii has been excluded, — one, that is, which by 
 its bare form alone c^n determine the will. It is ex- 
 pressed as a Categorical Imperative : act from a maxim 
 at all times fit for a universal lawl] 
 
 This conception of the mop^Twill is closely related to 
 the system of theoretic philosophy. As the pure forms 
 of Intuition and of Understanding were discovered by 
 abstracting from the content of our knowledge, so is the 
 pure will reached by abstraction from the matter of our 
 volition. And as through i^n spontaneity the under- 
 standing is distinguished from sense, so through its 
 autonomy is the pure will lifted above desire or appetite. 
 In the sphere of knowledge as of will, it is the self- 
 activity of reason that raises us above the mere appear- 
 ance and unreality, inherent in affections of sense, to the 
 truth and reality of things as they are in themselves. 
 Hence Kant's philosophy is in the main a determination 
 of the functions of self-active reason, and is thus grounded 
 in the question. How are synthetic judgments d 'priori 
 possible ? The answer, it is true, shows there is no a 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 51 
 
 priori knowledge, except with reference to objects of an 
 at least possible experience, and that metaphysic there- 
 fore is impossible, seeing that our knowledge is confined 
 to appearances, as constituted by the forms and con- 
 ditions under which we know, and can never reach to 
 reality,— to things as they are in themselves. If these 
 cannot appear to us in any other way than through the 
 forms of our perception, whereby they are eo ipso dis- 
 torted, the sublation of the limit to our knowledge is 
 only conceivable on the hypothesis, that beside the pure 
 forms, the mind also supplied the matter of our know- 
 ledge, that is, that the mind possessed the faculty of 
 intellectual perception. And though Kant rejects this 
 supposition, yet not only the problem of his Critique but 
 the whole tenor of the work itself show that his highest 
 ideal of a science was r^e constructed from pure notions 
 by the activity of thought, to the exclusion of every 
 element of sense. It is because the theoretical reason 
 does not escape its sensuous limitation that he denies to 
 it a true knowledge of the really existent, and subor- 
 dinates it to the practical reason, which through the 
 moral law brings us into connexion with the world of 
 reality. The supersensible, which cannot be known as 
 an object, is to be realized in the moral life of the subject 
 himself. As Socrates in despair of natural philosophy 
 concentrates the force of his genius on the problems of 
 moral speculation and practice, so Kant, become sceptical 
 of a metaphysic that was incapable of explaining 
 reahty, takes refuge in an ethic in which it was at least to 
 be experienced. Fichte following out the same line of 
 thought arrived at the conclusion that the theoretical ego 
 had no other niison d'etre than the need felt by the 
 practical ego for some opposition or resistance, by con- 
 
 4 * 
 
 
52 
 
 Kantian Ethics and tho 
 
 
 tact with which it might carry on its infinite process of 
 self-realization supposed to bo demanded by the moral 
 law. And tho young titanic Schelling, kindled into 
 enthusiasm by tho fire of Fichto's genius, proposes to 
 refute the dogmatism of tho theoretical consciousness by 
 " realizing in oneself a system which is tho direct contrary 
 of it." 
 
 But the realization of the supersensible by volition 
 seems not less impossible than the comprehension of it in 
 knowledge. For, since we never will without willing 
 something, which as object of a possible experience does 
 not lie on a plane different from that of our knowledge, 
 no distinction like that supposed can be made between 
 the two faculties. And least of all for Kant was any 
 such admissible. What he urged against Leibnitz with 
 such monotonous repetition in the theoretical philosophy 
 must be brought against himself in the practical. That 
 knowledge is impossible v hout a sensuous content, as he 
 so cogently demonstrated, is not more obvious than that 
 volition is inconceivable without desires or appetites as 
 motives. Thought whether in knowing or willing is 
 empty till filled by experience, though in both cases 
 experience is blind till illumipated by thought. A true 
 ethic as a true psychology must reconcile Rationalism 
 and Empiricism, and it can only be considered as a 
 defect that Kant did not carry into his ethical system the 
 method by which, in the theoretical, he mediated so 
 successfully between Locke and Leibnitz. 
 
 The inference from his principle cannot, however, be 
 difficult to draw. If reason as theoretical produces only 
 the forms of our perception, so must reason as practical be 
 limited to the forms of our volition. Defining the matter 
 of volition as the definite objects in view or the ends to 
 
EtMca of Evolution. 
 
 58 
 
 bo attained, and the form as tho universal rule we 
 follow in the determination of ends, it is manifest that 
 the material element in every volition can be given only 
 in experience. Fro.n this source, however, cannot bo 
 derived a principle which is universal and necessary, and 
 which raises us above tho sensible, into communion with 
 the Huporsensible world. The moral law can, therefore, 
 have regard neither to the ends nor to the consequences of 
 our actions, but only to tho rules which precede them, to 
 the form of the will from which they have issued. But 
 as it is no empirical principle it cannot have a content ; 
 it is formal, and, as such, empty as tho Categories or the 
 Intuitions. Whatever is moral must conform to the 
 Categorical Imperative; whatever is known to the cate- 
 gory of causality; but that does not tell us what things 
 are actually moral, or what causally related. Or the 
 moral law might be compared with the laws of logic, 
 which supply indeed a test of consistency, but not of 
 truth. If A is true, not-A must be false ; and if B is 
 the maxim of your conduct, not-B cannot be willed to be 
 a universal law. But in neither case is the condition 
 established on which the consequence rests; and it is 
 equally conceivable that not-A is true, and therefore 
 A false, or that not-B is the maxim of your conduct, 
 and B therefore unfit for universal law. But the point of 
 supreme importance is to determine what is and what 
 should be the principle of moral conduct. Here, however, 
 the practical reason can give no information, since its 
 very essence consists in being formal. 
 
 But if this be the ethical outcome of Kant's principles, 
 he himself did not consistently abide by it. From the 
 law, which, in virtue of its source, we have seen to be 
 formal and empty, he attempts to deduce the system of 
 
 •41 
 
64 
 
 Kantiini F.lhu-n and fho 
 
 
 f: 
 
 
 I 
 
 our ri^rlits and tluticH. 'I'ho impossibility of rucU n 
 dorivfttion iiiuy bo uliown by consiiloring tlio clmnictDr of 
 tho law itsolf. 
 
 Tho Cutt>gorical Imporativo begins with {]w notion of 
 action. Wo aro so to art Miat tho maxims of our oi.mluct 
 may adapt thomsolvps to universal law. Now an act is 
 tho translation by volition of a thonjrht into reality, as, 
 convoraoly, knowUnlgo is tlu» tranNlution of reality into 
 tlu)nj^ht. Tho idea on tho ono hand is n nu>ro state of 
 our consciousness, the chanf^e in the world on the other 
 hand is a !ni>ro event of nature. For action there is 
 ro.pnird a union of both through tho will. A volition 
 actualizes tho idea. Ihit this is imjwssiblo tndess tho 
 idea to bo reali»;od is sonietliinfr di,r,„ito, some particular 
 0!ul and no mere abstract i)rineiplo. There can bo no 
 vohtion in genend, no realization of a thought, whoso 
 universality sta.ids directly opposed to tho j)articularity 
 of Qxktout things. Now tlu) Imperative is such an 
 abstmction. It requires you to realize something, and 
 yet gives you nothing that you can realize. And tho 
 will to which this lmi)erative a(hlresses itself is likewise 
 an abstraction. It is its essence to bo formal, but tho 
 law requires you to materialize it, to give it a content, to 
 contradict its essence. O.dy as fornud is it good, and 
 yet as good it ordains an activity which it cannot under- 
 tako without c(vising to bo formal. Its object is the 
 nmstory of tho sensuous nature^, and yet it is defiled by 
 any contact with sense. Such a pure will is, in short, a 
 contradiction: as will it must have a delinito content or 
 matter for its activity, but as pure will it nuist bo merely 
 formal, that is, it can have no content. 
 
 The other clement in tho Categorical Imperative is 
 that of conformabiliiy to universal law. The maxim on 
 
I'Jfhicti of Evolution. 
 
 55 
 
 which you net tnuHt luhipl- it.Hc^lf to u principlo for othorH. 
 Jhit RH nnythinj^ you chooHo fur your own uiuxiia ia 
 HUHr(.ptil)lo of thiH univormil iipph'ivition, so fur uh tho law 
 Jiloiio is to (l.Mri.h), wo iiuiHt Hiiy witli llogol tliat "thoro 
 iH nothinj^ whutHoovor whicli iu thiw way could not bucorno 
 II moral law." * 'J'jio law forbids you niakinj^ any prin- 
 ciplo and tho contradictory of it, ut tho Hanio timo, 
 niaxinm of your conduct ; but it dooH not jirovcnt you 
 chooHiuf^ cither ono or tho otluT of thoHo two. Which 
 it shall bo, ii) loft ontiroly unih^tcTtnincd. Jf doccption 
 bo tho maxitn of your conduct, you inuHt not w il truth- 
 fuhu\sH for univorHal law; or if truthl'ulmwH bo your 
 maxitn, deception cannot bo willed uh priiunplo for others ; 
 but thero is no way of dotormining from tho law >vlono 
 whether truthfulness or decoption should bo tukon as 
 starting-point. Sui)poHo tho (jueHtion bo put, "if, when 
 h\ dillicidty, I may not make a promiHo with tho inten- 
 tion of not observing it;" then, says Kant, "I soon 
 perceive, it is true, that I can will tho lio, but not a 
 universal law to lio, for thon thoro couhl bo no such 
 thing us promising." f Hut what contradiction is thoro 
 in tho supposition that mon have ceased to make and 
 give promises ? Wo set out to prove that promise- 
 breaking is immoral, and wo show that if cuiversally 
 miopted it would K-ad to tho abrogation of promise- 
 making. JJut why should there be promiso-making ? 
 Though tho nbsenco of it might conflict with other 
 conditions, it is certainly not forbidden by tho formal 
 law. Whatever of cogency tho argument seems to 
 carry with it, it derives from an illicit appeal to tho 
 consequoncos of actions in tho real world, — by descending, 
 that is, from the a priori sphere of thought to the a. 
 posteriori of cxperiouco. Only if promise-keeping bo 
 * llogcl's Wcrkc, i. \io2. f Wcric, iv. 250-251, 
 
 M 
 
>^ 
 
 56 
 
 Knnlian FAhirtt and ihv 
 
 
 
 moral, doos tho lu,v pronoiinoo pmmiHo.l)n>nkln^ immorft!. 
 And tho Iftw itHclf ia inmpftbh, of dole nniiiinK wli(«t,lior 
 Miomlity it8i>(f conHiHt ill promiso-koopijijf or in prorniHo- 
 broakin^. Hut tho point of intoroHt is prorisoly to Hhow 
 that tho ono i8 moral and should bo, tho other imniural 
 and Miiould not bo. 
 
 Tho contradictions imnmnont in tho Categorical Tm- 
 ponitivo havo now boon dovolopcnl ; and it will porliapH bo 
 mhnittod that thoy coimtitntc^ a Huflicic-nt rofntation of any 
 nior,«ly formal principle of morality. If this bo Kfaniod, it 
 follows that an ethical systom can bo coiiHtructod only on 
 ft fi>undntion which is not formal, that is, only on tho 
 basis of a law wl.ich has a material content. Hut Kant, in 
 H proposition a,-* closely reasoned as any of its protofypos 
 in Goometry, claims to havo dcmoiiHtratod that "all 
 nuiterial practical jirinciples are, as such, of one and the 
 eairo ki.ul, and belong to a general systoin of self-love or 
 individual happiness." * Now, if there is any fact of 
 which our moral consciousness is indubitably certain, it 
 is that duty does not consist in tho i)ursuit of individual 
 happiness, and it is on this account that egoistic hedonism 
 fails as a philosophy of ethics. If, then, all material 
 principles are of this nature, as tho proposition asserts, 
 then obviously they afford no explanation of tho facts of 
 our moral life j and, since tho samo has been shown of 
 all formal principles, it would follow that an ethical 
 philosophy was for over impossible. But before assenting 
 to this conclusion, tho proof must be examined by which 
 Kant professes to have established the premise on which 
 it rests. What is v.iiid, what not valid, in his demon- 
 stration of the ogoipm of all material principles? 
 
 First of all it must bo granted, with Kant, that the 
 pleasure arising from the idea of the existence of an 
 
 * Wet'kc, y. 22. 
 
J'UhicH of h'voluUon. 
 
 67 
 
 ohjoot roBtH oti tho roocptivity of tho mibjoct, .H.d boloPK* 
 th(!rofor(3 to sonso a.ul not to undorstandin^. Tt must 
 furtJuT 1,0 granted that thi« c^xpoctod plooH„ro .lotor- 
 nnnoH tho doHJro towardH tho realization of tho object 
 Nor oaT. it bo doniod that a prir.cipio whieh makes Hi.ch' 
 pleaHuro tho higheHt detertninator of tho will in ouo of 
 Bolf-lovo. Hut it (..tnnot bo granted that all material 
 princ.pIeH are of tins nature. And we must, therefore, 
 alllrm that Kant has not proved what he set out to prove! 
 Indeed, this becomes obvious by a mero comparison of 
 the enunciation and tho conch.Hion of the proposition. 
 The proof only warrants what the conclusion expresses,' 
 namely, that "all material in'\ncip\c», whirk jmt tho deter- 
 minatnr of choicv in plmsuro or pain, roHuUing from the 
 e.U8toncn of an object, are, so far, all of the same Vind 
 that they belong to a system of self-love or individual 
 happiness." JJut fV enunciation affirms that all material 
 prmciplos as meh belong to a system of self-love. And 
 between this universal and that particular judgment 
 there lies an area which, it requires littlo logic to terich 
 us, is wholly untouched by tho demonstration. If only 
 the class of material principles specified is egoistic, it 
 does not follow that tho same can bo predicatod oi' all 
 material principles as such. 
 
 The result, accordingly, is that morality, w) ich wo 
 have found inexplicable from tho mero form of a universal 
 law, is not incompatible with a principle that differs t>om 
 the formal law, in that it has a content, but agrees with ;t, 
 in that it is of universal extension. Such a principh 
 cannot be the product of reason alone, which is onl^- 
 form-giving, nor yet of sense a?one, which is only the 
 source of matter. It is to bo a principle for men, aari 
 differs therefore on the one band from'a law for m'ereiy 
 
 ■ *y4 
 
68 
 
 Kaniian EJiics and the 
 
 Q. 
 
 
 rational beings like the angels, as on the other, from a 
 maxim for merely sensuous beings like the brutes. It 
 must express the end for us as men, Tavep(;>invov ayadiv. 
 It can be found only in the characteristics of human 
 nature— in the idea of man as such. Any other derivation 
 of it misses the mark, either by aiming too high, or not 
 liigh enough. We believe that the conception of Aristotle 
 must form the starting-point of any scientific ethic, 
 though, as may hereafter rppear, Aristotle .iid not 
 apprehend, as Kant did, the significance of an a priori 
 element in morality. But a rightly-developed Aristotel- 
 lanism 'n ethics must mediate between Formalism and 
 Empiricism, just as Criticism, in the theoretical sphere, 
 brought together the truth of Sensationalism and 
 Rationalism. 
 
 Against such a derivation of morality from the essential 
 nature of man, no one has, however, protested more 
 vigorously than Kant himself. " It is,'^ he says (to quote 
 only one of scores of passages), « of the last moment to 
 be on our guard ag-nst supposing for an instant that 
 the reality of this principle can be deduced from the 
 peculiar character of human nature. For duty is to be 
 the unconditicnate necessity qf an action, and must 
 accordingly be valid for all rational beings (to whom an 
 Imperative is at all applicable) and only on this account 
 binding on the human will. Whatever is derived, on the 
 contrary, from the particular constitution of human 
 nature, from certain feelings or tendencies, or even if 
 possible from a special bias peculiar to human reason but 
 not necessary for the will of every rational being, may, it 
 is true, be a maxim for us, but never a universal llw, 
 may, that is, be a subjective principle we like to follow! 
 but can rover be an objective law, ordaining how to act^ 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 59 
 
 even though the bent, inclination, and constitution of 
 our nature were opposed to it. Indeed, the sublimity and 
 internal dignity of the law show themselves the more 
 conspicuously, according as the subjective motives are in 
 opposition to it, without however weakening its deter- 
 minative force or derogating from its validity."* In 
 this passage Kant very emphatically rejects the deduction 
 of the ethical princ^ le from the peculiar nature of man. 
 He wdl have it binuing on man, soleli/ because it is valid 
 for all rational beings. But since we know of no other 
 rational beings than man, it does seem a work of super- 
 erogation to excogitate for them a system of morality, and 
 a hopeless undertaking to reach in this way the definite 
 rights and duties incident to human life.' If the law 
 which it is Kant's merit to have shown must be universal^ 
 be yet elevated above the universal o^ human nature, so 
 as to include within itself every ratioaal being, then by 
 leaving the actual world we know for an imaginary world 
 of which we know nothing, we make it incapable of 
 sustaining any content, without which, however, wo have 
 found morality wholly inexplicable. 
 
 Why, then, did Kant here aim so high— Kant, who had 
 formerly meted out the domains and bounds of knowledge 
 and cautioned us against those stormy and perilous seas 
 of the Unknowable, which encompass on every side the 
 tiny island of our knowable world ? He sought, in fact, 
 to rid his morality of the empirical element, which could 
 not be avoided if the idea of humanity were taken as its 
 foundation. For Kant the empirical was always associated 
 with the idea of the accidental; and he felt that its 
 admission into morality would sully the purity of +he 
 good will and endanger the dignity of a law that was 
 
 * Wei-lc, iv. 273. 
 
 •*« 
 
 'm 
 
 ! 
 
 II 
 •'•1 
 
60 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 pit. 
 
 I 
 
 to be valid even though opposed by the appetites, the 
 tendencies, or even by the constitution of our nature. 
 But Kant here fails to distinguish what is essentially 
 different. His grounds are vahd against a system that 
 makes pleasure the end and aim of action, but they do 
 not touch a principle like that of Aristotle, which lays a 
 foundation for morality in the essential and permanently, 
 abiding nature of man. It makes all the difference in the 
 world whether the principle be ^Sov^ or eiSatfiov la, hnt it 
 is just this that Kant failed to see. Vers.d as he was in 
 the moral speculations of the French and English, it is 
 more than probable that he knew only at second-hand the 
 great masterpieces of antiquity; and so failed to profit by 
 a distinction which Aristotle had so clearly developed. 
 
 The ancient moralist, recognizing that the good after 
 which all strive was universally named eiSaifiovid, pro- 
 ceeds to notice the variety of meaning covered by that 
 term, and rejects r/Bovv a^ an equivalent for it. The 
 absolute good must L ' in itself sufficient and cannot, like 
 pleasure, be dependent on anything else. What this self- 
 sufficient good, which is desired only for its own sake, 
 may be, will appear from a consideration of the work 
 peculiar to man (r^ iavrov ^pr-pv, rh X^oov, rh oiKetov). 
 For as the flute-player and the sculptor and the artist 
 find the good and the perfoct in their respective works, 
 Ro must the absolute good be found in the peculiar work 
 of man, if such indeed there be. That, however, cannot 
 be doubted; for nature that has assigned special functions 
 to the flute-player and the sculptor would not have left 
 man, as such, without an end. It is incredible that eye 
 and hand and foot, and in general every member, have 
 manifestly each a function of their own, but man as a 
 totality, man apart from these individual members has 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 61 
 
 none. Granting, then, that man must have some work or 
 activity peculiar to him as man, we must next determine 
 Its character. It cannot be merely to live, to nourish 
 himself, and to grow, for that is common to him with the 
 plants ; nor yet to live a life of feeling, for that he shares 
 with the animals. What distinguishes man from these is 
 reason, and the end of his being must therefore consist in 
 an activity of reason. 
 
 Is now the motive from which Kant forbids the 
 deduction of morality from the peculiar nature of man 
 justified by this view of the typical system of Aristotle ? 
 Does it endanger either the purity of the will or the un- 
 conditionality of the law ? The answer of courod depends 
 upon what we mean by our terms. If the will is good 
 and the law is absolute only because they are both empty 
 abstractions, then assuredly they are robbed of their 
 dignity in a system like that of Aristotle, which requires 
 that each should have a definite content. But a dignity 
 that consists in barren formality and that cannot come 
 in contact with reahty without losing its essential 
 character, it is at once absurd and impossible to maintain 
 in a philosophy of our concrete morality. It is not 
 necessary to repeat our criticism of the practical 
 philosophy; it will suffice to recall that the one great- 
 truth we found in its principles was that the moral law 
 and the good will are possible only by merging the 
 paifcicularity of sense in the universality of reason. But 
 for this, which was excluded by the system of Kant, 
 ample provision is made in the system of An;.+-itle. It 
 provides for the law a form that is univers-;!, and a 
 matter that is concrete. The character of generality 
 cannot be wanting to a principle which formulates, not 
 the empirical and accidental nature of the individual, but 
 
 1 
 
 '31 
 
 in 
 i 
 
62 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 **«»> 
 '«^. 
 
 the inner necessary and unconditioned idea of the species 
 itself. Nor yet can it lack a content, for it is not an 
 abstract universal of reason, but the concrete universal of 
 humanity. And the union of form and matter in actual 
 living practice is guaranteed by an Imperative ordaining 
 that reason, by which alone man is made what he is, 
 shall permeate all the activity of his life and gain the 
 mastery over his bhndly self-seeking appetites and 
 desires. In this way the individual while concretely 
 realizing the idea of his own being follows laws that are 
 unconditioned, because given in the idea, and that are 
 universal, because the idea is not peculiar to him, but 
 valid for every human being. The principle of Aristotle 
 accordingly satisfies the requirements of the moral law as 
 explicated by Kant. 
 
 The same may be said of the good will, which is how- 
 ever not explicitly discussed by Aristotle. With the 
 correlate question of freedom and necessity it came first 
 with Christianity into the living consciousness of modern 
 Europe. But it is not only in harmony with, it is really 
 supplementary to, a principle that places the absolute 
 good in the realization of the essential nature of man. 
 The good will is, as Kant explains, one that wills the 
 universal; and since, as we have seen, the universal 
 canrot be abstract, the good will can be no other than 
 that which wills the concrete universal. When man no 
 longer follows blindly his selfish appetites and desires, 
 but acts rationally in accordance with the idea he has of 
 his own worth and dignity as man, then the will is good, 
 for it is in the unhampered service of reason. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of arguing with Kant that the 
 moral law is not grounded in the peculiarity of human 
 nature and is binding on man only because valid for all 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 63 
 
 rational beings, we must, in the spirit of Aristotolianism, 
 maintain "that no other task can be given to man than 
 the reab-zation of the idea of his own worth, and that no 
 other than this can be comprehended, no other recognized 
 by him."* Had Kant really understood this principle, 
 it may be doubted whether he would have cast it so 
 lightly aside. But there is ample evidence that he had 
 no right comproben-ion of it whatsoever. And his table 
 of ethical principles, a table professedly exhaustive, does 
 not even contain the name of Aristotle, for whose 
 principle there is in fact no representative. It omits the 
 name of the greatest of morahsts and passes over in 
 silence the only principle Kant had been at pains 
 specifically to refute ! 
 
 It may now be considered as established that the moral 
 law, which Kant rightly argued must be unconditional, 
 can be no other than a material principle whose form and 
 content are given in the idea of man as man. Kant'a 
 opposition to this view, if it be not a mere misunder- 
 standing, must be held ungrounded and untenable. 
 We have now to add that Kant himself by a very 
 instructive inconsequence more than once assumes the 
 principle he had so vigorously combated. Thus when he 
 speaks of " the idea of humanity man carries in his soul 
 as archetype of his actions," he concedes everything for 
 which we here contend.f And this agreement is no 
 accidental occurrence, but a result rendered inevitable 
 by the logic of the moral consciousness. Hence Kant is 
 obliged to carry this conception into the development 
 of the practical philosophy, though, it is true, with a 
 sacrifice of its unity and consistency. Without supposing 
 
 ilf 
 
 i 
 
 # T 
 
 iFendelcaburg's NaturreoU, p. 41 (2nd ed. 1861) 
 iii. 260. 
 
64 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 
 that the last grounds of morality were contained in the 
 idea of man as such, he could never have reached the 
 second formulf. for the Categorical Imperative, the 
 formula ordaining : so to act as to use the humanity in 
 thine own person and in the person of every other always 
 as an end, never merely as a. means.* And only on the 
 same assumption is it possible to classify duties as tending 
 to the perfection of self or to the happiness of otherp f 
 
 Had Kant only meditated on the principle here un- 
 consciously and illogically assumed he would have found 
 in it the key to the solution of that unnatural antinomy 
 between goodness and happiness, which was not to be 
 avoided on his own conception of morality. True to the 
 noble thought with which his ethical writings begin, that 
 a good will is the only absolute good, he rightly refuses 
 to identify the moral with the pleasurable, and, as a 
 consequence, regards the pleasurable as an impure 
 motive to the good will. The children of the kingdom 
 take not the hireling's wages, nor give the hireling's 
 service. Duty is the necessity of an act out of reverence 
 for the law. On this side there is no compromise between 
 virtue and happiness. But on another, the case is 
 different. For, as we have already seen, in the highest 
 good, which the moral law enjoins us to realize, happiness 
 is an element not less than virtue. And, as is well 
 known, the antinomy supplies grounds for postulating 
 the existence of God. 
 
 Without inquiring into the nature of the new eudae- 
 monistic God that Kant thus sets up on the ruins of 
 Deism, we may merely observe that He has no other 
 function than the mediation of a contradiction which is 
 due solely to the one-sidedness of Kant's ethical philo- 
 * Werke, iv. 277. f vii. 189. 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 ed in the 
 iched the 
 tive, the 
 manity in 
 er always 
 ly on the 
 8 tending 
 therp f 
 
 here un- 
 ive found 
 antinomy 
 LOt to be 
 ue to the 
 )gin, that 
 Y refuses 
 ud, as a 
 I impure 
 kingdom 
 lireling's 
 everence 
 between 
 
 case is 
 
 highest 
 appiness 
 
 is well 
 itulating 
 
 65 
 
 :: ir Th'°^ '^^ - -ompaniment of, morarX: 
 naf ,r« """"^^ ^""' ^^^^ ^° «^-d of a super- 
 
 11 ■, . ^ '" "' ' '^"^ '^° ^^^^<^ incliuation to good 
 
 seemed to detract from the worth of goodness, which as 
 
 he concexved, only the moral law ootid produce And 
 
 o sharply does he exclude inclination from mollL fhat 
 
 to an end winch is unwillingly adopted."* Thus Schiller 
 ecu d say that the Draco of his age' expounded tL 1 
 
 But? Sir/'^^ir '''^'''' ^-^^ --y ^^- 
 
 ev 1 . r "f ^ -^--tained, duty cannot be for 
 
 at last an abidmg disposition which has its delight onlv 
 m the good. The ideal of a moral man ,•« ^ ..^ 
 which t,e ^.awof the mind" has t^.:;; ^r^.^ 
 
 the service of the good. But Kant regarded as end IZ 
 was only beginning, and placed, accordingly, duty il al 
 eternal warfare between ^^flesh" and '^spiHt'^^ S^rJ! 
 from a aw valid for rational beings alone' he was owj 
 when he reached the specifically human nature to 
 suppress entirely the claims of sense. But the enemy 
 not completely conquered until reconciled ; and Kantl 
 mistake consists in attempting to quench thj fire of sens 
 instead of turning it to account for the quickening oh" 
 moral life and the glow of moral feeling. Had he t^^kl 
 for his principle, instead of that formal universal of 
 reason the idea of human nature as such, he would Lf 
 seen ^at morality consisting as it does in' the real" at Ln 
 of the end to which we arc destined. mu«t necessarily 
 
 * Wirle, vii. 189. 
 
 5 
 
 
 
GO 
 
 Kaniian Etlilcn nml fh,> 
 
 h 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 bo accompntiiod by plonauro in tlio nttainTnont. (if tlini. 
 pvul. Tho idea is Mio OHsoniial mid tlio otiixiiinl, tlio 
 ])lonHuro tlid nccidtMilal and tli(> Hccdudary. 'V\w oikIh in 
 which tho i(h'a of luitnanity cxpivHscs itself must bo tho 
 otdy niotivoH of tlio jrood will ; but whon thoso nro 
 honestly fuKiUcd, Mumi i)l(>asnr(> spriiijrs np at onco as 
 conso(]u»mco and as si^ni of tho nvoral <h'voh)pnu'nt. 
 " An ethical philosojihy wliich would oxcludo pleasure 
 would bo contrary to natm-o ; ;uul ono which would 
 nmko a priiu-iplo of it would bo contrary to spirit.*'* 
 Tho doctriiu) of l<]picurns and tho doctrino of tbo Stoics 
 aro both fjilse. Virtuo docs not consist in tho pursuit of 
 pleasure, nor yet in tho pursuit of sottjo inui^n'nary sub- 
 limity that oxcli^dcs it. Tho truth of both, and ibo truth 
 of ethics at tho sniuo time, is contained potentially at 
 least in tho system of Aristotle. 
 
 Tlu'ro is still nnother ])oint to which referonco may 
 b(> m.'ido for the sak(> of comparison between tho two 
 principles. It has been seen alri>ii(ly that tlio Catojjforical 
 lm})(>rativo is formal and empty, but wo must now add 
 that it is essentially sid)jectivo. Tho individuMl is supposed 
 to bo t'lo source and the standard of all moral f^ood, and 
 no account is taken of tho morality already existent in 
 tho world. l?ut this wliolly ignores the development of 
 tho individual consciousness, which is made np for tho 
 most ])art of the moral and intellectual substance it has 
 assimilated from its environment. Unus homo, nuUm 
 homo. Tho individual has not to create from his own 
 innate emptiness some new morality; in the main, ho 
 has only to make his own the morality of his people and 
 his country. And his moral notions aro accordingly 
 conditioned by the history and circumstances of tho 
 
 * Troiiclcloiil)uru;'H Hisfovisrhc Ihitrage, iii. 212 (od. 1867). 
 
Elhirn of Kvoluh'on. q; 
 
 nd. I.O 0...-I, „nlHlM.,s, u,..I Uy (,,.,3 ,u.cun...lut,.a ol,- 
 
 vv.tl.on Ins cdncuUon ih li„i,sl.,.,| . „.,, <,,„. ,.f ^.^,.^ 
 
 •norul man ks never UM,sin.ilativc, I,..,, alwnyH c.vafciv. or 
 Holf.or,gn.ut.nf.. The fornm,! uuW.vhuI in an idea of his 
 mun not tlu, oLje-Cively ,.,.ali..,l ..nivernal of State, of 
 tln.rc-h of lanuly, nud of Soeioly. And as Kant's prac 
 t.cul plnlosophy i^n.onvs tl.o derivation of tho individual 
 con.sc.ouHnc.H,s fro,„ the objctivo consciouHncss as 
 -'-or.<l .n these institntions, so it ne,.lects, and could 
 not help nc-glecfing, these factors then.s(.lves When 
 l-wever, it is seen what a role they play in the develop- 
 n.ent of mornlity, a philosophy of them will bo inevitablv 
 den.anded. They are, to uso Schleiermacher's phntscf 
 our ethical heritngo {rtlM.o iJiU.,) ; and, as such' 
 luur ongni must bo traced and their rights justih-ed! 
 Into tins .piostion wo cannot of course now enter Wo 
 I.HV0 only to noto that it is a defect of the Kantian 
 l)lulosophy to have ignored or oven to havo excluded it 
 An nnphe.t explanation, on tho other hand, is latent in 
 the p,Mncii,le of Aristotle. For tho absolute good, which 
 ho finds ,n the peculiar work of man, is to be sullicient 
 in Itself not only for tho individual but also for tho 
 Innnan species; and since the inner side of it consists in 
 the activity of reason,_in the realization of the " proper 
 soil," tho outer side must bo an objectivation in which 
 humanity as a whole will find itself realized; and this 
 since man is a Z6>ov -rroXtrcK^v, can be no other than tho 
 
 6 * 
 
 
 
 Wi-^v 
 
 i-JSJ 
 
08 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 
 \^ 
 
 K 
 
 I 
 
 civil commiinify or tho Stato. In other lanjjrnaf^'o, our 
 Bocinl institutions are tho objoctivo oxprossion of tlio 
 idea of humanity as it embodies itself in the course of 
 history. 
 
 The view of tho moral principle for which wo havo 
 been contending rests on a meta])liysical assumption that 
 must now bo indicated. If the account given bo correct, 
 duty consists in tho realization of an end or idea, for tho 
 sake of which alone man exists as moral agent. Hero wo 
 are in accord with Kant, who conceived tho perfecting of 
 the will through reason as tho final cause of our existence. 
 Kthics is inevitably driven to a teloological conception of 
 tho universe. Wo find morality explicablo only if thought 
 be assumed as prins, and force or matter as the sub- 
 ordniato condition for tho fulfilment of tho ends which 
 thought establishes. This organic conception of tho 
 world we are not now called upon metaphysically to 
 justify. Wo havo only to observe that it is forced upon 
 us by tho interpretation of tho facts of tho moral con- 
 sciousnjss. By implication, therefore, wo have already 
 rejected an ethical philosophy built on a system of meta- 
 physics directly opposed to tho teloological. Where 
 matter is taken as the primary and original, and thought 
 as the secondary and derivative, there emerges such a 
 system,— which may, by way of contrast, bo called tho 
 mechanical. A science of physics is possible, but a 
 science of ethics is impossible under this conception of tho 
 universe. If man is nothing but a congeries of feelings 
 and ideas, which a blindly working nature has set up, 
 without purpose and without aim, if his actions are the 
 necessary consequences of feelings which are neither 
 caused by him nor subject to his control, does it not 
 seem evident that moral responsibility is meaningless 
 
 
Fdhics of Eoolatiun. 
 
 69 
 
 f\ui)fV!, our 
 
 on of tlio 
 
 course of 
 
 1 wo Imvo 
 iption that 
 )e correct, 
 ea, for the 
 Hero wo 
 rfecting of 
 • existence, 
 coption of 
 if thought 
 3 the sub- 
 )nds which 
 )n of the 
 y^sically to 
 rccd upon 
 noral con- 
 ve ah'oady 
 1 of raeta- 
 l. Where 
 id thouglit 
 ^cs such a 
 called the 
 )le, but a 
 tion of the 
 Df feelings 
 as set up, 
 18 are the 
 ro neither 
 oes it not 
 loaninglcss 
 
 and duty a vain mocking word? If wo are merely tho 
 arena m which events happen, and not tho self-centred 
 personalities from whom actions take their source, then 
 morality consists in a simple lalssoz-falre, and ethics is 
 not distinguishable from physics. 
 
 4. Evolution idle TIedonism. 
 
 But thougli our final result is that the mechanical con- 
 ception of the universe cannot bo reconciled with the 
 do!iveranc(^s of tho moral consciiuisness, it ia notorious 
 that evolution, as thus interpreted, has been applied— 
 and, as is widely supposed, with success— to the problems 
 of moral philosophy. Of this philosophizing Mr. Herbert 
 {Spencer's Data of Ethics may be taken as a typical 
 exat-plo. And it now remains to examine the philosophy 
 of ethics which that work contaiii s.* 
 Mr. Spencer makes no reference to the will in his work 
 
 * It may bo well to note that with Darwinism as a biological 
 hypothesis wo have in this casay really no concern. Certain 
 metaphysical assumptiona often associated with it we are liowcver 
 forced to rtyect. There aro two apheres-the sphere of nature and 
 the sphere of spirit. And if Darwinism has shed light on that it 
 has left this as it found it. Lange— no biass- ' authority— says • 
 " The evolution of man from lower forms of life is from the point 
 of view of natural science perfectly self-evident ; while, on the 
 contrary, his conscious life (Gcistesleben) remains still a problem 
 when all 'Jie consequences of Darwinism have been granted" 
 (Gcschk-hte des Maleralismus, ii. 313 (3rd ed.) ). It is our 
 eUbrt to show what this conscious life, on its moral side, really 
 imi)lies. And we enter our humble protest against the illogical 
 method of importing into the sphere of morality a hypothesis 
 taken from other phenomena. We demand that the facts of 
 morality shall be studied, as Darwin studied the facta of life, and 
 then, but Lot till then, a theory of them given-a theory deduced 
 
 LUC ...1 ,!,.., ,^itu xcitrfcnt-c to them, and not with 
 
 reference to a « holly different class of facts. 
 
 I, 
 
70 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 
 h*4'' 
 
 ^ 
 
 ** 
 
 on ethics, but olsowhoro ho rejects tho conception o^ 
 freedom as an ilhisiou. Not that ho proves it such, ...»♦, 
 that ho examines its validity at all ; but, simply sotti, .; 
 out with tho asHumptioi;, ho shows how tho "illus-'on' 
 has been Konerated. It arose, ho informs us, from the 
 belief "that at e.ich moment tho r(/() present as such i 
 consciousness (I exclude the implied, but unknown sub- 
 stratiim which can never be present) id somothing moro 
 than tho i\}r,rvvgnto of foeliijgs and ideas which then 
 exists."* But tho fact is, it seems, that tho c(jo is 
 nothing else than this "aggregate,'' and in no other 
 sense can it be said that " I '' determine this or that 
 action or volition. As the influence of Hume is traceable 
 in Mr. Spencer'b Lockean theory of knowledge, here it 
 meets us at tho very threshold of tJio ethics. But the 
 hypothesis is not on that account any the loss mysterious. 
 Why should all mankind have fallen into this strange 
 error of supposing themselves something more than their 
 "feelings and ideas" ? This supposition, so marvellous 
 in itself, needs some justification before being used as an 
 axiom to account for real or imaginary illusions. And 
 the next stage is equally wondei-ful. For even though 
 we concede tliat men, under a strange infatuation, have 
 come to believe in a "mental self'" present to conscious- 
 ness, apart fro-n tho aggregate of ideas and emotions, 
 how can there ariso from this tho notion of freedom ? 
 Because, says Mr. Spencer, wo attribute the action to it 
 and not to the causality of a feeling or idua. But why 
 we should do this, there is no reason given ; and none 
 perhaps could be given except the exigencies of a fore- 
 gone conclusion. Without a previous belief that we 
 were free, there would be no ground for assigning the 
 
 * P^ili-holofiy, 1. 50). 
 
»iicoption o^ 
 it Hiich, liot 
 nply sotti. .; 
 "illus-"on' 
 s, iroin tho 
 i aa audi ) 
 known aub- 
 jthiiig" nioro 
 which then 
 tho C(j() ia 
 II no other 
 ilia or that 
 ia traceable 
 (\go, here it 
 d. But tho 
 myaterioua. 
 hia atransro 
 ! than their 
 marvclloua 
 used aa an 
 iona. And 
 '■en thougli 
 ation, have 
 conscious- 
 emotiona, 
 freedom ? 
 action to it 
 But why 
 and none 
 s of a fore- 
 f that we 
 ii^niing the 
 
 Eihics of Evolution. 
 
 71 
 
 volition to tho causality of tho ryo and not of tho feeling 
 that preceded it. Indeed, wore inference at all posaible 
 for Hueh a consciousnesa-and that cannot bo adoiitted— 
 would it not argue from the connexion between feelings 
 and actions that the will waa neceaaitated ? Even, then, 
 though wo grant tho absurd supposition of tnat ghostly 
 presence in consciousneaa-that ego apart from ideaa and 
 emotiona-wo must deny that it could throw such a 
 deceptive halo about tho myateriea of tho human will. 
 But how it ever got its s-at there in consciouanesa ; how 
 wo, who are merely bundlea of conscious states, could 
 appear to tho " aggregaies^' that we are more than " aggre- 
 gates," is a mystery without parallel, or paralleled only 
 by tho belief in freedom which this buatard ego imposes 
 upon our credulity. 
 
 The genesis of tho notion of freedom here given, ia, we 
 think, absurd ; but the fact romaina that for Mr. Speucer 
 the notion is an illusion. And holding with K nt that 
 freedom ia the ratio es.mdi of morality, it ia not eaay for 
 ua to see how ethio.- is possible on the denial of it. Mr. 
 Spencer was, perhaps, dimly conacious of the aume diffi* 
 culty ; for it ia only by changing the problem of ethics 
 that his system ia at all conceivable. With a naivete 
 that is really surprising, he saya in hia well-known letter 
 to Mr. Mill : '< The view for which I contend ia, that 
 morality properly ao-called— the acience of right conduct 
 —has for its object to determine how and why certain 
 modea of conduct aro detrimental and certain other 
 modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be 
 accidental, but must bo necessary consequencea of the 
 constitution of things; and I coaceive it to be the 
 business of Moral Science to deduce, from tlie laws of 
 life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action 
 
 %\ 
 
11' 
 
 72 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 J ^4 
 
 1^. 
 
 % ■ 
 
 necessarily tend to produce happi.iess, and what kinds to 
 produce unhappiness."* 
 
 That the science thus sketched in outline would, when 
 realized, be useful, there can be no doubt whatever. And 
 any one who has in the slightest dej?ree observed how 
 much needless suffenng is entailed, through ignorance of 
 the conditions under which we live, would welcome a 
 hygienic almanac in which human actions were tabulated 
 according to their "beneficiar^ or "detrimental' results, 
 specific effects being set over against specific causes with 
 explanation of their necessary connexions. The possi- 
 bility of such a science may be doubted; and the induc- 
 tions it would bring together from al uost all th-.; other 
 sciences, especially from Biology, Psychology, and 
 Sociology, certainly imply an almost superhuman effort 
 and grasp to adapt them to the infinite variety of human 
 activities. In outline, however, the science is at least 
 conceivable. But though its possibility be granted, and 
 the benefits to be derived from it be emphasized, we must 
 note that it -- aid be the science of hedonistic action not 
 of ri(jU conduct. It would have shown the causes nnd 
 the conditions of pleasure, but it .^ould not have touched 
 the question of goodaess. From the tables it could in 
 any case be seen what it was prudent to do, but in no 
 case what it was duty to do. To identify moral action 
 with beneficial results, is to obliterate distinctions that 
 are as important as they are manifestly obvious. If any 
 one asserted that the science of sound properly so-called 
 had for its object to detormine how and why certain 
 relations existed among the phenomena of colour it 
 might be difl^cult to refute him, although you were 
 certain he used wjrds in a meaning entirely foreign to 
 * /)(rA7 of Rfhirs, p. 57. 
 
»r I 
 
 Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 73 
 
 it kinds to 
 
 'uld, whea 
 ver. And 
 3rved how 
 norance of 
 i^elcome a 
 
 tabulated 
 i " results, 
 luses with 
 ^he possi- 
 the induc- 
 th'.) other 
 :>gy, and 
 nan effort 
 of human 
 ! at least 
 nted, and 
 , we must 
 ction not 
 i.uses nnd 
 3 touched 
 
 could in 
 but in no 
 "al action 
 ions that 
 . If any 
 so-called 
 /■ certain 
 olour, it 
 ou were 
 >reign to 
 
 the popular usage. The case is precisely the same with 
 Mr. Spencer. He asserts that ethics or the science of 
 right conduct aims at determining how and why actions 
 are beneficial or detrimental. But the voice of humanity, 
 as caught alike in language rnd in thought, has pro- 
 clanned the incommensurability of right with the bene- 
 ficial and of wrong with the detrimental. It is sure that 
 pleasure is not morality nor misery immorality; and that 
 the moral life aces not consist in the pursuit of the one 
 or the avoidance of the other. A -moral science- that 
 proposes to deduce the laws and conditions of happiness 
 is as much opposed to the facts of the moral conscious- 
 ness as an acoustics of colours to the facts of extern-d 
 perception. A - moral science" must be a philosophy of 
 our morality, not of our pleasures or our advantages, or 
 anything else that is gratuitously identified with our 
 morality. 
 
 This false equation between the good and the beneficial 
 has led Mr. Spencer to assign to the law of causality an 
 important place in his evolutionistic theory of ethics. Ke 
 blames moral philosophers for not erecting "into 'a 
 method the ascertaining of necessary relations between 
 causes and effects, and deducing rules of conduct from 
 formulated statements of them.-* And in "studying 
 the various ethical theories," he has been "struck with 
 the fact that they are all characterized either by entire 
 absence of the idea of causation or by inadequa+e presence 
 of it."t And the fact is not essentially different from 
 Mr. Spencer's representation. Moralists have never 
 attempted to show the causal connexion between specific 
 modes of action and the feelings of pleasure or pain 
 accompanying them, much less to construct on such a 
 * DataofEthtcs,x>.(S\. ^ Ibid. -p. ii). 
 
 1% 
 
74 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 \l 
 
 If?'- 
 
 
 foundation a system of rules valid for all human conduct. 
 Already in possession of a moral estate, becjuoatlied by the 
 spirit of past generations, they did not foolishly attempt 
 to create it do novo by their own individual efforts. 
 They found existing in the world a system of morality, 
 which had formed the fibre of their spiritual being before 
 as yet they had awakened to reflection and become 
 "ethical philosophers.'^ And this universal ethos, at 
 whose breasts thc^y had been suckled, naturally seemed 
 bett' ■- than any jjoor empty i)hantom of their own indi- 
 vidual brain. It never occurred to them that the world 
 had waited for '' rules of conduct'' till they appeared, 
 like gift-bringing (lods from Heaven, to supply the 
 universal want. Nor did they deem it any part of their 
 task to construct from their own private minds a set of 
 laws to which hutnanity must conform. Recognizing the 
 superior wisdom of universal reason, as it exists not 
 merely ideally in the moral notions of individuals, but 
 actually intlie objective realization of these into State and 
 Society and Family, they proposed to themselves no other 
 problem than the understanding of what actually exists 
 —the comprehension of the dicf^seit)^, not the creation of 
 an imnginnvy jenscit.'<. And the solution of this problem 
 took them far beyond the "idea of 'causation," which, if 
 not entirely absent from their systems, is introduced only 
 to bo excluded on the ground that morality is impossiolo, 
 if spirit be in any way subject to the categories, wl'.'lx 
 spirit itself has imposed upon nature. 
 
 The etliics of evolution, however, has hitliorto univer- 
 versally, though, as wo venture to think, not aecc 'sarily, 
 followed a wholly different method. And it is t-u.. which 
 Mr. Spencer adopts. Instead of setting out from tbe 
 totality of facts to be explained^ he begins wicii an 
 
' f 
 
 Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 75 
 
 
 I conduct, 
 ed by tlio 
 y attempt 
 
 II efforts, 
 morality, 
 iig before 
 1 become 
 jtlios, at 
 f seemed 
 )wn indi- 
 ihe world 
 ppoiirod, 
 [)ply tlio 
 
 of their 
 } a set of 
 izing the 
 ists not 
 lals, but 
 tato and 
 no other 
 !y exists 
 'ation of 
 [)roblem 
 vhich, if 
 3od ouly 
 )oss7Uia, 
 
 univer- 
 :)y3Rrily, 
 o whii'ii 
 om fie 
 nch an 
 
 assumption borrowed from elsewhere, gratuitously im- 
 porting into the realm of thought a category, which we 
 know only as valid for nature. The law of causality 
 which the knowing subject finds, because he has put, in 
 the objective world, is, without any grounds except the 
 needs of a mechunicul hypothesis of the universe, pro- 
 claimed a law for self-consciousness itself. If the facts 
 cannot bo explained on this dogmatic assumpt-on, so 
 much the worse for the facts. The hypothesis is not 
 perhaps consonant with " morality as it is," but it i the 
 source of - morality as it should be l" Without appu- 
 rently observing the infinite presumption implied in the 
 impugning by any one man of the morality oi humanity, 
 or the ludicrousness of a " philosopher " creating from 
 his own individual prejudices and prepossessions a 
 "morality as it should be," our Evolutionists dilate upon 
 more than one " defect in the current system of morality," 
 develop points hitherto hidden from " men at large an'd 
 moralists as exponents of their view," and, as if pos'Iessed 
 of an insight at once poelic and prophetic, celebrate the 
 coming triumph of " Industrialism," when man, who "as 
 at present constituted," is net in h rrmony with the 
 requirements of the theory, shall have adapted himself 
 " to the conditions of social life,- or to the -guidance by 
 proximate pleasures and pains," which all other animals 
 have already accepted as Categorical Imperative in their 
 " system of morality."* We ask fo^ .->■ juiilosophy of our 
 existent morality, and we are pre .-id.ed Tnth a dogmatic 
 non-existent morality. This surely is to receive a stone, 
 
 * See Data of .Ethic- pp. v., 70, 87, 132. " Hence iLere is a 
 supi)o«able formula for th.. udivities wf eacli sp,.cie8, which could 
 It be drawn out, would constitute a s>,stem of morality i'or that 
 species (p. 132j. 
 
76 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 St 
 V 
 
 'V. 
 
 when wo have aslorl for bread. But that is not the 
 worst. A philosophy of morality we may dispense with, — 
 not, however, with morality itself. Yet the Evolutionist 
 requires that it be suppressed when it conflicts with his 
 " Moral Science," whose '' deductions are to be recog- 
 nized as laws of conduct, and are to be conformed to,'' 
 irrespective of the dictates of duty or the unmistakable 
 voice of conscience. The facts, it would seem, exist for 
 the sake of the theory, not the theory for the explanation 
 of the facts. 
 
 We have already advanced far enough to see that the 
 Evolution-hypothesis does not really affect, because it 
 never reaches, the problems of ethical philosophy. These 
 lie in the moral consciousness of humanity, to which it 
 simply gives the go-by. The conceptions of duty and 
 responsibility may be taken as fundamental. Mankind, 
 if we except a few philosophers, is certain that the con- 
 ditio sine qua non of the first is the freedom of the will, 
 and of o second, the self-sameness or identity of the 
 perse these be denied, it can see neither meaning 
 
 nor c • ; in the moral conceptions. The Evolutionist, 
 however, enters the ethical sphere with a ready-made 
 theory framed, irrespective of morality, from a wholly 
 different class of phenomena. His premises are that the 
 self is merely a collection of disconnected ideas, feelings, 
 and volitions, and that will is only the name for a deter- 
 mination towards action by any of these ideas, feelings, or 
 emotions. An ego to which the " states of consciousness" 
 belong, and by which they are held together, he ro^^ards 
 as a fiction and an illusion. Not less illusory Le i Pro- 
 claims that belief of the uiiphilosophical mind, which 
 holds to a will that ivills something, and not to the will 
 of the "philosophers," which is only another nao^e for 
 
Ethics of EvohLtion. 
 
 ! not the 
 ie with, — 
 olutionist 
 i with his 
 >e recog- 
 med to/' 
 istakable 
 exist for 
 jlauation 
 
 that the 
 cause it 
 . These 
 which it 
 luty and 
 [ankind, 
 the con- 
 the will, 
 '" of the 
 neauing 
 utionist, 
 ly-made 
 
 wholly 
 :hat the 
 eelings, 
 I deter- 
 ings.. or 
 usness^' 
 reofards 
 :i.e ';>ro- 
 
 which 
 the will 
 LTie for 
 
 the " niovement" produced by the " composition" of the 
 "forces" called motives, as they act and re-act in the 
 chaotic region called self. But, as we have just said, the 
 denial of freedom and of personal identity, and the 
 extension of causality to mind — which is only the other 
 side of that denial — lead inevitably to the annihilation of 
 all morality. The problem of the ethical philosopher has 
 therefore no existence for the Evolutionist, who has 
 already excluded it by the one-sidtdness of his mecha- 
 nical hypothesis. But he proposes a new problem to 
 himself. Emptying morality of its content and iden- 
 tifying the good with the pleasurable, he sets out "to 
 deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of exist- 
 ence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce 
 happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness." 
 And these he enjoins upon men as laws of their conduct. 
 Here, however, he falls into an inconsequence. For if man 
 is necessitated like any material object, as the theory 
 asserts, then you cannot enjoin anything upon him any 
 more than you can command the sun to stand still, or the 
 stars to change their courses. And though such a 
 " Moral Science " may interest the theorist, it is of no 
 use for practice, just because there would be no practice, 
 when the life of man was reduced to a series of events 
 causally happening within the arena he has somel^ow mis- 
 taken for a personal self. If on the other hanu man is 
 not necessitated, as the theory has assumed, then it is 
 evident that the "iaws of his conduct" wiil be very 
 diiferent from those deduced from a hypothesis 
 borrowed from the mechanical world. In any case, 
 therefore, the " moral " speculations of the Evolutionist 
 can have no interest for us as Moralists. 
 
 If a consideration of the scope of the eihics of evolurlon 
 
 I 
 
78 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 i^hii 
 
 '^y 
 
 
 end in doubts as to the wo.th of such a science, an 
 examination of its subject-matter will only confirm 
 them. It has to deduce from the laws of life and the 
 conditions of existence what kinds of action necessarily 
 tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce 
 unhappiness. It is at the outset assumed, in connexion 
 with a hypothesis framed to fit a wholly different class of 
 phenomena, thai^. the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance 
 of pams are the ultimate aims of all human conduct. 
 Thus the inquiry into morality bc-ins with the assertion 
 that morality is not an end in itself, but merely a means 
 to something else. -The ultimate moral aim" is "a 
 desirable state of feeling" (p. 4G). You arc to be 
 virtuous, either ,that you yourself or that others 
 naay be happy. The ethics of evolution, though 
 certain that "the good is universally the pleasurable ■' 
 (p. 30), wavers as to whether it is the pleasurable 
 for you or the pleasurable for Society. The incon- 
 gruities that emerge from its fusion of egoistic and 
 universahstio Hedonism will meet us later. Meantime 
 we wish to dwell on the first assumption that pleasure is 
 the end, "pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some 
 bemg^' (p. 4G). Meeting one assertion with another 
 why shall we not maintain that moraliiy is an end in 
 Itself? This can be impugned only on the supposition 
 that there is no absolute end, or, if there be, that it is 
 not morality. The ethics of evolution rests on the latter 
 assumption. It asserts that morality is only a means to 
 an ulterior end, which is pleasure. But nothing could 
 be more gratuitous than this dogmatic assumption ^.ith 
 which Mr. Spencer begins. As he denies that morality 
 IS an end m itself, so is it open to anyone else to deny 
 that pleasure is an end in itself. For the question 
 
lence^ an 
 ' confirm 
 
 and the 
 3cessarily 
 
 produce 
 onnexion 
 t class of 
 voidance 
 conduct, 
 assertion 
 a means 
 " is "a 
 ! to be 
 others 
 
 though 
 urable "' 
 usurable 
 ! incon- 
 tic and 
 eantime 
 asure is 
 'O some 
 mother, 
 
 end in 
 position 
 at it is 
 latter 
 Bans to 
 ;• could 
 n \/ith 
 lorality 
 deny 
 lestion. 
 
 Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 79 
 
 Why should I be happy? is just as little, or just as much 
 justifiable as the question. Why must I be moral ? The 
 end can never be reached by simply asking Why. And 
 it is no argument in favour of Hedonism that it gives a 
 reason for viitue, so long as it gives no reason for that 
 reason. Granted that you are to be moral that you may 
 be happy, why then are you to be happy ? And the same 
 may be asked of each and every end. . If therefore we 
 are to have a philosophy of our morality at all, it can 
 only be by facing the facts of the moral world and 
 observing with what end alone they arc compatible or 
 possible. 
 
 That pleasure is the ultimate end Empiricism has 
 generally taken for granted. Evolution, however, 
 adduces a reason for it. It maintains that pleasure 
 is the condition under which life has developed and 
 the condition under which alone it can continue. If 
 pleasure be not the end of conduct, then life would 
 disappear. But just because you have given a reason 
 for pleasure as end, it is not an ultimate end. You 
 are moral that you may be happy, for without pleasure 
 you could not live. Life is, therefore, taken as the 
 ulterior end— that for which you rre at once moral and 
 happy. But the old spectre again starts up in the 
 question, Why shall I live ? And if, as we venture to 
 think, no other answer can be given than that of Kant, 
 which asserts that morality alone is that which makes 
 life worth living, then with all our questionings w^e 
 have merely described a circle and returned to the 
 starting-point, that we are moral because morality itself 
 is the end. Or if so much be nob granted, it must at 
 least be conceded that pleasure has no more claim to be 
 the ultimate end than virtue itself. 
 
80 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 But if dc jure it cannot be shown tliat pleasure is the 
 ulterior end and virtue only a means to it, there are 
 de facto grounds for inverting that relation. For what- 
 ever be the opinion of the speculator as to what, accordinfr 
 to his theory, should be moans, and what ends, the 
 moral consciousness, whence alone the data of ethics can 
 be taken, is indubitably certain that virtue must be an 
 end in itself, and never a mere n.'on-nt to anything else. 
 It is sure that the moral man, neither directly nor indi- 
 rectly, aims at wages or perquisites in the performance 
 of his duties. And it suspects of immorality the man 
 who practises virtue only as a convenient way of attaining 
 something beyond it. All this is too well known to call 
 for further illustration. And yet, universally recognized 
 as it is by the consciousness of mankind, it is habitually 
 ignored by our Evolutionists. Their Ethics, as we have 
 seen, sets out from a hypothesis which is the direct 
 contrary of it— from the assumption that pleasure is the 
 only good and virtue merely a means to its attainment. 
 Thus, instead of explaining the phenomena of the moral 
 world, the ethics of evolution passes them over, or, at 
 best, explains them away. The facts, however, abide; 
 and none is more certain than the fact that pleasure can 
 never be the end of moral volition and action. 
 
 Besides these objections to the fundamental assumption 
 of the ethics of evolution — objections which we venture 
 to call insuperable— there is another which leaves that 
 science without any raison d'etre whatever. To put this 
 position beyond doubt will occupy us in the remainder of 
 this essay. Meantime the essence of the matter may be 
 stated in a few words. The subject-matter of "moral 
 science " is the content of the moral world. This con- 
 sists, on its inner side, of certain conceptions, emotions, 
 
Ethics of EcoJution. 
 
 81 
 
 ure is the 
 there are 
 ?^or what- 
 iccording 
 mds, the 
 )thic3 can 
 st be an 
 ing else, 
 nor indi- 
 formance 
 the man 
 attaining 
 n to call 
 cognized 
 abitually 
 we have 
 le direct 
 re is the 
 ainment. 
 he moral 
 r, or, at 
 ', abide ; 
 sure can 
 
 lumption 
 venture 
 ves that 
 put this 
 linder of 
 may be 
 " moral 
 'his con- 
 motions. 
 
 and beliefs ; on the outer, of a realization of these in the 
 State, the Family, and Society. Ethics has to explain 
 these moral phenomena, just as astronomy has to explain 
 the phenomena of the heavens. A science which fails to 
 do that, whatever else it may be, is no " moral science," 
 and has from tlie point of view of morality no justification 
 whatsoever. Now it is precisely this we maintain, this 
 we hope to demonstrate, of the ethics of evolution. 
 
 For that purpose we might proceed at once to an 
 examination of the relative parts of Mr. Spencer's Da fa 
 of Ethics, which may be considered the classical, as it is 
 the latest, exposition of " moral science " from the stand- 
 point of mechanical evolution. But before doing so, wo 
 shall attempt to establish our position by a few general 
 considerations of a more abstract character. 
 
 Our thesis is that the ethics of evolution can give no 
 explanation of the facts of morality. The moral law, as 
 Kant correctly interpreting the moral consciousness 
 affirms, is universal and necessary. It prescribes some- 
 thing to be done, not by any particular individual, but 
 by all human beings, and not under certain conditions, 
 but absolutely or unconditionally. The popular con- 
 sciousness is clear on both these points; and even 
 Mr. Spencer may hero be in harmony with it, for he 
 ordains that the laws to be deduced by his " moral science" 
 shall be observed by all men, irrespective of their own 
 personal desires and estimates. But how now are these 
 characteristics to be explained from the principle of 
 Hedonism i' If the moral worth of actions be estimated 
 by the feelings of pleasure and pain which accompany 
 them, then it is obvious that the standard of morality 
 cannot be objective and universally valid. For the 
 agreeable and the dis!igreeal/le depend upon tlio relation 
 
 I 
 
82 
 
 Kantian Ethics and thn 
 
 h^; 
 
 
 of the object to the subject nnd manifestly vary with 
 different ) ersons and even with the snnio person at 
 different •; mes. Now, according to tho theory, it must 
 follow that A, who finds his pleasure in excessive sensual 
 gratification, or in violating the rights of others, is 
 equally moral with B, who pursues a conduct the direct 
 contrary of this. Or how are you to prove to the former 
 that his life is immoral, when by hypothesis pleasure 
 is the only standard of what is right, and pleasure can 
 be estimated only by each individual for himself ? 
 Thus Hedonism knows nothing of the notion of duty 
 — of a something that is obligatory upon me whether 
 I like it or not, and upon all others equally under the 
 same circumstances. But this is ono of the most 
 prominent factors in the moral consciousness, which 
 an ethical philosophy is bound to explain. 
 
 It is not, however, necessaiy that momentary pleasure 
 be taken as the end; and the theory next aims at 
 freeing itself from its palpable defects by placing the 
 end in the greatest possible happiness of the individual 
 during the entire period of his life. It assumes that 
 from the experience of the race a series of rules might 
 be collected to show v/hat activities were conducive to 
 the highest and most enduring pleasures, and what 
 brought the greatest quantum of enjoyment with the 
 least alloy of pain. This is tho " Nautical Almanack " 
 of Mill's UtHitarianism, which Mr. Spencer endeavours 
 to supersede by substituting for its empirical inductions 
 a system of rational deductions from the laws of life 
 and the conditions of existence. Tho Almanack is 
 certainly open to the gravest objections. The rules 
 of experience are at best only the expression of an 
 average and probable calculation, and the individual 
 
Ethics of Euulation. 
 
 8;{ 
 
 mry with 
 )tTson at 
 ', it must 
 ^e sensual 
 others, is 
 he direct 
 he former 
 
 pleasure 
 isure can 
 
 himself ? 
 I of duty 
 ) whether 
 andcr the 
 the most 
 ss, which 
 
 Y pleasure 
 1 aims at 
 acing the 
 individual 
 imes that 
 les might 
 ducive to 
 md what 
 with the 
 Imanack " 
 ndeavours 
 inductions 
 ws of life 
 lanack is 
 The rules 
 ion of an 
 individual 
 
 can never be sure they have an application to his 
 particuhir case. Even were that found to bo so, they 
 may be in conflict with the maturest judgments he 
 himself has formed on the line of conduct to be pursued; 
 and since his pleasure is the end, he must, it might bo 
 supposed, be left free to follow the moans he deems 
 best. And this brink's us to an objection which neither 
 the Hedonism of Mr. Mill nor that of Mr. Spencer is 
 able to overcome. Popular morality is aware of an 
 obligation on the part of the agent to submit himself 
 to laws, which it conceives as binding upon him. But 
 what binding force have the rules of experience, what 
 the deductions of the ethics of evolution? I may 
 follow them or I may not. The end is pleasure, and 
 with that end no rules, no deductions are necessarily 
 given. They come to it from without; and, as their 
 connection is external and artificial, it may be recognized 
 or it may be ignored. Even though the rules are the 
 surest way to the greatest sum-total of happiness, you 
 can only call the individual who declines to follow them 
 a fool, but you cannot compel or oblige him to act 
 against his own views and wishes. What shall he care 
 for the "groans of an abstraction V 
 
 Hedonism endeavours to escape this objection, by 
 placing the end, no longer in the happiness of the 
 individual, but in the well-being of the community c 
 even of the " entire sentient creation." It defines good 
 as that which tends to promote the happiness of all 
 sentient beings, bad as that which is detrimental to 
 their welfare. And in the relation between the individual 
 and society, it thinks it has found a basis for the 
 notions of duty, responsibility, and accountability. This 
 is, however, an illusion. If pleasure is the only good, 
 
 G* 
 
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 (716) 872-4503 
 
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84 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 
 
 neither the origin nor the validity of the moral notions 
 admits of explanation. Not their origin : for though the 
 end assumed is nominally a universal, it is incapable, 
 because it is sensuous and not rational, of ever being 
 in practice more than a particular. Grant that pleasure 
 is the summum honum, and it follows, not that the 
 individual will seek to promote it in others, but only 
 that he will pursue it for himself. And that he should 
 ever have passed from the particularity inherent in the 
 principle to the universality which it is framed to 
 explain, is only then conceivable, if at the dawn of 
 self-consciousness he possess, not merely a sensuous 
 but also a rational nature, which makes it possible for 
 him to compare himself with others and to give himself 
 universal laws of conduct, and in which is already 
 contained a pnori the form of duty or moral obligation 
 that furnishes at once the groundwork and the possibility 
 of all personal morality. Utilitarianism, however, Avill 
 not accept this position. It perseveres in the attempt 
 to derive the universal from the particular, as though 
 by a natural dialectic selfishness inevitably passed over 
 into morality. Men, it is argued, soon perceive that 
 their stock of pleasures is likely in the end to be 
 increased if tliey abstain from those acts which excite 
 the enmity and opposition of their fellow-men. And to 
 a certain extent this is no doubt true. But even such 
 a fact cannot explain the genesis of the moral character 
 of the notions under consideration. On the contrary, 
 it is inconsistent with the unconditionedness of all moral 
 precepts, and its logical outcome is, not a system of 
 morality, but a series of pliable rules of prudence and 
 of cunning. And this brings us to the second point, 
 which regards the validitij of the moral conceptions. 
 
 '« 
 
Ethics of EooJ ition. 
 
 85 
 
 •al notions 
 tliougli the 
 
 incapable, 
 ever being 
 it pleasure 
 t that the 
 , but only 
 
 he should 
 srent in the 
 
 framed to 
 
 dawn of 
 
 1 sensuous 
 )0ssible for 
 ;ire himself 
 
 is already 
 
 obligation 
 ! possibility 
 wever, will 
 he attempt 
 
 as thoug'li 
 )assed over 
 rccive that 
 end to be 
 hich excite 
 a. And to 
 
 even such 
 xl character 
 e contrary, 
 of all moral 
 I system of 
 udence and 
 cond point, 
 conceptions. 
 
 i 
 
 Were they grounded only on prudential considerations, 
 one would be free to do evil provided no bad con- 
 sequences were to be feared. If I am to aim at the 
 universal good only as a means of reaching my own 
 individual pleasure, then there is no reason why I should 
 not, e.g. violate the rights of others, provided I were 
 cunniiig enough to avoid, or powerful enough to avert, 
 the consequences which such an act would bring upon 
 me. This conclusion can be invalidated only by the 
 assertion of a harmony, whether accidental or pre- 
 established, between the pleasures of each and tb . 
 pleasures of all. What is disagreeable to a community 
 is disagreeable to the individuals who compose it ; and 
 similarly of the agreeable. And this argument has 
 found favour with some who have been at pains to refute 
 in Political Economy the fallacy of protection. Yet it is 
 essentially the same logic in both cases. It is detrimental 
 to the State as a wJiole to protect any industry for which 
 its resources have uo adaptation ; but the class protected 
 may prosper, and that just because the State is the loser. 
 So in the moral sphere, it may also happen, that what 
 is detrimental to society as a whole brings the greatest 
 advantage to some particular individual. New grounds 
 must, therefore, be sought for his obligation to sacrifice 
 himself to the community. And these are, ^ist of all, 
 found in the force exercised by the State and by the 
 social institutions and conventions. The ultimate ground 
 of morality is the fear of punishment. But such a bald 
 statement makes very apparent the insufficiency of the 
 theory. For though it may explain subjection, it can 
 give no account of moral ohUgation. Its consequences 
 are the suppression of all that is most characteristic in 
 the phenomena of the moral consciousness; and, in 
 
 ■•■■ila 
 
 i 
 
oo 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 
 1 
 
 pi'actice, disregard for rights and duties, so long as they 
 may be neglected without present or future disadvantage. 
 Besides, if, as the wisest philosophers assure us, the State 
 and Society are themselves only morality on the objection 
 side, then the hypothesis, besides its other defects, is 
 chargeable with explaining a notion by itself- with 
 deriving morality from that whose sole content is 
 moi'ality. 
 
 Thus all forms of Hedonism seem worthless as theorief. 
 of morality. Has then the hedonistic ethics of evolution 
 escaped this destiny ? Or, is it, aa Mr. Spencer sup- 
 poses, a rational philosophy of the moral world ? To 
 answer these questions is the only problem that remains. 
 Evolutionists, as already pointed out, enter the moral 
 sphere with a ready-made conception of the universe, 
 framed for the explanation or physical, or at most of 
 biological phenomena. If the entire visible universe has 
 been evolved under a process of necessary causation, 
 mind and conscience, it is assumed, must also be subject 
 to the same laws and governed by the same necessities. 
 Hence the great ethical problem is to trace the genesis 
 of our moral notions. If they are the accidental products 
 of a blindly-moving fate, called the "Unknown and 
 Unknowable,'' the Evolutionist has only to examine 
 into their origin without in any way testing their validity. 
 And the general result of the ethics of evolution is that 
 ''experiences of utility organized and consolidated 
 through all past generations of the human race have been 
 producing corresponding nervous modifications, which, 
 by continued transmission and accumulation have become 
 in us certain faculties of moral intuition — certain emotions 
 responding to right and wrong conduct."* This surely 
 * Data nf E! hies, p. 123. 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 87 
 
 ig as they 
 advantage. 
 !j the State 
 3 objection 
 defects, is 
 IS elf- with 
 jontent is 
 
 IS theorier, 
 ' evolution 
 mcer sup- 
 irld ? To 
 it remains, 
 the moral 
 
 universe, 
 1 most of 
 iverse has 
 causation, 
 be subject 
 ecessities. 
 le genesis 
 1 products 
 lown and 
 
 examine 
 r validity, 
 on is that 
 isoiidated 
 lave been 
 s, which, 
 '6 become 
 emotions 
 his surely 
 
 is a wonderful attempt at graphic illustration. You see, ' 
 as it were, with the eye of fancy, utilities adhering to the 
 nervous system, gathering themselves about it as about a 
 central germ, till they undergo ultimately a new birth 
 and look out upon you as faculties of moral intuition ! 
 But in the light of reason this whole process reveals itself 
 as illusory. The experiences of utility can only mean 
 experiences of pleasure, and these can neither be 
 organized nor consolidated. A pleasurable feehng has 
 only a transient existence : it is, it is not. It is perish- 
 able, and in the moment of being ceases to be. If experi- 
 ence of pleasures can in any way affect the nervous 
 system, it is only by producing changes in its structure, 
 as the reaction of function on organism. There is no 
 " consolidated and organized " bundle of utilities which is 
 handed from one g aeration to another, till it turns up 
 at last as a system of morality. At most there is but 
 a momentary nervous modification accompanying each 
 experience of pleasure. These modifications may be 
 repeated, but they cannot, properly speaking, be accu- 
 mulated or tra'asmitted. The nervous system, however, 
 may be transmitted, and along with it the effects which 
 have been registered on it by the experiences of pleasur - 
 able feeling. And this is no hypercritical distinction. 
 For Mr. Spencer's language implies that there is some- 
 thing else transmitted than a nervous system, something 
 which is "accumulated" into a faculty of "moral intui- 
 tion." But though the pleasures experienced have 
 produced never so many nervouo modifications, though 
 these, or rather the nervous system to which they belong, 
 have been transmitted through never so many generations, 
 they remain at last simply modifications of a nervous 
 system— nothii;g more. And to identify them with a 
 
88 
 
 Kantian Ethics and th 
 
 %e 
 
 Is.. 
 
 r 
 
 faculty of moral intuition is to leap at a bound from the 
 outer wo/lcl of matter to tho inmost centre of self-con- 
 scious thouglit. 
 
 Tlie transformation here sketched in outline, however, 
 Mr. Spencer attempts to make clear bj; a four-fold view o£ 
 ethics. The science, he says, has a physical, a biological, 
 a psychological, and a sociological aspect. Is the 
 metamorphosis as thus mediated conceivable? Or, 
 passing from the origin to the validltij of our moral 
 notions, is the science thus established a satisfactory 
 philosophy of our morality ? 
 
 Making causahty the foundation of his system, Mr. 
 Spencer first of all finds a "basis for morality in the 
 physical order" (p. 59). Snppose, he proceeds, by 
 tying a mam artery we stop m, st of the blood going to a 
 hmb, there follows waste exceeding the repair and, in the 
 end, disablement. This, he assures us, is " part of the 
 physical order," and results "apart from any divine com- 
 mand, or political enactment, or moral intuition." And 
 that is so evident that we are only surprised it should 
 I^ave been thought to need specific mention. But the 
 fact that has not been observed is that the moral judg- 
 ment passed on the act is not based on the physical 
 order. If the limb wer tied by a surgeon for some 
 beneficent end, then ev.n though the present conse- 
 quences-the efeds of the act-are painful, we do not 
 call the act wrong. Contrariwise, if a murderer has 
 adopted this method of taking life he is condemned not 
 because death as effect followed tying the artery as 
 cause, but because he has violated the supreme impera- 
 tive of morality-the law of reverence for mankind 
 Whenever a moral judgment is passed on an act, it will 
 be found to have its ground, elstwhcre than in the causal 
 
d from the 
 of self-con- 
 
 3, however, 
 old view of 
 biological, 
 Is the 
 )le ? Or, 
 our moral 
 atisfactory 
 
 5tem, Mr. 
 ity in the 
 »ceeds, by- 
 going to a 
 md, in the 
 art of the 
 vine com- 
 n." And 
 it should 
 But the 
 oral judg- 
 5 physical 
 for some 
 nt conse- 
 ve do not 
 derer has 
 uned, not 
 irtery as 
 3 impera- 
 mankind. 
 ct, it will 
 ihe causal 
 
 Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 89 
 
 connexion of the events to which it refers. ^U'. Spencer, 
 however, has another illustration of his thesis. The c^eath 
 consequent on a " cancer of the oesophagus '* that pre- 
 vents swallowing, is as " independent of any theological 
 or political autliority^' as that caused by a want of food 
 brought about by the robbery or the fraud of others.. But 
 this merely amounts to saying that, if a man does not 
 take food, he will certainly die, whether starvation be 
 due to a " cancer of the oesophagus " that prevents 
 swallowing, or to an unmerited poverty that can supply 
 nothing to swallow. So far both cases are alike ; but so 
 far also there is no ethical judgment, and therefore no 
 possibility of a " basis for morality in the physical order.'' 
 When the moral sphere is entered the analogy ceases. 
 In the first case no one is blamed, in the second we 
 condemn the robbers who brought poverty and death on 
 their victim. And were their action as necessary a 
 product of nature as the cancer of the oesophagus, why 
 do we hold them responsible for the effects they have 
 wrought and yet leave the cancer uncensured ? We 
 contend that on Mr. Spencer's theory of a " basis for 
 morality in the phj'sical order," the cancer deserves the 
 same moral reprobation as the robbers ! In other words, 
 the theory by reducing human actions to the dead level 
 of physical causation is utterly incapable of explaining 
 the facts of the moral consciousness. Duty, responsi- 
 bility, and remorse imply a freedom of the will, which is 
 wholly unknown and unjustifiable in the physical order. 
 
 But Mr. Spencer does not in reality so much attempt 
 to find a basis for morality in the physical system, as to 
 discover analogies between the moral phenomena and tha 
 mechanical conceptions with which he approaches them. 
 Be the foundation of morality what it may, he maintains 
 
90 
 
 Kantian 7'Jfhics and the 
 
 it 
 
 
 |«*» 
 
 IS9l<^ 
 
 
 \^*\ 
 
 r 
 
 that since tlio process of evolution has been from an 
 "indcHaito, incoherent homogeneity to a definite co- 
 herent hetoroc^'enoity/' moral actions must differ from 
 the actions of the lower animals in general, and from 
 immoral actions in particular, by these characteristics. 
 " Moral principles," he elsewhere observes, " must con- 
 form to physical necessities " (p. 62.). And his affiliation 
 of moral conduct with highly evolved conduct is unintel- 
 ligible without this presupposition. The facts, hotvover, 
 do not bear out the requisites of the hypothesis. For it 
 is obvious that many kinds of immoral conduct are 
 characterized by definitcness and coherence, which Mr. 
 Spencer predicates of moral conduct alone. The mechan- 
 ical hypothesis of evolution may require that all immoral 
 conduct should be indefinite and incoherent, but that is 
 plainly not the case. The thief, acting on his principles, 
 may lead just as coherent and definite a life as the hedon- 
 istic moralist. For example, Mr. Spencer says : " The 
 conscientious man is exact in all his transactions. He 
 supplies a precise weight for a specific sum ; he gives a 
 definite quality in fulfilment of understanding ; he pays 
 the full amount he bargained to do. In times as well as 
 in quantities, his acts answer completely to anticipation, 
 &c." Now all this may be asserted -with equal propriety 
 of certain classes of immoral men. Thus the burglar is 
 exact in all his transactions ; he supplies a precise key 
 for a definite door; ho gives a fixed share to his comrades 
 according to agreement ; he keeps his appointment to the 
 day, to the minute ; and as father — shall he not train his 
 children to this definite and coherent mode of livino- ? In 
 short, the difference between morality and immorality lies 
 much deeper than these superficial and accidental marks. 
 Evil is not made good by becoming definite and coherent 
 
Ethics of Evulntl.nn. 
 
 91 
 
 I from an 
 efiuito co- 
 litfor from 
 
 and from 
 acteristics. 
 must con- 
 3 affiliation 
 is uniiitel- 
 , liotvever, 
 is. For it 
 nduct are 
 svliich Mr. 
 e mechan- 
 
 II immoral 
 but that is 
 principles, 
 :he bedon- 
 a: "The 
 ions. He 
 e gives a 
 ; he pays 
 as well as 
 ticipation, 
 
 propriety- 
 burglar is 
 •ecise key 
 
 comrades 
 ent to the 
 i train his 
 ving ? In 
 )rality lies 
 al marks. 
 I coherent 
 
 nor is right made wrong by the mcrofiat of a mechanical 
 metaphysic, because at times it may be indefinite and 
 incohercmt. 
 
 It is, however, in the biological view that the peculiarity 
 of Mr. Spencer's ethical system comes more distinctly 
 into prominence. His treatment of pleasures and pains, 
 and of their relation to morality, constitutes the essential 
 moment of this aspect of ethics. Pleasure-giving acts, 
 he argues, are those which increase life ; pain-giving, 
 those which decrease it. This is shown by two consider- 
 ations : first, that originally the act which an animal 
 tends to perform is the pleasure-giving, and, secondly, 
 that each developed creature is kept alive by pursuing 
 the pleasurable and avoiding the painful. This connexion 
 between pleasure-giving acts and life-sustaining acts is sup- 
 posed to supply to morality an ultimate basis. For if the 
 pleasurable be the condition of existence, then morality, 
 which is impossible without life, must be based on that 
 which makes life possible, i.e., on pleasure. Ingenious 
 as the argument must be admitted to be, it is never- 
 theless exposed to serious objections. In the first place, 
 by assigning a reason for the ultimateness of pleasure as 
 an end, it really makes iL only a means to something else, 
 that is, to life. And the question. Why should I live ? 
 requires that a reason be assigned for this end, which 
 also becomes thus a means, and so on ad infinitum. But, 
 secondly, even if this bo passed over, the argument is still 
 untenable. For granting that morality is based on the 
 conditions of sentient existence, it must follow that my 
 morality is based on the laws of my sentient existence. 
 The lowest sentient beings seek their own pleasures and 
 avoid their own pains ; and as " this which holds with the 
 lowest consciousness must hold throughout," it is obvious 
 
Isf^iS- 
 
 
 
 92 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 that I am what I am in virtue of having pursued a similar 
 line of conduct. Now as moral conduct is merely "highly 
 evolved conduct," morality must consist alone in seeking 
 by the safest and best and most numerous means my own 
 pleasures and avoiding my own pains. It might be 
 granted that each individual did not seek, and ought not 
 to seek, merely the momentary pleasui'es. As somehow 
 endowed with higher faculties than those of sense, he 
 might compare present pleasures with one another and 
 choo&e the highest of them, or he might even postpone 
 them all for the sake of a future enjoyment. But Mr. 
 Spencer requires no such concession. The theory of 
 pleasures and pains on which the evolution of life has 
 been dependent refers to present pleasures and pains. 
 " Does the action tend to maintenance of complete life 
 for the time being ? And does it tend to prolongation of 
 life to its full extent ? To answer yes or no to either of 
 these questions, is implicitly to class the action as right 
 or wrong in respect of its immediate bearings, whatever 
 it may be in respect of its remote bearings " (p. 77). 
 From these words of Mr. Spencer's it is clear that every- 
 thing must be right which gives either momentary pleasure 
 or the possibility of increased future pleasure. But facts 
 must be our tests for theories ; and -they certainly are not 
 in h rmony with this dictum. The moral consciousness 
 emphatically asserts that adultery is wrong, even though 
 it " tend to maintenance of complete life for the time 
 being," and that forgery is not right even though it 
 " tend to prolongation of life to its full extent." What- 
 ever be the merit of Mr, Spencer's hypothesis as such, it 
 is assuredly no theory of the moral world. He himself 
 has recognized its inadequacy to the facts of the moral 
 consciousness^ but he traces this to anomalies which, in 
 
EthicH of EcnliUion. 
 
 08 
 
 a similar 
 y"hi<rhly 
 n seeking 
 s my own 
 ;night be 
 DUglit not 
 somehow 
 sense, he 
 )thcr and 
 
 postpone 
 
 But Mr. 
 theory of 
 f life has 
 id pains, 
 plete life 
 igation of 
 
 either of 
 1 as right 
 whatever 
 ' (p. 77). 
 at every- 
 ' pleasure 
 But facts 
 .y are not 
 ciousness 
 n though 
 the time 
 hough it 
 ' What- 
 3 such, it 
 ! himself 
 lie moral 
 ivhich, in 
 
 his opinion, are merely "incidental and temporary." 
 They are due to misadjustments between man and 
 his social environment, and must, ho thinks, dis- 
 appear in the course of development. But this ex- 
 planation proceeds on the assumption that man can be 
 isolated from his social environment, and that it exists 
 apart from him. It would almost ieem as if Mr. Spencer 
 fancied that at certain epochs "social environments " fell 
 directly from heaven, with v/hich man was not in harmony 
 till he had worked himself up, or rather had been forced up, 
 to this higher celestial standpoint. But surely the social 
 environment is made by man himself, and if he has been, 
 and is now, misadjusted to it, wo see no grounds for 
 expecting a future harmony. The evils which, according 
 to Mr. Spencer, evolution has brought, it must, we think, 
 ever propagate, but can certainly never destroy. And 
 the assumption ho makes is only a very daring attempt to 
 protect an otherwise untenable position. This, however, 
 Mr. Spencer himself is far from admitting. Confident 
 that naturo will ultimately adjust itself to his theory, he 
 says : " The connexions between pleasures and beneficial 
 action and between pain and detrimental action, which 
 arose when sentient existence began, and have continued 
 among animate creatures up to man, are generally dis- 
 played in him also throughout the lower and more com- 
 pletely organised part of his nature, and must be more 
 and more fully displayed through the higher parts of his 
 nature, as fast as his adaptation to the conditions of 
 social life increases" (p. 87). Our higher nature must be 
 an imnoyance to Mr. Spencer ; it will not keep within tho 
 limits of his theory. With his usual optimism, however, 
 he does not despair even of it, when man shall have 
 become adapted to his social life ! Having emerged, as 
 
 i 
 
04 
 
 K<nif!i(ii I'Jililfs ami thr 
 
 
 
 k 
 
 I 
 
 ho concoivt'H, from llu> " tnilitimt " life, niiiii .■^till camos 
 with him noiiih ol' iho old iKljiiHtmcntH, which do not 
 nii»wor tho rociuirumoiitH of Mio "iiuhi.striiil " h'lb into 
 which lio hay como. lint it is apparently for<,'ottcn that 
 this r.n(>r^'cnco is man's own act, (hat ho has created for 
 liimseir a'ik( his past and his present social environment, 
 and that heforo lie is adjiistt>d to lh(> " indnHlrial" lifo 
 (us tho theory reqnires) ho may already have enveloped 
 l-imseU" in a more highly-deV(>ioped tissne of social re- 
 lations. For the soc'al ori^jinism is not, as Mr. Spencer 
 BO inconsistently seoms to anpposo, a lifeless stationary 
 mechanism, hnt a livinj^ and proji^ressivo or^mniam. Were 
 man merely sentient he wcnid bo i.' bject to no otlu>r 
 inflnenco than that of the physical environment, which 
 wonld in timo brini^' him wholly into harmony with 
 ^[r. Spencer's hypothesis, lint )i.s rational and moral ho 
 is not merely law-obeyini*- but also law-giving. It is f/ti's 
 fact that explains tho misadjustments of man's higher 
 natmv to the recpiirements of a hypothesis which is at 
 best valid only for brut(>a. 
 
 At thin point wo nuist expect remonstrances from tho 
 Evolutionists, lias not M\\ Darwin, they might ask, 
 tmced tho descent of man from the lower animals ? Who 
 dare in this generation speak irrovennitly of the brutes, or 
 even of the matter from which tlu>y have been generated ? 
 If you distinguish man ao antithetically from tho other 
 animals, then "the implication is that tho system of 
 guiilance by pli'asures and pains, which has answered with 
 all types of creatures below the human, fails with tho 
 human" (p. 84). Now this implication I am certainly 
 ready to accept. Nay, apart from it, 1 find tho whole 
 moral world an inexplicable riddle, upor which even the 
 ethics of evolution has not thrown a ray of light. Brute- 
 
■ 
 
 Filhli'H n( l']i'ttl.ilflon. 
 
 05 
 
 itill civrrios 
 'h do not 
 * Hfo into 
 nttt'ii tliiifc 
 'jvatod for 
 nroniin>nfc, 
 Iriiil" litb 
 onvolo{)(Ml 
 
 social ro- 
 *. Spoiicor 
 stiitioiinry 
 111. Wore 
 
 no otlior 
 mt, which 
 ony with 
 
 moral ho 
 
 It is f/iis 
 I's higher 
 lich is at 
 
 from tlio 
 ight ask, 
 Is? Who 
 brutes, or 
 :>ncrated ? 
 bho other 
 ystem of 
 cred with 
 with tho 
 certainly 
 lio whole 
 even the 
 Bruto- 
 
 giiidanct* l)y pli'Msur(!s am' pains is prol)a])ly n<«t .sufHc'ont 
 for man, ju.st Ixoause he in mort; than a brute. JJut it is 
 no probli'm of ours to det(»rmim; what *' .ui-iwors " or 
 what "sullices" for human or for other beinj^s. Takiuj^ 
 oiM' stand on imlnbitablo facts, wo have only to ask what 
 are the conditions of their possil)ility. Ami the facta of 
 tho moral world we iind inexplicable if pleasure bo tho 
 end for human b('in<>;s. Mr. Spencer endeavours to 
 strenf^then his position by thrustiu<^ on his opponents a 
 wholly irrelevant problem. " The admission beiiifjf," ho 
 says, "that with nuinkind it [j^uiihince by pler.sures and 
 pains] 8ucce(>ds in so far as fullilment of certain impera- 
 tive wants goes, ,i; fails in respect of wants th'it are not 
 imperative!.* TIioho who think this arc recpiired, in 
 the first place, to show ua how tho limit is to be draw?i 
 between the two ; and then fco show ns why the system 
 which succeeds in tho lov/or will not succeed in tho 
 hiijfher'* (p. 85). Now that we are not obliged to show 
 anything of tho kind will be mjiuifest by a slight survey 
 of the situaticm. The fact is the moi'al world ; the ethics 
 of evolution is the proposed oxphination. It sets out 
 with a biological theory of pleasures and pains in accord- 
 ance with which man does and should seek tho one and 
 avoid the othvr. JJut on examining the actual facts, it 
 perceives that man does not make this the end of his 
 conduct, and that it could bo at most valid only for his 
 sentient nature. Does 'he Evolutionist now recede from 
 tho position he has taken np and confess himself van- 
 quished by tho logic of facts ? Quite the reverse. I 
 grant, he says, that man's higher nature cannot bo 
 brought under my hypothesis, but I believe that in the 
 course of development this disharmony will disappear. 
 * These "wanes tlvat are not imperative" arc, however, accordinf]; 
 to p. 87, those of " tlie higher parts of our nature !"' 
 

 N- 
 
 i 
 
 r 1 
 
 ^ 
 
 96 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 Have you not faith equal to that ? Then you shall explain 
 why a system f guida,nce which " succeeds " in the 
 lower nature will not " succeed " in the higher. But the 
 obvious rejoinder to our Evolutionist is, that you are 
 neither the Creator nor the critic of the Creator's ways ; 
 and have, therefore, nothing- to do with what "succeeds'' 
 and what does not " succeed." You have only to explain 
 what actually exists. Whether guidance by pleasure and 
 pain would succeed or not is a question in which you have 
 not the slightest interest ; you are only certain that it 
 does not " explain " — does not, even on Mr. Spencer's 
 own admission, explain the facts to which he has applied 
 it. Nay, it is because he is obliged to make this con- 
 fession of the inadequacy of his theory that he throws out 
 that other vain problem to his opponents. His theory 
 does not explain the facts, so he turns upon you with the 
 question, Why do not the facts adapt themselves to my 
 theory ? 
 
 But the biological standpoint, from which everything 
 must be judged right that brings a surplus of present 
 enjoyment, is after all surrendered by Mr. Spencer with 
 the admission ■ iat " in mankind as at present constituted, 
 guidance by proximate pleasures and pains fails thr ugh- 
 out a wide range of cases " (p. 85).' It is important to 
 observe that biology has not made the slightest contribu- 
 tion towards the solution of moral phenomena. We leave 
 it, with Mr. Spencer, in asserting that "special and 
 proximate pleasures and pains must be disregarded out 
 of consideration for remote and diffused pleasures and 
 pains" (p. 85). And with this transition the Ethics of 
 Biology becomes the ordinary egoistic Hedonism, which 
 wo have already found grounds for rejecting as a 
 philosophy of our morality. 
 
Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 97 
 
 lall explain 
 i" in the 
 '. But the 
 it you are 
 or's ways ; 
 succeeds" 
 to explain 
 easure and 
 h. you have 
 dn that it 
 
 Spencer's 
 las applied 
 
 this con- 
 throws out 
 lis theory 
 u with the 
 Tea to my 
 
 verything 
 )f present 
 ncer with 
 instituted, 
 . thr ugh- 
 portant to 
 contribu- 
 We leave 
 )ccial and 
 arded out 
 3ures and 
 Ethics of 
 ira, which 
 ug as a 
 
 But the guidance by present pleasures and pains for 
 which Biology so pathetically pleaded as the basis of 
 ethics (how vainly wo have already seen) is excluded by 
 Psychology, which demands " the subjection of immediate 
 sensations to the idea of sensations to come*' (p, 108), and 
 which claims that the fei^lings shall " have authorities pro- 
 portional to the degrees in which they are removed by 
 their complexity and their ideality from simple sensations 
 and appetites " (p. 109). What then, we ask astonished, 
 was the need of listening vo the vain story of Biology at 
 all? Why assert there what is denied here? Mf. 
 Spencer is not insensible to this objection, and forthwith 
 adduces a new ground for his biological treatment of 
 ethics. "The current conception," he says, "is, not 
 that the lower must yield to the higher when the two 
 conflict, but that the lower must be disregarded even 
 when there is no conflict" (p. 111). Without inquiring 
 into the truth of this surprising assertion, we may merely 
 remark that it supplies no raison d'etre for assigning a 
 biological aspect to ethics, from which was deduced the 
 Tightness of what gave momentary pleasure, and the 
 Vfongness of what caused momentary pain, irrespective 
 of "higher" and "lower," of greater and less degree of 
 " ideality" and " complexity," or of any other limitation 
 or qualification whatsoever it be. 
 
 Passing however at once to the psychological view, we 
 are told that " the essential trait in the moral conscious- 
 ness is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other 
 feeling or feelings" (p. 113). How one feeling controls 
 another is not however explained. That we determine our 
 acts iu relation to feelings and desires, that we compare our 
 motives, and, if we would be moral, act according to the 
 higher, is no doubt quite true. And this might be taken as 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 ■ '•W'l 
 
 fei 
 
 
 the meaning of the above passage, had not Mr. Spencer 
 elsewhere said, the "conscious relinquishment of imme- 
 diate and special good to gain distant and general good 
 • ... is a cardinal trait of the self-restraint called 
 moral" (p. 114). But that this is no part of the self- 
 restraint called moral, Mr. Spencer has been able to hide 
 from himself and others only by using words that suggest 
 a meaning to which he has no right. If we remember 
 that by good he means the pleasurable, and if we make 
 this substitution in the foregoing extract, it will be 
 palpably manifest that it does not furnish any trait, much 
 less the car linal trait, of the self-restraint called moral. 
 The traffic in pleasures doubtless involves self-restraint, 
 but assuredly not of the kind called moral. On the con- 
 trary, it may be highly immoral. Thus, if a thief relin- 
 quish stealing £100 to-day, in order that by to-morrow 
 he may have the increased pleasure of stealing £1000, 
 nobody believes he has manifested " a cardinal trait of 
 the self-restraint called moral." But it is only after Mr. 
 Spencer has in this way emptied morality of all its con- 
 tent, that he attempts from the psychological standpoint 
 a theory of its genesis. 
 
 Thus his first problem is the " postponement of present 
 to future " good or pleasure, which he is pleased to call 
 the problem of "moral control." Among savages, we 
 are informed, the only restraint to the following of every 
 impulse is mutual fear of vengeance. When some advance 
 in government has been made and the strongest has 
 become chief, this restraint consists merely in the fear of 
 his anger. When he dies, the restraint becomes a dread 
 of his ghost. Social opinion strengthens this feeling, for 
 everbody has the same fear. What then would bo thpi 
 issue of this ? Plainly all for which Mr. Spencer contends. 
 
 
Mr. Spencer 
 nt of imme- 
 eneral good 
 ;raint called 
 of the self- 
 able to hide 
 ;hat suggest 
 Q remember 
 if we make 
 it will be 
 trait, much 
 ailed moral. 
 }lf-restraint, 
 On the con- 
 L thief relin- 
 to-morrow 
 Jing £1000, 
 rial trait of 
 y after Mr. 
 all its con- 
 standpoint 
 
 t of present 
 ised to call 
 savages, we 
 ig of every 
 me advance 
 ■ongest has 
 I the fear of 
 nos a dread 
 feeling, for 
 iijld be thfi 
 >r contends. 
 
 Ethics of Evolution. 
 
 99 
 
 namely, that the individual savago gives up a present 
 pleasure from dread of coming pain. The fear of punish- 
 ment is his permanent motive. But this restraint is not 
 yet moral. Mr. Spencer distinguishes it from the moral 
 in this way, that the one is a restraint due to the 
 "extrinsic eflfocts" of actions, the other to their " intrinsic 
 effects." Moral restraint is founded, that is, on an 
 unchanging physical order, while this primitive restraint 
 of the savage has its origin in a form of society that is 
 necessarily changeable. Now arguing with Mr. Spencer 
 on his own promises — on the assumption that moral 
 restraint has no other meaning than ho allogos — we are 
 bound to maintain that his hypothesis does not explain 
 the origin even of such a restraint. For no transition ia 
 possible from the restraint of the savago to the restraint 
 of the Evolutionist, except on assumptions foreign to the 
 theory. AVhy does the savago, whoso self-control is not 
 yet moral, forego the pleasure of sc ".Iping the comrade 
 with whom he is angry ? Because of the " extrinsic 
 effects" of the action, namely, the chief's vengeance, would 
 bo Mr. Spencer's reply. But why does the moral Evohi- 
 tionist refrain from slaying his enemy even under tlie 
 greatest provocation ? Because of the "intrinsic eCfccts" 
 of the action, namely, the destruction of the possibilities 
 of happiness for tho enemy and, in a certain measure, for 
 his relatives and connections. Now these two cases have 
 not the slightest analogy as regards tho ground of 
 resiiraint, which is the notion to be explained. The savago 
 refrains from destroying lif" from fear of future pain to 
 himself, the Evolutionist from concern for the pleasures 
 and pains of others. The first motive is possible to a merely 
 sensuous nature, tho second presupposes the moral nature 
 we are engaged in deriving. And between tliat stage of 
 
100 
 
 Kantian Ethics a/nd the 
 
 
 
 Iv 
 
 (9"^! 
 
 tho non-moral and this development of the moral, the 
 hypothesis has not offered the slightest mediation. When 
 Mr. Spencer says, "The truly moral deterrent from 
 murder is not constituted by a representation of hanging 
 as a consequence, or by a representation of tortures in 
 hell as a consequence^ or by a representation of the horror 
 and hatred excited in fellow-men ; but by a representa- 
 tion of tho necessary natural results — the infliction of 
 death-agony on the victim, the destruction of all his 
 possibilities of happiness, the entailed sufferings to his 
 belongings " (p. 120)— when he says all that, I repeat, 
 he forgets that his own account of the genesis of morahty 
 can explain only those deterrents which he here rejects as 
 not moral, aud that it cannot by any possibility be brought 
 into connexion with those deterrents which are here 
 pronounced truly moral. In the selfishness which knows 
 no restraint but that rendered prudent by the "extrinsic 
 effects" there is no immanent dialectic that carries it 
 over into a disinterested restraint constituted by an idea 
 of the " intrinsic effects " of action. 
 
 Mr. Spencer does, however, assert tliat guidance by 
 extrinsic effects is the necessary antecedent to guidance 
 by intrinsic effects. " Only after political, religious, and 
 social restraints have produced a stable community can 
 there be sufficient experience of the pains .... which 
 crimes of aggiession cause, so as to generate that moral 
 aversion to them constituted by consciousness of their 
 intrinsically evil effects " (p. 122). But does Mr. Spencer 
 mean to say that the intrinsic effects of murder are not aa 
 soon perceived as the extrinsic effects ? That the death- 
 agony of the victim is not, while the dread of punishment 
 is, present to the consciousness of the murderer ? The 
 difference lies not in the priority of perception, but in the 
 
Ethics of EvohUion. 
 
 101 
 
 moral, the 
 tion. When 
 !rrent from 
 of hanging 
 tortures in 
 if the horror 
 representa- 
 infliction of 
 of all his 
 rings to his 
 it, I repeat^ 
 of morality- 
 re rejects as 
 be brought 
 li are here 
 hich knows 
 ! "extrinsic 
 t carries it 
 by an idea 
 
 uidance by 
 to guidance 
 ligious, and 
 imunity can 
 . . . which 
 that moral 
 ?ss of their 
 ^r. Spencer 
 r are not aa 
 : the death- 
 punishment 
 erer ? The 
 , but in the 
 
 fact which Mr. Spencer attempts to ignore, and on which 
 his hypothesis shipwrecks, namely, that the one series of 
 effects (the extrinsic) concern the agent, while the other 
 (the intrinsic) in no way affect him. Is it not evident to 
 anyone who will see that the extrinsic eflPects, which are 
 by hypothesis dread of coming pain to me, can never 
 generate aversion — moral or otherwise — to anything that 
 threatens another, or causes another pain or even death ? 
 
 Thus the pyschological view of ethics presents us with 
 nothing which is not fanciful and absurd as a theory of 
 our morality. It may now be added that it presupposes, 
 even for that, a Society, a Religion, and a State. But as 
 these are nothing else than a realized morality, the ethics 
 of evolution must once more be charged with deriving 
 morality from morality itself. Or more correctly, while 
 professing to deduce morality from pleasures and pains it 
 assumes along with these a social, civil, and religious 
 organism, which can only be described in terms of the 
 morality not yet deduced. 
 
 If Physics, Biology, and Psychology have failed to 
 supply us with a philosophy of ethics, the case would 
 seem nearly hopeless from the standpoint of evolution. 
 There remains, however, the "sociological view;'' and as 
 Mr. Spencer has warned us that any of his conclusions 
 regarding the correlative aspect of conduct becomes 
 untrue if divorced from the other, it is necessary to 
 follow him in this last stage. 
 
 Were man not a social being, so begins the " sociolo- 
 gical view," his " system of morality " or the " formula 
 for his activities," would be limited to self and offspring, 
 and would offer no contrast to the formula of other 
 animals. And since there are other species which display 
 " considerable degrees of sociality " it might be expected 
 
 ■mmmt^iif. 
 
102 
 
 Kantian Ethics and the 
 
 l^ii 
 
 \S. 
 
 
 IV. 
 
 i*» 
 
 that we should find a striking likeness between their 
 " morality " and our own. But Mr. Spencer tells us that 
 tnau is the only species which has a *' formula for com- 
 plete life.*' How strange that must appear to those who 
 derive morality from adaptation to the environment — 
 physical^ biological, or social — he does not seem to have 
 perceived. The formula, however, is not discordant with 
 previous results, for though asserting that " the life of the 
 social organism must as an end rank above the lives of its 
 units" (p. 133), yet it is only because the individual 
 happiness, which has all along been the ultimate end, can 
 in this way be the better secured. The duties towards 
 my fellowmen have, therefore, their final ground in the 
 aim to secure for myself the greatest quantum of plea3ure 
 and the least of pain. But such a system makes us a 
 mere collection of mutually repellent atoms that have no 
 affinity with the moral agents to be explained. This 
 insuperable diflficulty for all hedonistic systems — the 
 impossibility of reconciling the universal in morality 
 with the particular in feeling — Mr. Spencer quietly 
 passes over with the dictum, that our present condition 
 is one of transition, and the normal state is one in which 
 all acts of aggression have been banished. In that 
 Utopia "the relations at present familiar to us will be 
 inverted; and instead cf each maintaining his own claims, 
 others will maintain his claims for him" (p. 252). With 
 this hypothesis, framed to obviate objections to the fun- 
 damental assumption of the ethics of evolution, we have 
 surely touched the goal of the new " moral science." If 
 it does not furnish any account of the moral world, it at 
 least prophesies that its present form is only transitional. 
 But, alas, the Arcadia which it discerns is not yet within 
 the ken of ordinary mortals, and its dim margin fades 
 
 iii 
 

 Ethics of Evolution. 103 
 
 veen their 
 
 for ever and for ever as we move. And as moralists we 
 
 ills us that 
 
 have really nothing to do with that untrodden future. 
 
 k for com- 
 
 For the fact is that we have certain moral notions and 
 
 those who 
 
 beliefs in the present stage of our development, of which 
 
 [•onment— 
 
 we ask for a philosophical explanation. Any theory which 
 
 5m to have 
 
 passes these over in favour of some imaginary reality of 
 
 rdant with 
 
 the future, may be ingenious enough, but is assuredly 
 
 life of the 
 
 worthless as a philosophy of our actual morality. 
 
 lives of its 
 
 And thus the ethics of evolution has little to add to the 
 
 individual 
 
 hedonistic systems we had already found grounds for 
 
 e end, can 
 
 rejecting. It has, however, laid stress on one important 
 
 's towards 
 
 fact, hitherto much ignored in all moral speculations — on 
 
 nd in the 
 
 the gradual development of moral notions, feelings, and 
 
 )f plea3ure 
 
 beliefs. But neither that fact itself nor the validity of 
 
 akes us a 
 
 the moral conceptions has it in any way philosophically 
 
 it have no 
 
 explained. Its principle is directly opposed to the empty 
 
 ed. This 
 
 abstraction formulated by Kant, but it is impotent as this 
 
 5ms — the 
 
 to account for the concrete facts of the moral world. Be- 
 
 morality 
 
 tween them both lies the idea of humanity as foundation 
 
 3r quietly 
 
 for morality. And in the varying degrees of insight with 
 
 condition 
 
 which this idea has been comprehended by diflFerent 
 
 9 in which 
 
 peoples and at different epochs, we shall find an explan- 
 
 In that 
 
 ation for the divergence of moral belief and practice, as it 
 
 js will be 
 
 has existed, or as it still exists at the present day. 
 
 vn claims. 
 
 
 2). With 
 
 
 ) the fun- 
 
 , 
 
 , we have 
 
 
 nee/' If 
 
 THE END. 
 
 orld, it at 
 
 
 insitional. 
 
 
 ret within 
 
 
 gin fades 
 
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