HM SB 20 EXCHANGE 8061 'A 'N scug; THE INDIVIDUAL SOCIETY A Comparison Between the Views of the Eiilighteninent and Those of the Nineteenth Century cA Thesis BY DAVIIJ BEVERlbGE TOMKINS, M. A., B. D. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY A Comparison Between the Views of the Enlightenment and Those of the Nineteenth Century A THESIS BY DAVID BEVERIDQE TOMKINS, M. A., B. D. Accepted by the Graduate School of New York University, In Partial Fulfillment of the Requiremeots for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 1914 To MY WIFE WHOSE HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS WERE INVALUABLE. OUTLINE OF THESIS. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY. A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE VIEWS OF THE ENLIGHTEN- MENT AND THOSE OF THE I9TH CENTURY. I. THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ETHICS. i. EGOISM A MODERN PROBLEM. A. Grotius. (1583-1645) (1) Jus Naturale. (2) Optimistic and social character of his thought. B. Hobbes. (1588-1679) (1) Egoism and pessimism. (2) Dogmatic view of the "Status Naturalis." (3) Attempted proof of egoism and pessimism. (4) The error in Hobbes' anthropology. (5) Oppositon to Hobbes. C. Cumberland. (1632-1718) (1) Ideal of benevolence. (2) Revision of Hobbes' ethic. D. Shaftesbury. (1671-1713) (1) Restatement of Hobbes' phychology. (2) Shaftesbury's view of human nature. E. Mandeville. (1670-1733) (1) Restatement of the problem. (2) Anticipation of Nietzsche. (3) Refutation of Mandeville's egoism, F. Hutcheson. (1694-1752) (1) Ideal of disinterested judgment. (2) Reappearance of the social. G. Butler. (1692-1752) Modified egoism. (3) 4 Outline of Thesis 2. THE CULMINATION OF THE SOCIAL IN THE i8TH CENTURY. A. Hume. (1711-1776) (1) Opposition to Hobbes' "Statu Naturali." (2) Ideal of sympathy. > B. Smith. (1723-1790) (1) Social theory of the moral sentiments. (2) The ethics of sympathy propriety, merit, duty. (3) Anticipation of Darwin. II. BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL ETHICS. i. RISE OF THE SOCIAL. A. Comte. (1789-1857) (1) Positivism and socialism. (2) Criticism of the enlightenment. B. Darwin. (1809-1882) Evolutionary ethics. C. Stephen. (1832-19) Organic conception of society. D. Spencer. (1820-1903) (1) Repudiation of atomic theory. (2) Society as evolved. (3) His reconciliation of egoism and altruism in present society; in ideal society. III. DISCUSSION AND CRITICISM. (1) Sharp distinction between i8th and I9th centuries' views of society. (2) Evolutionary ethics criticised. (3) Revolt against sociaj order. (4) Attempted synthesis of the ego and its world. CONTENTS. PAGES. INTRODUCTION: Aim of the thesis historico- critical. Individualistic theories of the 1 8th century contrasted with organic con- ception of iQth century. No problem of ego and alter in ancient ethics. The in- fluence upon Hobbes of "De Jure Belli et Pads." Thesis attempts to bring out historical fact that the enlightenment pro- ceeded from the individual to the social, the I Qth century from the social to the in- dividual. Two periods undergo complete transmutation and transvaluation I 3~ I 5 I. THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ETH- ICS. i. EGOISM A MODERN PROBLEM. A. Grotius. "Jus Naturale." Questions raised by the "De Jure Belli et Pads" justifies study of Grotius. (1) "Jus Naturale" fundamental principle of human nature. "Natural Rights" not a human invention nor a Divine creation. "Jus Naturale" independent even of God. (2) The optimistic and social character of the Grotian ethics. Utility an impossible source of "Jus Naturale." The basis of "Rights," man's social nature. Grotian conception of "Status Naturalis" optimistic and social. A priori deductions substanti- ated by a posteriori tests. Problem of ego and alter begins with Hobbes 17-20 B. Hobbes. "Status Naturalis" unsocial, selfish. This view of human nature due, in part, to temperamentality and social unrest. (5) Contents (1) Egoism, and pessimism of the Hobbist ethics. (a) Egoism. The ego and its private affec- tions the basis of human life. Self-love the motive of all action. (b) Pessimism. The Hobbist conception of the "Status Naturalis" led to pessimism. The state of nature a state of war of all against all, "Might" not "Right" rules. Life of man solitary, brutish, short. (2) Attempted proof of egoism and pessimism. The attitude of suspicion which men sus- tain to each other in a civil state, is his proof of man's unsocial and selfish nature in the "Statu Naturali." (3) Dogmatic view of "Status Naturalis." Right or wrong have no meaning in a state of nature. Morality a human invention. Nothing good or evil per se. Compact, starting point of ethics and norm of justice. (4) The error in the Hobbist anthropology. The Hobbist error due to a wrong con- ception of man's natural state. Ethnologi- cal proof of the fallacious assumption of the Hobbist anthropology. (5) Opposition to the Hobbist "Statu Na- turali." Relarivistic ethics attacked by rational intuitionism. Opposition of the "Cambridge Platonists." Morality im- mutable and eternal. Exclusive egoism opposed by other forms of intuitionism. C. Cumberland. Exclusive egoism refuted, (i) Ideal of benevolence. The given condi- tion of humanity social. The instinct of benevolence found in both man and beast. Universal law of benevolence basis of human society. God and not man source Contents 7 of the good. Relative ethics untenable. Good and evil anterior to the compact. (2) Revision of the Hobbist ethics. Social impulses, point of contact between ego and alter. End of morality, not individual good but common welfare. In making contents of moral law refer directly to good of the whole and only indirectly to good of individual, Cumberland completely revises the Hobbist ethics. Cumberland, father of utilitarian ethics. Many modern phrases used by him, such as rectitude, conscience, social 21-36 D. Shaftesbury. Enlargement of the social in- stinct in man. Shaftesbury's treatment of social problems, psychological and biologi- cal questions, modern. (1) Restatement of the Hobbist psychology. Shaftesbury's refutation of the Hobbist psychology. He finds three elements in man where Hobbes found only one, self- love, and classifies them as (a) natural affections, (b) private affections, (c) un- natural affections. Morality neither a human invention nor a Divine creation, but coextensive with human existence. The blending of the egoistic and social instincts, productive of the highest good. (2) Shaftesbury's view of human nature. Re- pudiation of the Hobbist "Status Natural- is." A social motive in the human will. Man designed by nature for society. Shaftesbury's view of human nature antip- odal to that of Hobbes 37-38 E. Mandeinlle. (i) Restatement of the problem. Rehabilita- tion of the egoistic argument. Self-love the spring of human action. Vice the 8 Contents source of prosperity. Virtue a mere device. Relativistic conception of the good. Noth- ing good or evil per se. Difference be- tween the egoism of Hobbes and that of Mandeville. (2) Mandeville's anticipation of Nietzsche. Nietzsche's transvaluation of values an- ticipated in Mandeville's conception of virtue. The judgment good for both, is created by the powerful and wise who impose it upon the weak. Both moralists set up an immoralistic ideal. Self-realiza- tion hindered by society 39-46 (3) Refutation of Mandeville's egoism. Law's refutation of Mandeville's relativism. God the source of the moral concept. Brown's opposition to Mandeville's ethics. Virtue and vice, permanent realities. Berkeley assails the unsound economical theories of Mandeville, and his relativistic ethics.... F. Hutcheson. Attack directed against Mande- ville's exclusive egoism. (1) Ideal of disinterested judgment. The social argument advanced, placed upon intellectualistic basis. A social motive in the will, and social principle of judgment in the intellect affirmed. A refutation of Mandeville's egoism. Man capable of dis- interested moral acts. (2) The reappearance of the social. The anti- social view of Hobbes and Mandeville repudiated. Human nature capable of ris- ing above interest 47-52 G. Butler. Modifed egoism. The social in- stincts of man stronger than his egoistic instincts. Reasonable self-love a neces- sity for selfhood. Benevolence and self- love necessary for the highest good .... Contents 9 2. THE CULMINATION OF THE SOCIAL IN THE i8TH CENTURY. A. Hume. Culmination of anti-social in the individual. Negation of anti-social in the race. Comparison between "Treatise" and '"'Inquiry." The denial of egoism as the only motive of the will. (1) Opposition to the Hobbist "Statu Natur- ali." The Hobbist state of nature a phil- osophical fiction. The natural state of man social. (2) Ideal of sympathy. The objective side of sympathy regarded by Hume. The human will capable of disinterested moral acts. Hume's attempt to rise above individual- istic conceptions of his age. The corporate life of society grasped, though feebly, by Hume. Anticipation of Comte 53-65 B. Smith. Contrast between egoism of "Wealth of Nations" and altruism of "Moral Senti- ment." (1) The social theory of the "Moral Senti- ment." Smith's indebtedness to Hume. Sympathy the basis of our benevolent and social nature. Sympathy limited by sense of propriety. (2) The ethics of Sympathy. Subjective and objective side of sympathy. Sympathy basis of moral judgments. Sympathy point of contact between ego and alter. The egoistic psychology of Hobbes refuted. Anticipation of Darwin's theory of con- science. Conscience a sense of man's agreement or disagreement with humanity. Memory and shame principle constituents of conscience 66-72 io Contents II. BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL ETHICS. i. RISE OF THE SOCIAL. The atomic theories of the enlightenment repudiated. Society an organism. A. Comte. Historical continuity of the race. The 1 8th century problem of relating in- dividual to society, no problem for iQth century. Man always part of social en- vironment. (1) Positivism and socialism. The law of the three stages. Predominance of social en- dangers selfhood. Spiritual freedom for ego. (2) Comte's criticism of the enlightenment. Individualism untenable. Society not pro- duct of utility. Social spontaneity.. ...... B. Darwin. Evolutionary ethics. Man and his environment inseparable. Reality not found in individual alone. Darwin's in- consistent view of life criticised C. Stephen. Atomic theory of enlightenment irrational. The true point of view not individual but social. Society a social organism 73-84 D. Spencer. Organic conception of society. (1) Society as evolved. Atomic theory re- pudiated. Human race organically related. The self of the i8th century an abstrac- tion. (2) Reconciliation between egoism and al- truism. Spencer's criticism of intuitional and hedonic ethics. Man dominated by egoistic and altruistic impulses. Harmony of both through compromise. Spencer seeks selfhood in absolute ethics. Com- parison between Hobbes and Spencer. . . . 85-89 Contents 1 1 III. DISCUSSION AND CRITICISM. Sharp distinction between the i8th and iQth centuries' views of society. The former seeks reality in the individual alone, the latter in totality of race. Indebted- ness to evolution for emphasis upon his- torical continuity of race. Criticism of evolutionary ethics. The ego robbed of individuality and moral content. Man's inner nature ignored. Voice of tribal self inadequate explanation of inner compul- sion. Man's refusal to be a mere eddy in stream. Revolt against the social order. Attempt to get back to ego at any cost. The 1 9th century individualists criticised. Society a necessity for self-realization. Attempted synthesis of ego and its world. 9~99 BIBLIOGRAPHY 101-104 THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY. A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE VIEWS OF THE ENLIGHTEN- MENT AND THOSE OF THE I9TH CENTURY. INTRODUCTION. The aim of this thesis is historico-critical. It seeks to show how widely the moralists of the enlightenment differed from the ethical writers of the iQth century in their conception of the individual and his relation to society. It has not been thought necessary to refer to the ethical views of either the ancient or mediaeval moralists, because for them there was no problem of alter and ego, at least not in the sense, in which the moralists of the i8th and I9th centuries were confronted with it. To the ancient moralist man was a political animal; he was never thought of except as a part of the state, indeed, it was that which gave him value and worth. The Greek could no more think of an individual existing apart from society, than he could think of an arm existing apart from the body. Artistotle declared that one who is independent of society is either a god or a beast ; and he frequently employs the metaphor of an organism to illustrate the relation in which man stood to society, 1 the family was regarded by him as the fundamental unit of all social life. For Plato, as for Aristotle, the social state was prior to the individual, and was necessary for the fullest development of his nature as a social being. It never occurred to the ancient moralist to think of the individual except as * member of a social state; nor do we find even the mediaeval thinker much concerned about the individual and society. It is not, indeed, until we come to the i8th century that we are seri- ously confronted with the problem of ego and alter; with the coming of Hobbes, we are brought face to face with two very different views of moral conduct. i. See his "Politics," 1 :2, Jowett's trans. (13) 14 The Individual and Society The thesis, which would logically begin with Hobbes, is in- troduced by a study of the social nature of Grotius' "De Jure Belli et Pads," because of its negative influence upon the thought of Hobbes, who swung, as Sidgwick says, to the opposite view of human nature, regarding it as minus all social impulses. Hobbes starts with the ego as the only point of reality, and bases human life upon the individual and his private affections, as a pyramid resting upon its apex; the moralists of the i8th century, who opposed his exclusive egoism, seek to reverse the argument and base life upon the social, with the self as the apex; thus they endeavor to relate the ego to the alter, not through fear as did Hobbes, but by the social instincts which they found in human nature. The thesis attempts to lift up, out of their setting, the peculiar philosophies of these early thinkers and point out the arguments by which they sought to repudiate the absolute egoism of Hobbes ; it endeavors, also, to show under what auspices, from what point of view, and with what motives, these moralists arrived at their conclusions. Moreover, the thesis aims to show the peculiar misconceptions entertained by the moralists of the en- lightenment, and their futile effort to relate the individual to a social order from which he never was, and never could have been separated. Furthermore, it endeavors to point out the sharp distinction between the views of the enlightenment and those of the iQth century, regarding the nature and composition of society, and to show that whereas the thinkers of the i8th century regarded society as an aggregate of individual atoms, whom they endeav- ored to bring together for mutual interest, the moralists of the I Qth century, on the contrary, looked upon society as an organism ; and unlike the thinkers of the enlightenment feel no necessity of relating man to his social environment, since he has never been other than a part of it. The effort of the I9th century ethics is not, therefore, to relate the ego to the alter, but to secure for the individual a place in a socialized world where he may assert his own individuality and save his egohood. The thesis will endeavor to bring out the historical fact, that whereas the enlightenment proceeded from the individual to the social, the present attempts to reverse this so as to proceed from the social to the individual. The purpose of the thesis might be illustrated by the following The Individual and Society 15 diagram, the first half of which indicates the growth of the social idea during the i8th century, when the moralists of the enlighten- ment, beginning with the ego, seek to relate it to the alter by means of the social impulses, which they endeavor to prove, in repudiation of the exclusive egoism of Hobbes, are as native to man as his egoistic instincts. The second half of the diagram illustrates the organic conception of society, which regards the individual not only as an inherent part of a social order, but so dominated by it that the ego is in danger of losing its selfhood ; therefore, the moralists of the igth century seek to reverse the order of the preceding century and endeavor to get back to the ego. Princeton, N. J., April 10, 1914. D. B. T. EGO SOCIETY AN ORGANISM . EGO I. THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ETHICS. i. EGOISM A MODERN PROBLEM. The individualistic conception of humanity did not appear in ethics in any dogmatic form until after the publication of Grotius' De Jure Belli et Pacis in 1625. It is not, therefore, until we come to Hobbes that the ego is placed over against the alter, and the thesis maintained that humanity began with the individual rather than with the social. Our thesis "The Individual and Society" which seeks to compare the views of the enlightenment with those of the present, and to show the sharp distinction between the atomic theory of the eighteenth century and the social or organic conceptions of the nineteenth century would logically begin with Hbbbes, whose dogmatic statement of "Status Naturale" presented for the first time the problem of egoism, and called into question the social conceptions of ethics : but owing to the influence of the "De Jure Belli et Pacis" on the ethical conceptions of its day and its indirect bearing on the thought of Hobbes, we feel that a study of the Grotian "Jus Naturale" is necessary, not only to a fuller concep- tion of the Hobbist theory of the "Status Naturale," but chiefly because the questions raised by it, led Hobbes to adopt the opposite view of human nature. It is true that the views expressed in "De Jure Belli et Pacis" were not in the main peculiar to Grotius, but the emphasis placed by him on the social instincts of man and his dogmatic statement of "Jus Naturale" arrested the atten- tion of his contemporaries, and led men to question his position and to "inquire," as Sidgwick suggests, "what was man's ultimate reason for obeying these laws, and in what sense, and how far was the nature of man social." 1 Croom Robertson, like Sidgwick, feels that the "De Jure Belli et Pacis" had a very direct bearing on the views entertained by Hobbes regarding man's natural state and sees in the "Leviathan" "the Dutch publicist plainly pointed at by Hobbes, throughout, as an opponent." 2 In view 1. History of Ethics, Sidgwick, (4th ed.), p. 163. 2. Hobbes, Croom Robertson, p. 143, (if (17) 1 8 The Individual and Society of these facts, we feel justified in beginning our thesis with Grotius instead of Hobbes, and will examine his "Jus Naturale" and point out the social character of his thought, so that we may better understand how widely removed is the Hobbist conception of the "Status Naturale" and that of traditional ethics. GROTIUS' Jus NATURALE. Grotius refused to accept the Machiavellian doctrine of his times, "that might made right." The love of war and the selfish and cruel disregard for the rights of others so obvious in his own day 1 he believed to be abnormal and not the natural state of man. He, therefore, sought amid the apparent contradictions of human nature a fundamental principle in man to which he might appeal, and this he found in "Jus Naturale." "This original form of rights, this inherent principle of natural morality is known to us," declares Grotius, "By the dictate of right reason." 2 Hobhouse says, "that the principle to which Grotius appealed was the law of nature which expressed the profound ethical truth that the rights and duties of men are not circumscribed by the limitations of positive law or revelation, but rest upon certain universal attributes of humanity." 3 The distinction which Grotius makes between "Jus Naturale" and religion, and the independence he claims for the former shows both courage and intellectual acumen. He was the first moralist who enunciated a principle of rights independent of religion, and outside of church and bible ; indeed, he went so far in exaltation of "Jus Naturale" as to say, that it would have force even if there were no God, "non esse deum," 4 and he held that these human rights like the principles of mathematics were unalterable even by God Himself. "For natural law," he declares, "is so immutable that it cannot be changed even by God Himself. For though the power of God be im- 1. See Hobhouse's account of the savagery of war in Grotius' day. Moral Evolution, vol. I, pp. 173-174. White's description of the cruel dis- regard of the rights of others in that age, "Seven Great Statesmen," p. 55. Also Grotius' own account, Prog., p. 59; De Jure Belli et Pacis. 2. Ibid, vol. I, sec. 10, p. 10. 3. Morals in Evolution, vol. I, p. 274, vol. II, pp. 224-225. 4. Prog., p. 46. The Individual and Society 19 mense there are some things to which it does not extend. God himself cannot make twice two not be four, or that which is intrinsically bad not bad." 1 Morality, or "J us Naturale," was for Grotius not a human invention, nor was it a divine creation, but part of the original stuff out of which humanity was formed ; hence its independence of religion, and its validity apart from the divine sanction or existence. Such a conception was, as we shall see when we come to deal with the statu naturale, antipodal to the views entertained by Hobbes. THE OPTIMISTIC AND SOCIAL CHARACTER OF His THOUGHT. * Grotius did not seek the ground and basis of rights in the isolated existence of the individual as did Hobbes, but in the social relations of man. He recognized in man a societatem appentitum and in this social tendency which was native to man he found the source of "Jus Naturale." 2 He disagrees with those who would make utility the mother of Rights and points out the narrowness and inadequacy of such a view ; "For the mother of Rights," he says, is "human nature, taken as a whole with its impulses of kindness, pity, and sociality." 3 He meets the utili- tarian views of individual interest by stating that even in animals there are evidences of unselfish desires, for they have regard for their offspring and under the powerful impulse of paternal love prefer their young to their own safety: in infants, too, anterior to any education we find a certain disposition to do good to others, while in man there is very positive evidence of his love of society for its own sake. "Man," he says, "delights in the society of his fellowmen independently of the help and accommodation which it yields."* Grotius did not believe that you could under- stand human nature without the presupposition of his social in- stincts, and he based the fundamental principles of ethics upon his social tendencies, deducing the "Philosophy of Rights" from these social impulses which he found were natural to man. He r. De Jure Belli et Pacis, vol. I, sec. 5 and sec. 17, pp. 12, 26. 2. Prog., sec. 7-8. 3. Prog., sec. 16. 4. Prog., sec. 5-7. 2O The Individual and Society appealed to human reason to prove the validity of his claims and fell back upon history to corroborate it. His a priori deductions were substantiated by his a posteriori tests. He says "I have quoted them" referring to ancient philosophers, historians, poets and orators "as witnesses whose conspiring testimony proceeding from innumerable different times and places must be referred to some universal cause." 1 It was this emphasis which he placed on the social nature of man and the inalienable rights of mankind which he held were like the truth of mathematics, unalterable, that justifies our inclusion of Grotius in this thesis. Grotius does not seek, it is true, to -relate the individual to society as did Hobbes and the moralists of the i8th century; for to Grotius, as to the ancient and mediaeval thinkers, the individual and society were not a problem. His purpose, therefore, is to prove that man possesses certain human rights which are independent of all external authority, and have their source in the social nature of man, which he conceives to be his natural state. To such a view of human nature and human rights Hobbes took exception, and in his "Status Naturalis" presents for the first time the problem of egoism and altruism, the individual and society. HOBBES, whose answer to the questions raised by "De Jure Belli et Pads" supplied, as Sidgwick states, the starting-point for independent ethics in England, 2 takes a very different view of human nature than that of the "Dutch publicist." Where the Grotian conception of the "Status Naturalis" is optimistic and social, that of Hobbes is pessimistic and unsocial ; a conception of human nature that was doubtless due in part to his temperamen- tality and the social unrest of his times. 3 Croom Robertson feels that we do the author of the "Leviathan" an injustice when we fail to take these two facts into consideration, and he finds in them a reasonable explanation for the Hobbist conception of the "Status Naturalis." "We must never forget," he says, "amid what welter of social strife a peace loving student of the 1. Prog., sec. 40, p. 66, vol. I, chap, i, sec. 12, p. 16. 2. History of Ethics, Sidgwick, p. 163. 3. See Shaftesbury's Characteristics, vol. I, pp. 61-63. The Individual and Society 21 I7th century was doomed to spend his life." 1 Sneath not only shares this view, but emphasizes it by showing the impossibility of a just appreciation of the Hobbist conception of human nature or his sincerity, when these two facts are ignored. Anxiety for his personal safety and the horrible fear of death, intensified by the uncertain and troublesome conditions of the times had a tendency to beget in him a general distrust of men, so that the unworthy conceptions of human nature which underlie his views of man must be considered in the light of these facts. Studying, therefore, his ethical and political philosophy in the light of these conditions in which he reflected and wrote, one can, in a measure at least, understand how he was led to form a conception of nature so utterly selfish and unsocial. 2 While we do not claim that the conclusions reached by Hob- bes regarding the "Status Naturalis" were due entirely to his temperament and surroundings, yet we feel that Sneath was warranted by these facts, in making them the source of the Hobbist conception of man in a state of nature. Few specula- tive thinkers escape the influence of their own times, or rise above their environment; and Hobbes more than the most of them was the child of his age. He dealt with human nature more in the concrete than in the abstract, and studied men more than man, drawing his conclusions largely from the men whom he saw around him; it is not strange, therefore, that he should see in the distrust and hatred of men toward each other, and their desire to break up the existing government, an evi- dence of the innate unsocial propensities of mankind. Nor is it to be wondered at that he should find in the fanatical Puri- tans, the scheming Jesuits or restless agitators who, for their private ends, would turn peace into war or order into anarchy, an outbreak of selfish and unsocial passions; which he believed to be natural to man, from the fact that though repressed within society were ready to appear on the first opportunity. It is perhaps not too much to say that Hobbes viewed mankind largely through the haze of political passion and deduced from the actions of his countrymen the primitive man as portrayed in 1. Hobbes, Croom Robertson, p. 222. See also Hobbes, Leslie Stephen, chap. 4, (1904). 2. See "The Ethics of Hobbes," E. H. Sneath, pp. 35-36. 22 The Individual and Society the "Leviathan." The selfishness and unsociability so apparent in his own day undoubtedly appealed to him as of the very essence of human nature, and was, as Robertson and Sneath have shown, responsible in a large degree for his egoistic view of man in a state of nature. Such a conception of the essen- tial nature of man became, as we shall see, the fundamental prin- ciple of his ethical philosophy. EGOISM AND PESSIMISM OF HOBBES' ETHICS. Egoism. Hobbes seeks to base human life on the ego and its private affections ; in his view we begin with the individual and go to the social. His conception of human nature is thoroughly egoistic; he does not inquire whether we ought to have a disinterested regard for the good of others; he asserts that this is impos- sible. His ethics is therefore psychological, being based on a description of what he believed to be the facts of human nature as revealed to introspection and substantiated by observation. Self-love, for Hobbes, is the motive of all action. The indi- vidual, he says, never seeks to further the general welfare, except in so far as he thereby secures his own ends; even those emotions and feelings which in their very nature were looked upon as altruistic. Hobbes declares to be egoistic. Love is nothing more than a selfish desire which seeks its own personal pleasure. He defines it as "the fruition of present good for ourselves." 1 Sympathy is but a thinly disguised selfishness : grief for the calamity of others, is pity for ourselves and "arises from the imagination that a like calamity may befall ourselves," and is therefore strong or weak in proportion as we imagine the calamity to be remote or near at hand. 2 Even the affection which parents have for their children is a selfish one, and is called forth because we expect to derive some benefit from them. 8 There is but one principle in man as Hobbes views him, which is the source of all his action and to which he ascribes the whole category of human virtues, namely the principle of self-love. 4 1. Leviathan, part I, chap. 6, p. 47, Ibid, Bk. IV, chap. 10, p. 44. 2. Ibid, Bk. IV, chap. 10, p. 44. Leviathan, part I. chap 6, p. 47. See also "Principles of Ethics," Fowler, pp. 70-71. 3. Leviathan, part II, chap. 30, p. 329. 4. See "Morality." R. B. Fairbairn, pp. 54-55. The Individual and Society 23 Pessimism. This egoistic conception of human nature led to pessimism" in Hobbes, 1 to the view that the state of nature is a state of strife, of "all against all," Each man had a right to all he could secure and for as long as he could retain it, for in a state of nature there was no inequality and "no mine and thine." 'Might' was the only recognized 'Right.' 2 There were no rights, human or divine, that 'might' was called upon to respect, for indeed in such a state rights did not exist. Hobbes declares that amid such conditions there was no society, no social instincts, no place for industry, for nothing was secure ; no domestic comforts, since each man sustained a belligerent attitude toward his neighbor, "no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society ; and which is worst of all, con- tinual fear and danger of violent death ; the life of man was soli- tary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." 3 From such a state of war and rapine Hobbes saw no way of escape except through fear of a worse fate; this fear drove primitive man into a mutual agreement to transfer each his own natural rights the right of each to all to a third party in order to secure the blessings of peace and safety. Hyslop sees in this pessimism and the method of escape suggested by Hobbes, the chief importance of the Hobbist ethics. "The importance of Hobbes' system," he says, "came from the particular pessimistic view which he took of human nature and the means necessary to secure social order." 4 Such was the pessimistic view which Hobbes entertained regarding human nature, which, both his observation and analysis of man, led him to conclude was true to man in his primitive state. THE ATTEMPTED PROOF OF EGOISM AND PESSIMISM. This social and belligerent state which Hobbes had inferred a priori through his psychological study of human nature is proved to him a posteriori by the attitude which men in a state of society 1. See "Elements of Ethics," Hyslop, pp. 81-82, (1895). 2. See also "De Corpore Politico,'' part I, chap. II, sec. 10, p. 44. Levia- than, part I, chap. 6, p. 47. Bk. chap. 10, p. 44. 3. Ibid, part I, chap. 13, p. 113. 4. Elements of Ethics, I. H. Hyslop, p. 80, (1895). 24 The Individual and Society sustain toward each other. Those who would doubt the inference which he has deduced from the human passions and who demand an empiric proof for his conclusions regarding primitive man, he bids them examine their own attitude toward their neighbors, and they will find sufficient confirmation for the inference which he has deduced from and a priori study of the human will. "When men in a state of society, with laws for their protection and a strong power to enforce them, arm themselves when taking a journey, and lock their doors when they go to sleep, and even their chests in their own homes, do they not, says Hobbes, accuse mankind as much by their actions as I do by my words ; and is not that very attitude a proof of the unsocial and belligerent nature of primitive man, whose passions and appetites are held in check by no external power?" 1 DOGMATIC VIEW OF "STATUS NATURALIS." Hobbes was convinced, as we have seen, both by his observa- tion of human actions and his analysis of the human passions, that the primitive state of man was belligerent and unsocial. This not only led him to declare that the "Status Naturalis" was "a state of war of all against all," but to the sincere conviction that in such a state morality did not exist, and that therefore good and evil were nothing but names which we give to our desires and aversions ; our private appetite alone being the measure or stand- ard of both. 2 In this view of human nature and conduct, he repudiates the intuitive conception; of morality and becomes a relativist in ethics, as he had for the same reason become a ma- terialist in philosophy. Morality is for Hobbes a human invention which the introduction of external authority made possible. "For where there is no common power," he says, "there is no law, and where there is no law there is no injustice. The notion of right or wrong, justice or injustice have there no place, since these qualities relate to man in society, not in solitude," 3 in such a state there are no ethical distinctions, individual desire being the 1. Leviathan, part I, chap. 13, pp. 114-115. 2. Leviathan, Part I, chap. 15, p. 146. 3. Ibid, Part I, chap. 13, p. 115. De Corpore Politico, Part I, chap. 13. The Individual and Society 25 measure of good and evil, that which is pleasant is for man in a state of nature good, that which is unpleasant, evil. "For every man by natural passion calleth that good which pleaseth him for the present; and in like manner that which displeaseth him evil." 1 Nothing, for Hobbes, was good or evil per se, it becomes so by agreement. The covenant into which man enters furnishes the norm of justice, the content of good and evil, and the starting point of ethics. "Whatever the ruler desires becomes right," he affirms, "and whatever he forbids becomes unlawful." 2 Hobbes having dogmatically asserted, and from his point of view proved, that a state of nature is a state of isolation and unsodability, in which man has not only no sense of moral obliga- tion or conception of right or wrong, but is in continual fear of death, now seeks some way by which he may relate him to society for self preservation, this he does by means of fear, which, he says, "disposeth man to seek aid by society, since there is no other way in which he can secure life and liberty." 3 There is method in the way in which Hobbes seeks to relate the individual to society, for as man is without social impulses, and dominated alone by self -regarding feelings, there was no other way to relate him to society than through fear of a worse fate; his method is consistent and logical. Hobbes is no immoralist and he does not resort to a mere device, like Mandeville, to account for morality and the social life of man, but frankly acknowledges that man is unsocial by nature and can only be related to society by his willingness to surrender his own rights and by means of a "compact" submit to the control of an external authority. 4 The reverence which Hobbes had for authority saved him from the immoralism into which Mandeville and Nietzsche fell. It enabled him to pass from egoism to relativism, and gives to his system a consistency in keeping with his assumption that man is unsocial by nature and becomes social and moral only by means of an external power by which he passes from the individual to the social. 1. Ibid, Part I, chap. 4, sec. 14. 2. De Give, chap. 12, sec. I, chap. 14, sec. 17. 3. Leviathan, chap. 2, p. 88. 4. De Corpore P'olitico, Part I, chap. 2, sec. 2. * 26 The Individual and Society THE ERROR IN THE HOBBIST ANTHROPOLOGY. The error in the Hobbist anthropology was only partially cor- rected by the moralists of the i8th century who attacked his egoism. They repudiated his assumption that man possessed nothing but self-regarding feelings, but not his individualistic conception of society. Their attempt to relate the individual to the social through his social and benevolent feelings, show their own individualistic conception of society and their inability to entirely correct the Hobbist anthropology. It is, therefore, neces- sary in proving the anthropological error of the Hobbist "Status Naturalis" to fall back upon the iQth century, whose conception of the historical continuity of the race and organic nature of society makes impossible an anthropological conception of man such as Hobbes had assumed. The error in the Hobbist anthro- pology lies in his assumption that such a creature ever existed. Neither history nor human experience know anything of a state of nature such as Hobbes had pictured. The ethnologist has shown us that man was never free in a state of nature to seize whatever he could secure, nor did he in his most primitive state, live in solitude and selfish egoism such as Hobbes conceived to be his condition. Indeed, the facts, as we shall see, prove a state of nature the very opposite from that which Hobbes had described. In the lowest conditions of human life known to us, man is not only found in society but is so dominated and controlled by it, that from the very begin- ning of humanity the individual has been struggling for freedom. There is no race or state of nature in which the taboo in some form is not found, and in the most primitive stages of human life it acted as a kind of conscience to them forbidding this and sanc- tioning that; social customs, too, have always held man as in a vice. 1 Taylor in describing prehistoric man, and man in his lowest savage state, says that "it is very evident that man did not even in his wildest days indulge his desires without restraint, and did not clutch whatever he longed for, and with gnarled club batter in the skull of anyone who stood in his way . . . the i. See Article by J. D. Stoops, in the International Journal of Ethics, Jan., 1913. See also The Facts of the Moral Life, Wundt, pp. 265-267. The Individual and Society 27 asserted existence of savages so low as to have no moral standard, is too groundless to be discussed." 1 History not only proves that Hobbes was in error regarding his assumption that man in a state of nature was free to seize whatever he could secure and for as long as he could keep it; but it proves also, that he was in error both in regard to the origin of society and the egoistic nature of the human will. Westermark declares that the altruistic instincts are not only found among the lowest savage races as among civilized peo- ple, "but have always belonged to the human race from the very beginning, as has also the germ of the maternal affection." 2 The man of solitude and unsocial instincts of the Hobbist type never did and never could exist. The facts of human experience and the history of the race prove how false and erroneous are the anthro- pological conceptions of Hobbes, and how unwarranted were his conclusions. Croom Robertson says, "History knows nothing of men existing in a state of savage warfare, even the Troglodytes are members of a tribe." 3 "The oldest records of our race," says Fowler, "and all the instruments that are to be gathered from the most archaic forms of language and institutions present man as existing from the first in the family or at least in the tribal group."* A similar statement appears in Taylor's "Primitive Culture," where he shows that the instruments used in the stone age indicate not only a social state but a condition of society differing little from modern savage tribes. 5 Lubbock corrobo- rates Taylor's conclusions by proving the sociability of the most primitive savage through the instruments which were used by them. "Which instruments," he says, "whether stone, iron or bronze point to a social life among the people." 6 However much 1. Article in Contemporary Review, vol, XXI, (1873), PP- 701-702. See also Primitive Culture, vol. I, chap. 1-2. Taylor. 2. The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideals, E. Westermarck, vol. I, p. 532, (1906). 3. Hobbes, Croom Robertson, p. 424. 4. Principles of Morals, Thomas Fowler, Part II, p. 74. 5. Primitive Culture, vol. i, pp. 57-64. See also The Ethical Importance of Darwinism. J. G. Schurman, chap. 6, (1887). 6. The Origin of Civilization of Primitive Conditions of Man, Natural and Social Conditions of Savages. Lubbock, p. 19, (sth ed., 1898). 28 The Individual and Society opinion may differ among anthropologists, regarding the forms of primitive society, they all agree as to the fact of society, and hold it to be coexistent with the beginning of human life. A state of nature which the Hobbist anthropology suggests, they declare to be impossible. McLennan says that "all the evidence we have goes to show that men were from the beginning gre- garious. The geological records distinctly exhibit them in groups. . . . We hear nothing in the most ancient times of indi- viduals except as being members of groups." 1 Maurice quotes Sir Henry Main* as saying that in a state of na- ture anterior to the establishment of law the unit of society was not the individual but the family, 2 and Giddings finds even in man's prehuman state the social instinct. "There is hardly a single fact in the whole range of sociological knowledge that does not support the conclusion that the race was social before it was human, and that its social qualities were the chief means of developing its human nature." 3 The above quotations are suf- ficient to show that the error in the Hobbist anthropology lay in his assumption that man in a state of nature was an isolated ego, untrammeled and unsocial, with no moral obligation and no altruistic instincts. His psychological analysis of man was defec- tive through its omission of certain elements in the human will : by ignoring the social feelings, such as sympathy and a genuine regard for the good of others, he was forced to begin with inade- quate premises, and unwilling to credit human nature with social as well as self -regarding feelings, he was compelled by the very self -consistency of his logical intellect to assume an anthropo- logical theory utterly irreconcilable with the facts of a more gen- eral experience. 1. Primitive Marriage, McLennan, chap. 8, p. 162. See also Social Psychology, Robert MacDougall, p. 85, in which he states that almost all anthropologists agree "that primitive man was, at least to some extent, gregarious in his habits." Mazes, also after showing the social instinct in animals, says "that man is a descendant of gregarious animals and has always lived in groups, is beyond doubt." Ethics Descriptive and Explana- tory, S. E. Mazes, p. 155, (1900). 2. Social Morality, Maurice, p. no, (1893). See Principles of Ethics, B. P. Bowne, p. 258, (1898). 3. The Elements of Sociology, F. H. Giddings, p. 232. The Individual and Society 29 OPPOSITION TO HOBBES. The Hobbist theory of ethics which made morality a human invention and man a selfish and unsocial ego, run so diametrically counter to all the views on religious ethics current up to that time, that it was met by violent opposition on the part of the moralists of his day, and continued with varying degrees of inten- sity until the beginning of the iQth century. But while the ethical writers of his own time and country were practically unanimous in their opposition to Hobbes, their methods of attack were by no means the same. Some were incensed at the brutal egoism of his system, others at the arbitrary character which he assigned to moral distinctions; for an ethic that did not hesitate to proclaim egoism as the ultimate and justifiable spring of moral conduct, could not long remain uncontradicted by men who believed in innate morality and the altruistic instincts of the human will; consequently the theories of Hobbes were attacked at both of these points; his relativism by the exponents of rational intuitions, and his exclusive egoism by the other forms of intuition. Cudworth and Clark, the two representatives of rational intuitionism, saw in the political absolutism of Hobbes, the implication that right and wrong were determined by an arbitrary social compact, and they opposed this human origin of morality and declared that moral ideas were innate truths. Indeed, Cudworth is so much concerned to establish a system of eternal and immutable truths, among which are the truths of ethics, that never once in his "Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality" does he take the trouble to combat the egoism of Hobbes. Good and evil, for Cudworth, are not human inventions, changeable and relative, but are eternal truths having a fixed nature and are independent of opinions or compacts, and cannot therefore, be determined arbitrarily by the will or power of man or even of God. "Mere will can no more turn good into evil or evil into good, than it can turn black into white. Justice is immutable and eternal ; it is natural and not artificial," that is, its laws are inherent in the very essence of things. Clark, whose opposition to the relativity of Hobbes, is just as pro- nounced as that of Cudworth, not only denies that morality had a human origin, but declares that even God did not invent it; 3O The Individual and Society 'for moral ideas are innate truths whose principles are as intu- itively evident to reason as those of mathematics, and it would be as absurd to deny the one as to deny the other.' The laws of morality he claimed express the eternal fitness or unfitness of actions, and these laws God does not arbitrarily create, but neces- sarily determines himself to act in agreement with them, in other words, "God chooses the good because it is good." The theory of "relativity" assumed such proportions in the minds of the "Cambridge Platonists" that they seemed to have lost sight of the exclusive egoism of Hobbes. The isolated ego impelled alone by self-regarding feelings, which Hobbes had conceived to be its condition in a state of nature, does not appear to have been as such, a problem for rational intuitionism. The failure of the Cambridge school to meet the absolute egoism of Hobbes, led other moralists to attack that side of the Hobbist ethics, and to prove not only how erroneous was the assumption that man in a state of nature was moved alone by self -regarding impulses, but that without the social instincts, which they endeavor to show are inherent in human nature, man never could have been related to society. One of the first and most influential of the earlier ethical writers to attack the egoism of Hobbes and to point out the impossibility of human society without social and benevolent instincts was Richard Cumberland. CUMBERLAND'S IDEAL OF BENEVOLENCE. In opposition to the dogmatic assertion of Hobbes that man- kind has passed from a pure egoism to a thoroughly social condi- tion, Cumberland seeks to create the idea that the given condition of humanity was the social, and this he does in connection with his ideal of benevolence. Cumberland followed the Hobbist method of observation and reason, in his study of the laws of nature i 1 but he arrived at a very different conclusion from that of Hobbes, both as to the origin of morals and the "Status Naturalis." In his psychological study of man he finds in addi- tion to the egoistic instincts which Hobbes had discovered in him, a social motive in the human will, and it is through that social motive, (which for him is an active and not a passive volition) 2 expressed in benevolent acts, instead of "through fear 1. De Legibus Naturae, (1750), see Proleg., sec. 29, chap. I, sec. 3. 2. Ibid, chap. I, sec. 4. The Individual and Society 31 of a worse fate/' that Cumberland finds the true point of contact between the ego and the alter. In repudiating the Hobbist theoi y of man in a state of nature, he points out the impossibility of bringing together such men as Hobbes had described, without the element of sympathy. 'If it be true,' he says, 'as Hobbes had declared, that men anterior to the compact were "more fierce and savage than bears, wolves and serpents," then it were evi- dently impossible to reduce such beasts of prey, always thirsting after the blood of their fellows, into a civil state i' 1 for if man ever possessed the right to act like bears, wolves and serpents, killing and destroying each other "then the natural and necessary consequence is that no one human creature can agree to enter into society." 2 Human beings minus all social and benevolent in- stincts could never be brought together so as to form a civil society ; even the compact, he declares, would avail nothing unless there was something in human nature that could make men abide by their promises. Cumberland saw the futility of the Hobbist method of relating man to society by means of fear and pointed out a more excellent way by showing that man is endowed with a social will which finds in the happiness of others its own greater happiness. 3 "Our own happiness, therefore, cannot be separated from a studious concern for the happiness of others, i. e. the universal social happiness of all."* 'It is through these benevolent instincts with which man in a state of nature has been endowed, that he seeks the society of his kind and forms a civil state/ 5 It must, therefore, have been apparent to all "that a mutual social assistance would prove useful convenient and beneficial ; and the natural propensity of the human mind toward such a state is capable," says Cumberland, "of full discovery by proper signs, marks and tokens." 6 He points out the fallacious statement of Hobbes "that man by discipline, institutions, and instructions, and not by nature is made fit for society, by declaring that "the soul is naturally adapted to enter into society and unless it does submit to enter into a social state, it neglects its principal use 1. Ibid, chap. 2, sec. 22. 2. De Legibus Naturae, (1750), chap. 9, sec. 12, part III. 3. Ibid, chap, i, sec. 16. 4. Ibid, chap. 2, sec. 8, sec. 23. 5. Ibid, chap, i, sec. 23. 6. Ibid, chap, i, sec. 19, part I. 32 The Individual and Society and employment, and lets go the best advantage of its own natural disposition." 1 "To refuse, therefore, to exercise these benevolent impulses, is to act contrary to right reason and out of harmony with our social nature." 2 In his biological argument for the universal law of benevolence, he refers to the social nature of animals, which, he says does not differ from that of man, as a further proof of man's social propensities and love of society. "Nothing is more delightful to animals than society. It is a truth too well known to need any proof, that members of the same species, if by accident it so happens they are separated, when- ever they espy each other even at a great distance rejoice, seem delighted, leap for joy, and are eager to meet ; they freely eat and drink and play together and rarely if ever fight. This social instinct is a mark of distinction common to all animals in general, and by consequence to that of man." 3 I have quoted the above statements from Cumberland's "De Legibus Naturae," regarding man's social and benevolent nature not only to prove that, contrary to the Hobbist conception of the "Status Naturalis," he found in the human will, social as well as self -regarding feelings, but to show that his individualistic con- ception of society, which characterized the moralists of the i8th century, led him to regard the ego in a state of nature as unrelated to society. The point of difference between the Hobbist view of man in a state of nature and that of Cumberland, is in their conception of the nature of the ego. Both mem conceive^a state in which there is no society, both recognize the need of a civil state, and seek a way by which they may relate the ego to the alter. Hobbes, finding no social instincts in man, relates him to society by means of fear; while Cumberland, who discovers a universal law of benevolence, relates him to society by his social instincts, which he says, "disposeth man to seek the society of others, and thereby to form a civil state." Cumberland not only attacked the exclusive egoism of Hobbes and his method of relating man to society, but like Cudworth and Clark, he opposed his theory of relativity. Morality, for Cum- 1. Ibid, chap. 2, sec. 2, 4. 2. Ibid, chap. 5, sec. 15. See Ethics of Positivism, Barzellotti, p. 104. 3. De Legibus Naturae, chap. 2, sec. 18, 20. The Individual and Society 33 berland, is not independent of God, for though it is inherent in human nature, it is not original and substantive, but created. It owes its existence to a divine creation. Unlike Cudworth and Clark, Cumberland is inclined to accept the Scotist view of the good and declares that the good is good because God wills it. His view of morality in regard to its divine origin harmonizes more with Locke's conception than with that of Cudworth and Clark, for he regards morality, like Locke, as inherent in the universal order of things, but by divine determination. God and not man is the starting point of ethics ; he therefore repudiates the Hobbist origin of morals and declares that in a state of nature man possessed moral concepts. "The sense of justice is innate in man and is exercised even in a state of nature, for some obliga- tion is affixed to the laws of nature; either from such punish- ment as conscience forebodes, will, at some future time, be inflicted by Almighty God; or from those punishments, even, which each and every one individual can, in a state of nature, with justice inflict upon any who transgress and violate the laws of nature," 1 for "there is in a state of nature some distinction be- tween just and unjust, lawful and unlawful." 2 "These laws of nature lay obligations upon all outward acts of behavior, even in a state of nature prior and antecedent to all laws of human imposition whatever." 3 These natural laws, which Cumberland reduced to one universal law of benevolence or universal love, 4 carry in them an eternal sanction and obligation. 5 Hobbes had denied the existence of natural laws 6 and with it, moral obligation 7 on the ground that a law must be clearly pro- mulgated by a competent authority with power to enforce it, and as no such authority existed anterior to the compact, he, therefore, affirmed that no such laws existed. Cumberland accepts the Hobbist definition of the laws of nature, and proves that the laws of nature are laws, precisely in the sense in which Hobbes uses the word and meet the requirements included in 1. Ibid, chap. I, sec. 26. 2. Ibid, sec. 32, sec. 35. 3. Ibid, chap, i, sec. I. 4. Ibid, chap, i, sec. 9. 5. Ibid, Proleg., sec. 28, chap. I, sec. 20. 6. Ibid, chap, i, sec. 3, sec. 5. 7. Ibid, chap, i, sec. i. 34 The Individual and Society his definition. The authority for these laws, Cumberland traces back to God, the first cause, and the promulgation of them to their uniform action in human experience, which "express with sufficient clearness, without the use of words, the evidence of their existence." 1 The purpose which Cumberland has in view in establishing the validity of natural laws was not merely a refutation of the Hobbist denial of them, but that he might, by their existence, prove that God and not man is the norm and source of moral- ity, which like the divine nature is immutable: that things are good not because we desire them, as Hobbes had contended, but that on the contrary "things are first judged to be good, and then they are afterwards desired only so far as they are judged and determined good." 2 Cumberland having proved the existence of natural laws independent of human compacts, then reduces them to one universal law of benevolence 3 through which he relates the ego to society and establishes the moral concept anterior to all civil society. 4 CUMBERLAND'S REVISION OF THE HOBBIST ETHICS. Cumberland undertook not only a refutation of the egoistic postulate which Hobbes had maintained was the basis of society, but a revision of his whole ethical system. In placing the empha- sis upon man's social and benevolent impulses, which prompt men to the pleasures of pacific intercourse as certainly as the appre- hension of danger and destruction urges them to avoid hostil- ity, and by showing that moral concepts are coterminous with human existence and therefore independent of human com- pacts, he reverses the entire ethical views of the Hob- bist system of ethics. The fundamental principle of the Cum- berland ethics is the universal law of benevolence which, for him, embraces not only humanity, but all nature in its scope, and impells men to seek the greater public good in preference to his own lesser private good. The end of morality for Cumberland is not, as with Hobbes, the individual good, but the furtherance 1. Ibid, chap, i, sec. 22. 2. Ibid, chap. 3, sec. 3. 3. Ibid, chap, i, sec. 9, p. 23. 4. Ibid, chap. 5, sec. 19. The Individual and Society 35 of the common welfare; this common welfare, however, is not regarded by him as identical with the sum of individual wel- fares, but is rather, for Cumberland, the social welfare of the whole; perhaps no single phrase could express his ideal so com- pletely as Leslie Stephen's phrase "the health of the social organ- ism." Cumberland even suggests the possibility of a rational creature seeking the public good, though there may seem no possibility that any private good will result from it. 1 In making the contents of the moral law refer directly to the good of the whole and only indirectly to the good of the indi- vidual, he completely revises the ethics of Hobbes, and makes impossible the theory of an original state of war, which assumes egoism as the only spring of human action. 2 Croom Robert- son says of this revision, that "we see in Cumberland's Laws of Nature, Hobbism made altruistic." 3 A study of Cumberland discloses the fact that he "builded bet- ter than he knew ;" for though his "De Legibus Naturae" is cum- bersome, many of his arguments irrelevant, his treatment of the nature of the good obscure and somewhat ambiguous, as he seems at times to confuse the good with the idea of perfec- tion and then with self-preservation, and again with the hedonic idea of happiness, nevertheless, his system has been the start- ing point of much of the ethics that followed him. He was the first exponent, in England at least, of a tendency which for a long time practically dominated English ethics. No writer of his time sounds so modern as we read him to-day. Many of his words, and not a few of his ideas remind us of the moralist of the iQth century. The word "social" which up to the appear- ance of "De Legibus Naturae" had not been used by ethical writers, is employed by him most frequently. Such phrases as "social laws," "social obligation,"* "social intercourse," "imi- versal social happiness," 5 "social union," "social states," 6 "mutual social alliance" and "social animals" 7 are phrases which he is con- 1. Ibid, chap, i, sec. 21. 2. See Ethical Systems, Wundt, pp. 60-62. 3. Hobbes, Croom Robertson, p. 208, (1886). 4. De Legibus Naturae, chap. I, sec. 22, sec. 23. 5. Ibid, chap. 2, sec. 8. 6. Ibid, chap, i, sec. 33. 7. Ibid, chap. 2, sec. 2. 36 The Individual and Society stantly using. Rectitude and conscience are words which appear in his "Laws of Nature;" and while conscience, for Cumber- land, is more a matter of intellect than feeling, yet there is an anticipation of the judicial function of conscience found in But- ler, "our mind is conscious to itself of all its own actions. It sits as a judge upon its own actions, and thence procures to itself either tranquility and joy, or anxiety and sorrow. In this power of the mind and the actions thence arising consists the whole force of conscience, by which it proposes laws to itself, examines its past and regulates its future conduct." 1 The He- donic Calculus might well have been suggested to Bentham by his method of finding out the summum bonum. 2 He almost used the utilitarian maxim of the greatest good to the greatest num- ber, by showing "that individual happiness alone, is not to be regarded but the common good of all ... "for the com- mon good is the greatest good." 3 For one brief moment he seemed to have felt, like Hutcheson, that man was capable of disinterested benevolence, and in that momentary glimpse, he saw the possibility of some human actions being performed with a view to the happiness of others, without any consideration of pleasure reflected back on themselves. "Nay we must constantly act thus (i. e. we must practice benevolence) even in cases where frequently there is not the least prospect or hope of any reward or return; and what is even still more, we must indispensably act thus, notwithstanding we are, in many cases, persuaded accord- ing to the general rules of probability, that any return of love suitable to such generous benevolent acts is a quite groundless expectation."* Cumberland, though writing nearly two centuries before Dar- win seems to have had at least a partial conception of the organic nature of society, for he refers frequently to the animal organism in illustrating the dependence of individual happiness on what we might call "the health of the social organism;" but the in- 1. Ibid, chap. 2, sec. 12, 26. 2. Ibid, chap. 2, sec. 4, pp. 141-142. 3. Ibid, chap. 2, sec. 20, chap. I, sec. 33. 4. Ibid, chap, i, sec. 21, see also chap. 2, sec. 20. The Individual and Society 37 dividualism of his day prevented him, as it did Shaftesfoury, from grasping the full significance of such a concept, and led him, as it did his successors, into an unnecessary effort to prove that man was a social creature. In Shaftesbury we have a further enlargement of the social conception of human life as against the individual postulate of Hobbes, where Cumberland had inverted the Hobbist point of view by emphasizing the virtue of benevolence, Shaftesbury fur- thers the progress of the social, by a direct reference to the social instincts in both man and animal. Shaftesbury's treatment of psychological and biological questions as well as social problems is extremely modern, and reminds one more of the writers of the I Qth century than the moralists of his own day; for though he writes in the termonology of the school-men, his subject matter at times resembles more the thought of a later age. Robertson says that Shaftesbury has given to us "Many shrewd hints of social evolution" . . . and "he deserves, among other things, to rank as one of the first of our sociologists; since ideas which afterwards seem fresh in Hume and Ferguson are to be found clearly enough set forth in his pages." 1 In his treatment of biology as well as that of psychology he shows a grasp of the subject and a keenness of insight almost equal to Spencer. In his opposition to the contract theory of natural law, he goes back to the obscure social instincts in man, where the individual and the community are not yet contrasted, and he endeavors to prove from a biological standpoint that all life is related ; in his discussion of this relationship of vegetable, animal and human life, he approaches very closely the Spencerian conception of biology and interdependence. 2 Hoffding sees in this conception "one of the most important germs of his thought ; but the mental atmosphere of the i8th century was not, however, favorable to its further development." 3 Indeed, Shaftesbury was himself too much under the dominance of the individualism of his age to see its true 1. Characteristics, vol. I. Introduction, p. 51. 2. See Characteristics, vol. I, pp. 245-246. 3. History of Modern Philosophy, Hoffding. 38 The Individual and Society relation to society. For although Shaftesbury seems to have almost equaled Spencer in his insight into biological relations, he was not able, owing to his individualistic conception of society, to recognize in it, as Spencer had, a proof of the organic nature of society, but sees only in it the negation of the anti-social in the individual. Like Cumberland, Shaftesbury spends his energy and thought in trying to prove what ought to have been self- evident, that man is a social creature, and he endeavors through his instincts and propensities to relate him to a social order. He attempts to force the position of Hobbes by his insistence on the benevolent or social side of human nature. Unlike the moralists of the i Qth century, whose organic conception of society and social nature of the race eliminted all necessity of proving, what to them was self-evident, the social nature of man or relating the individual to a social order into which he was born, Shaftes- bury endeavors not only to show, as we shall see when we come to study his view of human nature, that man possesses altruistic as well as egoistic instincts, but that the Hobbist state of nature was impossible owing to man's social propensities and instincts, and the impossibility of his existence in a state of isolation. SHAFTESBURY'S RESTATEMENT OF HOBBES' PSYCHOLOGY. In his restatement of the Hobbist psychology, Shaftesbury declares that the conclusions reached by Hobbes in his study of the passions are fallacious, and that his absolute egoism is not born out by the facts of human experience : he therefore refutes this artificial psychology which reduces all social affections to forms of self affections, 1 and points out that social and moral affections are direct sources of pleasure apart from considerations of self-interest. In opposing the Hobbist contention, that self- love is the only spring of action, he shows that there is a social motive in the will that leads man to seek the public good as well as his own private good. 2 Shaftesbury's psychology is far in advance of his times, and in his psychological analysis of human 1. See Characteristics, vol. I, pp. 79-8o. 2. Ibid, vol. i, pp. 280-282. The Individual and Society 39 nature he finds three elements in man where Hobbes had only discovered one self-love. These he classifies as (i) natural affec- tions, which are directed toward the welfare of society ; (2) private or self-affections, which aim only at private welfare;(3) unnatural affections, which are useful neither to the self nor to the public ; these he calls vicious and hurtful, and therefore throws them out as minus of all pleasure. Shaftesbury's position regarding the unnatural affections is open to criticism, his dismissal of them is too summarily ; for may there not be a kind of pleasure even in malice ? May not the creature have a kind of delight in seeing the other suffer, that contributes in some way to his own happi- ness? Shaftesbury attacks the egoistic interpretation of the good by asserting the naturalness of the social and moral affec- tions. 1 Ethics, with Hobbes, was purely a human invention which he found necessary in his progress from the individual to the social. There are, for him, no ethical distinctions anterior to the contract, individual desire determines good and evil. 2 The com- pact, for Hobbes, furnished the norm of justice and the starting point of morals. Shaftesbury repudiates this human invention of ethics 3 and points out that as the social and benevolent instincts of the human will are part of man's original stuff, morality there- fore must be coextensive with human existence, from which it is inseparable. "Faith, justice, honesty and virtue must have been as early as the state of nature or they never could have been at all, for a civil union or confederacy could never make right or wrong if they subsisted not before." 4 This conception of goodness which denies an immoral origin to the moral and makes morality native to man is fundamental to Shaftesbury's system and enables him in his restatement of the Hobbist psychology to show the fallacious inferences which Hobbes had deduced from the pas- sions, and to prove that man in a state of nature was not a bellig- erent but a social and moral creature, whose natural goodness and social propensities led him to seek the society of others, and thus fulfill the function of his nature, for "the end or design of nature 1. Ibid, vol. i, pp. 63-65. 2. De Corpore Politico, Part I, chap. 4, sec. 14. 3. Characteristics, vol. II, Part II, sec. 4, Ibid, vol. I, p. 73. 4. Ibid, vol. I, pp. 73-74. 4-O The Individual and Society in man is society." 1 This natural goodness in human nature which seeks the inward harmony of the creature and expresses itself in social and benevolent acts, gives rise to Shaftesbury's concep- tion of conscience: virtue, for him, consists in the harmonious blending of the passions which produces in man his greatest pleas- ure. With Shaftesbury; goodness is harmony, naturalness and peace; badness is disharmony, unnaturalness and pain. When a man therefore does anything to disturb the harmony of his inner nature, he has a sense of displeasure and discomfort, which Shaftesbury calls conscience. With him, conscience, like good- ness, is neither the result of compact nor the fear of diety: 2 it may exist apart from the religious consciousness, and is anteced- ent and contributory to it: it is part of man's very nature with which he enters the world, and is, therefore, independent of external authority, human or divine. Shaftesbury does not seek to deny the presence or underestimate the value of the self- regarding impulses, but only to prove that the altruistic instincts are on an equal footing with the self -regarding feelings and give to them their value. He does not regard the private affections as evil per se, any more than he regards the public affections as always productive of good. Either set of affections, he says, if developed to excess, would make the creature vicious. 3 The self -regarding affections in Shaftesbury's system are as indispen- sable as the social affections to secure the good of the whole, which consists for him, not in the triumph of one set over the other, but in the perfect balance and harmony between them in securing the public good. An act, for Shaftesbury, is not good simply because it has a beneficial result, but because it is prompted by benevolent affections for the public good. He finds it, there- fore, necessary in determining the moral quality of conduct to go beyond the benefits derived, and get behind the covert action to the prompting affections; it is thus he would test a virtuous life. He calls that man virtuous, who controls and governs his nature according to principles, and consciously and deliberately chooses the best when his inclinations would lead him to choose the lesser good; 'the greater the struggle the more virtuous the 1. Regimen, 49. 2. Characteristics, vol. I, p. 267. 3. Ibid, vol. I, p. 250 The Individual and Society 41 man if he succeeds.' 1 (We have here an anticipation of Kant's conception of virtue.) In order that man may be guided in his choice of virtue, he is given an inward sense by which he recog- nizes intuitively the good from the bad, just as we recognize the beautiful from the ugly by an inner aesthetic sense. 2 In this restatement of the Hobbist psychology, Shaftesbury has given to us a psychological analysis of the human mind antipodal to the Hobbist psychology. It negates the anti-social in the in- dividual, and proves that man's social and benevolent affections are as much an original part of human nature as the self -regarding impulses, that the former makes possible a social state in which, through the harmonious blending of these passions, man achieves virtue and secures the highest good. SHAFTESBURY'S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE. We have seen that Shaftbury's psychology found a social as well as an egoistic motive in the will. That discovery showed him that the "Status Naturalis" of Hobbes was a fiction of his own mind; 3 for man's nature being social, a war of all against all in a state of nature would be impossible ; he therefore under- takes in his refutation of the Hobbist "Status Naturalis" not only to prove that man is a social being, but that without society he could not exist: and he refers to the helplessness of the human infant as proof that nature designed man for society. "A human infant is of all creatures the most helpless, weak and infirm. Does not that very fact engage him the more strongly to society and force him to own that he is purposely and not by accident made rational and social, and cannot otherwise increase or subsist than in that social intercourse and community which is his natural state?" 4 Man, as Shaftesbury sees him, could not live alone or seek his own independent good or even the exclusive good of his own state or nation, for he is a citi- zen of the world and his interests are bound up with the inter- ests of the whole world. "To be a man is to be a citizen of the world and to prefer the interests of the world." 5 As a further 1. Ibid, vol. I, p. 256. See "A System of Ethics," Paulson, p. 188, 423. 2. See "Method of Ethics," Sidgwick, p. 423, (1901). 3. Characteristics, vol. II, pp. 80-81. 4. Regimen, p. 188. Characteristics, vol. II, pp. 77, 82. 5. Ibid, p. n. 42 The Individual and Society proof of man's social nature and fitness for society, Shaftesbury points to the gregarious habits of animals. He speaks, for exam- ple, of "social animals," such as bears and ants, which he regards as political animals and creatures of a common stock. 1 'If nature has implanted in animals social instincts and kindly affection toward their kind, can we imagine her doing less for the human animal upon whom she has placed so many marks of her special favor.' 2 "Will she deny to man that kind of society which to every beast of prey is known to be proper and natural?" 3 Shaftes- bury finds in human nature al the ear marks of sociability, and he declares that a lack of sociability in man stamps him as unnatural and abnormal; there is no appetite in man's nature, he says, more natural to him than that of fellowship with his kind, for "if eating and drinking be natural so is herding, if any appetite of sense be natural then the sense of fellowship is natural." 4 Shaftesbury finds in man, as Grotius did, an "appet- itum sociatum," whose natural state was not isolated and brutish but social and benevolent, to whom society is as natural and indis- pensable as life itself. 5 Shaftesbury's whole attitude toward human nature is as opti- mistic as Hobbes' attitude was pessimistic. Human nature, for Shaftesbury, is not bad but good; badness is unnatural and is the result of "extraordinary means and the intervention of art by which it is suppressed but not conquered;" for 'even in the most vicious and illnatured, there is still some good' "which lies sullen and ready to revolt on the first occasion." 6 Shaftesbury, like Hobbes, proceeded on the assumption that the impulses which he found in man indicated his condition in a state of nature. Hobbes, seeing nothing in the human mind but self -regarding impulses, premises a state of nature of absolute egoism and isolation; Shaftesbury, who discovers in the will a social as well as an egotistic motive, declares that humanity had a social beginning, and sees in the altruistic tendencies of his 1. Characteristics, vol. II, p. 292. 2. Ibid, vol. II, p. 82. 3. Ibid, vol. II, p. 82. 4. Ibid, vol. I, p. 74. 5. Ibid, vol. II, pp. 80-81, 83. See also The Principles of Natural and Political Law, Burlamaqui, vol. I, pp. 37-3?, (1763). 6. Characteristics, vol. I, pp. 260-261. British Moralists, I, 47. The Individual and Society 43 nature, and not in fear, the basis of human society. In prov- ing his position, Shaftesbury shows that man cannot exist with- out society. That the individual good can only be secured through the public good. That virtue, which is for him the highest good, is only possible as the individual chooses the larger public good in preference to this own lesser good. That isolation, or a desire for it, indicates an abnormal state of mind and is as unnatural as it would be for the hand to refuse to act for the body j 1 there- fore, in view of man's inherent moral nature, his social impulses, his utter dependence upon the social order for his existence, Shaftesbury premises a social beginning for society as against the absolute egoism of Hobbes and his theory of the compact. MANDEVILLE'S RESTATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM. In the present attempt to relate the self to society we have observed how Hobbes sought to base human life upon the ego and its private affections, as a pyramid resting upon its apex. In opposition to this view, Cumberland and Shaftesbury attempted to reverse the argument and thus base life upon the social with the self as the apex. In these two opponents of Hobbes, egoism and altruism are placed side by side as though their respective claims were upon an equal footing. With the coming of Mande- ville, the egoistic argument received rehabilitation and new force; Mandeville, like Hobbes, assumes an egotistic basis for humanity; for him, as for Hobbes, egoism is the real spring of human action. 2 "Man never exerts himself but when he is roused by self interest. 3 There is nothing more evident and more universal as the creature's love for himself." Mandeville sees in actions, which mankind generaly regard as disinterested acts, traces of self interest, and deduces from the most altruistic deeds egoistic impulses. "The agent in every case," he says, "hopes to be more than compensated for his sacrifice by the honor which it brings or by some material good." 4 1. Regimen, p. n. 2. Fable of the Bees, (3rd ed., 1724), p. 199. 3. Ibid, pp. 219, 395, 401. 4. Ibid, pp. 42-43, p. 67. 44 The Individual and Society Like Hobbes and the moralists of the i8th century, Mandeville views society from the individualistic point of view, and like them he feels the necessity, not only of relating the individual to the social, but of explaining the origin of the social state. His per- verted conception of moral values made him reject the Hobbist compact as the origin of society, and his repudiation of Shaftes- bury's theory of social instincts made him seek in man another point of contact through which the ego and the alter might be related, and this he finds in the evil impulses of human nature. "What we call evil in this world, moral as well as natural, is the grand principle that makes us social." 1 He rejected the Shaftes- burian picture of man's goodness because it was untrue to human experience; 2 and he points out that had man possessed in his primitive state the social and benevolent qualities described in the "Characteristics" as the source of human society, he would have felt no need of society, and therefore would have made no move to create it. "No society could have sprung from the amiable virtues and loving qualities of man." 3 Mandeville turns away from the Shaftesburian origin of society, as he does from the Hobbist compact, and finds in man's baser nature and the multiplicity of his desires the origin of human society.* "Not the good and amiable, but the bad and hateful qualities of man, his imperfections and want of excellence with which other creatures are endowed are the first causes that made man social beyond the animals." 5 To Mandeville nothing was good or evil per se, it was the relation that one thing sustained to another that made it so : "things are only good or evil in reference to something else and according to the light and position they are placed in." 6 Mande- ville, like Hobbes, finds nothing original in virtue, but unlike the serious minded philosopher who sought to explain the mechanics of society in a fashion which should be trustworthy, the author of the "Fable of the Bees" misapplies the logic of the "Leviathan" 1. Ibid, p. 428. 2. Ibid, p. 372. 3. Ibid, p. 399- 4. Ibid, p. 369. 5- Jbid, p. 395- 6. Ibid, p. 426. The Individual and Society 45 and thus falsely concludes that the regard for virtue was not even a method, but only a device on the part of artful rulers. 1 He desumes all moral ideas from institutions, and denies to virtue an original moral content. Virtue, in the sense of a habit of acting for the benefit of others, or the conquest of our own nature contrary to the impulse of nature, does not, for Mande- ville, exist ; and the notion that it does exist and that it promotes the happiness and greatness of states, he calls a useful delusion, propagated by politicians for the purpose of civil government. The difference between the egoism of Hobbes and that of Mandeville, may be expressed by saying that the egoism of Hobbes was universal and as it were sincere, inasmuch as each sought his own because there was nothing else to be done. Hobbes was animated with a sincere desire to relate the individual to society, and thus save him from the evils of his isolation. In doing this, however, he does not resort to a mere device, but seeks to accomplish his end by a method which saves him from im- moralism. With Mandeville, however, no such method is pur- sued : egoism is for him a principle employed by the high-minded in their conflict with the lowly and humble. Where Hobbes advances the relativist standard of moral action, he does so with the idea of supplying a sincere moral method ; Mandeville, how- ever, uses relativism as a device, by means of which the strong foisted certain principles of beneficial action upon the weak. Furthermore, Mandeville passes from egoism to immoralism, as Hobbes had passed from egoism to relativism. That is to say, where Hobbes deduces a moral standard, its character can be criticised only by calling it inferior and low ; with Mandeville, the moral as such receives no recognition, its place being taken by an immoralistic ideal. Mandeville thus repudiates the moral standard, and like Nietzsche, sees nothing original in virtue ; it is a mere device by whch the high minded seek to impose their will upon the lowly and humble. MANDEVILLE'S ANTICIPATION OF NIETZSCHE. There seems to be in Mandeville's conception of virtue an anticipation of Nietzsche's transvaluation of values ; vice and not i. Value and Dignity of Human Life, Shaw, pp. 132-133- 46 The Individual and Society virtue is, for Mandeville, the source of individual good and public prosperity. Every part was full of vice, Yet the whole mass a paradise. Such were the blessings of the state, Their crimes conspired to make them great. 1 In his origin of morality there is a striking resemblance to the slave morality of Nietzsche, and his origin of the judgment good. It might not be amiss, at this point, to institute a comparison between Mandeville and Nietzsche, for indeed there is a more perfect resemblance between them than that evinced by Mandeville and Hobbes. This distinction reappears in the "Genealogy of Morals" where Nietzsche contrasts 'the noble, the powerful, the high-situated, the high-minded, with the low, low-minded, mean and vulgar/ Like Mandeville, Nietzsche does not find in the compact the origin of virtue. He is not concerned, as Hobbes was, to guard the moral standard, and therefore he does not need to seek a method in keeping with some recognized norm of morality. Like Mandeville, he repudiates the moral standard, and sets up an immoralistic ideal. Goodness is not an act of self- denial, but rather of self-assertion on the part of the powerful toward the less powerful. "The judgment good was not in- vented/' he says, "by those to whom goodness was shown, on the contrary, the good, that is the noble, the powerful and high-minded felt and regarded themselves and their acting as of first rank, in contradistinction to everything low, low-minded, mean and vulgar. Out of this pathos of distance, they took for themselves the right of creating values and of coining names for these values." 2 Mandeville finds the origin of the judgment good in a similar source, imposed upon the weak by the strong, upon the lowly and humble by the powerful and wise. "It is evident," says Mandeville, "that the first rudiments of morality broached by skillful politicians to render men useful to each other as well as tractable, were chiefly contrived that the ambitious might reap the more benefit from, and govern vast numbers of them with the greater ease and security." 3 Mandeville thus seeks in his psy- 1. Fable of the Bees, p. 9. 2. A Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche, pp. 19-20, (1907). 3. Ibid, p. 33. The Individual and Society 47 chology to show, as against Shaftesbury, that the whole life and charm of the social system rests solely upon the struggle which self-seeking individuals carry on in their own interest. The motive power of civilization, he holds, is solely egoism, and there- fore, we must not be surprsed if civilization displays its activity, not by heightening the moral qualities, but only by refining and disguising egoism. For Mandeville, as for Nietzsche, civilization hinders rather than advances man's happiness. The individual's happiness, he says, is as little enhanced by civilization as his morality. Mandeville does not find in the development of society or "good of the whole" the individual good that Shaftesbury found, but on the contrary, the development of the whole is ac- complished, he says only at the cost of the morality and happiness of the individual. Individual happiness, for Mandeville, is not the product of the "harmonious blending of the passions," but of the supremacy of the ego. Society, for him as for Nietzsche, stands in the way of individual development and morality, and the cunning device of rulers prevents him from being himself and living his own life. In our comparison of Mandeville and Nietzsche there is found a close resemblance between them in their conception of man and his place in society. Both writers find the origin of morality in self-assertion. The self-denial that made the compact pos- sible for Hobbes, and with it the invention of the concept good, is repudiated by Mandeville and Nietzsche. Furthermore, they see in the present standard of morality the real source of hypoc- risy, and in society the chief hindrance to self-realization, there- fore they seek through an immoralistic ideal the freedom and development of the ego. REFUTATION OF MANDEVILLE'S EGOISM. Although the brutal egoism of Mandeville which resolved all human affection into self-love, and virtue, into a mere device on the part of artful rulers, did not become the center of any formal controversy apart from the main current of discussion, never- theless it was met by several moralists of marked ability, among whom were Law, Hutcheson, Berkeley and Brown. William 48 The Individual and Society Law, who pointed out the paradoxes which abound in Mande- ville's work, presents the most detailed, and according to Les- lie Stephen, the ablest refutation of Mandeville's theories of any of his contemporaries. Law attacks principally the Mandevillian origin and relativity of virtue. He denies that an act is vicious or selfish because it is natural, and declares that an action is none the less virtuous because we are prompted to it by natural instincts, or by acquired habits. 1 He assails Mandeville's theory of relativity, and repudiates his statement "that virtue and vice are not permanent realities," but vary as other fashions, and are subject to no other law than that of fancy and opinion. Law asserts with great vigor, that moral virtue is founded on the immutable relations of things, in the perfection and attributes of God, and not in the pride and craft of cunning politicians; 2 and he maintains that you might as well ascribe man's erect posi- tion to the cunning flattery of politicians, as his virtue. 3 Brown makes a similar attack upon Mandeville's relativity and declares that virtue and vice are permanent realities "whose nature is fixed, certain and unvariable."* He also shows that the author of the "Fable of the Bees" is an unsound economist, for waste, he says, cannot contribute to the public good, nor theft bring prosperity to the commonwealth. Indeed, "it is very evident that the only essential consequence of private vice is public misery." 5 Berkeley's assault on Mandeville in his "Minute Philosopher," is not so much against his cynical egoism or his relativistic moral- ity, as it is against his false economical theories which make vice a public benefit. He points out that pride, instead of being a benefit, is prejudicial to a community, and immorality of all kinds is ruinous to the constitution of the individual, and destructive to the state. No commonwealth, he maintains, can profit by the extravagance and wastefulness of its citizens. Virtue, he says, is not a mere fashion or device, but implies obedience to the laws upon which man's physical and spiritual health depend. These moralists, in their refutation of Mandeville's theories, 1. Law's Works, vol. II, p. 20. 2. Ibid, p. 24. 3. Ibid, p. 20. 4. Essays on the Characteristics, John Brown, (1751), Essay II, sec. 4. 5. Ibid, sec. 5. The Individual and Society 49 directed their attack principally against his mechanical inven- tion of ethics, which reduced all virtue to a mere device as vari- able as the fashions, and against his theory of economics, which would build up a strong and prosperous state on the vices rather than the virtues of men. With Hutcheson, however, we have the point of attack directed more against his absolute egoism, against his assertion that all human action may, in the last analysis, be reduced to selfishness, and virtue to hypocrisy. 1 This concepton of human nature, Hutcheson repudiated by his asser- tion of disinterested benevolence. HUTCHESON'S IDEAL OF DISINTERESTED JUDGMENT. In their apology for the social instinct, whose presence had been denied by Hobbes and Mandeville, Cumberland and Shaftes- bury had done little more than to assert the possibility of an altruistic motive in the human will ; Hutcheson advances the social argument by placing it up on an intellectualistic basis, whence he is able to affirm, not only the presence of a social motive in the will, but a social principle of judgment in the intellect. Indeed, this was the onus probandi in the Hutchesonian ethics. In opposi- tion to Mandeville's assertion that all moral acts are judged in the light of private interest, Hutcheson claims that man is capable of a disinterested point of view in ethical judgment. 2 If men were incapable of such a judgment as Mandeville and Hobbes main- tained, why then, he asks, do they rejoice at the overthrow of a tyrant when such an exigency is prejudicial to their own interest? 8 Why do we admire the act of Cordus, from whom we reap no benefit, more than the act of the miser whose gold has been of great advantage to us, if we are incapable of disinterested moral judgment ; and why do we praise a gallant enemy who is very pernicious to us, if there is nothing in all this but an opinion of advantage ? 4 In opposition to Mandeville's contention that all our actions have their source in self -love, Hutcheson maintained that 1. See "Types of Ethical Theory," Martineau, pp. 518 and 538. 2. An Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil, pp. 125-127. 3. Ibid, pp. 117-118. 4. Ibid, p. 124, p. 119. 50 The Individual and Society many of our actions spring solely from a regard for others, and that in fact this is the case with all those of which on reflection we approve. He goes even a step further and says that the only quality either in our own actions or in those of others which commends itself to our approbation is their benevolence or unself- ishness. In his essay on the passions and affections he declares that there is absolutely no doubt that men desire the happiness of others when they have no thought that such happiness will in any way be advantageous to themselves. 1 Hutcheson found in every day experience many familiar instances of human conduct that could not be satisfactorily explained on any other basis save that of disinterested affections in the will. He could see no reason why a desire to promote the public good regardless of personal interest should not be as much a real element of our nature as any other desire. Indeed he saw in every walk of life empirical proof of its existence. He found men continually giving themselves up to tasks and ideals which could not have been prompted by self interest; and his knowledge of human nature convinced him that almost everyone takes an interest, more or less, in matters which in no way affect themselves, and are glad or sorry at this or that victory or defeat, though it does not affect in any way their own personal interest. Hutcheson denies the claims of Mandeville, that we seek virtue because of the concomitant pleasure and maintains that if we pursue virtue be- cause it is pleasant, then before we resolved to pursue it, there must have been a prior sense of virtue antecedent to any idea of advantage upon which the knowledge of this advantage is found- ed. Furthermore, some virtue or the practicing of some virtuous affections such as sorrow, anger, or compassion is not pleasant. 'It is not therefore, says Hutcheson, motives of self-love or inter- est, as the author of the "Fable of the Bees" affirms, but the frame of our nature which determines us to be thus affected and approves our being so/' 2 He further illustrates this social and benevolent motive in our will by pointing to the fact that the imminence of death often intensifies rather than diminishes a man's desire for the welfare of those he loves, adding as con- 1. Essay on the Passions and Affections, sec. I, p. 20, (1742). 2. Ibid, pp. 155-156. The Individual and Society 51 firmatory evidence of this disinterested affection, that the sympathy and admiration commonly felt for self sacrifice depends on the belief that it is something different from a refined self-seeking. He meets the argument of Mandeville, that 'a man's love for his child is prompted by self interest/ by showing that a parent's love for his child is antecedent to any conjunction of interest the cause and not the effect ; that nature, in short, determines him to have affection for them without any thought of personal ad- vantage ; and this same motive, though in a lesser degree, impels him to seek the public good. 1 For Hutcheson as for Cumberland and Shaftesbury, benevolence, which for him is synonomous with disinterested affection, is not an acquired habit but an innate motive of the human will. 2 He finds that man is not only a social creature but a creature capable of disinterested moral judgment and moral acts. He repudiates Mandeville's immoralistic ideal of virtue and defends an original sense of virtue antecedent to all interest. He contended for neither abstract rectitude nor concrete feeling, but allied himself with a view of virtue as something independent of private interest, but at one with the well-being of humanity. 3 This is finely expressed by saying "whence this secret chain between each person and mankind ? How is my interest con- nected with the most distant parts of it? and yet I must admire actions which are beneficial to them and love the author, whence this love, compassion, indignation and hatred toward even feigned characters in the most distant nations, according as they appear kind, faithful and compassionate, or of opposite dispositions toward their imaginary contemporaries. If there is no "moral sense," which makes rational actions appear beautiful or de- formed; if all approbation be from the interest of the approver 'what's Hecuba to us or we to Hecuba? "* Hutcheson does not agree with Shaftesbury in making virtue the result of the har- monious blending of our egoistic and altruistic impulses. Such a vew, he claims, is contradicted by the unconditional preference which our judgment always gives to sympathy, above all selfish inclinations. 'Our approval is won, not by a harmony among the 1. Ibid, pp. 160-161, p. 218. 2. Ibid, p. 239. 3. Value and Dignity of Human Life, Shaw, p. 223. 4. Inquiry, pp. 115-116. 52 The Individual and Society different affections, but by the predominance of purely disinter- ested love over all other impulses.' This victory of the altruistic impulses can occur only with the aid of a peculiar emotion which he calls the moral sense, an innate sense in man which associates itself with every benevolent instinct in him. 1 For Hutcheson, as for Shaftesbury, though perhaps in a more profound sense "the moral sense" is a feeling within us of immediate pleasure on the perception of certain acts and affections, and a feeling of im- mediate displeasure on the perception of their contraries, and has been planted in our nature as a guide to benevolence and virtue. It is, therefore, in itself a proof of a disinterested motive in the will and of a social principle of judgment in the intellect. Such a view of human nature disclaims and rejects the artificial and utilitarian ethics of Mandeville and Hobbes, 2 and finds the source of ethics in the very nature of man. For Hutcheson as for Cum- berland and Shaftesbury, man enters life with a social nature, and an intellect capable of forming disinterested ethical judgments. He finds in the human will a benevolent motive, and sees in the shame that follows a selfish act, and the condemnation of man- kind, of conduct prejudicial to others besides the actor, proof of man's original goodness and social virtues. THE REAPPEARANCE OF THE SOCIAL. Thus we find in Hutcheson's disinterested benevolence the reappearance of the social, with an added emphasis upon the altruistic nature of man, which to Hutcheson, is coterminous with human existence. Like Cumberland and Shaftesbury he repudi- ated the anti-social views of Hobbes and Mandeville, and en- deavored to prove not only that there is a social motive in the will, but that there is also a social principle of judgment in the intellect. From an a posteriori point of view he finds that the absolute egoism of Hobbes and Mandeville is at variance with the facts of human experience, and that a state of nature such as Hobbes had described would be impossible with human nature 1. Ibid, p. 200. 2. Ibid, pp. 136, 166. The Individual and Society 53 constituted as it is. "He found in the record of nature many a passage which the key of 'sensation and reflection' failed to un- lock: and boldly replaced among the primary data of humanity numerous springs of action and modes of feeling, which neither interest nor reason could be shown to evolve." 1 He agrees with Shaftesbury that man could not exist outside of society, but he goes further than the author of the "Character- istics," in his emphasis upon man's capacity for disinterested benevolence. He finds in mans' social instincts, as did Shaftes- bury, the origin and perpetuity of the social state, and sees in "the social virtues, the foundation of all apprehended excellen- cies." 2 He goes beyond his predecessors in his conception of the dignity and value of human nature, and sees in it the possibility to rise above all hedonic interest, though he does not, however, always maintain that high ideal. Hutcheson is interested not in the individual as such, nor in the social as such, but in the nobility of human nature and its power to rise above interest. Although Hutcheson's conception of human nature is individualistic, like that of his predecessors, his individual is however, a social self which has gained in dignity and worth and which is capable of rising above personal interests, and not only approving, but per- forming acts for the public good, which are prejudicial to its own private interests. BUTLER'S MODIFIED EGOISM. We have seen in the emphasis placed by the Hutchesonian ethics on the disinterested affections, a repudiation of the egoism of Hobbes and Mandeville. Butler following the Shaftesburian view of man's nature, emphasizes still further the social, and corrects the exclusive egoism of Hobbes, by pointing out first, that unselfish social affections and impulses are actual constituents of human nature, and secondly, that conscience, though not always obeyed, yet provides a motive tending to urge a man to sacrifice his own immediate interests for the public good. 1. Types of Ethical Theory, Martineau, p. 518. 2. An Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil, sec. 3. 54 The Individual and Society Butler looked upon the unregulative ego of the Hobbist type as nothing but a Psychological chimaera; 1 and found sufficient a posteriori proof in every day life to refute the ethics of the "Leviathan," and establish the thesis that the social affections are no less natural than the appetites and desires which tend more directly to self-preservation. 2 "We find that there are as real and the same kind of indications in human nature, that we were made for society and to do good to our fellow creatures, as that we were intended to care for our own life and health and private good: and the same objection may be raised against the one assertion as against the other. 3 The reality of the social affec- tions was, for Butler, as indisputable as human nature itself, indeed, he could not conceive of the one without the other. The very fact, he argues, that men try to point out a selfish motive in the will, is itself a proof that a social motive exists there : 'does not this very disapproval manifestly imply a belief that man's feelings may be, indeed ought to be other than selfish ; for how can we contemn a person for having selfish feelings only, if human nature admits no other?' The common application of the term selfish implies, as Whewell points out "a moral dis- approbation as well as a metaphysical analysis." 4 Butler accepts the premises laid down by his predecessors re- garding the social nature of the human will, and agrees with the conclusions that man is a social animal, whose propensities and instincts lead him to society and to seek its good; and he shows the falsity of the Hobbist war of all against all by proving that our nature even on its sensible side relates us to others, since we have affections within us which rest on the good of others as their object. He is, therefore, in perfect accord with the conclusions reached by the aesthetic intuitionists regarding man's benevolent propensities, and finds, as they did, that there is a natural principle of benevolence in man, which aims directly at the good of others and finds its satisfaction only in attaining that good. 5 Butler feels, 1. History of Ethics, Sidgwick, p. 193. 2. Sermon I, sec. 9, Gladstone ed. 3. Ibid, sec. 4. 4. Sermon II, sec. 4. 5. Sermon IX, sec. 7. The Individual and Society 55 however, that his predecessors, especially Hutcheson, in their eagerness to prove that man is a social creature and that he is capable of disinterested moral judgments and acts, have lost sight of the place that the ego holds in human life, and fearing lest man's neglect of his own interest may endanger his egohood, he therefore pleads for a reasonable self-love. It must be remem- bered, however, that cool self-love and selfishness are, for Butler, two very different principles of human nature, and are by no means identical terms. Selfishness is a passion that may lead the creature to its own ruin ; while a reasonable self-love leads it to act always for its own good and may at times demand for the performance of such an act, all the self-abnegation which even a Stoic would require. The cool self-love of the Butlerian type resembles more the self realization of the I9th century than it does the egoism of the Hobbist character. Butler's ego is a social ego that is more in danger of neglecting the interest of its own nature than it is that of the public. Unlike Hobbes and Mande- ville, Butler believed that the ego was weak and needed to be strengthened, and his defence of the ego is scarcely less startling than that of a Stirner or a Nietzsche. "If it be said," he urges, "that there are persons in the world who are without natural affections toward their fellow creatures, there are likewise in- stances of persons without the common natural affections to themselves . . . men as often contradict that part of their nature which respects self as they contradict that part of it which respects society; 1 and it is on this ground of the lack of egoism that Butler contends for a cool or reasonable self-love. Butler saw in the subordinate place given to the ego in the Hutchesonian ethics an undue emphasis placed on the social pro- pensities, which infringed upon the rights of the ego, whose weakness to assert its rights endangered its egohood; he there- fore seeks to place the ego on a level with the alter. In the two principles of self-love and benevolence, Butler recognizes the fundamental rational character of the egoistic and altruistic ten- dencies of human nature, and feeling that an injustice has been done to the former, he strives in his first sermon to place it on a footing of regulative equality with the latter; he would thus i. Sermon I, sec. 13-14. 56 The Individual and Society strengthen the principle of reasonable self-love by giving to it a certain aspect of the moral faculty, and further advance its inter- est by associating it with conscience and assigning to it a regula- tive equality with conscience itself : "reasonable self-love and conscience are the chief or superior principles in the nature of man ; because an; action may be suitable to this nature, though all other principles be violated; but becomes unsuitable if either of these are." 1 Thus we find though Butler raises conscience to a commanding position, he does not fail in his attempt to strengthen the ego, to place personal self-love on the same basis. He even goes so far as to say, as Sidgwick points out, that should a con- flict arise between them, conscience would have to give way. 2 In his sermon "Upon Love of our Neighbor" he seems to justify such an inference, for he there makes a statement which is still more sweeping in its exaltation of reasonable self-love than the one at the conclusion of Sermon III., quoted above; there cool self-love was apparently viewed as a principle coordinate with conscience, and benevolence seemed to be excluded from the dual sovereignty; here, however, not only benevolence but conscience itself is apparently made subordinate to the principle of reasonable self-love. "Let it be allowed, though virtue or moral rectitude does indeed consist in affection to, and pursuit of, what is right and good as such; yet, that when we sit down in a cool hour we can neither justify to ourselves this or any other, till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it." 3 Although Butler has been endeavoring to put increasing emphasis upon the importance of reasonable self-love, it is not his intention to reduce virtue to self-interest and individual happiness, as the above quotation would seem to suggest, but in giving to reasonable self-love the position he assigns to it, he would impress upon humanity the claims of the ego and the danger to society itself, if these claims are ignored. He would in this way strength- en the ego and give to it an equal place with that of benevolence, for in the harmony of these two fundamental principles of benev- olence and reasonable self-love, Butler recognizes the highest 1. Sermon III, sec. 13. 2. See Method of Ethics, Sidgwick, p. 366. 3. Sermon II, sec. 21. The Individual and Society 57 good for the self and the public: and by this conception of a social self and a common interest he transcends the dualism of interested and distinterested action, and finds in this common inter- est, the true point of contact with other selves ; for true self-love always looks to others, and true benevolence always looks to self, and virtue as the end of life is a good so complete that all indi- viduals alike find in it their common good and happiness. Reason- able self-love must not only have the same end as benevolence, but it must include benevolence, and to reverse the proposition, benevolence must include cool self-love. 2. THE CULMINATION OF THE SOCIAL IN THE i8TH CEN- TURY IN HUME. In Hume we reach not only the culmination of the social in the individual begun by Cumberland and Shaftesbury, and the nega- tion of the anti-social in the race, but in his philosophy the critical examination of knowledge begun by Locke, reaches its culminating point in the English school of the i8th century. H,ume instituted an examination into the two concepts which formed the foundation of all earlier philosophy the concepts of substance and causality which neither Locke nor Berkeley had seriously attacked, and he denies the validity of both concepts. Following Locke, Hume, in his epistomology, bases all knowledge upon experience and gives to reason, which he calls the salve of our passions, but a very subordinate place : reason, he says, com- bines ideas but gives no knowledge of reality. 1 In his attitude toward God, substance and causality, Hume assumes a sceptical attitude. His scepticism, however, resembles more the positivism of Comte, whom he seems to anticipate, 2 than it does the intellect- ual nihilism of Gorgias, whose scepticism would make knowl- edge impossible. Although Hume does not deny the existence of God, his final word regarding the deity is one of doubt and uncertainty. His inability to find anything in the mind except sensations made him sceptical regarding the self. "When I 1. See Treatise, Bk. II, part III, sec. 3. 2. See Problems of Human Life. Euchen, p. 422. -^i < 58 The Individual and Society enter, he says, most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or another of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hate, pain or pleasure/' 1 and consequently he concluded that what we call the self or personality, was noth- ing but a collection of different perceptions which precede each other rapidly and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Believing as he did that all our ideas were derived from impressions, and finding no impression corresponding to the concept of substance he therefore declared that the idea of substance was invalid. "We immediately perceive only particular qualities bound together more or less firmly, but no substance." It is, however, in estab- lishing the problem of causality that his greatest achievement in philosophy consists; here Hume's scepticism reaches its highest point, for it questions the validity of all knowledge which lies beyond the given impressions. Hume would answer the queston "is not the validity of causal relations founded in experiences," by declaring that experience only shows us that one event follows another but does not exhibit any causal relation, effects, he held, were entirely distinct from causes and were not contained the one in the other. "The motion of one billiard ball is altogether distinct from the motion of another billiard ball." It is custom alone that leads us to associate a certain cause with a certain effect, for after we have frequently observed one phenomenon following another we involuntarily expect the former the next time the latter occurs ; but this is custom, says Hume, and does not justify us in concluding from the past to the future. The fact that up to the present we have always observed that fire burns, does not prove a causal relation between fire and burn ; there may come a time when fire will not burn. This sceptical attitude which Hume assumed toward dogmatic metaphysics is wholly abandoned by him in his moral philosophy : here, in dealing with the problem of morality, he shows himself as the empiricist only, not the sceptic, and maintains that the laws of human nature are capable of just as exact empirical investiga- tion and scientific proof as those of external nature, and there- i. Treatise, Bk. I, part 4. The Individual and Society 59 fore, bases his ethics on feeling 1 instead of reason, which he elimin- ates in the sphere of practice just as he had curtailed her rights, in favor of custom and instinct, in the theoretical field. 2 In his earlier work the "Treatise" this feeling is egoistic, but in his later and more mature ethics the "Enquiry" it is social. When Hume wrote his "Treatise" he was evidently in sympathy with the views of his age regarding the origin of society, and in his treatment of the natural and artificial virtues, was doubtless in- fluenced by the individualistic conception of society which so dominated the ethics of the i8th century, for he seems to base his distinctions between them on the erroneous idea that men were once in a state of nature when there was no custom, tradi- tion or education, and that virtues in that state were natural, being spontaneous. 3 This view, however, he appears to repudiate in his "Enquiry," for he omits the distinctions between the virtues alto- gether, and declares that all disputes about the meaning of artificial and natural are merely verbal. 4 Furthermore, in his "Treatise" he does not admit that altruism is native to man or that he can have anything but an egotistic love for others, 5 but in his "Enquiry" he assumes not only a certain degree of native altruism and original sympathetic tendency in human nature/ but declares that the will is capable of disinterested benevolence, and this he seeks to prove by the evidence of social and benevolent instincts in animals. "For if we admit a disinterested benevolence in inferior species, then by what rule of analogy can we refuse it in the superior ... we shall find that the hypothesis which allows of a disinterested benevolence distinct from self-love is more conformable to the analogy of nature than that which pre- tends to resolve all friendship and humanity into this latter prin- ciple" 7 "for the voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose the selfish theory." 8 I have pointed out this apparent 1. See "Enquiry," app. pp. 264-265, 248-249, sec. 9, part I. 2. See "Treatise," Bk. Ill, part I, sec. i. 3. Ibid, Bk. Ill, part II, sec. 2. 4. See "Enquiry," part I, sec. 9, p. 247, Note. 5. Treatise III, part II, sec. i. 6. See Enquiry, part I, sec. 9, p. 247. 7. Enquiry, app. 2. 8. Enquiry, part I, sec. 5, p. 204. Enquiry, part I, sec. 9, p. 249. 60 The Individual and Society change of view in Hume's conception of ethics because that it emphasizes the fact that in his latter work, Hume is evidently struggling aganst the individualism of his age and seems to have grasped in his more mature work, though somewhat imperfectly, the continuity of the race and the corporate life of the community. The point upon which he insists in his "Enquiry" is the neces- sarily social nature of human desires and propensities : for though Hume is sceptical in his metaphysics regarding the self he has no doubt whatever in his "Enquiry" regarding the social. His criticism of contemporary egoism is that when the term egoism is stretched to include all human motives it loses its meaning. "Whatever contradictions may vulgarly be supposed between the selfish and social sentiments and dispositions they are really no more opposite than selfish and ambitious, selfish and revengeful, selfish and vain. It is requisie that there be an original propen- sity of some kind in order to be a basis of self-love, by giving a relish to the object of its pursuit; and there is none more fit for this purpose than benevolence or humanity." 1 The important point in the above quotation is not so much the denial of egoism as the only motive of the will, for Cumberland, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and others had done that, but the fact that Hume here adopts the view that man has a nature which may realize itself quite as much in acts which make for the good of society at large as in those which are dictated by egoism alone. Further- more, Hume sees in the essential social nature of man one of the fundamental principles upon which government is established. "Force," he says, "is on the side of the governed" 'and if men were not social by nature, easily influenced, fond of following a leader, acting in masses, and sharing the communal opinion and thought, there could be no government;' "it is this same social disposition, that leads men to submit to their rulers and live in peace and harmony." 2 Hume here and in his eassy on "Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature" repudiates the H^obbist origin of society and the unmitigated selfishness of man, 3 and bases the 1. Enquiry, part II, sec. 9. 2. See Essay on the Principles of Government, vol. I, pp. no-in Green and Grose ed. 3. Ibid, vol. i, pp. I54~ T 55- The Individual and Society 6l social state not on fear as did Hobbes but on the social disposi- tion of human nature. In dealing with the origin of justice Hume attacks the contract theory and shows that law, property, and the sacredness of con- tracts exist first in society, but not first in the state, and while the obligation to observe contracts is indeed made stronger by the civil law and civil authority, it is not created by them. Hume says that law arises not from a formal contract but from a tacit agree- ment, a sense of common interests, and this agreement in turn proceeds from an original propensity to enter into social rela- tions. 1 HUME'S OPPOSITION TO THE HOBBIST "STATUS NATURALIS." Hume looked upon the Hobbist "Status Naturalis" as a mere fiction not unlike the "golden age'' which poets have invented, only that the latter is represented as the most charming and most peaceful conditon that the imagination can depict, while the former is described as one of mutual war and violence. Hume therefore denies the existence of a state of nature such as poetical fancy has pictured and philosophical fiction has described, but feels, however, that if a state of nature ever did exist it must have been more like the "golden age" than that which the Leviathan sets forth. Concerning the Hobbist "Status Naturalis,'' he says, "whether such a condition of human nature could ever exist or if it did, could continue so long as to merit the appella- tion of a state may justly be doubted." 2 Like Cumberland, Hume felt that had men lived in a state of nature in "mutual war, violence and distrust" they never could have formed a social state, 3 and the fact that men were capable of doing so proves that the un- social and lawless state of nature is a philosophical fiction, and substantiates the assumption that man has always been a social being "born into a family-society" upon whom no greater punish- ment can be imposed than that of enforced isolation. 1. See Enquiry, app. Ill, pp. 272-278. 2. Enquiry, part I, sec. 3, p. 185. 3. See Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature, pp. 150-156- Original Contract, pp. 443-460. 62 The Individual and Society HUME'S IDEAL OF SYMPATHY. Hume's theory of sympathy is primarily designed to explain how an indivdual, whose experience is absolutely confined to his own feelings, can yet acquire such an interest in the feelings of other individuals as to form a society in which his own feelings are subordinated to that of others. In dealing with sympathy, Hume regards only its objective side : we feel sympathy with moral actions, he says, even when they do not affect us by putting ourselves in the place of those who are benefited. But although sympathy, in spite of its emotional basis, is thus given a utilitarian tendency, it is not a utility that is synonomous with self-interest, for Hume has in mind a utility that embraces public good as well as private interest. 1 It is the usefulness of an act whether to ourselves or to others that we sympathize with, and not because it gives us pleasure; a benevolent act will give us pleasure, but we do not perform the act for the pleasure it will give; the act is antecedent to the pleasure, for example, Hume assumes that it is possible to enter into the feelings of another man by sympathy, and this assumption he uses to explain the incon- sistency between the theory that the virtue of an act is nothing but the pleasure it gives us, and the admitted fact that we often approve of actions which are decidedly hurtful to us and ad- vantageous to our enemies. We sympathize he says, with the supposed pleasures which a quality or character gives the pos- sessor, as we do with the supposed pleasure of the owner of a useful article, and furthermore, that transferred pleasure is suffi- cient to overcome the pleasure we feel in surveying qualities useful to ourselves, and to raise in us a disapproval of our own unjust though profitable actions. Hume bases our moral judgments upon the feeling of sympathy, (which he calls in the "Enquiry," benevolence) and he defines it as an interest in the well-being of others which nature has implanted within us. In speaking of this internal sense or feeling which nature has made universal in our species, there is a lack of clearness in his thought, and one might at first imagine this internal sense or feeling to be no other than the moral sense of Hutcheson, but a more careful study shows that such is not his i. Enquiry, part II, sec. 5, pp. 216-217. The Individual and Society 63 meaning, (as is shown in his first app. to "Enquiry") for Hume does not find it necessary to assume a moral sense, since he regards sympathy as the basis of moral sentiments; he therefore defines that feeling which nature has made universal, as sympathy or humanity. 1 Furthermore, Hume bases the virtue of an act upon our natural feelings rather than upon a moral motive. As a heteronomist Hume saw the fallaciousness of basing morality upon morality, and therefore, he declares that "an action must be virtuous before we have a regard to its virtue. ... In short, it may be established as an undoubted maxim that no action can be virtuous or morally good unless there be in human nature some motive to produce it distinct from the sense of its morality." 2 In this calm statement of heteronomy Hume anticipates Kant's contrary argument (that an act is not virtuous unless it is done from a moral motive) by nearly a half a century. Although Hume in his "Treatise" seems to give to this "natural and uni- versal feeling" an egoistic origin, nevertheless when he speaks of it as benevolence in his "Enquiry," its original derivation from self-interest alone is discarded by him or at least is kept very far in the background. Hume finds from an inductive study of human experience con- clusive evidence that man is capable of a disinterested moral judgment. 3 Berzellotti quotes Lackey and Bain, writers, he says, whose authority cannot be doubted, as declaring that Hume stands out as one of the exponents of disinterested affection, 4 and Whewill points out that one of the elements in Hume's system of ethics which gives his principles of morals such high merit is "his conclusive argument for human disinterestedness." 5 While it is true that Hume's sympathy differs from the emotion of benevolence and universal love for humanity, on which Hutcheson had based his ethical theory, nevertheless, it has the same common aim, for both further the existence of disinterested moral judg- ments and acts. 6 1. "Enquiry," app. I, p. 259. 2. Treatise, Bk. Ill, part II, sec. I. 3. Enquiry, app. 2. 4. Ethics of Positivism, Barzellotti, pp. 112-113, (1878). 5. A Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, p. 231, (1836). 6. Treatise, Bk. Ill, part I, sec. 3. See also Wundt's Ethical Systems, p. 76, (1897). 64 The Individual and Society Hume in rejecting the Hobbist origin of morals and in re- pudiating the contention of both Hobbes and Mandeville, that man is not capable of unselfish acts or disinterested moral judg- ments, declares that such a view can be very easily disproved by a "crucial experiment" on the play of our moral sentiments; and as a further proof he points, like Hutcheson, to the fact that we frequently bestow praise on virtuous acts performed in very distant ages and remote countries and even a brave deed per- formed by an adversary commands our approbation, though its consequences may be acknowledged prejudicial to our particular interest. 1 Hume looked upon the instinctive sympathy with which nature has endowed us, as a "principle in human nature beyond which we cannot hope to find any principle more general." Sympathy in Hume's system takes the place of Hutcheson's "moral sense" and Butler's "conscience," and is the one element in our nature by which we are led' to approve or disapprove moral acts. In the element of sympathy Hume finds not alone the basic principle of his system of ethics but the clearest proof of man's sociability. So conclusive for him is the evidence of our social nature that all our acts are declared by him good or bad in pro- portion as they are useful in promoting the public good. 2 But that is not the chief reason why we find in him the culmination of the social in the i8th century, for other moralists had recognized the social instinct in man and by means of it, in the form of benevolence (Cumberland) or native sociality (Shaftesbury), disinterested moral judgments (Hutcheson) or conscience (But- ler"), had endeavored to relate the individual to the social, but because he recognized not alone the social nature of the individual but also the social nature of the race. Hume saw, though some- what obscurely, that this universal principle, this internal sense was the one touch of nature that gave to society an organic rather than an atomic life. 3 Hampered and circumscribed by the thought of his day Hume finds it difficult to break away from the individ- ualistic conceptions of his age, and is led at times to unduly emphasize the ability of the individual, say of a genius, to mould 1. Enquiry, part I, sec. 5, 2. Enquiry, sec. 9. 2. Enquiry, part I, sec. 9, pp. 248-249. The Individual and Society 65 the character of his age; but even here Hume so far transcends the abstract individualism of his day as to recognize the corporate life of the community and the dependence of the individual, however great, upon the influence of his social environment. 1 To have seen the relation which the present holds to the past and the utter dependence of the individual, though a genius, upon both the social environment and former institutions for his fitness to perform his work, and that too in an age so dominated by the atomic theory of society, is a fact which is surely worthy of onr notice; and all the more so when we remember that the results which the evolutionary study of literature has since yielded and the historical continuity and interdependence of one age upon another, which our more recent historians have pointed out with varying degrees of success, were all unknown to Hume. That he should have grasped the historical continuity and stability of society and recognized that each generation was heir to the institutions and customs already established by its predecessors (as he undoubtedly does in his "Original Contract" 2 was a long step toward the ideas of the iQth century with its racial solidarity and organic conception of society. Hume's attitude toward the historical method has been criticised by some because of his failure not only to appreciate fully the social relations and the plasticity of the individual, but because he could never quite free himself from the individualism of his age. But a careful study of his views regarding society will show that, though he may have failed to grasp the full content of the historical method, he did not fail to recognize, at least to some degree, the corporate life of society, and to 'contribute to the historical method a more adequate conception of the social nature of the individual and of the organic structure of society, than was generally prevalent among his contemporaries.' If in Cumberland and especially in Shaftesbury we find the first negation of the anti-social in the individual, so in Hume we have the first negation of the anti-social in the race. The positivism of Comte is not only anticipated in the scepticism of Hume but his racial soli- 1. See Essay Rise of Arts and Sciences, vol. I, pp. 176-177. Green & Grose ed. 2. Essay Of the Original Contract, vol. I, p. 452. Green & Grose ed 66 The Individual and Society darity is foreshadowed in the essays of the Scotch sceptic. The organic life of the race which Hume saw "as through a glass darkly," the moralists of the I9th century saw "face to face;" and it is their development of that truth which marks the sharp distinc- tion between the social concepts of the i8th and iQth centuries and gives to us an organic instead of an individualistic conception of society. The ethical theories of Hume and Smith taken together mark the culmination of the social in the i8th century. Smith, though indebted to Hutcheson and especially to Hume for his idea of sympathy, which is the key of his system, develops it independ- ently; his application and explanation of the principle is thor- oughly original, and he finds in it, as we shall see later in our study of his system, the true point of contact between the self and the other self. 1 If it be said that in Hume's scepticism we have an anticipation of Comte's positivism, so with equal right it may be said, that in Smith's sympathy we have an anticipation of Darwin's treatment of conscience and the social concept. ADAM SMITH. The two books through which Adam Smith is best known and appreciated as a thinker, are his "Theory of the Moral Senti- ment," (1759) and his "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." (1776) One would hardly suspect from the former work the standpoint which he assumes in the latter. (The two books seem radically opposed to each other in their conception of society and the place which the ego occupies in the social order. In his ethics, the individual must recognize the supremacy of society, and flatten the sharpness of his natural tone to meet its approval; 2 while in his economics, society must take a subordinate place and keep her hands off the individual in his efforts at self realization. V 'In fact all intervention of the state, whether it be in the way of help or hindering economic processes, is, under normal conditions, an evil." As a political economist Smith makes the chief motive of human action to con- 1. Constructive Ethics, Courtney, pp. 94-95, (1886). 2. Theory of the Moral Sentiment, Part I, sec. i. The Individual and Society 67 sist in a prudent calculation guided by egoistic interests ; but as a moralist he bases his whole theory on the feelings, and among the feelings he makes altruism supreme. {Sympathy is the funda- mental principle of his ethics, but the acquisitive instinct is the basis of his political economy.) An egoistic utility is therefore the main spring of action in his "Wealth of Nations," while in his "Theory of the Moral Sentiment" he makes a disinterested impulse (or sense of propriety) precede all thought of utility and bases moral approval neither on direct nor indirect utilitarian- ism. 1 Hoffding fails to see any contradiction in the two works and says "the fact that both were originally parts of one and the same course of lectures does not harmonize with any view of conflict between them, and furthermore, he adds, sympathy with human life in every phase forms the basis of Smith's political economy; it covers the effort of laborers to secure better wages as well as the effort of employers to increase production. His ethics is, therefore, in internal harmony with his economics." 2 It seems to us, however, on the contrary that the emphasis placed) on the independence of the individual and the subordinate posi- tion which he gives to society in his "Wealth of Nations" is out of harmony with the part which society is made to play in his "Theory of the Moral Sentiment" and warrants us in asserting that the point of view in the former is individualistic while that of the latter is social. SMITH'S SOCIAL THEORY OF THE MORAL SENTIMENT. Smith proceeds in his "Theory of the Moral Sentiment" on the assumption that the social and altruistic feelingsi dominate human action, and finds in the simple and natural feeling of sympathy the origin of the moral sentiment. Martineau rejects this concep- tion of the moral sentiment and declares that "it is no less impossible in ethics to resolve moral sentiment into sympathy than in optics to treat of reflection of light without any incidence." 5 Hlume, by his emphasis upon this element of sympathy which he 1. Theory of the Moral Sentiment, Part IV, chap. 2, Part VII, chap. I. 2. A Brief History of Philosophy, Hoffding, p. 114. 3. Types of Ethical Theories, vol. II, p. 185. 68 The Individual and Society found in human nature and by his conception of a state of nature so antipodal to that of the Hobbist "Status Naturalis," put an end to the Hobbist theory of ethics. Influenced by the ethical theories of Hume and especially by his conception of sympathy, Smith follows up the idea of sympathy suggested by Hume and de- velops it more fully than his predecessor: "dispensing with all Hume's elaborate machinery for transferring into ourselves the pleasure of another person in things useful to him" he develops the simple element of sympathy and makes it the fundamental principle of his whole system. Smith in his treatment of the subject is more concerned with the psychology of sympathy than he is with its metaphysics. He regards sympathy as the ultimate element into which moral sentiment may be analyzed and holds that there is no ground for assuming a peculiar "moral sense;" and finds in the simple feeling of sympathy all that is necessary for the basis of moral judgments. Smith reached this conception of moral judgment by recognizing the full bearing of a thought which Hume had expressed, that Amoral judgment depends on participation in the feelings of the agent^ and with fine psycholog- ical observation he followed out this sympathy of men from its first to its last manifestations. He begins with the simple feeling of sympathy and refers to our instinctive imitation of the ges- tures and behavior of others as a proof of this natural element with which human nature is endowed. When we go through all the motions of a person walking on a tight rope, or when we feel as we look on a beggar with sores, an itching sensation at the corresponding parts in our own body, or feel a tightening of our muscles when we see a blow aimed at another, we instinctively and naturally put ourselves into the other person's place. 1 Here at this first stage of sympathy which is purely psychological and natural, the spectator sympathizes with the feelings of the agent, with the gratitude or anger of the person affected by the action, and the person observed sympathizes in turn also with the imita- tive and judging feelings of the spectator. There seems at first in Smith's system of ethics no limit to our natural and spon- taneous feelings; he finds in the simple element of sympathy all i. Theory of the Moral Sentiment, Part I, sec. I. The Individual and Society 69 the facts necessary for the origin of moral approval ;(^ut later he is confronted with the fact that in human experience the spectator cannot always respond to the excessive emotions of others who long for sympathy and in order to secure it they find it necessary to flatten the sharpness of their natural tone so as to reduce it to harmony and concord with the emotions of those who are about them, 1 therefore Smith introduces a sense of propriety by which he would limit that natural and simple element of sympathy which at the beginning seemed all that was necessary for his theory of the moral sensej It seems to us that in limiting our simple and natural feelings of sympathy, Smith has departed from his former assumption that the simple element of sympathy was all that was necessary for his ethical system. It is true that feeling is still, with Smith, the basis and source of our moral sentiments and approbation, but it is no longer the simple ele- ment of sympathy with which he began, and which in its very nature was spontaneous and unlimited, but a compound feeling which deepnds on other elements for its stimulation. This, however, does not affect the fundamental principle of his ethics for sympathy is still with him the foundation of his social theory of the moral sentiment the source and origin of our moral judg- ments. THE ETHICS OF SYMPATHY. Smith, as we have seen, was indebted to Hume for the idea of sympathy which he makes the source of our moral sentiment, but he differs from Hume and goes beyond him in his treatment of the feelings. Sympathy, for Smith, has a broader and deeper meaning than it had for his predecessor ; he is not satisfied with regarding simply the objective side of sympathy as was Hume, but goes a step further and completes the conception by adding to it the subjective aspect as well. Hume declared that we sympa- thize with moral actions which do not affect ourselves, by putting ourselves in the place of those with whom we sympathize, but Smith says we feel sympathy with moral actions not only because I. Theory of the Moral Sentiment, Part I, sec. I. 7 The Individual and Society we put ourselves in the place of the person affected, but because we enter into the spirit of the agent. Sympathy, being for Smith the ultimate element into which moral sentiments may be analyzed, takes largely the place in his system that the "moral sense" held in the ethics of Hutcheson. It is for him the basis of our benevo- lent and social nature and the ground of our moral judgment; it is the means, he says, by which we enter into another's mind and estimate its contents and set up a moral standard of judg- ment. 1 So fundamental is sympathy to Smith that he cannot con- ceive a person so low and hardened as not to have it. 'The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society is not altogether without it." 2 This conception of sympathy which Smith had, enables him to consider the ethical possibilities in the human relation between man and society, and leads him to see that man is capable of a disinterested moral judgment. He can stand aside as a disinterested spectator and by means of sympathy, which he says is a natural endowment in all men, he instinctively changes places with the sufferer. 3 Smith, in describing the actions best calculated to arouse sympa- thy within us, introduces the higher notion of merit. Propriety, he says, arises from a direct sympathy with the feelings and motives of the person who acts : merit is occasioned by an in- direct sympathy with the gratitude and resentment of the person who is acted upon. 4 The sense of duty arises from putting our- selves in the place of others and adopting their sentiments re- specting our own conduct ; moral judgments being impartial, we apply to ourselves the standard that we apply to others and con- demn in ourselves that which in our cool moments we would condemn in another as unjust : duty, therefore, stands above the me and the myself and makes us judge impartially as per dia- I grain, 5 generosity^^--^^" "^~~- ^^^^gratitude me myself anger resentment 1. Ibid, part I, chap. 2. 2. Ibid, part I, chap. i. 3. Ibid, part I, chap. I. 4. Ibid, part II, sec. i, chap. 5. Ibid, part III, chap. i. The Individual and Society 71 We are thus capable not only of entering into another's feelings but we can stand apart and in the attitude of a spectator view our own acts with approval or disapproval : here Smith divides the ego into two persons, one who judges and the other who is judged ; and it is this impartial spectator within the breast which at last finds itself in> the place of conscience deciding for or against, re- gardless of the agent's personal feelings. This conscience of sympathy, moreover, not only holds the position of authority but it lays down rules which are the commands and laws of the Deity, 1 such as conception of conscience and its relation to God saved Smith from the utilitarian tendency of Hume. The final judgment of the merit of an act rests, for Hume, on its external object; for Smith, it rests upon the disposition. We cannot, he says, be moved to sympathy with another's act unless we are convinced that it springs from a moral disposition. Motive and not utility is the determining principle of an act for Smith, 2 and in that principle he finds, as did Hutcheson, a disinterested motive in the human will, as well as the capability of disinterested moral judgments in the intellect. In his conception of sympathy, Smith corrects the egoistic psychology of Hobbes, by showing that he was in error in attribut- ing to sympathy a selfish content; "when I enter into sympathy' with another I not only change circumstances, he says, "with that person but I change persons and character. My grief, therefore, is entirely on his account and not in the least upon by own. It is not, therefore, in the least selfish. How can that be regarded as selfish passion which does not arise even from the imagination of anything that has befallen or that relates to myself in my own proper person and character, but which is entirely occupied * about what relates to you." 3 SMITH'S ANTICIPATION OF DARWIN. In his treatment of conscience and remorse, Smith anticipates the social conscience of Darwin. Conscience, for Smith as for 1. Ibid, part III, chap. I, chap. 5. 2. Ibid, part IV, chap. 2, p. 303. 3. Ibid, part VII, sec. 3, chap. i. /2 The Individual and Society Darwin, is a sense of man's agreement or disagreement with humanity; any act of impropriety on the part of the agent will be frowned upon by society and produce a sense of disapproval and shame in the agent. He who does a wrong act, says Smith, to another to gratify his own passions, must not expect that the spectators, who have none of his undue partiality to his own interest, will enter into his feelings, In such a case he knows that they will pity the person wronged and be full of indignation against him. When he is cooled he adopts the sentiment of others on his own crime, feels ashamed at the impropriety of his former passion, pity for those who have suffered by him and a dread of punishment from general and just resentment produces in him a feeling of remorse. 1 Memory and shame are for Smith the con- stituent part of conscience and remorse. The memory that we have committed an act of impropriety will produce a sense of shame within us, as the memory of an unjust act, which spectators would condemn, produces in us a sense of remorse. Darwin fol- lows Smith in his explanation of the social conscience, the feel- ing of self-reproach or remorse. Given an animal with several instincts, some transient and intermittent, others persistent, so related as to be liable to conflict, and with also intelligence enough to secure memory of the past and reflection upon its images, and the feeling of remorse, Darwin assures us, is certain to follow. For the most persistent of instincts in a creature thus far de- veloped will be the social feeling of attachment to the community in which he lives ; but stronger than this will often be by fits and starts some paroxysm of passing want or passion, as of hunger or of rage, so that his will is swept away by the more vehement assault. Afterwards, when these desires are satisfied and in their absence the durable affection returns and makes him conscious of the hurt it has sustained, he cannot but experience in this changed mood regret for his short-sighted conduct : his temporary satisfaction has entailed on him a permanent pain/, and the memory of his impropriety has made him ashamed of his act, so that he resolves that in the future he will control his passion. Such is Darwin's account of conscience, or more properly in the Darwin- ian sense, what we might call remorse. Memory and shame are i. See Ethical Philosophy, Mackintosh, p. 165. The Individual and Society 73 with Darwin as with Smith, the principal constituents of con- science, and these are made possible for the former as for the latter, by putting ourselves in the place of the spectators and judging our conduct by their standard. This anticipation of Darwin by Smith exactly a century before the "Origin of Species," must be regarded as extraordinary, especially when it is remembered that his leading principle was the simple feeling of sympathy. II. THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL ETHICS. i. THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL. We have endeavored to trace through the enlightenment the attempt of the British moralists to refute the exclusive egoism of Hiobbes, by proving that man was a social creature whose benevo- lent instincts led him to form a social state. This attempt to prove, what ought to have been self-evident, was due as the subsequent part of this thesis will show to a wrong conception t the relation of the individual to his social environment, a con-J >tion which regarded society as an aggregate of individuals I "T chanically cohering like atoms or molecules in inorganic matter. * e weakness of this view became obvious, as Muirhead points out, when the question was asked, how the atoms, which accord- - ? ing to such a theory constituted society, came together. To meet this question the moralists of the i8th century, as we have seen, had recourse not only to the mythical contract theory, but to the ' social and benevolent instincts which they found in man, and through which they endeavored to explain the origin of society. It is true that these moralists had, as we have pointed out, momen- tary glimpses of a possible organic society, but not in the sense in which the I9th century moralists viewed man's organic rela- tions to the social order, for they never could rise above the thought of their day which found reality alone in the individual and saw in society an aggregate of individuals cohering to- gether through fear as in the case of Hobbes, and for social and benevolent purposes, as in the case of those who opposed his absolute egoism; for both Hobbes and his opponents, the indi- vidual was the starting point not only of a social state, but of reality itself, and while they differed as to the nature of the egos composing society and the instincts which led them to form it, 74 The Individual and Society they agreed as to the nature of society itself. It was this indi- vidualistic conception of society as an aggregate of homogeneous units that prevented them from recognizing the fact that man was already a part of a social organism and required no effort on their part to relate him to a social order, from which he had never been separated and to which he was related not as a soldier to an army but as a member to an organism. It is this con- ception of society as an organism that marks the sharp distinction between the ethical theories of the i8th century and those of the 1 9th. The moralists of the iQth century turn away from the individualistic conceptions which prevailed all through the en- lightenment, and by means of the historical method, as in France and Germany, and evolution, as in the English school, they prove that the individual never stood alone, that he owes his life and development to others, that he is a member of society by virtue of his own inherent nature and the fact that he is a man. 1 This view of humanity was a reaction from the individualism of the 1 8th century, which came to an end in Rousseau, whose indi- vidualistic view of life was the last quintessence of a philosophy which found reality alone in the individual and terminated in the French Revolution. COMTE'S POSITIVISM AND SOCIALISM. It is to Comte, more than to any other thinker of his age, that we are indebted for the emphasis which the I9th century placed upon the social, in opposition to that placed by the i8th century upon the individualistic nature of society, and this emphasis is due, in part at least, to his theory of historical progress, which recognizing the continuity and solidarity of society, links the individual to the past, to which he owes his existence and develop- ment. Caird shows how fundamental to Comte's whole system is man's historical relation to his own and preceding ages. The life of the individual in any age, he says, is what it is by reason of the whole progressive movement of humanity. 2 It is true that 1. See Comte, Mill and Spencer, Watson, (1895), pp. 148-149. 2. The Social Philosophy of Comte, Caird, (1898), 2nd ed. p. 25. See also Review of Evolutional Ethics, Williams, (1893), p. 122. Value and Dignity of Human Life, Shaw, p. 376. See Article in the American Journal of Sociology, Jan., 1912, by Cooly, which shows the influence of this historical continuity on pecuniary and social values. The Individual and Society 75 we find in Hegel the recognition of the part which the social played in the moulding of the individual and his indebtedness to past generations for the development of the present, nevertheless it is to Comte, as Croom Robertson points out, that we are in- debted for the first clear comprehensive view of the solidarity of society and man's indebtedness to the past. 1 Martineau declares that the distinctive feature of Comte's moral system is his theory of society which regards it as a unit and not a theory of personal conduct, such as the moralists of the i8th century conceived it to be and according to which each individual is a separate factor. 2 Such a recognition of society as an organism a unit, and the individual of the enlightenment as a mere abstraction, together with the consciousness that man is indebted to his contemporaries and to past generations not only for his development and prog- ress, but for his very existence, gives Comte an unique place among the thinkers of the i8th century, who turned away from the individualism of the enlightenment and maintained the social origin and continuity of humanity. ' The problem of how to relate the individual to society which confronted the moralist of the 1 8th century was no problem to the thinkers of the iQth century. They did not look upon society as an aggregate of individual atoms like stones in a building, such as the moralist of the i8th century had conceived it to be, but as an organism whose mem- bers were related to each other as the organs of the body are related to it. The individual, for them, was part of a social order from which he had never been separated, and apart from which he could not have existed. They were conscious of the futility of the enlightenment in their attempt to relate the ego to the alter, and build up a society of individual atoms in a world so overwhelmingly social, therefore to them the problem of how to relate man to society had ceased to be a problem, and the greater problem of how to keep the individual from losing his individuality in a socialized world order by which he was so dominated and controlled, became the problem of the iQth cen- 1. Elements of General Philosophy. Croom Robertson, pp. 149-150. Sec also Short History of Ethics. Rogers, p. 258. 2. Comte's System of Philosophy, vol. II, p. 64. Translated by Harriet Martineau, 3rd ed., (1853). 76 The Individual and Society tury. s Comte was not indifferent to this problem, and in his earlier philosophical inquiries, he endeavors to find a place, though a subordinate one, for the individual in society, where he may retain his individuality and work out his own salvation, not apart but in conjunction with his social environment. This attempt, however, he abandons in his later work (Sociology) and declares that in a world so overwhelmingly social, there is no place for self-realization, and he therefore in opposition to his earlier method, adopts, as Eucken points out, the idealistic way of view- ing and valuing things, and seeks through a defied humanity a spiritual freedom for the individual. A careful examination of Comte's system shows that he was dominated by two main ideas, which accounts for much of the inconsistency found in his philosophy, and explains why in his early works he is anxious to preserve the individual in a pre- dominantly social order, and later seeks his ideal in the complete submission of the individual, whose absorption, through love, in the grand etre secures for him a kind of spiritual freedom. The first of these ideas he calls the law of the three stages ; here he declares that theology and metaphysics have no longer any value for man ; he recognizes that in the earlier development of the race they were necessary as a prelude to all science, and that the former was well .suited to excite the nascent intelligence and satisfy the primary affection of man, but now neither of them are of value to man, and therefore he eliminates them from his phil- osophy and introduces positivism, which he claims is the true criterion of knowledge. Such a view of theology and metaphysics (both of which, he says, fosters individualism) is open to criti- cism, for it not only involves a false conception of their nature, but necessitates an entire misrepresentation of their historical development. The second thought which dominated his mind was the subordination of science to man's social well-being, thus sociology becomes the crown of his system. We shall be better able to appreciate the part these two ideas played in his work and their conflicting influence in his system of philosophy, if we consider the process in his mental development, by which he reaches them. The Individual and Society 77 The starting point of his intellectual development was his pro- found conviction that the pure individualism preached by Rous- seau, and illustrated in the blood of the French Revolution, was false and untrue to the best interests of humanity. His youthful connection with the movement led by St. Simon which sought to reconstruct society by combining men together for the general good of all and especially the poor and weak members of society, reveals the fact that he shared in the reaction of the individualistic philosophy of the i8th century. He turns away from the doctrine of "Laissez faire" which was expected to introduce an economic millenium, for he saw that unless it was modified by a higher principle there was grave danger of its ending in a dissolution of society altogether. Comte soon discovered that the system of St. Simon was inadequate to meet the profound needs of human society ; that the simple repression of rebellion, the mere closing up of the ranks of society under a social despotism, that would sacrifice his intellectual development in order to make him com- fortable, was an utterly inadequate solution of the problem. Comte is here at this early stage of his development seeking a place for the individual in society where he may assert his own indi- viduality without detaching himself from his social order, which attempt, however, he gives up in his later development, as we have seen, in his desire for spiritual freedom through the absorp- tion of the individual in the grand etre. Comte's revolt against St. Simonism helps us, as Caird says, to understand this double movement of thought out of which his philosophy sprang. 1 His connection with St. Simon had taught him the essential weakness of pure individualism and the need of seeking a solution of the social problem, not by combining men together, as St. Simon had attempted, but in the idea of society as an organism : and it was this idea which in its fuller development changed his conception of the social and the individual's relation to his environment, and led him, as Eucken points out, to embrace an idealism that found in the complete submission of the individual to the social, the goal of all science. i. The Social Philosophy of Comte, Caird, 2nd ed., (1893), pp. 3-5. 78 The Individual and Society COMTE'S CRITICISM OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT. Comte's adoption of the historical method as the scientific basis of positive philosophy, brings him into sharp conflict with the individualism of the i8th century whose ignorance of the historical continuity of society led the thinkers of that age to adopt an indi- vidualistic view of society. 1 He reminds them that the very language which they use to express their individualism is itself a refutation of their doctrine, for it is the product of long genera- tions of men co-operating together. 2 Confident as he is that society whether in the form of the family, the nation or humanity is not merely a collection of similar individuals, but a unity of organically related members, and that its development is not a succession of events but the evolution of one life which remains identical with itself through all its changes ; he therefore main- tains that the position of the thinkers of the i8th century who try to build up an individualisic society is untenable: further- more, he asserts in opposition to their atomic theory of society, that a society can no more be decomposed into individuals than a geometric surface can be dissolved into lines or a line into points, and he affirms that the simplest association that is the family sometimes reduced to its original couple, is the direct constit- uent of society and constitutes its true unit. 3 He points to the tendency of modern biology as a further proof that society is composed of families and not of individuals, and declines, with characteristic emphasis, to derive sociability from the individ- ualism of the enlightenment. 4 Furthermore, he proves by the preponderance of the social over the individualistic, or personal feelings as he calls them, that the thinkers of the iSth century were not only in error in their conception of society as the sum of individual atoms, but also regarding the origin of man's social tendencies, and quotes Gall's cerebral theory as destroying for- ever the metaphysical fancies of the enlightenment concerning the 1. H. Martineau's Translation of Comte, vol. II, p. 115. 2. Comte's System of Philosophy, Harrison's trans., (1875), vol. II, pp. 184-185. 3. See Harrison's Translation, vol. II, (1875), PP- 152-153- Martineau's Translation, vol. II, p. 116. 4. See Windelband's History of Philosophy, pp. 501-502. The Individual and Society 79 origin of man's social instincts, which are now proved, he says, to be inherent in his nature and not the result of utilitarian condi- tions. He even finds that the social impulses in man have a separate "organ" in a separate place in the brain, and are as in- independent of intelligence as they are of the egoistic instincts and in no way the result of utility. He is surprised that the thinkers of the i8th century should have failed to see how impossible it was to base society on utility, since utility did not and could not manifest itself until after the development, at least up to a certain point, of the very society that it was supposed to create ; therefore, he maintains that society is not the product of utility but is the result of the "social spontaneity" of human nature. 1 He refers to the great principle of love, on which the whole positive doctrine is based, as a still further proof that the views of the preceding century regarding the composition and purpose of society are untrue to the facts of human history and experience, and he claims that if man were utterly selfish no empirical process could ever have developed social sympathies within him, any more than it could produce reason in a being who was devoid of even the germ of intelligence. So conscious is Comte of the dominance of the social, and the utter futility of the enlightenment to isolate the individual from the race, that he declares that not even in thought, any more than in reality, can we separate the individual from society without at the same time taking from him all that characterizes him as an individual; nor can we regard individuals as so many distinct beings, without doing violence to a self-evident truth, that they are organs of the one grand etre dominated and controlled by the social life of humanity. It is very evident from his criticism of the i8th century that Comte's conception of society is very different from that of the enlightenment. To the thinkers of that age the individual stands alone; society, for them, is nothing more than an aggregate of individuals drawn together for mutual safety, and might again be decomposed into separate atoms. Comte's conception of society as an organism, involves a very different conclusion from that i. Martineau's Translation, pp. 105-106. 8o The Individual and Society reached by them, therefore his view of society with that of the igth century stands out in sharp contrast from that of the en- lightenment. Society, for Comte, is a unit of organically related members, from which the individual member has never been isolated and never can, except, as he ironically says, in the too abstract mind of the metaphysicians of the preceding century. Indeed, so predominantly social is the world that Comte finds the ego the mere slave of his social environment, whose only hope of freedom is a spiritual one, which, for Comte, is made possible through a deified humanity. Unlike the moralists of the enlighten- ment, who endeavor to prove that man is a social creature whose social instincts disposed him to seek the society of his kind, the thinkers of the iQth century see no necessity for such an effort, for they find themselves dominated and controlled by a social or- der that has not only reduced the ego to the position of a mere slave, but threatens to deprive it of its individuality altogether. Comte, as we have seen, seeks to avert this danger by giving to the ego a spiritual freedom, while Spencer and Stephen endeavor to find a place for it in the body politic, where it may maintain its individuality though dominated by its social environment. DARWIN AND EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS. Comte's emphasis upon the historical continuity of the race and his effort to free himself from the individualism of the en- lightenment, through his conception of the corporate life of society introduced a view of humanity antipodal to that of the atomic theory of the i8th century. In the evolutionary ethics of Darwin, Spencer and Stephen, this view is still further emphasized, and the distinction between the two centuries is even more sharply drawn. They find no place in the history of the race for an isolated ego, such as the older utilitarian had in mind, for nature herself is social, and her aim is always the preservation of the species regardless of the sacrifice of the individual. The evolu- tionist has shown us that the self, whose satisfaction in one form or another these moralists aimed at, was nothing but a mere abstraction ; and any theory which defines the self in terms of its The Individual and Society 81 individual nature as only accidently related to society, they de- clared to be untenable. 1 One of the leading exponents of evolu- tionary ethics is very pronounced in his rejection of the atomic theory of the i8th century and declares in his "Science of Ethics" "that man is not man except as a member of society of some kind or another," and he points out that this society is not merely an environment in which man lives 'but is an environment that makes him what he is.' Humanity as seen by the evolu- tionist is so welded together into one organic whole, that for him a society of individuals such as the i8th century had in mind was impossible. 'All that a man has, says Lesle^ Stephen^, in the way of bodily or mental faculties or even individuality he has by reason of the relation in which he stands to society.' 2 Viewing society as an organism, the evolutionist agreed with Comte and the historical school of Germany, in affirming that the past history of society affects man by heredity, and the present condi- tion of society affects him as environment, and that therefore the individual could not be detached from the past or be unaffected by the present. All life for the evolutionist is related and the historical continuity of the race an undisputed fact, consequently for him an isolated ego freed from the influence of his social environment never could have existed. This is the view taken by Darwin, who though not the first to advance the theory of evolution, was the first to collect the facts necessary to give it support, 3 and to furnish the thinkers of his day with a key that enabled them more clearly to understand the evolutional hypo- thesis, and the organic nature of humanity. The new science had shown Darwin, as it had Spencer, the utter folly of the i8th century in seeking reality in the individual alone, he therefore in his biological ethics, turns away from the atomic theory of the older utilitarian moralists and begins with the social, where they began with the individual. Darwin, however, is open to criticism in his attitude toward the egoistic and altruistic instincts, for here he presents an inconsistent view of human life, since in his 1. See Comte, Mill and Spencer, Watson, pp. 27-34. 2. Science of Ethics, Lesley Stephens, (1882), chap. 3. 3. See A Review of Evolutional Ethics. Williams, part I, p. 28. Ibid, part II, Introduction and chap. i. Also "From Comte to Benjamin Kidd," Mackintosh, pp. 76-77. Pioneers of Evolution, Clodd, pp. 139-143, 158- 82 The Individual and Society "Origin of Species" he seems to deprive the creature of all altruistic instincts, while in his ethics endows him with altruistic impulses so strong that the creature will risk his own life to save the life of another. In the third and fourth chapters of the "Origin of Species" we have a picture more cruel and selfish than that portrayed in the "Status Naturalis :" "what a struggle must have gone on for centuries between the several kinds of trees, each annually scattering its seed by the thousand; what war between insect and insect between insects, snails and other animals with birds and beasts of prey, all striving to increase, all feeding on each other . . . such is the war of nature, the struggle for existence." 1 Here Darwin seems to be a Hobbist of the most pronounced type so far at least as altruism is con- cerned, finding nothing in the creature but self -regarding impulses in its struggle for existence; but in his ethics this view of the human creature is so modified that he not only finds in man the altruistic instinct, but declares it is so strong in him that he will frequently disregard the instinct of self-preservation, and risk his life even to save a stranger. 2 Moreover, he finds in man's ape- like progenitors, evidences of strong altruistic impulses which impel the creature to actions very different from that described in the "Origin of Species." He refers to the action of a baboon, who at the risk of his own life returned from a place of safety and faced a pack of dogs alone to save a young baboon, who finding himself separated from the others and surrounded with dogs, was loudly calling for help. 3 He refers to a number of other cases in which there are unmistakable evidences of the altruistic in- stincts in man's ape-like progenitors. 4 This apparent inconsistency in his treatment of the egoistic and altruistic instincts does not, however suggest any confusion in his mind regarding his concep- tion of society as an organism ; for while he may not have apprehended it as clearly as Stephens, or expressed it as fully as he, he is no less positive in his opposition to the atomic views of the Origin of Species. Darwin, chap. 3, p. 56. 2. See Descent of Man, p. no. 3. Ibid, pp. 101-103. 4. Ibid, chap. 4. See Genetic Psychology, Kirkpatrick, for similar evi- dence, (1911), PP. 97-98. The Individual and Society 83 preceding century. Darwin was convinced that any theory that sought to explain society in terms of individualism was false; the facts of evolution had demonstrated to him, beyond doubt, the historical continuity of the race and the organic nature of human society. Leslie Stephen, whose adoption of the Darwinian theories, so far at least as they relate to the social organism and the continuity of the race, is even more pronounced than Darwin in his opposi- tion to any view of society which regards it as a mechanical aggre- gate of individuals ; and in his defense of the organic theory, he goes beyond Spencer or any of his contemporaries. ORGANIC CONCEPTION OF SOCIETY. STEPHEN. Stephen considers the atomic theory of the enlightenment as a most irrational explanation of the origin and nature of human society, and declared that such a view "was due to their refusal to take into account the true nature of the social organism, and considered society as a simple combination of independent atoms . . . an aggregate built up of the uniform atoms called men." 1 Society not being an aggregate of such independent atoms, we must, therefore, "consider the race as forming what is called a social organism, or as I have preferred to call it, forming a social tissue." 2 Any other view of society he considered not only false but unreasonable, in the face of the facts presented by evolutional ethics. "It is sheer nonsense to speak of a man as if he either might or might not be in some respects independent of society. ... A man not dependent upon a race is as meaningless' a phrase as an apple that does not grow on a tree." 3 Like Comte, Stephen saw how absurd it was to speak of an independent ego, or attempt, as did the moralists of the pre- ceding century, to explain all reality in terms of individualism, since "the individual is dependent at every moment upon his 1. The Science of Ethics, pp. 360-361. 2. Ibid, chap. 3, sec. 31, p. 126. Stephen prefers "social tissue" to "social organism" because a nation has not the unity of the higher organ- isms. It is limited by external circumstances, not, like them, by internal constitution. 3. Ibid, pp. 95-96. 84 The Individual and Society contemporaries as well as upon his ancestors." 1 For Stephen, as for all the thinkers of the ipth century who embrace the organic conception of human nature, the true human point of view is not individual but social, man as man cannot be taken as the starting point of social philosophy, since, as they affirm, the individual man is the product of society; his intellectual powers and moral habits are alike formed in him by social influence, his very life being a part of the intellectual and social life of his times. Go back, says modern science, as far as you will in the history of the race and you never come to anything that in any degree corresponds to the isolated individual of the enlightenment. The individual of the older theories, as evolu- tionary ethics has shown, is a mere abstraction, man is never known except as a member of some kind of society and his rela- tion to it is not merely external and mechanical but internal and organic. 2 His instincts and desires, which are the spring of his actions, would be inexplicable without the presupposition of some sort of organized society of family or tribe as the field of their operation and satisfaction. His intellectual development and moral training as Comte pointed out are only possible by means of such social institutions as language, the family, the school and the work-shop: indeed, this organic conception of human nature, which the I9th century opposed to that of the enlightenment, shows that the individual never did exist and never could exist as an isolated atom; that his life takes its form at every point from the relation in which it stands to his social environment." Such are the social views of Stephen and of the thinkers, who in the 1 9th century accepted the scientific or evolutionary view of human nature, and expressed it with more or less clearness and insight in opposing the atomic theories of the preceding century. 4 Among these thinkers we must include Spencer whom Muirhead thinks might be called the founder of the organic doctrine. 1. Ibid, p. 108. 2. The Facts of the Moral Life, Wundt, chap. Ill, sec. I pp. 127-134. 3. See Comte, Mill and Spencer, Watson, pp. 165-183. See also Chris- tianity and the New Idealism. Eucken, (1913), pp. 31-39. 4. See Muirhead's Elements of Ethics, (1899), chap. 3. The Individual and Society 85 SPENCER'S CONCEPTION OF SOCIETY. SOCIETY AS EVOLVED. Spencer accepts the organic view of society in opposition to the atomic theory of the i8th century; and though he does not expound it with the same clearness of insight as Leslie Stephen, yet he recognized the above facts as implied in the scientific doctrine, and with the exponents of the new science he repudiates the individualistic theory of the enlightenment. Spencer, like Comte, was dominated by two conflicting ideas. His early train- ing which fostered a spirit of independence, led him to embrace a view of life inconsistent with his later evolutionary views. This made him chafe under the yoke of society and led him in the practical field to become the most uncompromising champion of complete individual freedom. 1 His acceptance, however, of evolution, the scientific view of human nature, made him embrace the organic conception of human society, which was a refutation of individualism. These two tendencies in Spencer's thought led him, as it did Comte, into many inconsistencies and they help us to understand his attempted conciliation in the I3th and I4th chapters of the "Data of Ethics/' and his desire to find a place for the ego in a world order, which he found so dominated by the social. As the purpose of this thesis is not to criticise and expound the entire system of the writers with whom it deals, but to point out their social or individualistic conception of human nature, and to show the sharp distinction between the atomic or individualistic theory of the enlightenment, and the organic or social views of the igth century ; we shall, therefore, not attempt to deal with the inconsistencies found in his synthetic philosophy caused largely by his desire to find a place for the ego in society but will confine ourselves, as far as possible, to tracing his socialistic conceptions of human nature as they stand in marked contrast to the individualistic views of the i8th century. Spencer in accepting the organic view of nature, repudiates the individualism of the preceding century. Society, for him, is more than the mere gathering together of individuals into a group. In his i. See Problems of Human Life. Eucken, pp. 535-536. Ethical Systems Wundt, pp. 154-159. 86 The Individual and Society "Principles of Sociology" Spencer shows that the conception of society as an aggregate of individuals is not only untenable but impossible, since, as modern science has shown, society is an organism whose members have been interdependent and co- operative from the beginning; therefore, he maintains, the indi- vidual can no more sever himself from society and exist, than he can sever the head from the body and live. 1 He points out in his "Principles of Biology," that as the complex organism is not formed by a combination of independent cells, but that in each cell itself from which the organism develops, there is latent the principle of organization, which is manifested in the growth of the complex organism, neither is society the artificial product of independent individuals drawn together by fear or self-interest, but an organism whose members are inter-related and inseparable. Spencer looked upon the individual as organically related to aJl members of the race, not only bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, as Bixby phrases it, but mind of their mind. 2 Indeed, the chief significance of his "Principles of Psychology" lies in the fact that although based on empirical philosophy, it emphasizes the impossibility of explaining individual consciousness by the experience of the individual alone: we cannot hope, he says, to explain the conscious life of the individual from his own ex- perience alone, we must go back to the experience of the races. 8 This relation between the individual and the race, which Spencer brings forward in his psychological and biological treatment ot the subject, became of paramount importance in his sociology, for in it he emphasizes the fact that every individual has an original substratum in his character which is traceable to the earlier history of the race. 4 Furthermore, in his "Principles of Sociology" he repudiates the Hobbist conception of man as an independent atom, declaring that even the savage knows that he is no self -sufficient unit, but owes his existence to parents who have begotten him and nursed him, and is conscious that his life is conditioned on his fellows for its comfort or misery. Civiliza- 1. Principles of Sociology, vol. II, p. 344, vol. I, pp. 486-487. 2. See Ethics of Evolution. J. T. Bixby, p. 33, (1900). 3. History of Modern Philosophy, Hoffding, pp. 454-455. 4. Ibid, p. 477. The Individual and Society 87 tion, he says, binds rather than loosens this dependence of the individual on the race, so that we never reach a stage in the historical development of man, where we can find the isolated individual of the enlightenment ; but on the contrary, we find the social ties which bind men to each other gradually extending from family to tribe, from tribe to nation, and from nation to continent, till the whole human race is immeshed in one closely woven net of mutual relations. The growth and development of the individual is something, therefore, to which all the past has contributed. Like Comte, viewing society as an organism, Spencer sees in the futility of the enlightenment to relate the individual to the social, a waste of energy, since man has always been a part of society, united to it as an organ to the body, from which it cannot be severed and live j 1 and he criticised the utilitarian school for treating society as an aggregate rather than as an organism. Furthermore, Spencer attempts by his theory of evolution, not only to prove that the self of the i8th century, whom the thinkers of that age were trying to relate to society, was nothing but an abstraction, but through his historical method he also seeks to prove that their moral judgments are untenable : for if our moral ideas have a history, as he maintains they do, there can be no place in his system for the rationalistic theories of the enlighten- ment. In Spencer's ethics there is no room for either innate moral ideas or the atomic theory of society ; for since our moral sense is nothing but "the experience of utility organized arid consolidated through all past generations," intuitional moral judgments must, therefore, be eliminated by him ; and as human society is an organism whose members are related to it as our members are related to the body, the isolated ego of the i8th century can, there- fore, find no place in the social philosophy of Spencer. SPENCER'S RECONCILIATION OF EGOISM AND ALTRUISM IN THE PRESENT AND IDEAL SOCIETY. Spencer recognizes an element of truth in both the intuitional and hedonic ethics, though he disagrees with the content of the i. Principles of Sociology, vol. I, 3rd ed., (1898), pp. 452-453, 463, 486-487. The Data of Ethics, p. 240. Spencer. 88 The Individual and Society one and with the method of the other. He rejects the doctrine of innate moral ideas held by intuitional ethics, though he agrees with them that the intuition of a moral faculty should guide our conduct, but he refuses to accept their origin of this moral faculty, and declares that these intuitions are not divinely given, but are the "slowly organized results of experience received by the race while living in the presence of these conditions." In his criticism of hedonic ethics, he accepts their ultimate end, but differs with them in their method of attaining it. The dif- ference between Spencer's evolutionary ethics at this point, and hedonic ethics, does not lie in the ultimate end which they each recommend, but in the proximate end, that is, it does not concern the object to be reached, but the method of reaching it; the end for both is happiness, but Spencer believes it is best attained by keeping it in the background, while the hedonist makes it both the immediate and ultimate end of his striving. "I admit, says Spencer, "that happiness is the ultimate end to be contemplated, but I do not concede that it should be the proximate end." 1 Spen- cer admits here his failure to withdraw completely from tradi- tional hedonism, and in making life good or bad according as it does or does not bring a surplus of agreeable feelings, 2 he departs from his original and more consistent view, a view that did not demand this hedonic element since it made the life of the organism, as Stephen makes the health of it, the ultimate end of moral conduct, and he therefore seeks in his absolute ethics an ideal state in which actions are followed with pleasure, and pain is not a concomitant. Spencer finds, however, that man has altruistic as well as egoistic impulses, that self-sacrifice is no less primordial than self-preservation, 3 and that neither of these elements alone can produce an ideal state, he therefore in his "Compromise" introduces the Butlerian principle of reasonable self-love which avows the rights of both alter and ego and the need of both in a world whole. Spencer, while recognizing that the individual has certain rights, is conscious of the dominance of the social, and therefore, endeavors to find a place in the social 1. Data of Ethics, p. 51. 2. Ibid. p. 302. 3. Ibid, p. 235. The Individual and Society 89 order where the ego may do its work untrammeled by its environ- ment. In his "Conciliation" he tries to work out the balance of interest between the two on a basis of purely relative ethics, but failing to find a solution of the problem in his "Concilia- tion," he looks forward to a future form of "absolute ethics" which finds the "ultimate man" in an atmosphere untainted by either egoism or altruism. 1 Spencer sees in the participation by both alter and ego in the totality of life, the first step toward reconciliation, and finds in his "absolute ethics" the proper con- ditions in which ego and alter may live in harmony and do their work without let or hindrance. Spencer, however, is forced to turn away from his idea of "absolute ethics," for he recognizes that such an ideal state is unattainable with human nature and hu- man society constituted as they are, he is, therefore, compelled to fall back on a relative ethics as the only basis of reconciliation be- tween the ego and the alter. In all this effort of compromise and conciliation, Spencer is seeking a place for the individual in an ethical system which he finds so dominantly socialized that the ego has become little more than a slave to its environment, whose life must be sacrificed for the safety of society when such is endangered. 2 Spencer sees in the coming victory of the indus- trial over the militant stage, which still coexist, the hope of indi- vidual freedom, and he believes that social evolution is gradually making possible a state in which the claims of the individual shall no longer be ignored by the social, and society will come to recognize that she needs the self just as much as the self needs society. 3 This conception of the self and its relation to society is very different, however, from that of the enlightenment for Spencer is not here trying to relate the individual to the social, but to find a place in the social order, to which he is already related, where he may have an opportunity for self-realization. Perhaps a comparison between the older utilitarian views and that of Spencer might be instituted at this point, so as to bring into sharper contrast the ethical ideals of the enlightenment and those of the iQth century. In Spencer appears a statement of 1. Ibid, chap. 15. 2. Ibid, pp. 144-146, 170-173- 3. Ibid, pp. 275-276. 90 The Individual and Society the moral problem which stands out as the very antipode of the Hobbist system. Where Hobbes had premised the ego, Spencer assumes the social ; where Hobbes had sought to remove the ego for the sake of establishing society, Spencer attempts to conceive of the social in such a way as to make the egoistic possible. The supreme difference between the two, however, appears in their respective anthropologies, in accordance with which, Hobbes can find nothing in man but the individualistic, while Spencer finds only the social. Indeed, with Spencer, the beginnings of 'con- duct are to be dated from a stratum of life far below the simple, unorganized life of the community, 1 so that we observe the Spencerian ethics beginning with the 'physical view of conduct/ in which all is indefinite, incoherent, homogeneous, far removed from any suggestion of self-conscious individuality. Even upon the second stage, where the 'biological view' is considered, the principle of conduct instead of being truly human and individual, is simply organic and social. From the third or psychological point of view, the principle of conduct is such as has its bearing upon the beast as well as the human being, so that it is not until we arrive at the fourth, or social view point, that the humanistic receives independent treatment. Even here the individualistic is submerged in the social, so that it is only at the very conclusion of his work, as we have seen, that Spencer finds the place for the ego. While Spencer does not fail to accord certain rights to the individual, his system, so representative of contemporary thought, is as absolutely social as Hobbes' was absolutely indi- vidual. What with Hobbes was the Alpha, is here the Omega; thus did the two periods of modern thougth undergo complete transmutation and transvaluation. III. DISCUSSION AND CRITICISM. Our study of the two preceding centuries has shown us how widely they differ in their conception of the nature and origin of society. We have seen that the thinkers of the i8th century, finding reality in the individual alone, were led to an individualistic view of human life, and to the erroneous idea that society was i. The Data of Ethics, pp. 112-114. The Individual and Society 91 composed of separate individual atoms, drawn together for mutual interests : while the moralists of the iQth century finding reality in the totality of the race, were led to view society as an organism, and the individual as merely a part of the whole. Both of these views of human life, as we shall point out later, are inadequate ; the former, because of its failure to grasp the corporate life of humanity, and the latter by its failure to find in the organism, a place for the selfhood of the ego. A conception of life, that sees in individual happiness the measure of moral values, and therefore, expresses human welfare in terms of mere pleasure, is fallacious; for it does not take account of man's inner striving to rise above nature, nor his ability to live without pleasure. The inability, not only of the egoistic hedonism, but even of the altruistic utilitarianism of the 1 8th century, to see in the general happiness anything more than the sum of separate individual happinesses, was due to their individualistic conception of human life. Humanity, for these moralists, was made up of individual men, hence a social utilitarian is as self -contradictory as an egoistic hedonism of the Hobbist type is untenable, for its fundamental assumptions conflict with each other. 'It defines, for example, the moral end as the welfare of the ivhole of human society, and then proceeds, as Wundt points out, to resolve this whole into disconnected atoms.' 1 The position of these thinkers, therefore, becomes untenable, owing to the irreconciliation of these opposite tendencies; for their indi- vidualistic theory of society led them to an egoism which their more correct ethical instincts sought to repudiate. In regarding the world from the point of view of the individual alone, the moralists of the enlightenment were thus led to adopt a view of philosophy that made life consist of a sum of pleasurable feelings, with self as the center ; and in conceiving of self in an abstract way, apart from its social relations, they were led, as we have seen, to look upon society as an aggregate of independent atoms, whose relation to the body politic was analogous to stones in a building. With the dawn of evolution, the point of reality has been shifted from the individual to the race. We are in- debted, therefore, to evolutionary ethics for the emphasis placed i. Ethical Systems, Wundt, chap. 4, sec. 3. 92 The Individual and Society by the moralists of the iQth century on the organic nature of society; for they have shown us that the self in not an isolated atom, but is only comprehensible as a member of society whose moral judgments reflect a moral order already established in its environment. 1 They have also pointed out that the theories of independent rights, which the individualists of the preceding cen- tury put forth in behalf of the ego, were nothing but arbitrary assumptions. The statement of Rousseau, that man was born free, i. e., independent of the laws, habits and conventions of society, they have shown by the historical continuity of the race, to be fallacious ; the child, they assert, who comes into the world inherits everything he has from a previous state of society. Indeed, the evolutionist has gone so far in his emphasis upon the organic nature of society, that he has robbed the self of all moral content. The individual as such, ceases to have value except as a means to an end. D'Arcy criticises the evolutionists for identify- ing the selfhood of the individual with his social setting; 'for while the body of man may be a mere eddy in the stream of cosmic evolution, the man as a self, a spirit cannot, for the stream only exists for him as constituted by him,' and it is the ignoring of that fact by the evolutionists, that has led them to view the individual as a mere element 'in a complex whole, a member of an organism, the slave of his social order.' 2 In looking upon man as nothing more than a part of a great cosmic system, whose existence, like that of the tree or the beast, is the result of natural law, the evolutionists have robbed the ego of its individuality and freedom: and by treating the term organism, as if it were, in and of itself, a reality instead of an analogy, they have been led to conclusions which even they find necessary to modify. Hence, we find Spencer conceding certain rights to the individual, which are, he admits, part of his very personality, and seeking through his conception of an ideal state to find a place in the social order where the ego may assert its selfhood and refuse to be a mere eddy in the stream, while Stephen seeks to save the identity of the self by making it possible for the ego to express its individuality through the virtues of 1. See Individual and Society, Baldwin, chap. I, sec. 3. See Value and Dignity of Human Life, Shaw, pp. 121-124. 2. See Short History of Ethics, D'Arcy, Part III, chap. 4. The Individual and Society 93 courage, temperance and truth, which, he says, strengthens the ego, and at the same time contributes to the health of the social organism. 1 Furthermore, the evolutionist is open to criticism in his anthropological conception of the inner nature of man, for in making man's inner nature the product of natural law and the accumulation of past experiences, he has emptied the ego of all spiritual content, and man's inner nature refuses to be thus dealt with, and compells us to ask, whence conies this inner compulsion which we find in man, this sense of duty and obligation, is it also a development of generation after generation from external pres- sure? That is the outstanding difficult question which the inner nature of man compells the evolutionists to answer, and their theory of the tribal self fails to explain it; for experience has shown that the individual is more than a member of the herd, that he has an inner spiritual nature that cannot be reduced to the "voice of the tribal self sounding in his ear," and no one, not even the evolutionist, is prepared to say that he is conscious that this inner compulsion of obligation, of duty, is to him obviously a pressure from without, for we cannot make that transfer in our consciousness. In other words, in the development of all the moral concepts of our race, this inner sense of obligation this categorical imperative that which says to us "thou shalt not" is not a matter of custom or experience, but comes out of our own personality, and that particular part of our personality which has not been developed wholly by external pressure from genera- tion to generation. 2 The evolutionists of to-day have a phrase which is very significant, and which illustrates the point we are seeking to emphasize, that this inner compulsion is not the out- come of external pressure, they speak of "orthogenetic develop- ment" i. e., development that has been straight away, no pres- sure of environment to change its course, it has been a develop- ment straight to the end. We are willing to admit to-day, in our criticism of naturistic ethics, that a great body of customs has come down to us, which make for the welfare of the community, and that the experience of our ancestors has shown us that dis- honesty should be avoided, and that lying is hurtful, both to the 1. Science of Ethics, chap. 5. 2. See The Ethical Philosophy of Sidgwick, Hayward, chap. 3, sec. J 94 The Individual and Society individual and society; nevertheless, there has been all along, this straight away sense of obligation, and this appeared not as variable, not as growing generation after generation, but appear- ing as constant, and as a power that is continually urging on this stream of thought, or to use the evolutionary phrase, "ortho- genetic development" is descriptive of this feeling of obligation. The atttiude of the present in its criticism of evolutionary ethics might be expressed briefly by saying that evolution ac- counts for about every question that can be raised in the field of ethics, until it comes to touch this vital and central question what is it in human personality that puts upon man this inner compulsion to do and to be, without any regard for consequences ? Here its explanation is inadequate as all explanations must be that ignore the spiritual in man; for man is conscious that this inner compulsion is not a matter of his father, or his father's father, but comes out of the depths of his own personality. As he listens to the voice of conscience, he hears, it is true, the reverberations of past experiences, the voice of the tribe, but as he listens more intently, and to be true to himself he must listen more intently, he can hear the still small voice, and it is the voice of his inner soul, that part in him that makes him more than a portion of a cosmic system or member of a group; and it is that spirit in him, which the evolutionists have ignored, that refuses to be an eddy in the stream or a mere part of the cosmic system, and which led the individualists of the I9th century to repudiate the social order and assert the selfhood of the ego. It is true that these egoists of the iQth century, who would save the ego from the dominance of the social and that too by no gentle method, were not concerned with the philosophical deduc- tions of evolutional ethics, nevertheless, they were conscious of the general tendency to belittle the ego and magnify the alter, and fearing for the ego in its submerged state in the social order, they repudiate society and seek reality alone in the individ- ual, as Hobbes had sought it in the ego. The ego of the super- man, however, is very different from that of the "Leviathan;" if loving the self was the dominant trait of the Hobbist ego, willing the self is the distinguishing characteristic of the modern ego. "To be himself, man must will himself. Selfhood is an The Individual and Society 95 inward creation, not an outward fact; it must be achieved not simply accepted. ... To achieve selfhood, the ego must make the ego an object, and instead of accepting selfhood as a matter of necessity, as Hobbes suggested, the ego must follow the freedom of the Fichtean 'Ich' which posits itself." 1 In their attempt at self-realization, the individualists of the ipth century refuse to be bound by the customs of the social order, and like Emerson, look upon "society as everywhere in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." 2 It is that conception of society that justifies Nora in "A Doll's House," in asserting herself in defiance of the social order. In- deed, Ibsen's egos know only one law "Be thyself," and this law, Brand attempts to obey in the realm of spirit, as Peer Gynt endeavors to do it in the world of sense. It is true that this effort on the part of the Gyntish ego to erect a selfhood on the basis of sense, like the attempt of volunteristic egoism to erect it on the basis of will, was doomed to failure, and Peer Gynt, himself, fit only for the button moulder's refuse heap, 3 never- theless, it indicates the dissatisfaction of the modern ego with its world, and its struggle, at any cost, for emancipation and ego- hood. Indeed, it woud be difficult on any other basis, to account for such caricatures of the self as we find among the individ- ualists of the Baudelarian type, for while we would gladly escape from an atmosphere so poisonous and low, we cannot but see in it an effort for freedom and selfhood. Baudelaire, like Nietz- sche, would save the ego by a transvaluation of values that makes evil good and good evil, and like Sudermann's "Magda" would attain self-realization by sinning and becoming greater than its sin. A similar endeavor for freedom is seen in Stendhal, whose egos, repudiating all moral standards, refuse, like Stirner, to enter the circle and submit to the moulding process of social custom. These men would save the ego through sin as Hauptmann would save it through joy, or Wagner through freedom; for just as 1. Value and Dignity of Human Life, Shaw, Part II, sec. 3. See also Crime and Punishment, Dostoieffsky, pp. 207-208. 2. Essay Self-reliance, Emerson. 3. Peer Gynt., Act. V, Scene VII, p. 225. Egoists, a Book of the Super- man, Huncker, p. 330. 96 The Individual and Society the "bell-founder" seeks self-realization neither in Socratic knowl- edge or Kantian morality but in the idea of joy, and Siegfried through a fearlessness and freedom that defies the gods, so Baudelaire and Stendhal seek through immoralism a self-realiza- tion that would save the selfhood of the ego. In these egoists, as indeed in all the individualists of the igth century regardless of their method, there is a desperate effort to get back to the ego as the fundamental basis of reality; for, like Stirner, they see in the ego, and not in the family, the unit of the social life, 1 and like him would begin and end with the self. 2 "So anxious is current egoism to emancipate itself from the social order, that it does not take the pains to inquire whether the independent existence of the self comes within the range of ontological pos- sibility. Indeed, an egoist like Stirner destroys the self in the very moment that he destroys the absolute; while Nietzsche, in his opposition to the soul-atomism of modern thought, negates the metaphysical basis upon which his ethical egoism rests." 3 The modern individualists, who in their anxiety to get back to the ego would not hesitate to destroy society itself, seem to forget that the individual is no more fitted to be a solitaire than he is adapted to solidarity. The individual needs a social environ- ment in which to realize himself. He cannot detach himself from his environment and be happy; even Stirner seems to recognize that fact, and looks for the time when 'there will come into existence a society in which every man will find room.' 4 There are two tendencies confronting us to-day, as they did, though in a slightly different form, the moralists of the preceding century. The first is the modern formulation of the old Greek view which regarded man as a means to an end an end too, that is outside himself the other view regards man as an end in himself. The problem which we must meet is how to balance these two factors ; how to make them co-operative and reciprocal, and it is a problem, not only of philosophy, but is the great social problem of our day. The obvious judgment is that the extreme 1. See Degeneration, Max Nordan, p. 360. 2. Ego and His Own, Stirner, Part II, sec. I. 3. The Ego and Its Place in the World, Shaw, Bk. Ill, sec 4 4 Ego and His Own, p. 234. The Individual and Society 97 view of either society or individualism is inadequate. 1 We must never regard man as a means to an end, nor impede his effort at self-realization ; for there are certain obligations which arise out of the very nature of personality, and chief among them is the obligation to realize all the possibilities of that personality itself. We feel within us the individual springs of activity, the stirrings of our own powers along the lines of self development, and any institution that hinders such a development impedes human prog- ress. The only true socialism that can be defended, is a socialism which in the operation of the system provides in some way for the realization of the personal potentiality. Human personality must never, therefore, be lost sight of or become a mere cog in the wheels of our social machinery. Yet on the other hand, we must not lose sight of the dependence of the ego on its social setting, for the preservation of the very personality which we have been emphasizing : to forget that is to fall into an ipsesistic view of life that would deprive the ego of the very selfhood which it is seeking to realize. 2 The individual cannot betake him- self to his "Ivory Tower" and detach himself from society if he would develop his personality, for man can realize himself fully, only when he finds himself in the largest set of relations which he must normally sustain to his fellowmen; and it is only in the setting of these larger relations that the largest development can be reached. The object of the individual then is, to so enter apon the relations of life, as they come before him, that he can increase the points of contact with the world about him. The individual is not merely responsible for the discharge of his duties within that particular system of relations, which he finds that he sustains naturally to the great world about him, but he is above all things else responsible for the multiplication of these relations, so that the individual must make it his aim to touch the world at every possible point of contact. It is in this sense that every man makes his own world, and in this sense that alter and ego are necessary for the larger development of personality. To-day we are not satisfied with solipsism, the ego in a "Barrel 1. Christianity and Modern Culture, Shaw, chap. 9. Ethical Systems, Wundt, p. 174. 2. See Applied Sociology, Ward, chap. 4. 98 The Individual and Society of Self" is too dwarfish to meet the approval of the present, neither do we want a social system that will so submerge the ego as to empty it of all spiritual content and selfhood, but we are seeking a point of view that will clearly bring together, in the proper synthesis, these two great factors the individual and society and this can be done, not by denying to the self its right to live and participate in the world's work, nor by repudi- ating the social order and upholding a doctrine of egohood where the view of self is that of blind solipsism, but by conceiving society as the arena in which man achieves his selfhood, and her institu- tions, the point of contact between the ego and his world. Rous- seau, like these egoists of the iQth century, was, therefore, in error when he said that we should detach ourselves from the institutions of society, for the institution wherever we find it *s the incarnation of a thought, which in the form of a set of human purposes has been working toward definite ends, bringing the lesults of many minds and activities to a single purpose. Indeed, the institution is the manifestation of a great human idea, which has come into some concrete realization. This idea, that is slowly but surely emphasizing itself in the world, now in one of its phases as the state, in another phase as the church, is the idea of a universal consciousness representing humanity's striving and humanity's deepest aspirations. The individual must, therefore, relate himself in this life to the institutions which are part of his life the church, the state and society at large for the institu- tion is the dynamic thought of man coming to some kind of con- crete expression. Now if we think of a formative idea in the history of the world showing itself as it does, here and there, in the development of every human life, though on a small scale, that development of thought in the human individual is one phase of its development, on the other side, the development of this great human idea on this larger and more extensive scale in the institutions of the world, is another phase of its development. It is in the bringing together of these two manifestations of human thought that the problem of ego and alter can be solved, for it makes possible the development of selfhood in a social order that has ceased to be inimical to self-realization; for the thought which forms the individual personality is the same in The Individual and Society 99 another form of its multiplied and aggregate expression that we find in our great institutions and. in society at large. Thus the two are not separated, but are naturally brought together in our every-day life. 1 To be blind to the significance of the time- spirit, i. e., the spirit which is outside of ourselves and is show- ing itself in the development of our communal life; to ignore it in our purposes and calculations, and to say we will blaze out a trail for ourselves with the scorn of any cooperation, is folly; for such a course not only leads men to live a short-sighted and narrow life, but an immoral life as well. We agree, therefore, with the trend of modern thought in tak- ing the point of view, not of the naturistic evolutionist who would empty man of all spiritual content and selfhood, nor the view of the individualists of the 'iQth century, who repudiating all social institutions would degenerate into blind solipsism, but the point of view that sees in the synthesis of these two great factors, the individual and society, the content of all ethical values, and the true point of contact between the ego and its world of reality. Such a view of the social order that not only enables the ego to participate in the totality of the world, but gives to it the right to assert its selfhood, adds value and dig- nity to the ego without loss to the social order. i. See The Ego and His Place in the World, Shaw, Bk. Ill, sec. 7; also Value and Dignity of Human Life, Shaw, Part IV.6, sec. 46. BIBLIOGRAPHY. ARISTOTLE, Politics, Jowett's Translation. ALBIE, ERNEST, The History of English Utilitarianism. 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