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COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 Essays in Common-Sense Philosophy 
 
COMMON. SENSE 
 ETHICS 
 
 BY 
 
 C. E. M. JOAD 
 
 LATE SCHOLAR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD, AND JOHN LOCKE SCHOLAR 
 IN MENTAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 
 WITH A PREFACE BY 
 
 PROFESSOR A. H. WILDON CARR 
 
 METHUEN & CO. LTD. 
 
 36 ESSEX STREET W.G 
 
 LONDON 
 
Tt 
 
 ■:3-S" 
 
 First Published in igzi 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 By H. WILDON GARR 
 
 THERE is no class of judgments to which we appeal 
 with more absolute confidence in the ultimate 
 unanimity of different minds than moral judgments. 
 If men have been found to defend the Holy Inquisition, 
 the Roman gladiatorial shows, negro slavery, or frightful- 
 ness in war, it is not because they differ from their fellows 
 in their judgments concerning what constitutes right and 
 wrong, but because they can make appeal to a sentiment 
 in human nature which is not the subject of dispute but 
 the arbiter. When we try, however, to give definite form 
 and substance to this sentiment itself, — and this is the aim 
 of the philosophical science of Ethics, — we find serious 
 difficulty. It was manifested in wide divergency in the 
 ancient ethical theories, and it is a problem dividing 
 different schools of thought in philosophy to-day. More- 
 over, it is a problem to which no one is really indifferent, 
 for it involves the problem of problems, — the nature and 
 meaning of life. 
 
 This book is a study, an earnest, fresh and living study 
 of the ethical problem by a young philosopher who has 
 reflected deeply on the metaphysical theories of the ancient 
 and modern periods and has tried seriously to bring them 
 into accord and to discover in them some guidance, 
 particularly in regard to the political and social evolution 
 which the present generation is witnessing. He describes his 
 own view as that of common-sense Ethics. But by common 
 sense it is clear that he does not intend to class himself 
 with unphilosophical opinion, either in reasoned or con- 
 temptuous opposition to philosophical theory. 
 A generation ago it was very widely held by writers on 
 
 462604 
 
vi COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 Ethics that the ethical problem, so far as the principle 
 by which conduct should be ruled is concerned, depended 
 on a previous question and was governed by the decision in 
 answer to it : "Is life worth living ? " It was taken 
 for granted that if on inquiry this question has to be 
 answered in the negative, then all conduct which makes 
 effectually for the extinction of life is good conduct, and all 
 that makes effectually for the furtherance of life is bad. 
 And this seemed in fact to distinguish not merely individual 
 ethical systems, but to mark a fundamental divergence of 
 orientation between different systems of philosophy and 
 also between different religions. Broadly it marked the 
 profound difference between East and West which Scho- 
 penhauer was the first to discover and make familiar to us. 
 We have now come to see that life is an activity, or force, 
 or reality, which cannot in any way be affected by our 
 individual opinion in regard to its desirability, measured 
 by any possible or impossible hedonistic calculus. A 
 consensus of modern research, scientific and philosophic, 
 biological and psychological, has antiquated all the 
 ethical and religious theories which made life subservient 
 to a force and purpose superior to it and independent of it. 
 The will to live is the nature of life, something in the very 
 fact and expression of life, and not a power, rational or 
 irrational, which raises us above life and enables us to 
 control it. To appreciate the significance of this in indivi- 
 dual, social and political action seems to me the underl5dng 
 motive of the author in this book. 
 
 There are two movements in quite recent scientific 
 research which seem to have had a considerable influence 
 on the author in the formation of his theory. Both are 
 mentioned, and their importance referred to, although no 
 detailed exposition of them is given in the book. They 
 are first the Behaviourist theory and second the psycho- 
 analytic psychology - and psychotherapy of Freud and 
 Jung. The Behaviourist theory and method has been 
 adopted and brought into prominence by some of the lead- 
 ing psychologists of America. The form and practical 
 application of the theory is new, but in effect it is the revival 
 of an old, almost venerable, theory — the old theory of 
 Descartes of the bete-machine. It declares that there is no 
 entity, — consciousness or thought, — constituting a special 
 
PREFACE vu 
 
 class of existences, requiring a particular method of their 
 own, — introspection, — in order to bring them within mental 
 apprehension. 
 
 The Psycho-analytic theory is in a certain aspect the 
 direct antithesis of the Behaviourist theory and method, 
 for the responses we observe in animal behaviour are 
 according to the psycho-analysts never to be taken at their 
 face value. This is always illusive and though unconscious 
 purposely deceptive. Behaviour has to be interpreted, and 
 the interpretation rests on the concept of a reality which is 
 unconscious, yet essentially active and mental. In another 
 aspect, however, the theory may be said to agree with 
 Behaviourism, namely in its thoroughgoing mechanism 
 and determinism. To me, indeed, the difference is more 
 striking than the resemblance, for while behaviourism 
 seems to triumph only when and in so far as it succeeds in 
 explaining psychical phenomena by rejecting psychology, 
 the Psycho-analytic theory has a psychological explanation 
 of every fact of experience. The only point in which they 
 may be said to agree is in the fact that each in its way 
 gives a negative answer to William James's now famous 
 question, " Does consciousness exist ? " 
 
 These then seem to me to be the moulding influences 
 under which Mr. Joad has worked out his theory of a life 
 force manifesting itself as unconscious impulse, for which 
 it should be the main purpose of aesthetical, social and 
 political activity to discover the most perfect expression. 
 His book falls naturally into two parts, and we are told 
 in the introduction that we may skip the first part if we 
 are not philosophically inclined. This is not my advice. 
 The exposition of the Utilitarian and Intuitionist theories, 
 and the account of Plato's theory, and the criticism upon 
 them, are a necessary introduction to the view which the 
 author terms common-sense Ethics. 
 
 H. WILDON CARR 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP- PAGE 
 
 Introduction ....... xi 
 
 PART I 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL OR TRADITIONAL ETHICS 
 
 I Utilitarianism and the Philosophy of 
 
 Pleasure ....... i 
 
 II Intuitionism and the Moral Sense . . 21 
 
 III The Form of the Good ... . .65 
 
 IV Summary of Ethical Theories and their 
 
 Results 78 
 
 PART II 
 
 EMPIRICAL OR COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 ^V The Psychology of Impulse .... 95 
 
 ^ VI The Place of Impulse in Politics and Society 131 
 
 VII Impulse as the Expression of the Life Force 176 
 
 Index 205 
 
 IX 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE following chapters purport to constitute a book 
 on Ethics. Whether those who read them will 
 agree that they have anj^hing to do with Ethics 
 at all is doubtful. The possibility of this doubt arises from 
 a very real disagreement as to what the study of Ethics is 
 about. Most philosophical controversies when analyzed 
 are found to be controversies about what exactly it is that 
 is the subject of the controversy, and controversies about 
 Ethics are no exception to this rule. There is in fact a 
 complete lack of agreement as to the subject matter, the 
 scope, the method, and the object of Ethics. 
 
 Nor are the philosophers entirely to blame. 
 
 It contributes to the confusion that Ethics is a pursuit 
 in which everybody is an expert. Whereas it is held that a 
 man needs special training and experience before he may 
 presume to speak with authority on architecture, painting, 
 engineering or chemistry, most men believe themselves to 
 know the difference between good and evil by the light of 
 nature. Elderly relatives in particular are an inexhaus- 
 tible fount of moral maxim. The mother is thought fully 
 qualified to instruct her child on the meaning of naughtiness, 
 the priest his congregation on the path to perdition, and the 
 fact that where the object of both is to deter from wrong- 
 doing, the one means inconvenience to herself, and the 
 other disobedience to a written word, believed to be divinely 
 inspired, only serves to show that usage can be made to 
 countenance any meaning of morality or immorality that 
 happens to be convenient at the moment. Ethics in short 
 is every one's preserve ; it is like a hat which has lost its 
 shape because everybody wears it. 
 
 Contemplating the welter of material thus presented, 
 philosophers have endeavoured to work it up into a clearly 
 
 xi 
 
xu COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 defined branch of knowledge like biology or physics. The 
 attempt has not been very successful. What has happened 
 is that philosophers have become interested in di^erent 
 classes of ethical questions, and, by a natural process of 
 reasoning, have insisted that the particular questions in 
 which they were interested and which formed the topics of 
 their books, were the proper subject matter of Ethics. 
 
 Thus a number of quite different problems have each been 
 regarded as the central problem of Ethics, which has been 
 variously defined as the attempt — 
 
 (i) To discover the good. 
 
 (2) To find a meaning for the words right and wrong. 
 
 (3) To find a criterion by which to distinguish right from 
 
 wrong. 
 
 (4) To describe the nature of the moral sense. 
 
 (5) To lay down rules for moral conduct. 
 
 With regard to each of these inquiries sufficiently intelli- 
 gible results can be and have been reached. \^^y then 
 yet another book about Ethics ? 
 
 The answer to this question is to be found in a conviction 
 on the part of the writer that Ethics really ought to have 
 something to do with life. Ethics ought to tell you how to 
 be good or happy, that is, if you want to be ; or why it is 
 impossible to be either good or happy ; or why, though it 
 is possible to be both good and happy, it is not possible 
 to tell you how to be either. In short the writer takes the 
 view that the conclusions of Ethics ought to have some 
 relation to the business of living. 
 
 Now it is, I think, a fact that the conclusions arrived at 
 by philosophical ethical theorists do not have this relation. 
 I do not believe that a knowledge of all the philosophical 
 ethical theories in the world would in any way assist a man 
 in the business of living : jf life is a duty, they would not 
 help him to be good ; ii it is an art, they would not confer 
 mastery in its technique. 
 
 Many people who reason about Ethics for the first time 
 are convinced at an early stage by the specious arguments 
 of those who hold that pleasure is the only good, and the 
 only possible object of human desire. I remember with 
 what excitement I was myself converted to this view, and 
 set about life in a new spirit, believing that I had knocked 
 the bottom out of virtue, and need not bother myself any 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 more about being unselfish ; for was not all unselfishness 
 just a somewhat peculiar method of getting pleasure ? It 
 was something of a shock to fhid that my new convictions 
 did not in practice make the slightest difference. I went on 
 acting in precisely the same way as before, and was not 
 noticeably worse in point of conduct than I had been in the 
 days when I still thought there was some virtue in being 
 good. 
 
 Nor was mine an exceptional case. There is absolutely 
 no evidence either to show that the average moral philo- 
 sopher is in any way better or worse than men who have 
 never heard of John Stuart Mill, or that the followers of John 
 Stuart Mill are in any way better or worse than their mortal 
 enemies of the moral sense school. There is, on the con- 
 trary, plenty of evidence that the moral philosopher is just 
 as liable as his wife to lose his temper when he misses a 
 train or breaks his bootlace ; that ethical philosophers like 
 Bentham and Aristippus, who propounded theories of such 
 outrageous immorality that no roue has yet been discovered 
 with the capacity to live up to them, were men of pre- 
 eminently blameless conduct, who recognized in every act 
 of their lives the moral sanctions they denied in theory ; 
 and that being a philosopher in the technical sense of the 
 word has nothing to do with possessing a philosophic outlook 
 on life in general. The philosopher, in the commonly 
 accepted sense of the word, is a man who maintains an 
 attitude of serene equanimity in face alike of the inevitable 
 toothaches and pimples of experience, and of such trage- 
 dies as life has to ofier ; the expert on philosophical Ethics 
 can refute the arguments of the pleasure philosophers 
 and knows what the neo-Platonists thought about the good. 
 The first is a master of the art of life ; the second of the 
 theories of philosophers : but the knowledge of the one 
 does not help him to attain the serenity of the other. In 
 so far as ethical theories have had any practical 
 effect whatever, it has been of an inhibitory rather 
 than an inspiring character. Instead of revealing 
 a vision of what life might be, they have denounced it 
 for what it is. People have found in ethical systems a 
 convenient clothes-line for airing their own moral preju- 
 dices ; moral codes have tended to become a catalogue of 
 " Don't's," and writers on conscience have succeeded in 
 
xiv COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 taking the sugar out of our tea without preventing our 
 drinking it. 
 
 This failure on the part of Ethics to apply to the actual 
 problems of life is, I think, the inevitable result of the 
 methods by which Ethics has been pursued — the methods 
 of a priori reasoning. Certain general principles, the truth 
 of which is supposed to be immediately perceived, are used 
 as the starting point of an inquiry which proceeds by the 
 methods of logical reasoning to construct an elaborate 
 system on the basis thus provided. The result may be 
 logical and consistent : if the reasoning is good it is bound 
 to be ; but it has no necessary relation to life. The state- 
 ments made in the course of the inquiry are statements not 
 about life, but about the philosopher's reasoning about life : 
 the results achieved are a reflection not of the world, but of 
 the philosopher's mind. 
 
 It is too commonly assumed that the laws by which mind 
 works must necessarily produce results which are true of 
 life, and that conclusions which are satisfying to mind must 
 necessarily apply to something. The remoteness of the 
 conclusions of ethical systems from the facts of human life 
 shows that a process of logical reasoning, satisfactory as its 
 conclusions may be in the realm of mathematics, is not in 
 itself an adequate method for the treatment of life. 
 
 Life, ujalike mathematics, is various and changing. It 
 persistently eludes the attempt of mind to gather it up under 
 a few comprehensive formulae. It is tentative, provisional 
 and incondusive, and for this very reason refuses to accom- 
 modate itself to the demands which philosophic systems 
 have made of it. 
 
 Thus it is in part their very completeness and definitive- 
 ness which niake the systems of philosophic Ethics inappli- 
 cable to life. They have laid it down that the good is X, 
 and the meaning of right is Y, when the individual finds in 
 practice that the good is X to-day and Z to-morrow, while 
 as for the meaning of right and wrong, it changes continually 
 according to his mood and his feelings towards the person 
 who happens to be right or wrong at the moment. Life is 
 like a play in which the individual has to learn his part 
 while he is speaking it. Philosophical systems assume him 
 word perfect from the beginning. 
 
 It is suggested therefore that a book on Ethics which is to 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 apply to life, can neither evolve a system nor establish a 
 standard. It will not begin with general principles and 
 proceed by deduction from them, starting that it is along a 
 road indicated by mind in the hope that it will somehow 
 lead in the end to life. It will start rather with the observa- 
 tion of life, and be glad if the results fall into any kind of 
 order, or admit of any kind of generalization. 
 
 And these generalizations will be neither final nor 
 infallible, for they will be conditioned by the changing and 
 elusive character of the subject matter about which they 
 generalize. Perhaps in generalizing at all about Ethics and 
 psychology, we are going beyond our evidence ; perhaps the 
 individual's desires'^and inhibitions are too personal and idio- 
 syncratic to be ranked in common with those of others 
 under any formula : perhaps it is the power or generaliza- 
 tion which gives us our chief superiority in mistake over the 
 animals. But since thinking is little more than a process 
 of stringing together likely generalizations, and since, in 
 spite of all the evidence to the contrary, men including 
 writers do think, readers must be asked to put up with the 
 generalizing habit, provided that writers do not try to pass 
 off their generalizations as absolute and infallible truths. 
 
 Given the twofold object, first of demonstrating the 
 irrelevance for the actual problems of life of philosophical 
 Ethics, and secondly of indicating a method likely to yield 
 more practical results, the following book falls naturally 
 into two parts. 
 
 It will be the object of the first part to give a brief survey 
 of the leading theories of philosophical Ethics. It will 
 indicate the conclusions that they reach, and wiU attempt, 
 in the spirit of the theories with which it deals, to achieve a 
 logical reconciliation of their differences. I have tried to 
 avoid all technical language in dealing with these theories, 
 and to present them briefly and clearly. But the treatment 
 is here primarily philosophical, and if the reader dislikes 
 philosophy, he is recommended to begin at Part II. 
 
 The second part leaves the region of traditional philo- 
 sophy and enters the realm of psychology and politics. 
 Beginning with the individual, it asks what most men do as 
 a fact desire, and then proceeds to consider in what way 
 their desires can be realized. The method of treatment 
 changes with the change of subject matter ; it is discursive 
 
xvi COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 rather than philosophical and ranges from psycho-analysis 
 to Guild Socialism. We leave the region of truths which are 
 true for all men in all ages (truths, that is, that apply to no 
 men who have ever lived), and consider the typical modern 
 man in the typical modern community. 
 
 It is hoped that this part will be found to make up in 
 verve what it lacks in logic, and to compensate by an 
 increased vitality of treatment for its philosophically 
 impressionist methods and provisional generalizations. 
 
 C. E. M. J. 
 
COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 PART I 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL 
 OR TRADITIONAL ETHICS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 UTILITARIANISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY 
 OF PLEASURE 
 
 § I. What the Utilitarians Believed 
 
 1 PROPOSE in this and the two following chapters to 
 describe and to discuss some of the main theories about 
 
 Ethics that have been propounded by philosophers. 
 
 In this chapter I shall deal with the group of theories 
 which hold, m the first place, that actions are to be judged 
 as right or wrong according to their consequences ; and 
 in the second, that in assessing those consequences pleasure 
 or happiness is the only thing which can properly be 
 regarded as valuable. It is clear that the second proposi- 
 tion, namely that pleasure is the only thing of value, does 
 not necessarily follow from the first, namely that the right- 
 ness or wrongness of actions depends on their consequences, 
 and that it is possible for the one proposition to be true 
 although the other is untrue. Philosophers who have held 
 the first position have, however, as a general rule subscribed 
 to the second, and it will therefore be convenient to consider 
 them together. 
 
 I 1 
 
2 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 The theories in question have been very popular among 
 ethical writers, from the early Greek thinkers down to our 
 own day. John Stuart Mill may, however, be regarded as 
 perhaps the most typical exponent of this school of thought, 
 and I propose therefore to examine the theories chiefly in the 
 form in which they were propounded by him. He called his 
 doctrine Utilitarianism, or the Theory of Utility, and he 
 states it as follows : " Actions are right in proportion as 
 they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to 
 produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended 
 pleasure and the absence of pain ; by unhappiness, pain and 
 the privation of pleasure." " Pleasure and freedom from 
 pain are the only things desirable as ends." Wlien we ask 
 the question, whose happiness and whose pain are meant, 
 the answer is the happiness and pain of the greatest number. 
 
 In this connection Mill refers us to Bentham's famous 
 maxim, to the effect that " Everybody should count as one, 
 and nobody as more than one." 
 
 Those actions therefore are " right " or " ought " to be 
 performed which produce the best consequences, and the 
 best consequences are the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number. 
 
 In addition to the above doctrine, Mill adopted a peculiar 
 psychological view with regard to the nature of pleasure. 
 Not only does he hold as a matter of ethics that pleasure 
 ought to be pursued, but as a matter of psychology he 
 holds that nothing but pleasure can be desired, and that 
 nothing but pleasure can therefore be pursued. 
 
 When pressed for a proof of this theory, he points out 
 quite rightly that questions of ultimate ends are incapable 
 of proof in the ordinary sense of the word, for whatever 
 can be proved to be good can only be so proved by being 
 shown to be a means to something which is recognized as 
 good without proof. " The medical art is proved to be good 
 by its conducing to health ; but how is it possible to prove 
 that health is good ? " The only way therefore in which we 
 , can show something ultimate to be good, is by looking into 
 our consciousness and seeing whether we really think it so. 
 When desiring to prove his theory that pleasure is the only 
 good. Mill has recourse therefore to the methods of practised 
 self -consciousness and self -observation. 
 
 These methods lead him to the following conclusion : 
 
UTILITARIANISM 3 
 
 " Desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and 
 thinking of it as painful, are phenomena entirely inseparable, 
 two different modes of naming the same psychological fact : 
 to think of an object as desirable . . . and to think of it as 
 pleasant are one and the same thing : and to desire any- 
 thing except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant is a 
 physical and metaphysical impossibility." 
 
 These quotations are sufficient to give a brief summary 
 of the Utilitarian doctrine. It will be seen that it divides 
 itself into two distinct parts : (i) That the rightness and 
 wrongness of actions must be judged by their consequences, 
 and (2) that of these consequences, pleasure alone is good 
 and pleasure alone ought to be promoted. 
 
 In this chapter I propose only to consider the second of 
 these tenets, namely that pleasure alone is good, and to 
 assume that the first is correct. Consideration will be given 
 to the first position, namely that actions must be judged 
 and assessed by their consequences and only by their 
 consequences in the second chapter, in which I propose to 
 discuss Intuitionist theories. 
 
 The view that pleasure is the only good is held in two 
 distinct forms. {A) That as a matter of psychological fact 
 only pleasure can be desired. (B) That other things can in 
 point of fact be desired, but only pleasure ought to be 
 desired. 
 
 § 2. Pleasure as the Sole Object of Desire 
 
 {A) The first of these views, which is usually called 
 hedonism from the Greek word rj^ovy (pleasure), is as old 
 as the Greeks if not older. It was the doctrine of the 
 Cyrenaic school of Greek Philosophy, and was expounded 
 with great force of dialectic by a philosopher called Aristip- 
 pus. It has a disarming and specious simplicity which 
 attaches to all extreme theories, and may be propounded 
 with overwhelming effect by young libertines and revo- 
 lutionaries anxious to discredit the canons of orthodox 
 morality for their own purposes. The plausibility of the 
 theory in fact renders it particularly attractive to those who 
 have reflected for the first time upon ethics, and it is always 
 a little disappointing to find, on deeper reflection, that truth 
 really is not as simple as all that. The theory derives this 
 
4 GOMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 plausibility from the fact that there is no class of actions 
 which cannot be shown by very good arguments to have 
 been performed with the object of producing pleasure for 
 the doer, and solely with that object. 
 
 Let us consider an instance of an apparently unselfish 
 action performed from so-called altruistic motives. A has 
 ten shillings at Christmas and spends it on presents for 
 himself, whereas B, also having ten shillings, spends it on 
 presents for his little brothers and sisters ; it might appear 
 at first sight that whereas A was being selfish and acting 
 only for his own pleasure, B was being unselfish and acting 
 for the pleasure of others. 
 
 " Not a bit of it," says the hedonist ! " B's action 
 exemplifies my theory as much as A's, for B is aiming at his 
 own pleasure just as much as A, only B happens to get his 
 pleasure in a different way. Whereas A t>btains most 
 pleasure from things which indulge his appetites and satisfy 
 his acquisitive desires, B obtains it by indulging his im- 
 pulses towards generosity which secure for him the approba- 
 tion of his conscience and the gratitude of his brothers and 
 sisters to boot. People like B are so constituted that they 
 "***>- get most pleasure by giving pleasure to other people. Thus 
 they choose to indulge their tendencies to self-denial and 
 their instincts of generosity. The result is that they benefit 
 their fellows, who naturally call them unselfish, whereas they 
 call people like A selfish ; but this does not mean that the B's 
 are not thorough-going hedonists all the same, and aiming 
 all the time at the pleasure which pleases them, just as their 
 opposites secure by more direct means the pleasure to 
 which they are attracted. Similarly it may be shown that 
 any course of action, such as voluntary martyrdom at the 
 stake, is undertaken solely because the agent thinks that by 
 its means he will secure the maximum of pleasure in the 
 long run : otherwise of course he would not act in that way." 
 
 Any virtue may be completely shown up by these methods. 
 Temperance is simply the exercise of our faculties in such 
 a way as to combine the maximum of pleasure with the 
 minimum of pain : Charity is a proposal by A that B should 
 relieve G : Patriotism is a love of country, other people's 
 preferred : the only sin is to get found out and so on. 
 
 This theory is not only plausible but it is logically irre- 
 futable. It is not possible to prove that people's actions are 
 
 \ 
 
UTILITARIANISM 5 
 
 not dictated solely by the desire to secure pleasure for 
 themselves. On the other hand there is not the least 
 reason to suppose it to be true. 
 
 The best means of disproving it is to look into one's own 
 consciousness and to find out whether one is in fact actuated 
 by desire for pleasure, either present pleasure or pleasure 
 in the long run in every action one undertakes. Does the 
 theory, in short, square with the facts of consciousness ? 
 
 When a man rushes into the street to save a child from 
 falling under the wheels of a passing motor-car at the risk 
 of his own life, does he stop to calculate that by doing so 
 he will obtain more pleasure than by staying where he is, 
 or does he act from an unthinking impulse to save the 
 child's life ? To me at least it is clear that he acts from 
 impulse only. Many actions are purely impulsive, in the 
 sense that the agent has no thought of any ulterior end to 
 be gained by the action. Such actions are the result of the 
 prompting of impulse, and no calculation on the part of 
 mind influences the performance of the action. Acts of 
 passion and anger are of this character. The man who 
 beats his wife does not do so because he calculates that he 
 will get the most pleasure by doing so, but because he is 
 annoyed with his wife and wishes to vent his annoyance by 
 beating her. This does not mean that he may not get 
 pleasure by beating his wife ; he probably will, the satis- 
 faction of any impulse being a source of pleasure ; but it 
 does mean that the desire for pleasure was not the motive 
 of the act. 
 
 Two distinct truths do in point of fact lie at the basis of 
 the hedonist philosophy. It is true in the first place that 
 the satisfaction of every impulse or desire is attended by 
 pleasure. It is true in the second place that nothing can 
 be regarded as ethically valuable in practice, except with 
 reference to its effect upon human consciousness. Thus if 
 an exhibition of unselfishness could be imagined to take place 
 in a world devoid of conscious beings, such an exhibition, 
 just because it would have no reference to any form of 
 consciousness, would from the practical point of view be of 
 no value. It would not help anybody to be good, nor would 
 anybody feel it to be good.^ 
 
 1 For the intrinsic as opposed to the practical value of non- 
 apprehended goodness see Chapter in, page 79. 
 
\ 
 
 6 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 These truths, the truth that satisfaction of desire brings 
 pleasure, and the truth that the practical value of actions 
 is to be sought ultimately in their effect upon some human 
 consciousness, have been distorted into the theory that the 
 pursuit of pleasure is the end of all our actions. 
 
 But to say that, because only consciousness is practically 
 valuable, and because all satisfaction of desire brings plea- 
 sure to consciousness, it follows that the desire for pleasure 
 is the mainspring of all our actions, is to put the cart before 
 the horse. 
 
 What happens as a matter of psychology is that we desire 
 specific things, and we obey specific impulses without 
 actually thinking about pleasure or the chances of getting 
 it one way or the other. Pleasure comes and clothes our 
 mental state when we have acquired the thing, or satisfied 
 the impulse, but that does not mean that the pleasure which 
 came later was the motive which inspired our action to 
 begin with. 
 
 The theory in fact becomes ludicrous when applied to 
 primitive and impulsive actions, such as the blows a man 
 strikes in anger, the inevitable flinching of countenance 
 when a man shakes his fist under your nose, or the turning 
 aside of the face to avoid a rapidly flying hockey ball. In 
 all these cases we act purely impulsively without reflec- 
 tion. 
 
 To take an instance given by Canon Rashdall. " If the 
 hedonistic psychology were true, every one must have been 
 starved in early infancy. A young animal could not sur- 
 vive without sucking, and it would never on this theory 
 have begun to suck, unless it had some reason to suppose 
 that sucking would be a source of pleasure. Such knowledge 
 it could only obtain from experience, and such experience it 
 could not possibly possess a few hours after its birth." 
 
 It is clear that the first act of sucking is the result of an 
 impulse of which absolutely no account can be given except 
 the statement that it exists, and although the infant may 
 suck at a later stage because it finds by experience that 
 sucking produces pleasure, it is obvious that it did not suck 
 with that motive to begin with. 
 
 Pleasure, then, though it may be attendant upon the 
 satisfaction of every desire, is not the object of absolutely 
 every desire, and some actions could never have been 
 
UTILITARIANISM 7 
 
 performed at all if pleasure was in fact the only possible 
 object of desire. 
 
 So far is the hedonistic view from being the true one that 
 we may notice as a matter of psychological interest, that 
 desire for pleasure as opposed to desire for specific things is 
 the most unsatisfactory form of desire, inasmuch as it 
 constantly fails to attain its object, pleasure if pursued 
 directly having a curious habit of eluding the pursuer. 
 Thus entertainments which we attend because we desire 
 pleasure, nourishing, in spite of all the evidence to the 
 contrary, an invincible belief that they will produce it for 
 us, are notoriously incapable of providing either intense or 
 lasting pleasure. 
 
 That life would be tolerable but for its amusements, is a 
 despairing commentary upon the Nemesis that appears to 
 overtake the majority of our efforts to capture pleasure, by 
 attending amusements and other functions which purport 
 to supply it. 
 
 Pleasure, like beauty, cannot be taken by storm. It 
 may not be pursued directly, but comes indirectly to invest 
 our consciousness only when we have been actively engaged 
 in pursuing and achieving something else. In particular 
 it is wont to manifest itself when our faculties are fully 
 developed, and are called into the fullest activity of 
 which they are capable. This is the gist of Aristotle's 
 famous account of pleasure in the tenth book of the 
 Ethics, as of a something added when the activity of 
 the best faculty is directed upon the best and most complete 
 object. Aristotle takes a parallel from the case of health. 
 When a healthy young man is engaged in activity calling 
 forth his fullest powers, there is a superadded completion or 
 perfection upon his health like a bloom. Now pleasure is 
 of this character ; it comes as a superadded perfection, like 
 the bloom upon the cheek of a young man, which, though 
 not directly aimed at, may be taken as a sign that the 
 powers of the mind and body are in an active and healthy 
 state, that in other words the human machine is working 
 smoothly. 
 
 For this reason paradoxically enough the most real and 
 lasting pleasures have probably been found to arise in 
 connection with work. The pleasures of that work which 
 makes the heaviest demand upon our faculties, the plea- 
 
8 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 sures of the athlete, the artist, the critic or the composer, 
 the pleasures, in brief, of creative work are probably the 
 most real pleasures known to mankind. 
 
 On these lines also is to be found an explanation of the 
 element of uncertainty that attaches to pleasure. There 
 is no certain recipe for the production of pleasure, just as 
 there is no certain recipe for the production of beauty. 
 The mathematician who multiplies seven by seven knows 
 that the result will always and infallibly be forty-nine. The 
 scientist knows that if hydrogen and oxygen are combined 
 in certain proportions the result will infallibly be water. 
 But the ingredients that will infallibly produce pleasure are 
 unknown. Just because it eludes us if we desire it directly, 
 just because it comes and clothes as it were absent-mindedly 
 without purpose or design, a mental state which has been 
 ardently concerned with the achievement of something else, 
 there is always an element of chance or fluke about its mani- 
 festation. » 
 
 It may indeed be probable that if the methods of its 
 production were certainly known, if in fact it could be 
 produced at will, it would cease to be pleasure and would 
 become something different : for the pleasantness of plea- 
 sure seems to lie more than anything else in the unexpected 
 quality that characterizes it. It is this element of chance? 
 in pleasure that makes it impossible for us to predict of 
 experiences in life whether they will be valuable or not. 
 
 We have seen reasons above for doubting whether plea- 
 sure is, as the hedonists assert, the only possible object of 
 human desire. It seems probable that besides actions 
 which are dictated purely by impulse, with regard to which 
 no desire of any kind is entertained or commonly put before 
 himself by the agent, human beings can desire for their own 
 sake a number of different things such as music, knowledge 
 and beauty. By the term " desire for its own sake " I under- 
 stand a desire which does not pursue its object as a means, 
 a means namely for the production of pleasure to the person 
 entertaining the desire ; a desire, that is, which does not 
 connect the object desired with pleasure, or envisage the 
 pleasure which its possession may produce. What these 
 objects are which can be desired for their own sake, and 
 which possess value in their own right, will be considered 
 in the next chapter. 
 
UTILITARIANISM 9 
 
 It is nevertheless possible, if not probable, that no whole 
 can be regarded as valuable unless it possess some admixture 
 of pleasure. It has been said above that in practice the 
 only thing which is ultimately valuable from the point of 
 view of ethics is some form of human consciousness. In a 
 world of machines there would be for practical purposes no 
 good or bad, no right or wrong. Mental states are the 
 source and origin of practical ethical value, and also the 
 test or arbiter by which the value of actions is to be judged. 
 Now what seems to be possible if not probable with regard 
 to pleasure, is that no mental state considered as a whole 
 can be valuable unless it possesses an admixture of pleasure. 
 We have noted above how pleasure tends to invest the 
 mental state of the man who achieves a desired object, or 
 exercises his faculties to the full : we may go further and 
 assert that unless it does so, that mental state has no value. 
 
 We are committed therefore to the position that although 
 when a man goes to a concert he desires music and not 
 pleasure, nevertheless unless pleasure is an element atten- 
 dant upon his appreciation of the music, the whole mental 
 state that results from hearing the music is a state without 
 value. This does not mean, however, that the whole 
 mental state is valuable only in proportion to the amount of 
 pfeasure it contains. Such a statement would be tanta- 
 mount to the assertion which we have already repudiated, 
 that only pleasure is valuable, whereas the satisfaction of 
 the desire for music has value on its own account apart 
 from the pleasure which attends it, provided always that 
 pleasure does attend it. The fact that the pleasure is 
 superadded, gives the appreciation of the music a value 
 in its own right, which it did not possess until the pleasure 
 were superadded. 
 
 This is an apparent contradiction in algebra, which may 
 yet hold true in psychology. It is a contradiction in algebra 
 because it involves our saying that if jv is a whole containing 
 two elements y and z, and if y stands for the element of 
 pleasure, and z for the other elements of value in the whole 
 Xy then (i) the value of % is o, if the value of jy is ; yet (2) 
 z has value in its own right apart from the value of y. 
 Hence arises the paradoxical conclusion that the value of 
 the part z plus the value of the part y is greater than the 
 value of the whole x. 
 
10 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 I have used this algebraic illustration simply to elucidate 
 the point at issue, and not because I think that the circum- 
 stance that ethical reasoning leads to algebraical paradox is 
 in any way to the discredit of ethical reasoning. Moreover, 
 any one who thinks that it tends to obscure instead of to 
 clarify the issue is at perfect liberty to leave it out. 
 
 As a result of this section therefore we may assert the 
 following propositions : 
 
 (i) Pleasure is not the only thing which it is possible for 
 human beings to desire. 
 
 (2) Other things may not only be desired besides pleasure, 
 
 but may possess intrinsic value in their own right. 
 
 (3) No mental whole is valuable unless it contains a 
 
 certain admixture of pleasure. 
 
 § 3. Desire for Pleasure as a Duty 
 
 {B) If we hold the first of the two positions with regard 
 to pleasure referred to above, namety that as a matter of 
 psychological fact only pleasure can be desired, consider- 
 ation of the truth of the second position, namely that plea- 
 sure and only pleasure ought to be desired, does not arise. 
 There is no meaning in saying that we ought to desire 
 pleasure, if we are so constituted psychologically that we 
 can desire nothing else. i 
 
 But it is possible to maintain that, although as a matter of 
 psychology we do desire other things besides pleasure, 
 only pleasure ought to be desired, pleasure being the only 
 kind of good. This latter position was held by the philoso- 
 pher Henry Sidgwick. It was also held implicitly by John 
 Stuart Mill, the philosopher whom we are considering as a 
 typical example of the Utilitarian school, however much he 
 may have explicitly repudiated this particular doctrine in 
 his writings. Explicitly Mill agreed with Jeremy Bentham, 
 from whom he inherited his Utilitarian views, that only 
 pleasure could in point of fact be desired. Mill, however, 
 though the author of a work on logic, was more remarkable 
 for philosophical insight than foi logical consistency, and he 
 frequently commits himself to statements that involve the 
 assumption that other things besides pleasure are desirable, 
 and can be desired. It will be convenient to consider 
 exactly what view it was that Bentham held, in order that 
 the differences that Mill introduced, — the differences in- 
 
UTILITARIANISM ii 
 
 volved by his implied belief that ' other things besides 
 pleasure were desirable — may be brought more clearly into 
 relief. 
 
 Bentham held definitely that the only valuable thing in 
 the world was pleasure. Pleasure was therefore the only 
 desirable thing. It was also the only thing actually desired. 
 From this it follows that the mere circumstance of a thing 
 being desired meant that that thing was pleasant, was 
 desirable and was therefore good. Whereas most people 
 would say that there was a distinction between a " desired 
 thing " and a " desirable thing," the distinction being that a 
 desirable thing denotes a thing which ought to be desired in 
 the interests of some standard of morality or some con- 
 ception of the good, although in point of fact it might not be 
 desired, Bentham held that desired, desirable, and good 
 were interchangeable terms, with identical nieanings. 
 
 Good therefore has no meaning apart from the amount of 
 pleasure it connotes. Whereas we are familiar with such 
 distinctions as " It is good to go to church, but it is pleasant 
 to stay at home and read novels by the fire," no distinction 
 is involved for Bentham except the distinction between 
 degrees of pleasantness. The one is either more or less 
 pleasant than the other, that is all, and as novels and the 
 fireside are generally regarded as more pleasant than 
 church, it follows not only that we ought to prefer them, 
 for we cannot help preferring the pleasant, but that we 
 inevitably must prefer them and reject church. If in point 
 of fact we do go to church, it proves not that church is 
 regarded as ** better," but simply that owing to the curious 
 nature of our desires we happen to find it more pleasant. 
 Two results follow : 
 
 1. As we always do what we think will be productive of 
 most pleasure, to say that we ought to do tliis in preference 
 to that is a meaningless expression ; the word " ought " 
 therefore becomes superfluous. " If the word ought means 
 anything at all it ought to be excluded from the dictionary," 
 was a famous Benthamite motto. 
 
 2. As the only criterion of value is pleasantness, it is clear 
 that pleasures cannot differ in quality. They will differ in 
 quantity only. That will be the greater good which is also 
 the more intense pleasure, but we cannot say that one 
 pleasure will be higher than another : to do so would be to 
 
12 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 assume that some other thing besides pleasure, namely 
 height or nobility of pleasure, was valuable. Hence 
 Bentham's famous doctrine, " Quantity of pleasure being 
 equal, push pin is as good as poetry." If our ruler of value is 
 marked out in units of pleasure only, quantity of pleasure is 
 the only thing that we can measure. 
 
 Now explicitly this is a position which is adopted by Mill. 
 
 As we have seen, he holds that " to think of an object as 
 desirable and to think of it as pleasant are one and the same 
 thing," and " to desire anything, except in proportion as the 
 idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical im- 
 possibility." We soon, however, find him faltering. He 
 falters in the first place by introducing a distinction of 
 quality in pleasure. 
 
 " Of two pleasures ... if one is, by those who are 
 competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the 
 other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to he attended 
 with a greater amount of discomfort, and they would not 
 resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their 
 nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the 
 preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality so far out- 
 weighing quantity, as to render it in comparison of small 
 account." 
 
 Mill goes on to point out that people do as a w^hole prefer 
 the pleasures attendant upon the exercise of their higher 
 faculties, as compared with a greater quantity of pleasure 
 produced by the indulgence of their lower. A wise man 
 would not consent to be a happy fool ; a person of feeling 
 would not consent to be base, even for a greater share of 
 pleasure, the pleasures namely of the fool and the base. 
 " It is better," says Mill, " to be a human being dissatisfied 
 than a pig satisfied." 
 
 This admission is fatal to the position that the only 
 desirable thing is pleasure. If in a whole x, y is the quantity 
 of pleasure, and z the quantity of something other than 
 pleasure, which Mill denotes by the adjective " higher," 
 Mill regards the value of the whole as greater if z is 
 present, than it is if z is absent. But if y, the quantity of 
 pleasure, is the only thing of value, the amount of z present or 
 absent would not affect the value of the whole. It can only 
 affect the whole if z is regarded as possessing value in its own 
 right. If, however, z is regarded as simply pleasure, and not 
 
UTILITARIANISM 13 
 
 as higher pleasure, what is the point of making the dis- 
 tinction in pleasures implied by the word higher ? Mill 
 therefore regards certain other things besides pleasure as 
 being desirable, and in so doing gives up the hedonist 
 position in the form in which he professes to hold it, 
 namely that pleasure is the only thing that can be desired. 
 
 We come therefore to the second form in which the 
 hedonist position can be asserted, namely that although 
 other things besides pleasure may be desired, pleasure is the 
 only thing that ought to be desired. 
 
 We have already seen that in his assertion that people 
 " ought " to desire pleasures of the best or " highest " 
 quality, Mill admitted implicitly that it was possible to 
 desire other things besides sheer pleasure, thus introducing 
 an inconsistency into the pure form of Bentham's doctrine. 
 The inconsistency implicit in his treatment of " quality " of 
 pleasure, is more clearly revealed in Mill's view of the 
 individual's relation to his fellows. 
 
 The names of Bentham and Mill are bound up with the 
 famous phrase, " the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number." The phrase was used as a criterion whereby to 
 assess the rightness or wrongness of actions. An action was 
 right, if it alone of all the other actions possible to the agent 
 at any given moment, tended to produce the most happiness 
 for the most people, and as it was a man's " duty " to do 
 what was right, his duty was always to promote the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number. But the basis of this 
 so-called " duty " was different for Bentham and for Mill. 
 
 Bentham, as we have seen, believed that a human being 
 was so constituted that he could only desire his own greatest 
 possible pleasure or happiness. It follows therefore that 
 it is psychologically impossible for him to desire the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number, except in so far as the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number tends to promote 
 his own happiness. Now Bentham believed as a philan- 
 thropist that the promotion of the happiness of others was 
 one of the chief sources of personal happiness. He also 
 believed, as a matter of social philosophy, that the net result 
 of the struggle by each individual to attain his own personal 
 pleasure was the imposition by the majority upon the 
 individual of the rule that " every one should count as one 
 and nobody as more than one." The majority impose this 
 
14 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 rule upon the individual by all the methods of which it has 
 control, by the laws, by the current morality of the time, the 
 press, the pulpit, and the various other organs which go to 
 create that 'public opinion by which in turn the mind of the 
 individual is moulded. All these organs are directed to 
 impressing upon him the maxim that what produces the 
 general happiness does in the long run produce the greatest 
 happiness for himself. 
 
 And as the law stands this maxim is on the whole un- 
 deniably true. Abstention from murder and burglary on 
 the part of the individual, produces more happiness for the 
 public than the habitual practice of these pursuits. The 
 community therefore evolves laws and penalties the object 
 of which is to guarantee that such abstention will also 
 conduce to the greater happiness of the individual who 
 abstains. 
 
 Hence in saying that right conduct is that which promotes 
 the greatest happiness of the greatest number, Ffentham 
 means that such conduct also tends in general to promote 
 our own greatest happiness, and he is therefore perfectly 
 logical on his own premises in calling it right. 
 
 If, however, on any particular occasion a certain action 
 which did not promote the general happiness, happened to 
 conduce to the greater happiness of the individual, the 
 individual would on the premises of the hedonistic philo- 
 sophy be right to perform that action. 
 
 Now while Bentham regarded the greatest happiness of 
 the greatest number only as a means to the happiness of the 
 individual. Mill with less logic regarded it as an end in itself. 
 
 The principle of utility which he maintains we " ought " 
 to follow, is a principle which does not aim at producing the 
 greatest happiness of the individual, but the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number. If the happiness of the 
 individual conflicts with this, the individual must go to the 
 wall. " In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth we read the 
 complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would 
 be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute 
 the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality." It is both 
 moral and right therefore to promote the happiness of 
 others. But how can this be if one is so constituted that one 
 can only desire the happiness of oneself ? 
 
 Let us suppose that A can, by doing an action P, produce 
 
UTILITARIANISM 15 
 
 an amount of happiness X for himself, and an amount of 
 happiness Y for three other people. Let us suppose that by 
 doing another action Q he can produce an amount of 
 happiness C for himself, and an amount of happiness D for 
 three other people. Let us further assume that X is greater 
 than C, and Y is less than D, but that the whole X plus Y is 
 less than the whole C plus D. Then ought A to choose the 
 action P or the action Q ? 
 
 According to Mill's first premiss, namely that a man can 
 only desire his own greatest happiness, the choice does not 
 arise because A can only choose P, for X is greater than C. 
 
 According to his second premiss that a man ought always 
 to pursue his own greatest happiness, A ought to choose P 
 on the same ground. 
 
 But according to his third premiss that a man ought to 
 promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number, he 
 ought to choose the action Q, on the ground that the total of 
 happiness C plus D is greater than the total X plus Y . 
 
 We therefore arrive at the conclusion that Mill does believe 
 that a man ought to pursue something other than his own 
 pleasure, namely the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number, and furthermore that he ought to pursue it even 
 if it conflicts with his own pleasure. 
 
 Now it may be argued that though this is giving up one 
 form of the hedonist position, the form namely which asserts 
 that a man can only desire his own pleasure, it is not giving 
 up the other form of that position, namely that although a 
 man can desire other things besides pleasure, he ought to 
 desire pleasure only ; for by insisting that he ought to desire 
 the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the theory 
 still maintains that pleasure is the only thing that ought to 
 be desued, although it is now somebody else's pleasure. 
 
 But in maintaining that the individual ought not to 
 pursue his own pleasure always, but other people's pleasure 
 to the detriment of his own sometimes, we are admitting 
 that something can be and ought to be pursued besides 
 pleasure, namely what is called social good. 
 
 We are admitting in fact that the individual can and 
 ought to desire something which may have no relation to his 
 own pleasure, namely the good of the community ; and the 
 mere circumstance that we are for the present identifying 
 that good with pleasure, does not necessarily mean that it 
 
i6 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 is pleasure for the individual. In saying therefore that the 
 individual ought to promote social good or utility, we are in 
 effect saying that it is on occasion his duty to do what may 
 produce pain for himself. The martyr is clearly actuated 
 by such feeHngs of duty. 
 
 We arrive therefore at the conclusion which Mill ex- 
 plicitly denies but implicitly admits, that the individual 
 ought to desire at least one other thing besides his own 
 pleasure, namely social good. 
 
 What other things ought to be desired besides pleasure 
 will be considered in the next chapter. 
 
 These inconsistencies in Mill are important, and I have 
 dwelt on them at some length because they demonstrate the 
 impracticability of maintaining, even with the best will in 
 the world, that pleasure is the only thing of value. They 
 are liable to occur in any theory which asserts the exclusive 
 value of pleasure, and which attempts to square itself with 
 the facts of human desire. They reveal themselves most 
 completely in Mill's work, but they are implied in any form 
 of Utilitarian hedonism. 
 
 It remains to point out two further instances of the 
 departure which Mill makes from the premises of strict 
 hedonism when he attempts to work out his theory, 
 attempts which tend further to emphasize the difficulty of 
 maintaining in detail that happiness is the only thing of 
 value, the only thing which all our actions are intended 
 to promote. A consideration of these departures will 
 therefore pave the way to the conclusions which I shall 
 endeavour to establish in the next chapter, namely that 
 other things besides happiness are valuable. 
 
 The first of these instances is afforded by Mill's treatment 
 of virtue. The Utilitarian theory according to Mill does not 
 deny that virtue can be desired. " It maintains not only 
 that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be desired 
 disinterestedly, for itself." Utilitarians, says Mill, "re- 
 cognize as a psychological fact the possibility of virtue 
 being, to the individual, a good in itself, without looking to 
 any end beyond it." 
 
 This admission seems at first sight to give up the principle 
 that only happiness can be desired altogether. Mill, how- 
 ever, endeavours to reconcile it with his main doctrine, by 
 asserting that though virtue may be desired as an end now, 
 
UTILITARIANISM 17 
 
 it has only attained this position because it was originally 
 desired as a means, a means, that is, to happiness. People 
 apparently found out that the practice of virtue generally 
 produced happiness, desired virtue for this reason as a 
 means to happiness, and after a time by force of the habit of 
 desiring virtue, forgot the reason for which they originally 
 desired it, and desired it as an end in itself. 
 
 But the fact that virtue may once have been desired as a 
 means to an end, does not in the least mean that it is not 
 desired as an end now. The origin of a thing is no invalida- 
 tion of its present state. To take an instance given by 
 Canon Rashdall : the fact that a savage can only count on 
 the fingers of his two hands, does not invalidate the truth of 
 the multiplication table ; and the fact that religion began in 
 devil worship, Totemism, and exogamy, does not mean that 
 it is not religion now. 
 
 Similarly the fact that virtue began by being desired for 
 something else, if it is a fact, does not alter the fact that it is 
 desired for itself now ; and, if it is so desired, it invalidates 
 the principle that happiness is the only possible object of 
 human desire. 
 
 Nor is it an answer to this argument to say as Mill does, 
 that in being desired as an end in itself, virtue is desired 
 " as part of happiness." It is a matter of common obser- 
 vation that so far from always promoting happiness, the 
 practice of virtue very frequently promotes the reverse, and 
 it is not therefore by any means always true that virtue is 
 desired as a part of happiness. 
 
 Without attempting accurately to define virtue at this 
 stage, we may note that it can often be identified with the 
 observance of the current code of morality. Novelists and 
 dramatists have made us famiUar with the antithesis 
 between virtue in this sense and happiness, and one of the 
 stock conflicts of tragedy, especially in the case of women, is 
 the conflict between the desire to act virtuously, or to pre- 
 serve one's honour as it is sometimes called on the one hand, 
 and the desire to obtain happiness by following one's 
 affections on the other. 
 
 The fact that on the stage the virtuous course usually 
 brings ultimate happiness, is the outcome of the general 
 desire for a " happy ending " which animates those who go 
 to the theatre to be " taken out of themselves " : it is 
 
i8 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 notorious that in its predilection for happy endings melo- 
 drama is hopelessly at variance with the facts of life. 
 
 It is not therefore by any means always true that virtue 
 is desired as a means to a part of happiness. It is often 
 desired in spite of its demonstrable failure to promote the 
 happiness of any one. 
 
 Mill's treatment of justice affords another instance of his 
 failure to subordinate the manifestations of the salient moral 
 faculties to his principle of utility. 
 
 The sentiment of justice, according to Mill, has two 
 ingredients : the desire to punish a person who has done 
 harm, and the knowledge or belief that there is some 
 definite individual to whom harm has been done. Of these, 
 the first ingredient arises from two natural sentiments, — the 
 impulse of self-defence, and the feeling of sympathy. 
 
 The impulse of self-defence makes us resent wrongs done 
 to ourselves ; but this purely egoistic feeling is not yet the 
 principle of justice. It is through the additional feeling of 
 sympathy that man, as distinct from the animals who have 
 the impulse of self-defence only, " is capable of forming a 
 community of interest between himself and the human 
 society of which he forms part." This leads him to resent a 
 harm done to others belonging to his society, just as he 
 resents a harm done to himself. The animal impulse of 
 self-defence is in fact sublimated into a feeling for the good 
 of the society of which the individual forms a part. 
 
 This sentiment of resentment at a wrong done to others is 
 in Mill's view at the root of the principle of justice. In 
 asserting this principle the individual is asserting, for the 
 benefit of others, the principle which he would wish to apply 
 to himself. Hence he is asserting the principle of utility in 
 another form, the principle namely, that actions are moral 
 in so far as they promote the greatest happiness of the 
 greatest number. 
 
 But if people are able to desire justice, as defined by Mill, 
 it is clear that they are able to desire something which is not 
 only other than their own happiness, but which frequently 
 conflicts with their own happiness. 
 
 A man may possess a belonging of his neighbour's. The 
 possession of this belonging may confer upon him very great 
 happiness. The circumstances may be such that it is 
 totally impossible for his neighbour to know that he 
 
UTILITARIANISM 19 
 
 possesses it : it may also be totally impossible for the pre- 
 sent holder to be disturbed in his possession of it : it may 
 also be true that though the rightful owner may get some 
 pleasure from the enjoyment of the belonging, he will not 
 get so much pleasure from it as the man who wrongfully 
 possesses it at the moment. It is clear that in such circum- 
 stances the present owner will not, by restoring the belong- 
 ing, increase the total amount of happiness in the world. 
 His own happiness will be diminished by the loss of the 
 belonging, and this happiness which he loses will not be 
 counter-balanced by the gain in happiness to his neighbour. 
 Nevertheless it would be an act of justice to restore such a 
 belonging, and it is an act which might quite conceivably 
 be performed. 
 
 In acting justly therefore men are not always animated 
 by a desire to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number. Whatever they may desire when acting justly, 
 they do not always desire what Mill's principle of utility says 
 they ought to desire. 
 
 Mill's treatment of justice therefore affords another 
 example of the difficulty of maintaining that people do in 
 fact desire or ought in morals to desire pleasure and pleasure 
 only. 
 
 § 4. Summary 
 
 It will be convenient to sum up the results to which an 
 examination of the Utilitarian theory has led us. 
 
 The Utilitarian theory of Ethics estabUshes a criterion of 
 right and wrong and makes a judgment of value. The 
 criterion which it asserts is that the rightness and wrongness 
 of actions depend entirely upon the consequences of those 
 actions. They do not depend upon any feeling or set of 
 feelings which any person or body of persons may entertain 
 with regard to them. The validity of this criterion will be 
 discussed in the next chapter. The judgment of value 
 which the Utilitarian theory makes, is that in assessing the 
 consequences by which the rightness or wrongness of actions 
 are to be established, only pleasure or happiness is of value. 
 In so far as this judgment of value is asserted in the form 
 that human beings are so constituted that they can desire 
 nothing but pleasure, we have seen that there are good 
 
20 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 grounds for believing it to be untrue. In so far as it asserts 
 that people can desire other things besides pleasure, but 
 ought to desire pleasure, we have seen that as treated by 
 its leading exponent, John Stuart Mill, the theory is not held 
 consistently. 
 
 In his distinction between the quality of pleasures he 
 implies that other things besides pleasure can and ought to 
 be desired. In his assertion that we ought to promote other 
 people's pleasure even at the expense of our own, he is 
 asserting that we ought to desire the good of society, or in 
 other words that we ought to be altruistic. 
 
 In his treatment of virtue and justice his attempts to 
 prove that they are only desired as a means to pleasure, 
 involve a misrepresentation of the ordinary phenomena of 
 moral consciousness, in the course of which he implicitly 
 admits that virtue is desired for its own sake, and justice 
 for the sake of something other than personal pleasure. 
 
 In the next chapter it is proposed to discuss the validity of 
 the Utilitarian criterion of right and wrong, and to endea- 
 vour to outline a scale of values in contradistinction to the 
 one happiness value. These questions will arise out of a 
 consideration of the Intuitionist theories which in philoso- 
 phical Ethics are the leading alternative to Utilitarianism. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 
 
 § I. The Belief in the Moral Sense 
 
 THE criterion laid down by the Utilitarian theory 
 was an objective criterion. It was to the effect that 
 the rightness or wrongness of actions depended on 
 their consequences, that is upon something in the outside 
 world. Many, if not the majority, of philosophers have, 
 however, held that the criterion of rightness and wrongness 
 is subjective. By this is meant that the rightness or 
 wrongness of an action is dependent upon the existence of 
 some sentiment or feeling in some person or body of 
 persons towards that action. Certain actions possess a 
 quality which excites a feeling of approval on the part of 
 what is called the moral sense. This feeling of approval 
 by the moral sense, which is sometimes called an intuition, 
 and is sometimes identified with what is called conscience, 
 is the criterion of rightness and wrongness by which the 
 ethical value of actions is to be measured. 
 
 In order to distinguish the Utilitarian from the Intui- 
 tionist criterion I propose to call actions judged by the 
 Utilitarian standard right or wrong actions, and actions 
 judged by the Intuitionist standard moral or immoral 
 actions. 
 
 A right action then is an action which has the best 
 consequences. A moral action is that which secures the 
 approval of the moral sense. 
 
 In saying that an action is moral, we shall mean there- 
 fore, among other things, that the approval of the moral 
 sense is in itself alone sufficient to establish its morality, 
 for the moral sense judges actions in themselves, inde- 
 pendently of any other consideration such as the conse- 
 quences they may produce. 
 
 21 
 
22 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 The judgments of the moral sense are further ultimate 
 and unanalyzable. The criterion of approval by the moral 
 sense cannot be resolved into anything else. No " why's " 
 can be asked about its judgments, and, according to ex- 
 treme forms of these theories, no reason need or indeed 
 can be given for its deliverances. Just as our sense of 
 smell is sole and ultimate arbiter in deciding what things 
 smell good and what things smell bad, so our moral sense 
 is ultimate in deciding what actions are moral and what 
 actions are immoral. 
 
 In saying that when I affirm an action to be moral, 
 all I mean is that I know it to be moral, or feel it to be 
 moral, or have an intuition to the effect that it is moral, 
 what I am asserting according to these theories is, that no 
 reasons can be asked or given for my feeling or my intui- 
 tion. This faculty of the moral sense is in fact given to 
 me expressly in order that I may judge actions to be 
 moral or immoral by its means, and it is itself the umpire 
 of its own decisions. There is in short no other faculty by 
 whose means I can judge its deliverances : therefore its 
 deliverances are ultimate. 
 
 Before proceeding to consider the nature of the moral 
 sense and the validity of its claim to be the criterion of 
 goodness and badness in matters of conduct, I propose to 
 give a brief outline of the main ethical theories which 
 adopt the moral sense criterion, and to enumerate the 
 different classes of actions of which the ethical value is, 
 according to some one or other of these theories, established 
 by the moral sense. 
 
 § 2. Forms of the Moral Sense Theories 
 
 The statement that the moral sense judges actions in 
 themselves independently of other considerations, is not 
 strictly accurate without qualification. In most forms of 
 the theory the moral sense judges those actions to be 
 moral which are done from good motives, or in other 
 words motives of which the moral sense approves. 
 
 While the Utilitarians look to the consequences of an 
 action for their judgment upon it, the Intuitionists look to 
 the motive from which it is done. 
 
 A moral action is frequently defined therefore as an 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 23 
 
 action which is done from a moral motive, which is further 
 defined as a motive of which the moral sense approves. 
 
 The moral sense theory has been held in a number of 
 different forms, the difference between the forms of the 
 theory consisting mainly in the different types of actions of 
 which the moral sense has been regarded as approving. The 
 variations can, however, be conveniently embraced under 
 three main forms of the theory, the first two of which lay 
 particular emphasis upon motive as being the subject of 
 judgments by the moral sense, the third form being that 
 which regards the moral sense as judging of actions in 
 themselves independently of either motive or consequences. 
 
 Kant's Theory of the Free Will 
 
 I. The extreme form of that branch of the moral sense 
 theory which holds that the morality of actions depends 
 upon the motive from which they are done was enunciated 
 by the German philosopher, Kant. For Kant, a moral 
 action was that which was done from a sense of duty as 
 opposed to desire. 
 
 In considering this view it will be necessary to say a few 
 words about the relation between reason and desire. 
 
 Most philosophers have held that the mainspring of all 
 action was desire. In Aristotle's view, desire sets the end 
 as a whole : it also formulates all the petty individual ends, 
 the achievement of which is but a step on the road to the 
 achievement of the end as a whole. The individual's 
 desires are, however, apt to be a chaotic, unruly band each 
 of which clamours for satisfaction for itself at the expense 
 of the others. If, for instance, I desire* at the same time to 
 go to bed, and to sit up and read Meredith, it is clear that 
 the one desire can only be satisfied at the expense of the 
 other. But the satisfaction of one of these two desires will 
 also be more conducive to the realization of the end as a 
 whole than the satisfaction of the other. 
 
 We have, therefore, according to Aristotle, over and 
 above the competitive desires which are self-regarding and 
 neglectful of the good of the whole, a desire for the end as 
 a whole whose business it is to discipline the individual 
 desires, to dovetail each into its special place in the whole 
 
34 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 structure, and to permit it only that amount of satisfaction 
 which is compatible with the good of the whole. 
 
 This desire for the good of the whole Aristotle called the 
 Will. The function of reason is to ascertain the various 
 steps by which the achievement of the end of each desire 
 and of the whole can be realized, and to devise how those 
 steps may be taken. Reason is then the servant of desire, 
 and also of the will which desires the good of the whole. 
 
 Action which is dictated by will or by the desire for 
 the good of the whole, is, according to Aristotle, moral 
 action. 
 
 I have briefly summarized Aristotle's account of moral 
 action, in order that the position taken up by Kant may be 
 more clearly defined by contrast. 
 
 According to Kant not only was it possible for an in- 
 dividual to act as the result of the promptings of reason as 
 opposed to desire, but he could only be regarded as acting 
 freely when he acted from reason and not from desire. This 
 view depends upon Kant's peculiar notion of freedom. 
 
 Kant conceived of man alone in nature as being free, that 
 is exempt from the laws of cause and effect which prevail 
 throughout nature. " Everything in nature works accord- 
 ing to laws. Rational beings alone have the faculty of 
 acting according to the conception of laws — that is accord- 
 ing to principle, in other words, to have a will." 
 
 When acting in accordance with will which is rational, 
 man is acting according to the laws of his own nature : he is 
 therefore acting freely and morally. But man does not 
 consist of reason only. He is a sentient being, sharing the 
 life of sentient creation and as such influenced by the 
 external stimuli which produce pain and pleasure. When 
 man allows these stimuli to dictate his actions, he is acting 
 according to desire. Hence arises a conflict between action 
 according to desire stimulated from outside, and action 
 dictated by reason, which has its seat within, and works 
 through the will. Action of this latter type only is moral 
 and really free. The only things in the world of moral 
 value, said Kant, are a free will and the actions which spring 
 from it. The free will is the result of man's power of self- 
 determination, as opposed to determination from outside, 
 and, according to Kant, extorts unconditional allegiance in 
 the performance of certain actions. Kant's famous phrase, 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 25 
 
 the " categorical imperative," is used to denote the binding 
 nature of the obligation which the rational will lays upon 
 human beings to act only in accordance with its dictates. 
 In so far as they act in accordance with desire men are 
 acting immorally. The morality of actions depends there- 
 fore upon the circumstances which determine the action. 
 
 " An action done from a sense of duty derives its moral 
 worth not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, 
 but from the maxim by which it is determined, and there- 
 fore does not depend on the realization of the object of the 
 action, but merely upon the principle of volition by which 
 the action has taken place, without regard to any object of 
 desire." 
 
 Kant's ethical philosophy therefore makes the goodness 
 or badness of an action depend upon some occurrence in the 
 psychology or mental state of the agent. The action is 
 good or moral if it is the result of the dictates of the rational 
 will, immoral if it is the result of desire occasioned by 
 external stimuli. 
 
 Bringing this statement under the formula of motive 
 which we began by using, we shall say that the kind of 
 motive upon which the goodness of an action depends, 
 according to Kant, is the motive engendered by the oper- 
 ations of the free will. 
 
 The first of the classes of actions therefore of which the 
 moral sense has been historically regarded by philosophers 
 as approving, is the class of actions that spring from that 
 kind of motive known as the free will. 
 
 The Morality of Motive 
 
 2. There are, however, other actions belonging to that class 
 of actions whose goodness is regarded by philosophers as 
 depending upon their being done from a motive of which the 
 moral sense approves, which do not involve the extreme 
 view of the relation between reason and desire held by Kant 
 as their basis. 
 
 The motive criterion as the standard for the measurement 
 of the rightness and wrongness of action is the chief bogey 
 writers like Mill are endeavouring to dispel, in their in- 
 sistence that the criterion must be found in the consequences 
 
26 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 of the action. Many writers have insisted that the motive 
 from which the action was done was the main factor in 
 determining its rightness or wrongness. Bishop Butler, 
 for instance, who beUeved in the unique and unanalyzable 
 character of the moral motive held that " the rightness or 
 wrongness of an act depends very much upon the motive 
 for which it is done.' ' Few of these writers, however, go to 
 the length of Kant in making the morality of action depend 
 entirely upon motive and not at all upon consequences, and 
 an endeavour is made to disarm the Utilitarians and to gain 
 the advantages of their position by asserting that motive 
 and consequences cannot be divorced from one another as 
 two distinct and unrelated things, that they are inaUenably 
 connected, and that the moral sense in approving actions 
 done from a moral motive, is also bestowing its approval 
 upon actions which produce good consequences. This is the 
 line which is taken for instance by such writers as Professor 
 Muirhead in his book, " The Elements of Ethics." 
 
 How is this intimate connection between motive and 
 consequences made out ? 
 
 The word motive is a complex word, involving at least 
 two different elements. One of these is feeling, and 
 this factor of feeling is of great importance. Aristotle's 
 position that feeling is the mainspring of all action 
 has, as a general rule, been accepted by philosophers, and 
 there can be little doubt that on this point Aristotle was 
 right. This element of feeling is usually a form of desire. 
 The pleasure seeker must, in doing an action which he 
 intends to bring him pleasure, experience a desire for the 
 pleasure before he can perform the action. Scientific 
 experimenters are prompted by a feeling of curiosity, or by 
 the desire for the discovery of truth that may result from the 
 experiment. Purely impulsive actions, like the withdrawal 
 of the finger from a poker which proves unexpectedly hot, 
 though not prompted by a desire for any ulterior end to be 
 gained by the action, are nevertheless occasioned by a 
 feeling of pain. If the feeling were not there we should 
 suffer our finger to remain on the poker. 
 
 Feeling then is a conditioning factor in all action, the 
 engine which supplies the steam that sets the mechanism of 
 action in motion. But feeling by itself is not the only 
 element in what is called motive. Motive implies as a rule 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 27 
 
 an end or an aim, the picturing or presentation to oneself of 
 the results of the action which it prompts. 
 
 For the purposes of this consideration of motive actions 
 may be divided into two classes : those which are purely 
 impulsive, and those in which the agent sets before himself 
 an object or end to be attained as the result of his action. 
 
 Actions of the first class are as a rule the automatic 
 results of excitation by external stimuli. The withdrawal 
 of the hand from the red-hot poker, or the shutting of the eye 
 when a fly enters it, are conditioned entirely by something 
 outside the agent. They are not the products of the 
 individual's will, nor are they prompted by any motive in 
 the sense in which we have been using the word. It seems 
 doubtful therefore whether they can be described as 
 voluntary actions, in the sense in which actions which are 
 done for the sake of a definite object are voluntary, and, if 
 this is the case, they cannot be regarded as proper subjects 
 either for the approval or disapproval of the moral sense. 
 They are morally neutral. 
 
 Actions of the other class, however, are voluntary, being 
 undertaken for the sake of a definite end or purpose, and the 
 idea of this end cannot, it is argued, be distinguished from 
 the motive which prompts the action. The will or motive to 
 perform an action of this class contains an idea of the con- 
 sequences expected therefrom, and, inasmuch as it inevitably 
 points forward to those consequences and takes its shape 
 and quality from them, cannot be judged apart from them. 
 When the moral sense approves therefore of actions done 
 from a good motive, it is not making a judgment about 
 motive alone divorced from the consequences of the action, 
 motive so divorced being meaningless, but it includes in its 
 scope the end towards which the motived action is directed, 
 from the nature of which end the motive takes its colour. 
 In saying, in short, that the motive which leads people to 
 torture animals is bad, the moral sense does so mainly if 
 not wholly because the results of the action in question, 
 namely the pain experienced by the animal, are bad, and 
 the motive of an act which is expected to produce pain 
 derives its nature from the consequences it contemplates. 
 
 Although, in admitting that the consequences of actions 
 are a factor which the criterion of right and wrong must take 
 into account, this form of the " moral sense " theories is in 
 
28 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 agreement with the Utilitarians an important distinction 
 between the two views must be noted. 
 
 When it holds that a judgment of motives involves a 
 judgment of consequences, the moral sense view means the 
 expected consequences. When the Utilitarian asserts that 
 the rightness or wrongness of actions must be judged by 
 their consequences, he means their actual consequences 
 whether intended or not. This is a real difference. Before 
 pointing out its significance, however, it is necessary to 
 explain a little more fully what is meant by expected 
 consequences. 
 
 When it is said that motive takes its colour from the 
 expected consequences of the action it prompts, the ultimate 
 or final consequences of the action are meant. These must 
 be distinguished from the immediate consequences, although 
 these are in an equal degree intended and expected. Thus 
 if a dentist uses a drill to stop a tooth, the immediate 
 expected consequences are painful and unpleasant, al- 
 though the ultimate expected consequences are beneficial. 
 When the moral sense approves the motive of the dentist's 
 action as taking its colour from the aim the dentist sets 
 before himself, the expected ultimate consequences are the 
 grounds of its approval, not the immediate painful ones. 
 Yet the immediate painful consequences are equally 
 expected and equally intended. In order to maintain this 
 distinction Bentham defines motive as that for the sake of 
 which an action is done ; whereas intention includes both 
 that for the sake of which and that in spite of which an 
 action is done. Intention is therefore wider than motive, 
 and of the total sum of the intended or expected conse- 
 quences only those for the sake of which the action is done 
 form the subject of approval or disapproval by the moral 
 sense. 
 
 Returning to the distinction between this form of the 
 moral sense criterion and the Utilitarian criterion, it is 
 obvious that the intended or expected consequences of an 
 action are very different from the actual consequences. 
 Nobody can ever know all the actual consequences of an 
 action, and for this reason alone it is impossible to say 
 whether the intended consequences are identical with them. 
 
 Frequently, however, it is obvious that they are very 
 different. This difference is especially marked in the case of 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 29 
 
 well-meaning, interfering people who are so anxious to 
 avoid giving pain that they can be relied on in an emergency 
 to make everybody suffer. 
 
 Let us suppose that A is an action of which the actual 
 consequences are X and the expected consequences are Y ; 
 and let us further suppose that X are bad and Y are good. 
 Then A is an action which is a wrong action by the Utili- 
 tarian standard, although it is a moral action by the moral 
 sense standard. 
 
 A possible line of reconciliation between the two views 
 will be considered in the fourth chapter : for the present, 
 however, it is sufficient to note that we have now arrived at 
 a second class of actions of which the moral sense has been 
 historically regarded as approving, those namely done from 
 a moral motive, a motive which takes its colour from the 
 expected consequences of the action and cannot be divorced 
 from them. 
 
 Conscience as an Unique Faculty 
 
 3. It will be remembered that we have defined a moral 
 motive as that of which the moral sense approves. What 
 are the grounds for this approval ? 
 
 The answer to this question leads us to a consideration of 
 the third class of actions of which the moral sense has been 
 regarded as approving, a class of actions which can only be 
 defined from the circumstance that the moral sense approves 
 of them. If we ask for the grounds of its approval, either 
 of moral motives or of this third class of actions, the answer 
 is that there are none. The dictates of the moral sense are 
 regarded on this view as ultimate and unanalyzable, and 
 it is as unreasonable to ask why the moral sense approves 
 as to ask why we approve of health, or like music, or dislike 
 the smell of castor oil : we just do. What are the reasons 
 for this view ? 
 
 It is held in the first place that the moral sense is a unique 
 faculty which we possess, whose function it is to pass 
 judgments which are valid in their own right. With regard 
 to the exact composition of this faculty there has been 
 dispute. Some writers, like Bishop Butler and an ethical 
 philosopher named Martin eau, have regarded it as a distinct 
 and unique part of our natures, uncompounded of other 
 ingredients, which reigns over the sphere of conduct and 
 
30 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 morals, just as the sense of taste is the arbiter of flavours, 
 and the sense of hearing the judge of music. In this form 
 it is usually spoken of as conscience. 
 
 Other writers regard it as a kind of feeling, others again 
 as a manifestation of reason, most perhaps as a sort of 
 composite fusion of reason and emotion, entitled, in order 
 to save the difficulty of more precise definition, by the 
 question-begging word of " Intuition." The dash of reason 
 in Intuition gives it more authority than a mere feeling : 
 the dash of instinct gives it a mysterious rapidity and 
 directness of operation, so that it comes to be regarded as a 
 short cut to the truth, of unerring aim and rapid flight, a 
 charming alternative to the ponderous perambulations of 
 heavy-footed reason. It is sometimes, though not often, 
 admitted that like other short cuts it may just as likely 
 land its followers in the ditch. 
 
 Whatever the nature of this faculty, it is held that it 
 gives immediate assent to certain moral propositions, of 
 the truth of which no guarantee is required, further than 
 the fact of the assent being given. Just as the rational 
 faculty immediately realizes that the proposition 2 + 2=4 
 is true, so the moral sense instinctively apprehends the 
 truth of propositions such as "It is better to promote 
 happiness than pain." If anybody fails to subscribe to 
 the truth of this proposition he is devoid of the moral sense, 
 and to that extent not wholly a human being. 
 
 The deliverances of this sense take the form of immediate 
 judgments that certain actions or classes of actions are 
 right and wrong, irrespective of their consequences. Cer- 
 tain actions win the approval of the moral sense because 
 they are like that and because the moral sense is like that, 
 and that is all there is about it. In the words of Bishop 
 Butler, " There is something as yet darkly known which 
 makes right right and wrong wrong." 
 
 The deliverances of the moral sense are clearest and most 
 unanimous in regard to propositions in very general 
 terms, such as, " Kindness is better than unkindness " ; "All 
 lying is wrong" ; "All stealing is wrong " ; " Honesty is better 
 than dishonesty." It is further claimed by some, but with 
 less confidence, that these intuitions or deliverances of the 
 moral sense apply with equal unerringness to particular 
 actions, issuing in judgments such as, " It is wrong to tell 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 31 
 
 this particular lie," " That particular business transaction 
 is shady," these judgments being pronounced without 
 reference to consequences and remaining valid, even if the 
 consequences of disapproved actions unexpectedly prove 
 to be beneficial. 
 
 It is argued in support of this view that the belief in 
 morality as a good in itself without reference to any ulterior 
 end is one of the strongest beliefs that we possess. That 
 although the performance of good actions does as a fact 
 usually produce satisfaction, yet virtue is regarded as an 
 end in itself, and is pursued as such independently of its 
 value as a means to pleasure or self-satisfaction. That 
 intuitions of this kind are possessed by children, who, 
 although they have not been instructed in their elders' 
 code of morality, almost invariably know that lying is 
 wrong, and have a sense of guilt when they have told a 
 lie, even when they are not afraid of being found out or 
 of being punished if they are found out. 
 
 Psycho-analysts have pointed out that children who 
 suffer from some form of sexual perversion invariably feel 
 a sense of guilt which makes them disguise its manifesta- 
 tions, although from the very oddity and irrelevance of the 
 form of the perversion, it is most unlikely that they have ever 
 been told that it was wrong. To take a common enough 
 instance, a boy finds that it gives him intense pleasure of a 
 sexual character to squeeze his feet into boots that are too 
 small for him. Clearly nobody has ever told him that such 
 a proceeding was wrong ; yet cases are historically recorded 
 in which boys so affected have admitted that they knew 
 such actions to be immoral, have performed them furtively, 
 and in doing so have experienced all those feelings of loss of 
 self-respect commonly associated with what in Christian 
 terminology is known as yielding to temptation. 
 
 Furthermore these inalienable judgments with regard to 
 the rightness and wrongness of particular actions or classes 
 of actions, are exercised perhaps in the most marked degree 
 by uneducated and illiterate persons, who have neither 
 the wit nor the interest to care about the consequences of 
 the actions they approve or condemn, or about their 
 social effects. 
 
 A keen moral sense is often found conjoined with 
 Uttle knowledge of the world, and practically no capacity 
 
32 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 for accounting for or justifying its dictates ; and people 
 who unhesitatingly condemn stealing as immoral, are often 
 completely at a loss to give any reason for their judgment 
 or to explain why a society of burglars is less to be desired 
 than a society of middle-class persons who spend their time in 
 feverishly respecting one another's property, and all being 
 moral together. If therefore the moral sense judgment is 
 not based upon an estimate of the consequences of actions, 
 it must, for lack of an^^thing else to which it may attach 
 itself, be a judgment passed about the actions themselves. 
 
 Thus we arrive at a third class of actions which the moral 
 sense has been regarded as approving or disapproving, 
 this class consisting of certain specific actions and types 
 of actions which can be defined neither by motive nor by 
 consequences, nor indeed by any distinguishing mark other 
 than the circumstance of their being those particular actions 
 of which the moral sense approves or disapproves. 
 
 All three types of actions, which we have been considering, 
 those done from a Kantian free will, those done from a 
 motive other than a Kantian free will of which the moral 
 sense approves, and certain specific actions approved in 
 themselves by the moral sense, have this in common, that 
 their goodness is regarded as dependent upon the fact of 
 the moral sense passing a judgment of approval upon them. 
 The criterion of their goodness consists therefore not in 
 the nature of their consequences, but in the nature of the 
 feelings entertained towards them by some person or body 
 of persons, the word feeling being used here in a wide and 
 loose sense to describe the functioning of the moral sense. 
 
 We have now to see what are the arguments which can 
 be brought against the moral sense theory in any of the 
 three main forms in which we have been considering it, 
 and whether these same arguments should lead us to prefer 
 that alternative theory of the criterion of morality which we 
 considered in the first chapter, that is the UtiHtarian 
 criterion which makes the rightness or wrongness of actions 
 depend upon their consequences. 
 
 This line of inquiry will also lead us to the question which 
 was left undiscussed in the first chapter, namely whether 
 the Utilitarian theory was right in its assertion that in 
 assessing the consequences of action the only thing that is of 
 ultimate value is happiness. 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 33 
 
 § 3. Criticism of the Moral Sense Theories 
 
 The objections which may be brought against the Intui- 
 tionist or moral sense theories enumerated above are of a 
 serious and, to my mind, of a convincing character. 
 
 Some of them were first used by the UtiUtarians in the 
 early part of the nineteenth century when the contention 
 between the two schools of thought was keenest. Most 
 of them were enunciated in some form or other by Sidgwick 
 in his famous book " The Method of Ethics." 
 
 I do not propose to go in very great detail into these objec- 
 tions, as I hold that in a very real sense, which will be 
 explained later, the points at issue between the Intuitionist 
 and Utilitarian Schools are purely academic, but will 
 summarize as briefly as possible the main arguments upon 
 which the objections are based. 
 
 These arguments may be most conveniently summarized 
 under five heads. The first two apply only to the last of 
 the three main forms of the moral sense theory described 
 above, while the last three apply equally to each of the 
 three forms in which that theory has been asserted. 
 
 Conflicting Dictates of the Moral Sense 
 
 I. In the last form in which we considered the moral 
 sense theory, the moral sense was regarded as supplying 
 us with immediate judgments of approval or disapproval, 
 sometimes called intuitions, with regard to classes of actions 
 or particular actions. 
 
 In so far as the existence of these intuitions with regard to 
 particular actions is asserted, the proposition may with 
 reason be flatly denied. 
 
 Although there may be a kind of vague consensus of 
 opinion among most people in most periods of the world'i> 
 history with regard to certain classes of actions, as for 
 instance a fairly general disapproval of lying, there is 
 almost invariably the greatest possible disagreement 
 between people's intuitions about particular actions. 
 
 The conflict between the opinions of two apparently 
 morally-minded people as to the right course of action 
 under a particular set of circumstances is one of the stock sub- 
 jects of tragedy and drama, and need not be enlarged upon. 
 
34 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 Only it should be noted that as a moral action is, upon 
 this theory, one with regard to which a feeling of approval is 
 entertained by the moral sense, it is impossible to regard both 
 the disputants whose moral senses disagree as equally right. 
 To do so would involve the assumption that the same action 
 is both moral and immoral at the same time, make rightness 
 and wrongness a question of taste, like the sweetness of 
 meringues, and so destroy that foundation of objectivity 
 for moral judgments upon which this school so confidently 
 bases the validity of its intuitions. Not only do people 
 have different intuitions with regard to the morality of the 
 same action, but the moral sense most noticeably fails to 
 deliver itself of any judgment at all when clamorously 
 required to do so. The path of duty is often as hard to 
 find as it is to follow. Hamlet is not so much a man torn 
 by conflicting duties, as one who turns an anxious ear to 
 the voice of a conscience, which persistently fails to respond 
 even by the vaguest hint of the course which ought to be 
 pursued. 
 
 The judgments of the moral sense are thus neither unani- 
 mous nor unfailing. Intuitions, if they are to be valid and 
 not the mere deliverances of irresponsible instinct, should 
 be both. Not even with regard to classes of actions does 
 the moral sense deliver itself in unmistakable terms. 
 Spartan children were taught to steal ; chastity was un- 
 known among the Turks, truth among the Cretans : yet it 
 is surely in the case of general maxims with regard to 
 property and sex that the voice of the moral sense should 
 be unfaltering and its manifestations constant. 
 
 Most significant of all is the fact that where people do 
 differ with regard to the morality of particular actions, 
 or nations with regard to the morality of particular codes 
 of conventional conduct, it is always by an appeal to the 
 consequences of the action or class of actions that one side 
 invokes superiority for its own particular judgment as 
 opposed to that of its neighbours. 
 
 Actions Divorced from Consequences 
 
 2. In assuming that actions divested of their consequences 
 form the subject of judgments by the moral sense, this 
 form of the moral sense theory errs in supposing they can be 
 so divested. 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 35 
 
 What would be wrong with steaUng if it did not lead to 
 want, insecurity, remorse and unhappiness ? Divested 
 of these consequences it would cease to be stealing. 
 
 " What would be the sense," says Canon Rashdall, " of 
 asking whether drunkenness would still be wrong if it did 
 not make a man thick in his speech, unsteady in his gait, 
 erratic in his conduct, incoherent in his thoughts, and so 
 on?" 
 
 Actions stripped of their consequences are meaningless. 
 They have no more ethical significance than the workings 
 of an automaton : in fact they cannot be so stripped. 
 
 Unfortunate Consequences of Moral Actions 
 
 3. Once the factor of consequences is taken into account, 
 it must be noted that actions which are shown to be moral, 
 on either of the three forms of the moral sense theory 
 frequently have the worst possible consequences. 
 
 In using the phrase " worst consequences " at this stage 
 of our inquiry I am not endeavouring to beg one of the main 
 questions which I have set out to discuss, the question 
 namely of what is the meaning of the word bad as applied 
 to consequences. It will be remembered that, according 
 to the theory considered in the first chapter, the badness 
 of the consequences resulting from an action renders the 
 action which produces those consequences a wrong action ; 
 but it was left an open question at the end of the chapter 
 whether " worst " consequences meant solely those which 
 consisted of the maximum amount of unhappiness possible, 
 or whether there were other things besides happiness which 
 possessed elements of intrinsic value, and which must be 
 taken into account in estimating the goodness or badness of 
 consequences. For the present it will be sufficient to point 
 out that happiness has been regarded practically universally 
 as a good or desirable thing, even if it is not the only good, 
 and that we saw reason in the first chapter to doubt whether 
 any whole could be regarded as valuable unless it con- 
 tained at least some happiness. 
 
 Whatever else the phrase " worst consequences " may 
 mean therefore, it is clear that it will mean among other 
 things, consequences which involve a minimum quantity of 
 happiness and which also involve a considerable amount 
 of unhappiness or pain. 
 
36 GOMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 Yet many actions which are done from a moral motive, 
 or from a free will in Kant's sense of the phrase, or which 
 are regarded as moral in themselves, do frequently have 
 consequences of this character. 
 
 In certain Greek city States the exposure of unwanted 
 infants was regarded as a highly moral and patriotic duty. 
 Whatever amount of social good such a measure may have 
 involved, or however commendable it may have been 
 on Nietzschean principles, it is clear that it did not conduce 
 to the happiness either of the mothers or of the infants. 
 
 Similarly the burning of witches in the Middle Ages was 
 regarded as a highly moral and even religious act : it was 
 also defended on moral grounds by writers who make no 
 pretensions either to religious enthusiasm or to religious 
 prejudice. Yet the consequences clearly involved unhappi- 
 ness for the witches, and although it may be argued 
 that they involved an even greater amount of happiness 
 for the onlookers who had the satisfaction of beholding the 
 discomfiture of those whom they feared or disliked, and of 
 debauching that morbid lust for horrors which makes most 
 of us revel in books of tortures and in Madame Tussaud's, 
 it is equally clear that it is not on this ground that they were 
 defended. 
 
 All wars declared by States, nations or tribes have been 
 undertaken from professedly moral motives and defended on 
 professedly moral grounds : it is even possible that in some 
 cases they have been undertaken from moral motives and 
 defended on moral grounds. Their consequences have, 
 however, been uniformly bad in the sense provisionally 
 defined above. 
 
 Now it is clear that the fact that actions of this class do 
 have bad consequences does not disprove the fact that the 
 moral sense of many people passes a judgment of approval 
 upon them. It does, however, afford a very strong presump- 
 tion for doubting the theory which holds that the passing of 
 the judgment of approval by the moral sense is in itself a 
 sufficient criterion of the morality of actions, that the 
 moral sense is, in fact, infallible. 
 
 In the case of actions of the kind described above, the moral 
 sense of many people passes an equally clear judgment of dis- 
 approval upon the consequences of the actions which in them- 
 selves have gained the approval of the moral sense of many. 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 37 
 
 Now the fact of one judgment being passed about the 
 consequences of an action while a contrary judgment is 
 passed upon the action itself, taken in conjunction with the 
 difficulty attending any attempt to divorce an action from 
 its consequences, means in effect that the same actions 
 are at once the object of judgments of approval and of 
 disapproval by the moral sense. 
 
 In any event we arrive at the conclusion that the mere 
 passing of a judgment by the moral sense upon either an 
 action or its consequences is not in itself sufficient to 
 establish the Tightness or wrongness of the action. 
 
 This objection applies both to actions whose intended 
 consequences are good, — and whose motive therefore wins 
 the approval of the moral sense, — but whose actual conse- 
 quences are bad, and to those actions which are judged 
 good in themselves by direct intuitions. 
 
 The Relation of the Moral Sense to Society 
 
 4. Not only does the moral sense of different people pass 
 contradictory judgments upon the same action at the same 
 time, but the moral sense of the same communities at 
 different times, instead of being a fixed, definite and infalli- 
 ble thing, as supporters of the theory would have us believe, 
 is constantly changing, while the moral sense of different 
 communities at the same period is frequently contra- 
 dictory. The Greek historian Herodotus makes a sage 
 remark to the effect that while fires burn upwards in all 
 parts of the world, people's notions of right and wrong are 
 everywhere different, whence the stability of natural and 
 the mutability of moral phenomena are inferred. 
 
 Canon Rashdall estimates that " There is hardly a vice or 
 a crime (according to our own moral standard) which has 
 not at some time or other, in some circumstances, been 
 looked upon as a moral or religious duty." 
 
 Instances have been given above of the approval be- 
 stowed by the moral sense upon actions which, having 
 regard to their consequences, can only be described as 
 Qutrageaus. 
 
 It has also bestowed approval upon actions. which may be 
 fairly termed ridiculous. Our Victorian ancestors insisted 
 on swathing the legs oT their grand pianos on the ground 
 
38 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 that being legs they were necessarily indecent. The 
 monks on Mount Athos carried the early Christian prejudice 
 against the female sex to such length? that they devoted 
 much time and labour to devising a method for producing 
 eggs without keeping hens. It may fairly be argued 
 then that the deliverances of the moral sense are fre- 
 quently too misleading, contradictory and even trivial in 
 their nature to form a reliable criterion of right or wrong. 
 As they are constantly changing, they involve the assump- 
 tion that the same action which is right in one age is 
 wrong in another ; as they are constantly contradictory, 
 they involve the assumption that the same action is both 
 right and wi-ong at the same time. 
 
 But the moral sense view is not so readily to be disposed 
 of as these arguments might at first suggest. In the first 
 place attempts are made to show that the deliverances of 
 the moral sense are not as irresponsible as they appear, 
 by pointing to the fact that they are usually directed to the 
 maintenance of order and the preservation of the social 
 structure of the time. In the second place it is also urged 
 that a definite trend of progress can be observed in the 
 changes of the standard set by "the moral sense, and that 
 the moral judgments of succeeding races which have played 
 a prominent part in history show a continuous advance. 
 , The first of these contentions is in the main a true one 
 .and raises an important point. Dealing with the problem 
 presented by the relativity of moral judgments, Professor 
 Muirhead points out that morality does not consist in 
 obedience to a fixed code of rules. The rules change, and 
 they are different for different individuals. They change 
 because different societies are differently constituted. 
 They are different for different individuals, because indi- 
 viduals have different stations in society. The individual 
 is a social unit : he cannot be considered as an isolated 
 entity. Morality consists in relations with one's fellows, 
 and the individual has a definite role to play and status to 
 maintain in society. As a social being therefore his duty is 
 relative to his station and circumstances. 
 
 Now states and societies evolve : therefore morality v/hich 
 contains a " quality of social tissue " must evolve mth 
 them. It varies with reference to the needs of society, 
 and the morality of any society, finding concrete expression 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 39 
 
 in the laws, prescribes as moral whatever contributes to 
 the maintenance of that society, and allocates to the indi- 
 vidual his proper place within it. The judgments of 
 the moral"] sense are therefore relative to the needs of 
 society : that does not mean, however, that they are 
 not binding. "It is because," says Professor Muir- 
 head, " morality is always and in all places relative to 
 circumstances, that it is binding at any time and in 
 any place." 
 
 But this position is open to an objection which is men- 
 tioned in passing by Professor Muirhead himself, but of 
 which he does not appear to recognize the full force. 
 
 Supposing for a moment we assume that the standard of 
 morality is relative to the needs and nature of society, and 
 that changes in the deliverances of the moral sense are 
 occasioned, and rightly occasioned by changes in the social 
 forms under which the individual lives and by which his 
 moral standards are moulded. 
 
 We have indeed gained this much, that we have shown 
 that the variations in the moral standard are not purely 
 irresponsible, but exhibit a common quality or principle 
 of unity in that they are related to and conditioned by 
 changes in society. We are further enabled to define 
 morality as that kind of conduct which at any given moment 
 supports and maintains the particular social form to which 
 society has evolved. 
 
 But what are we to say of the evolution of society ? It 
 it purposive and designed ? Does it exhibit progress ? 
 Can we say of every particular stage of society that it 
 ought to be maintained, because it is more advanced than 
 the last ? Can we in fact discover in the history of the 
 human race a standard of progressive good, by reference to 
 which we can at last claim an absolute yalidity for our moral 
 standard, on the ground that it is concerned to support and 
 maintain the progressively evolving stages of the human 
 race ? 
 
 This question, which brings us to the second point 
 which can be made in defence of the validity of moral 
 judgments, is an important one. If changes in society 
 are arbitrary and irresponsible, then the code, of morality 
 which supports them is equally irresponsible. If evolution 
 does not involve an ethical advance, then the deliverances 
 
;• 
 
 -T VW ? f COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 5 \of the moral sense which approve of the stage of evolution 
 ';A ^' which has at any moment been reached, are themselves 
 ^^^^; devoid of that ultimate validity which a discernible rela- 
 tion to human good can alone bestow. Morality becomes, 
 V r in Professor Muirhead's words, "nothing but that Jcind 
 .1^ / of cpnduct which supports one or other of the accidental 
 3S^/ changes in the phantasmagoria of social forms." 
 KV By recognizing in short that the moral sen se is rdative, 
 ' ■ we have transferred the whole burden ol "making good a 
 claim to "absolute validity from the moral sense to the 
 social structure to which it is relative. If a sjiaudaxd-jol 
 progress can be observed in the eyolutioruoiioGiety, then 
 a similar standard can immediately be established for the 
 moral sense which registers each stage in the advance 
 witmHe^mark of its approval. Jf^ however, no such 
 progress can be discerned the moral sense ^\Si gain 
 neither in significance nor in validity from the fact'that it 
 automatically confers approval upon acts tending to main- 
 tain existing social forms, and will become merely an 
 instrument for bolstering up the State because it exists, 
 blindly lending its support to the bad as well as to the good. 
 The question of whether the structure of the universe 
 exhibits design and purpose, and whether the changes of 
 society can be regarded as the expression of this purj56se, 
 brings us to the threshold of metaphysics which it is at all 
 times difficult to exclude from ethical discussion. Some 
 of the questions which are involved will be treated more 
 fully in the last chapter, but at this stage it will be sufficient 
 to advance certain considerations which tend to throw 
 doubt upon this attempt to legitimize the promptings of the 
 moral sense by relating them to the alleged progressive 
 evolution of society, without for the present taking up any 
 definite attitude with regard to the vexed question of 
 purpose and design in the Universe. 
 
 The Moral Sense as the Pillar of the State 
 
 (i) In the first place it is necessary to point out that the 
 function of the moral sense in acting as a sort of pillar of 
 society is not in itself sufficient to invest it with validity. 
 Many societies are definitely bad societies according to any 
 reasonable criterion of political valuation that one may 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 41 
 
 choose to invoke, and the moral sense that counsels obedi- 
 ence to their laws is infected with the evil of what it up- 
 holds. In particular it should be noticed that it is a 
 characteristic of the moral sense to approve of conduct 
 which is legitimized by the laws, and to disapprove of 
 whatever is inimical to that order in the State which it is 
 one of the functions of law to maintain. 
 
 Yet the State which is responsible for the maintenance of 
 law and order may be a repressive and coercive force, and 
 the attempt to subvert instead of to uphold the institutions 
 under which we live may therefore be a desirable expression 
 of the desire for liberty. When the State is tyrannical, 
 the moral sense should act as an incentive to revolt, instead 
 of being a sort of adjunct to the State police force. Yet 
 the theory which attempts to define the moral sense as 
 the upholder of society would allot to it the perform- 
 ance of the latter function only, and would regard the 
 former with the horror and distaste which people who 
 profit by the status quo usually feel for efforts on the 
 part of those they oppress to subvert the State. 
 
 It is significant that most Socialist political theory regards 
 almost every form of society which has hitherto existed 
 as a device for .oppressing the mass of the people, and 
 enabling the privileged few to maintain themselves on the 
 fruits of the labour of others, Karl Marx, for instance, 
 regarded the State as an organization of the exploiting 
 class, for maintaining the conditions of exploitation that 
 suit it, and held that the moral sense of the proletariat 
 was deliberately moulded and perverted by the capitalists 
 into an acceptance of those regulations and institutions 
 which secure to the latter the surplus value of the labour 
 of the former. Those who adopt this view must necessarily 
 regard the moral sense not as a force of progress, but as one 
 of the most powerful instruments of oppression. The 
 exploitation of the religious sense by those who inculcate 
 the practice of the Christian virtues of humility and con- 
 tentment because their observance by the poor makes 
 for undisturbed possession by the rich, may be cited as a 
 parallel. 
 
 It is not necessary for us to subscribe in all cases to these 
 extreme views as to the nature of the State, the utility of 
 Christianity to the rich, and its consequent popularization 
 
42 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 among the poor, to recognize clearly that the value of any 
 existing form of social organization is not sufficiently estab- 
 lished to enable us to claim validity for the deliverances of 
 the moral sense, solely in virtue of the role it plays in main- 
 taining and supporting existing forms of social structure.^ 
 
 The assumption of progress in the successive forms of 
 human evolution is therefore essential to the legitimizing 
 of the moral sense as a criterion of right and wrong. 
 
 We must be in a position to show that each stage of 
 evolution constitutes a definite advance upon its predeces- 
 sor, that man is not only later than, but higher than the 
 amoeba, and that in the history of specifically human 
 organizations the various forms which society has assumed 
 succeed one another not only in time, but also in advance- 
 ment. 
 
 The Dogma oj Progress in Morals and Society 
 
 (ii) Can this assumption be made ? Most writers on 
 Ethics are of opinion that it can, and this opinion lies at 
 the basis of their confidence in the moral sense. 
 
 Professor Muirhead, whose views on this point may be 
 regarded as fairly typical, cites from Herbert Spencer 
 the formula for progress in evolution : " Evolution is a 
 process whereby an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity is 
 transformed into a definite, coherent heterogeneity." 
 
 Thus the jelly-fish is, with minor qualifications, struc- 
 tureless and homogeneous : man is a vertebrate of a highly 
 compHcated character, his bones being clearly of a different 
 substance from his brains, and his alleged soul. Similarly 
 in primitive societies all men lead the same kind of life, 
 and the social structure is simple : in so-called civilized 
 societies one man lives in a mine, and another inhabits a 
 mansion, while society is cut across by an infinitely diverse 
 stratification composed of divisions mainly of wealth, 
 partly of blood, and to a smaller extent of intelHgence. 
 
 That the process by which the structureless jelly-fish 
 evolves into the highly complex and differentiated human 
 being is a form of progress is taken so much for 
 granted that it is not generally thought necessary to adduce 
 any evidence in support of this belief. 
 
 * I shall return to the question of the relation between the moral 
 sense and any existing form of Government in Chapter VI. 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 43 
 
 With regard to the evolution of society there is indeed 
 ample evidence for the gradually increasing complexity 
 both of form and function. Comte traces the development 
 from what he calls the Fetichist period when the elements 
 of family life and primitive ideas of property were the 
 main characteristics of society ; though what he calls the 
 Polytheistic period of the Greek city States, which show a 
 higher degree of complexity of laws and institutions, to 
 the Roman world in which law becomes at once more 
 detailed and embracing, and the divisions into classes more 
 numerous. 
 
 This increase of heterogeneity is, according to this view, 
 accompanied by a moral advance. The Roman world 
 established for the first time a widespread reign of law and 
 security. With the feudal era and the spread of Christi- 
 anity, slaves are emancipated and become serfs, who in their 
 turn become the free labourers of the industrial era. The 
 slavery of the wage system, whereby a man has no choice 
 but to sell his labour to the owners of the instruments of 
 production, in order that he may live, being a slavery not 
 of law but only of fact, apparently escapes notice. 
 
 With this advance in diversity of social structure comes 
 an increasing diversity and elaboration of the moral code. 
 
 The traditional moral customs of the barbarians and early 
 Greeks become the highly elaborate and rational morality 
 of the Greek philosophers. The general principles laid 
 down in the Ten Commandments become particularized 
 into the Book of the Covenant. The somewhat primitive 
 and vindictive morality which animates the heroes of the 
 Old Testament is refined into the highly spiritualized 
 moral code of the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 It would be superfluous to increase the instances. The 
 process by which society becomes more complex and moral 
 codes more elaborate is sufficiently obvious. Nor are the 
 two developments disconnected. If, as has been argued, 
 what gets itself called moral, is the sort of conduct which 
 maintains existing institutions, it is clear that the moral 
 sense will have more scope for its deliverances as the number 
 of institutions increase in quantity ; if the social organism 
 is differentiated into an ever increasing diversity of forms 
 and classes, it is clear that the number of moral codes, each 
 appropriate to a particular class and relative to its position 
 
44 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 and status in the whole organism, will grow in proportion. 
 The progress of growing heterogeneity is admitted. The 
 question is, can it justly be termed progress ? 
 
 Anything like an adequate consideration of this question 
 would involve a more extensive trespassing on the preserves 
 of metaphysics than has been undertaken up to the present, 
 or than it would be desirable to undertake at this stage. 
 
 Some of the questions which it involves are : is there a 
 discernible purpose in the Universe ; is that purpose 
 making for good ; is it embodied and expressed in human 
 institutions ? 
 
 Even if we admit that the growing heterogeneity observ- 
 able, as evolution proceeds, both in the structure of the 
 human form and of social institutions, is accompanied by an 
 enrichment and enlargement of the moral standard, and 
 that the growing complexity both in human institutions and 
 in the moral sense which supports them can be called pro- 
 gress, there still remains the question of whether the process 
 is subject to natural laws, so that each stage of it is me- 
 chanically determined from without, or whether it can be 
 regarded as the continuous striving of a self-conscious 
 intelligence to express itself in the system of social relations 
 and institutions which we call human society. 
 
 Is the process we have described, even if it be termed 
 progress, inevitably conditioned by mechanical laws, like the 
 apple which falls from the tree, or is it an expression of the 
 fundamental nature of human consciousness, a product of 
 human will, which is itself an expression of the divine 
 nature that made the world ? 
 
 It is intended to give some consideration to these ques- 
 tions in the last chapter of this book. For the present 
 it will be sufficient to point out that until they have received 
 some sort of answer, the affirmation of the principle of pro- 
 gress in human society and in the moral standard which 
 registers each alleged advance in the social structure with 
 its approval, is not in itself sufficient to endow the deliver- 
 ances of the moral sense with that validity which is required 
 if they are to form an adequate criterion of right and wrong. 
 If in short the progress is mechanically conditioned by the 
 operation of natural laws, so is the moral sense which keeps 
 time with it, and the principle of morality will not be an 
 expression of human or divine consciousness, but merely a 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 45 
 
 natural development determined by outside circumstances, 
 like the shedding of our tails, or the atrophying of our 
 appendices, similar in kind to and possessing no more 
 authority than any other instinct. With this proviso we 
 can proceed to consider how far the existence of progress 
 both in man and in the societies he has formed can be 
 substantiated. 
 
 Without going at length into this intricate question, I 
 wish to point out three considerations which seem to me to 
 rob the principle of progress of much of the certainty which 
 is claimed for it. 
 
 Change and Progress not Identical 
 
 (ii) {a) Let us assume that the continuous evolutionary 
 development which biologists record from the amoeba to the 
 hum.an being is an established fact. When the researches 
 of Darwin and his followers showed that human life, instead 
 of being unique in the catalogue of natural phenomena, a 
 fresh creation, as it were, endowed with a nature which in 
 virtue of its rational and perhaps also of its spiritual charac- 
 teristics removed it by an impassible gulf from the lower 
 animals, had been gradually evolved as the result of a con- 
 tinuous process involving intermediate beings who could 
 not with certainty be classed as members either of the 
 animal or the human species, the blow delivered to human 
 conceit was at first staggering. And later biologists, 
 though differing with regard to the manner of evolution, 
 tending to regard it as a process of discontinuous jumps 
 rather than a gradual modification of existing species, have 
 not thrown doubt on the central fact that human nature 
 has been evolved. 
 
 Human nature, however, quickly found its way to re- 
 assert its self-respect by investing the process of evolution 
 with ethical considerations. The process which trans- 
 formed the amoeba into the ape and the ape into the human 
 being quickly came to be regarded not only as a process 
 but as a progress. But in making the assertion that 
 change in structure and development in time, involved 
 change in value and development in morals, thinkers 
 have gone entirely beyond the evidence. 
 
 " A process which led from the amoeba to man," says 
 Mr. Bertrand Russell, " appeared to the philosophers to be 
 
46 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 obviously a progress, though whether the amoeba would 
 agree with this opinion is not known." Until we can obtain 
 the views of the amoeba, until further we can arrive at some 
 agreement as to the goal to be attained, and the standard of 
 value by which we are to measure, it is not possible either 
 to affirm progi'ess or to deny it. 
 
 I do not mean that the change has not involved progress : 
 I am only asserting that on our present evidence we are not 
 in a position to assert that it has. Our judgment should 
 be made with the modesty of those who are both judge 
 and jury in their own cause. 
 
 Cycles oj Progress and Decadence 
 
 (ii) {b) Turning from the evolution of the human being to 
 the evolution of the human organization known as society, 
 the principle of progress seems equally difficult to assert. 
 
 Each of the detailed arguments which are brought for- 
 ward in support of the assertion of progress may be met 
 with an equally reasonable denial. It is true that slaves 
 have evolved into serfs, and serfs into free labourers. But 
 many critics of the modern industrial system would contend 
 that the lot of the worker under the capitalist order, who 
 though theoretically free spends his hfe in bondage to the 
 wages through which alone he can live, and in slavery to a 
 machine which robs his work alike of the joy of creation and 
 of the variety which lightened the toil of his ancestors, 
 is in no way superior in leisure, dignity, or happiness to 
 the state of the serfs of the Middle Ages or even of the 
 slaves of the Classical world. An examination of such 
 a book as " The Town Labourer," by J. L. Hammond 
 and Barbara Hammond, would suggest to many that 
 it was definitely inferior, and when it is remembered that 
 the workers form numerically something like four- 
 fifths of the society for which progress is claimed, the 
 claim requires more confirmation than it has hitherto 
 received. 
 
 The abuses of the industrial system which the passing of 
 the Factory Acts has mitigated without abolishing, have 
 seemed to many as grave a condemnation of the society 
 which countenances them as the constant resort to violence 
 and general insecurity which characterized the societies 
 of the Middle Ages ; and it is difficult to see that the lot of 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 47 
 
 the miner who spends his days under the earth, or the Uft 
 boy who spends them in a Uft, is much superior to that of 
 the galley slave who spent them in the hold of a ship. 
 
 Similarly it is in all probability true that the change which 
 substituted the morality of the Sermon on the Mount for the 
 code of Deuteronomy, was a progressive development as 
 well as a change. But the failure of the world to observe in 
 practice any of the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount is 
 notorious, and affords a standing example of the inability of 
 society to make any progress over a period of two thousand 
 years in the way of living up to a code of ethics which re- 
 mains to-day as much of an unattainable, though not an 
 impracticable ideal, as it was on the day it was promulgated. 
 
 In general it may be remarked that decadence no less 
 than progress is a constant attribute of human societies. 
 
 The normal evolution of society is an evolution in which a 
 period of progress precedes a period of decadence. No 
 phenomenon in history is more remarkable than the appar- 
 ent inability of human society to develop beyond a certain 
 point. Egypt, Assyria, Chaldea, Babylon, Greece, Parthia 
 and Rome, all declined in their turn. The close of the 
 Classical era was followed by the Dark Ages which set the 
 clock of progress back by some two thousand years, and 
 left the work of civilizing the world to be begun over again. 
 The recent war would suggest to some the beginning of a 
 repetition of this process. 
 
 If therefore we are to assert any principle with regard 
 to the development of society, it will be the principle 
 of cycles rather than that of progress. 
 
 It is not established that progress in human society 
 is continuous : it appears to persist for a varying period 
 only, to be followed by a period of decadence which 
 carries the swing of the world's pendulum back to the 
 point at which it started. 
 
 Vagueness of Conception oj Progress 
 
 . (ii) (c) It will doubtless have already occurred to the 
 reader that the whole of the question at issue turns upon 
 the meaning given to the word progress. 
 
 If, for instance, we accept as our definition of progress 
 Herbert Spencer's account of evolution as a process whereby 
 " an indefuiite, incoherent homogeneity is transformed 
 
48 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 into a definite, coherent heterogeneity," then the arguments 
 which assert progress for the development of the indi- 
 vidual and of society are valid. Evolution does in fact 
 involve such a development, but that is no reason for identi- 
 fying the development with our definition of progress. 
 Half a dozen equally good formulae could be given for 
 the process of evolution, and each formula might with 
 equal reason be defined as progress. The difficulty in 
 defining progress arises, as Mr. Chesterton has pointed 
 out, from the fact that the term implies not only change 
 but direction, and direction involves a goal. If a man 
 is walking along Whitehall between Trafalgar Square and 
 the House of Commons, the process is quite clearly one 
 involving change and motion. Equally clearly, howv^ver, 
 it cannot be said to involve progress unless it is known 
 at which end of Whitehall he desires to arrive. If he 
 wishes to arrive at Trafalgar Square and is walking north, 
 his motion is clearly a progress : if, however, he is walking 
 south, it is not progress but retrogression. 
 
 Our definition of progress then depends upon our con- 
 ception of the goal. But it is precisely with regard to this 
 conception that the widest diversity of opinion exists. 
 
 " Whether," says Mr. Chesterton, " the future excellence 
 lies in more law or less law, in more liberty or less liberty ; 
 whether property will be finally concentrated or finally 
 cut up ; whether sexual passion will reach its sanest in 
 an almost virgin intellectualism, or in a full animal free- 
 dom ; whether we should love everybody with Tolstoy 
 or spare nobody with Nietzsche ; — these are the things 
 about which we are actually fighting most." 
 
 You cannot in fact assert progress for the development of 
 the world unless you can indicate your goal. You cannot 
 indicate your goal unless you have decided what things 
 are good and valuable. To decide what things are good 
 and valuable is one of the main objects of Ethics, and 
 according to the theory which we have been considering 
 it is one of the functions of the moral sense to make the 
 decision. We cannot therefore hope to legitimize the 
 moral sense by invoking the principle of progress, if we 
 are compelled at the same time to establish a meaning 
 for progress by appealing to the moral sense. The point 
 is important since the theory we have been considering 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 49 
 
 regards the principle of progress as the best means of estab- 
 Ushing the validity of the various and changing deliverances 
 of the moral sense ; but ^e cannot make the moral sense 
 depend upon progress, IFprogress in its turn depends upon 
 the moral sense ; each cannot be the basis of the other. 
 
 The arguments set out above are not intended to deny 
 progress : they are only concerned to deny that it can 
 be asserted, and for my own part I do not see how it is 
 possible either to deny or to assert it. If this position 
 is a sound one it is clear that the attempt to establish 
 the evolution of the moral standard, on the ground that 
 the societies, laws, and observances which the moral sense 
 by its approval helps to maintain, themselves exhibit a 
 principle of progress, cannot be substantiated. 
 
 From this it follows again that we have failed to arrive 
 at any expedient for legitimizing the promptings of the 
 moral sense. Until they can be so legitimized they must 
 be regarded as in a measure irresponsible, and as such they 
 clearly provide an inadequate criterion of right and wrong. 
 
 I will now proceed to consider the fifth and last argu- 
 ment which I wish to bring forward against the moral 
 sense theories. 
 
 Nature of the Moral Sense 
 
 5. What is the nature and status of the moral sense ? 
 Is it some kind of feeling or emotion ? Is it a kind of 
 glorified instinct ? Is it intuition which is usually regarded 
 as a sort of amalgam of instinct and reason ? Or is it 
 purely rational ? 
 
 Each of these views with regard to the nature of the 
 moral sense has been held by philosophers, and as the 
 binding force and the obligatory character of the deliver- 
 ances of the moral sense depend upon the view we adopt, 
 the question is one of considerable importance. 
 
 The Moral Sense as Feeling. 
 (i) Let us first consider the view that the moral sense 
 is some kind of feeling. 
 
 There are two main groimds for this view : 
 
 How Primitive Feelings Evolve. 
 (i) (a) Many of the observances and requirements of 
 morality seem to be the historical developments of what are 
 
 4 
 
50 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 undoubtedly primitive feelings in animals and savages. 
 
 When a dog obtains a bone, carries it away for secret 
 consumption, and having satisfied himself with enough 
 pickings for the moment, hides it carefully and strenu- 
 ously resents any attempt on the part of others to exhume 
 it or otherwise disturb his possession, he is exhibiting the 
 germ of that feeling which lies at the basis of the sanctity 
 of private property, which in its turn is the ground for 
 the moral disapproval of stealing. 
 
 Just as jiaturalistic writers will show that igar is at the 
 ■ bottom of our religious sense, so will they prove with 
 copious illustrations from the behaviour of primitive 
 peoples that the possessive Jnstinct^ whether for property 
 or women, is at the Jbottpm of our moral sense, expressing 
 itself in the highly organized moral code which disapp roves 
 of stealing and violence with regard to property, and in- 
 chastity, polygamy and* violence with regard to women. 
 
 It is indeed significant that law, which is a man-made 
 invention, is more severe on immorality in women than 
 in men, and the inference may be drawn that, by means of the 
 penalties it prescribes, and by the equally potent influence of 
 the social taboo, men first endeavour to safeguard their right 
 of ownership in women, and then proceed by a natural 
 tendency of human nature to make a virtue of their feelings, 
 and to call them moral because they happen to possess 
 them. Whenever anything, however fantastic, is imposed 
 on men whether by the needs of their own nature like 
 sexual intercourse, or by outside forces like the necessity 
 for clothes, they straightway make a virtue of it, and 
 idealize it under sanctified appellaticns such as marriage 
 in the one case, and decency in the other. Thus writers 
 in the naturalistic strain ! 
 
 Others trace the growth of the moral feeling to the 
 social sense which is a fundamental human attribute. 
 > Morality of its very nature implies more than one person. 
 You cannot be moral all by yourself, and if human beings 
 existed in solitude each on an isolated island the moral 
 sense would not exist. But man has always lived in 
 society. He is fundamentally gregarious. Morality is 
 therefore a. development of the feeling of sympathy which 
 is a sine qua non of the possibility of there being social 
 life in a group. 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 51 
 
 Hence we tend to call moral whatever conduces to the 
 interests of our group, and the feeling of group-solidarity 
 is the basis of our so-called moral disapproval of actions 
 like theft or violence which threaten the well-being of 
 society. 
 
 If we accept Schopenhauer's definition of human society 
 as "a collection of hedgehogs driven together for the 
 sake of warmth/' it is the moral sense which puts the 
 felt upon the spikes. 
 
 Subjectivity and Objectivity 
 
 (i) (b) A familiar theory of perception, the theory of 
 the philosophers, known as Empiricists, tells us that all 
 knowledge is derived from sensation, and that a priori 
 knowledge, that is knowledge which is acquired indepen- 
 dently of the senses, is impossible. 
 
 From this it follows that our knowledge of what is right 
 and wrong in common with our other knowledge is based on 
 sensation and feeling. It is therefore conditioned by and 
 dependent upon the nature of the feelings upon which 
 it is based. Even if it may become something other than 
 feeling it always retains something of the nature of its 
 source ; the feeling element dogs all its deliverances. 
 Just as warmth is not in the fire but is a feeling produced 
 in you by the fire, so immorality is not an attribute of actions 
 but a characteristic of the sense which condemns them. 
 
 (From these and similar considerations arises the theory 
 that the moral sense is some kind of feeling. 
 Now it is important to note that if this view is taken 
 the deliverances of the moral sense are robbed of all validity. 
 The moral sense is in fact reduced to the level of feelings 
 oX_taste. 
 
 If one man likes meringues and another dislikes them, 
 
 the judgment of each is equally valid in the sense that it 
 
 is a correct account of his own feelings. But this judgment 
 
 of like or dislike is not a judgment about the meringues : 
 
 > it is a judgment about the feeling produced by them. 
 
 Similarly if morality is a kind of feeUng, the statement 
 that the action A is good and the action B is bad is not 
 a statement about the qualities of the action A and the 
 action B, but about the s^tk^X produced by the contem- 
 platip n q£ tV^gge ar.tionc; npnn the speaker. 
 
52 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 Moral judgments are therefore on this view judgm ents 
 a^bout the feelings of the person who^niakes them,^and:TiQt 
 judgments about conduct. In so far as "the person who 
 inakes the judgment does poss ess the feelings, all moral judg- 
 ments are equally valid, They are equally valid as judg- 
 ments that those particular feelings are being entertained. 
 In so far, however, as they purport to be more than that, 
 in so far as they profess to say that the action A really is 
 bad in itself because I have the feeling that it is bad, they 
 possess no validity whatever. Furthermore, inasmuch 
 as the contemplation of the action A may produce an 
 entirely different feeling in some other person, a feeling 
 namely that A is good, his judgment that A is good will 
 be perfectly valid as an account of the feelings produced 
 in him by A, although it will not be valid as an account 
 of the real quality of A. If therefore the statement that 
 A is good, or the statement that A is bad, means 
 simply that some person entertains a particular feeling 
 towards A, and means no more than that, and seeing 
 that different persons may at the same time entertain 
 feelings of a contrary character with regard to A, it is 
 clearly possible for A to be both good and bad at the 
 same time. 
 
 This is what is meant by the statement which is fre- 
 quently made that morality is subjective only, and it is 
 perfectly true that if the moral sense is a kind of feeling, 
 morality cannot be more than purely subjective. 
 
 The use of the word subjective as applied to judgments 
 of a moral sense, which is regarded as being a kind of 
 feeling, is important and requires further explanation. 
 
 The difference between subjectivity and objectivity is a 
 question of metaphysics and raises highly controversial 
 issues. Many philosophers would deny that there is such 
 a thing as objectivity at all. 
 
 In order to explain the sense in which I am using these 
 terms, I propose to give one or two simple illustrations of a 
 difference which in practice we all recognize, leaving the 
 metaphysical questions (underlying the difference which I 
 am assuming) to remain a bone of contention among meta- 
 physicians. 
 
 To return to the case of meringues, when I say " me- 
 ringues are palatable " my judgment may be termed 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 53 
 
 subj ective. What is meant is that the j udgment is made not 
 about the meringues but about the gfigfit of the meringues 
 on myself, the subject making the judgment. It is to 
 be noted that the judgment " meringues are not palatable " 
 is equally valid as being a correct account of the effect 
 of the meringues on somebody else. There is, however, 
 on objective fact, namely the actual palatableness of 
 meringues, by reference to which one judgment can be 
 shown to be more true or less tru3 than the other. 
 
 To take an instance of another kind ; it is a well-known 
 fact that railway lines appear to approach one another and 
 ultimately to coincide as the distance from the eye increases. 
 The judgment that they approach is again a case of a 
 subjective judgment, being a judgment about the effect 
 produced by the railway lines on the subject judging. In 
 the case of the railway lines, however, it is known that 
 they are equidistant, and this equidistance is regarded as 
 an objective fact. The statement therefore that railway 
 lines converge is a statement about the impression they 
 create in the observer ; the statement that they are equi- 
 distant is a statement about the railway lines. The equi- 
 distance of the railway lines being regarded as an objective 
 fact, provides a standard or criterion by which to convict 
 of error the feeling of their convergence. 
 
 No such standard exists in the case of the meringues, 
 and it is in this difference, the difference constituted by 
 the presence or absence of an external standard, that the 
 distinction between subjectivity and objectivity partly 
 consists. 
 
 Now if the moral sense is regarded as a feeling only, it 
 is clear that its deliverances may be regarded as parallel 
 to our views about meringues. The statement " this action 
 is immoral " becomes a statement not about the action but 
 about somebody's feelings about the action ; as an account 
 of those feelings it is correct, but as an account of the 
 nature of the action it is no more correct than the contrary 
 statement which affirms that the action is moral. 
 
 In the case of the railway lines there was always an 
 objective fact, namely the equidistance of the lines, by 
 reference to which the judgment that they converged 
 could be convicted of error, and the judgment that they 
 remained equidistant shown to be correct. But on the 
 
54 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 view which identifies moral sense with feeling there is 
 no objective fact, namely the intrinsic goodness or bad- 
 ness of any particular action, by reference to which 
 deliverances of the moral sense can be shown to be right 
 or wrong. 
 
 Even if we were to assume for the sake of argument 
 that an action had an intrinsic goodness or badness in 
 its own right, we cannot know which kind of action it is, 
 for since all judgments passed by the moral sense are 
 judgments not about the action but about the feelings it 
 excites, we can never know anything about the real nature 
 of the action itself : we can never know therefore whether 
 it is good or bad : and we can never know which of two 
 varying judgments is the more correct. 
 
 If therefore the moral sense is some kind of feeling, all 
 its deliverances are equally accurate ; and none of them 
 can be substantiated or verified. The conventional 
 moralist who believes stealing to be wrong can have 
 no ground for reproaching the burglar, who in the act 
 of appropriating his spoons bluntly asserts that wealth 
 being at present unevenly distributed, any attempt by 
 private individuals to readjust the balance has the com- 
 plete approval of his moral sense ; and maintains that 
 prisons and the penal code which assert that some actions 
 are crimes which society is justified in punishing are 
 monuments of arbitrary irrationality. 
 ^ A moral action becomes in this view simply an action 
 which is approved by the moral feelings of the majority 
 of people. In Hume's words, " Actions are not approved 
 because they are moral : they are moral because they are 
 approved." 
 
 It is clear therefore that any attempt to identify the 
 moral sense with feeling not only cuts at the objective 
 basis of aU morality, but Ay asserting that moral conduct 
 is simply that which happens to obtain the approval of 
 the majority at any given momei^, nullifies the teaching 
 of history, which shows that any advance in the current 
 standard of morality invariably comes from the insight 
 and understanding of a few individuals, who are roundly 
 abused for immorality by the majority because they dare 
 to question the propriety of what the majority approves. 
 
 If morality is conduct which is approved by most people 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 55 
 
 at the time, Christ was obviously one of the most immoral 
 characters recorded in history. 
 
 The Moral Sense as Instinct 
 
 (ii) An attempt is sometimes made to escape this 
 repellent conclusion by identifying the moral sense not 
 with some kind of feeling, but with some for m_ of instinct. 
 There is a tendency to regard instinct as something unrque* 
 and infallible. Instincts, it is argued, are not arbitrary, they 
 (do not arise out of nothing, and they must be signiJ&catjit- 
 of something : the fact that they are.experienced is therefore 
 regarded as a sufficient ground for trusting them. 
 
 Writers with an evolutionary" tendency are inclined to 
 
 make much of this point. The instinct that prompts the 
 
 .squirrel to store nuts is salutary because the winter is 
 
 coming : the instinct which prompts the hedgehog to roll 
 
 itself into a ball is salutary because danger is imminent : 
 
 the instinct which makes the savage., forebode evil when 
 
 thunder is in the air is salutary because lightning, is 
 
 dangerous ; therefore it is argued that the jnstin ct which 
 
 makes us approve of certain actions as moral is salutary, 
 
 and may be trusted-in^jlicitly, although it is unable to 
 
 j give an account of itself. The old woman who tells you, 
 
 I " Right is right and wrong is wrong, and a' can alius tell 
 
 \ one from t'other," is an exponent of this view. The fact 
 
 j that the moral instinct is possessed, is in fact regarded as 
 
 sufficient evidence of its trustworthiness. 
 
 The defects of this view are obvious. 
 
 Instincts, whatever be their source, are as frequently 
 
 fallacious as trustworthy. If a hen is put to sit on ducks' 
 
 eggs, she will have an instinct when the ducklings are 
 
 hatched to prevent them from entering the water : but 
 
 the fact that she possesses the instinct does not mean that 
 
 the instinct is trustworthy, nor that it is dangerous for 
 
 the ducklings to enter the water. Animals have an instinct 
 
 to seek the woods when thunder is in the air, and human 
 
 beings with colds have an instinct for stuffy rooms . 
 
 Furthermore the supporters of the instinct view will not 
 agree that we should trust all our instincts. They are 
 usually uncompromising moralists who would regard with 
 horror any suggestion that we should give free play to 
 the sexual instinct, and roundly denounce as immoral a 
 
56 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 philosophy such as that of Walter Pater or of Oscar Wilde 
 which urges the indulgence of instinct for its own sake or 
 in the interests of experience. 
 
 / By what principle then do supporters of this school 
 distinguish evil instincts which are not to be trusted, 
 [ from the moral instinct which is to be implicitly obeyed ? 
 The answer is of course by the principle of reason. 
 Reason is invoked to discriminate between a beneficial 
 instinct and a harmful instinct. It is reason whicirTegifr-'* 
 mizes the promptings of the one and represses those of 
 the other. It is by an appeal to reason alone that the 
 advocate of the moral sense view can find any ground 
 for deprecating the promiscuous indulgence of the sexual 
 instinct, while advocating the promiscuous indulgence of 
 the moral instinct. 
 
 The Moral Sense as Reason 
 
 (iii) This brings us to a consideration of the third and 
 chief ajt eriiative. view as to the nature of the moral sense, 
 "tlie view that it is y2l\^ nr i^} ; for, once the intrusion of reason 
 is admitted, there is no longer anything to be gained by 
 maintaining that our moral judgments are compounded 
 of instinct or feeling only. Although we may granl that 
 there is a strong admixture of feeling in every moral 
 judgment, it is a feeling which is guided and informed 
 by reason. A feeling of moral approval or moral re- 
 pulsion is doubtless at the bottom of every such judg- 
 ment : without it it would be impossible to explain how 
 the judgment came to be passed, but it is a feeUng 
 which requires reason to justify and legitimize its expression. 
 Feeling is the steam which sets the engine of our moral 
 machinery going, but the direction which the engine takes is 
 determined by reason which plays the part of the driver who 
 holds the levers. Once, however, the fact that our n ipral 
 judgm p.n ts a r^ pati.on^is granted, it becomes clear that they 
 cannot be divorced from a consideration of consequences. 
 
 It is not rational to pass moral judgments on actions 
 in themselves, on the ground that they are either good or 
 bad in their own right apart from the consequences they 
 produce, and it is only by divesting the moral sense of 
 any admixture of reason that we can suppose that moral 
 judgments are passed in this way. 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 57 
 
 Reason demands that the consequences of actions should 
 be taken into account. They must be taken into account 
 because we have seen that an action only is what it is, 
 when considered in conjunction with its consequences; 
 that without them it is featureless, being deprived of those 
 characteristics in virtue of which it is judged good or 
 bad. 
 
 ,. ^tions and their consequences form an indiyisibla. whale, 
 no part of which can form the subject oT a judgment of 
 value independently of its relation to the other parts ; 
 and as it is irrational to pass judsme nt on a wholg, when 
 you are only acquainted with TEe^part, it~ is imperative 
 that we should take consequences into account if we are 
 to regard moral judgments as something other than purely 
 instinctive feelings of liking and disliking. 
 
 Consequences are objective concrete facts. As such they 
 provide us with an objective standard whereby to estimate 
 the value of actions and to correct the deliverances of the 
 moral sense, just as the equidistance of the railway lines 
 provided a standard for the correction of the judgment 
 that they converged. 
 
 By admitting the importance of consequences, we elevate 
 judgments of right and wrong out of the region of subjec- 
 tivity which is the sphere of disputes as to the palatableness 
 of meringues, and arrive at a definite standard which will 
 serve as our criterion of right and wrong. 
 
 Summary of Moral Sense Theories and Criticisms 
 
 We have now concluded our survey of the arguments 
 which can be brought against the moral sense theory in 
 any of the various forms in which it has been maintained. 
 If these arguments are correct, we cannot hold that the 
 lightness or wrongness of actions or classes of actions 
 consists in any unique and intrinsic characteristic attaching 
 to certain actions or classes of actions in their own right ; 
 nor that it depends upon the motive from which they are 
 performed ; nor upon the consequences which it is intended 
 that the actions should produce, as opposed to the conse- 
 quences which they do in fact produce ; nor upon any 
 deliverances of the moral sense or senses of any persons 
 or body of persons with regard to the actions in question. 
 
 For the purpose of convenience we may summarize the 
 
58 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 various forms under which the moral sense theory is held 
 as follows. 
 
 The jpnrni rr>nrf> thonrias rP.garf|JJifi_rj^htTlPS*^ Or WrOOg- 
 
 jiess__Qf _ jaclions as (impendent upon the opinions enter- 
 tained towards them by certain persons or bodies of 
 "persons! The theories which emphasize the importance 
 of motive or free will or intended consequences, regard 
 the opinion entertained towards his actions by the agent 
 himself as being the criterion ; theories which emphasize 
 the social character of the moral sense, or the moral unique- 
 ness of certain classes of actions, look for their criterion to 
 the opinion entertained about these actions not by the 
 agent but by the body of persons called the community. 
 
 In all these forms, the moral sense theory appears to 
 be (TQgll to siir.h ^H pVis obj^ ctinnfi that it becomes necessary 
 to look elsewhere for our criterion of right and wrong. If 
 therefore we take the view that the rightness or wrongness 
 of actions is not determined by the opinions or feelings of 
 any person or body of persons, we arrive by process of 
 elimination at the theory described in our first chapter 
 which makes ng]itn£ss-.aixd--wrongness^.d£pead-upen 
 Jiatiim pLthe actual .consequences produced. 
 
 We have seen that this theory regarded as valuable 
 only those consequences which consisted of the maximum 
 possible Quantity^^i ..pleasure, or- liappiness ; and we have 
 now to consider the question which was left unexamined 
 in the first chapter, namely whether pleasure is the only 
 element of which we are to take account in estimating 
 the nature of the consequences of an action. 
 
 § 3. What Consequences are Valuable ? 
 
 The theory which was considered in the first chapter 
 defined a right action as that which produced the best 
 consequences on the whole. To determine what is meant 
 by the best consequences, it is clear that we must arrive 
 at some conception of what is good. 
 
 Reasons were given in the first chapter for regarding 
 pleasure as a good : we also saw that there were reasons 
 for not regarding it as the only good. We have therefore 
 to ask what is good besides pleasure ? 
 
 The question of what is good, or rather what is The 
 Good, used to be the central problem of Ethics. Philoso- 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 59 
 
 phers in Classical times used to go about looking for The 
 Good as though it were a kind of hidden treasure, much as 
 in the Middle Ages they devoted their lives to the quest 
 of the Philosopher's Stone, or the Elixir of Life. The 
 view was commonly held that only one thing was good, 
 and that for the sake of this one thing everything else was 
 desired. The Good was supremely valuable, and was 
 desired for its own sake : other things were valuable only 
 in so far as they tended to bring us nearer to The Good. 
 The difficulty of this view lay in the impossibility of 
 agreeing upon a satisfactory definition of what The Good 
 was ; it has been variously identified with Pleasure, Truth, 
 Virtue, Beauty, Knowledge, and Intellectual Contempla- 
 tion, and volumes have been written by the supporters of 
 each of these conceptions to prove that their particular 
 good was ultimate, and that other apparent goods were 
 only regarded as such because they conduced to The Good. 
 On this subject we have surprisingly little to say. The 
 
 (fundamental problem of Ethics has ceased to be funda- 
 mental, simply because the notion of " The One Good " 
 has had to be abandoned. The view is now generally taken 
 that instead of there being one ultimate good there are 
 several, several different things that is, each of which is 
 desired for its own sake, and in order to discover what these 
 
 « things are, we have simply to answer the question : " What 
 is in fact desired ? " 
 Before giving the reasons for this view, I want to make 
 three preliminary observations which will have the effect 
 of clearing the issue. 
 
 The Good is Indefinable 
 
 (i) Ultimate goods are indefinable. By an ultimate 
 good is meant that which is desired for its own sake, and 
 not for the sake of something else. 
 
 The distinction involved between ultimate goods and 
 other kinds of goods, goods that is which are good for a 
 particular purpose, is an obvious one. Let us assume for 
 
 moment that health is an ultimate good. If a man has 
 
 cold he is told that quinine is good for him, and he 
 accordingly desires to obtain quinine. It is clear that he 
 does not desire quinine for its own sake ; it is also clear 
 that although he is told that quinine is good for him, he 
 
6o COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 does not regard quinine as a good in itself. He only 
 desires quinine because he believes that it may banish his 
 cold and restore him to health, and he regards quinine 
 therefore as good for this particular purpose. Quinine is 
 a good, therefore, because it conduces to health, and its 
 value is derived from the end which it promotes. 
 
 Now if health is an ultimate good, it is ultimate in the 
 sense that it is not desired, as quinine is desired, for the 
 sake of anything else. Its value cannot therefore be 
 expressed in terms of any other form of value, as the value 
 of quinine can be expressed in terms of its conduciveness 
 to health. If health is an ultimate good, therefore, its 
 value, or that in virtue of which it is good, is unique. 
 
 Now all definition consists in describing one thing in 
 terms of something else. This is true both of correct and 
 incorrect definitions. If, for instance, we consider Samuel 
 Butler's definition of faith as the " power of believing in 
 things which are known to be untrue," the definition depends 
 for the fact of its being made and understood on the possi- 
 bility of expressing faith in terms of belief. Faith is regarded 
 and spoken of as a certain kind of belief : it is not something 
 unique. Similarly the definition of a regular pentagon as a 
 " figure bounded by five equal straight lines " depends upon 
 the possibility of the peculiar attributes of a pentagon being 
 expressed in terms of equality and of straight lines. 
 
 Ultimate things, however, just because they are unique, 
 cannot be expressed in terms of something else. We 
 may define faith in terms of belief, and belief in terms of 
 something else, knowledge for instance, but in the long 
 run we must always arrive at something which, owing to 
 the uniqueness of its characteristics, cannot be defined in 
 terms of anything else. 
 
 Ultimate goods are of this character. 
 
 The Good Desired Irrationally 
 
 (ii) Good is the object of desire, not of reason. 
 
 Desire sets the end of our actions : reason plans the 
 necessary steps for the achievement of that end. 
 
 As a rule the ends we place before ourselves in action 
 are only desired for the sake of something else. A boy 
 desires success in an examination because it will bring a 
 diploma or degree. He desires a diploma because it will 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 61 
 
 assist him to gain a situation. He desires a situation 
 because it will bring him money. He desires money at 
 first because it will bring enjoyment or security : later he 
 desires money for its own sake. But the ultimate thing, 
 for the sake of which other things are desired, is as much 
 an object of desire as the succession of achievements which 
 bring it nearer. 
 
 It is true that we may reason about our desires, and 
 endeavour to interpret them to ourselves. Reason may 
 also control or repress desires; but when it does so it 
 is only in the interest of something else which reason 
 beUeves to be the object of a stronger desire, as when a man 
 represses his desire to smoke before a Rugby football 
 match in the interests of his stronger desire to keep his 
 
 . wind during the match. But reason plays no part in 
 
 1 determining what we desire. 
 
 Many of our desires have been shown by psycho-analysts 
 to be unconscious desires. Unconscious desires cannot 
 properly be said to have any end or object in view; cer- 
 tainly they have no end which has been set by reason. 
 
 An Intuitionism of Ends 
 
 (iii) If ultimate goods are objects of desire, it is absurd 
 to ask why they are desired ! It is impossible to give 
 reasons for our desires for ultimates. The only reason that 
 can be given for the desire for an object is that it is desired 
 for the sake of some other object. Objects which are not 
 desired for this reason are desired for no reason at all. 
 
 No answer can be given to the question, why we 
 desire health or appreciate beauty : nor can we say why 
 we find music pleasing. It is of course possible to identify 
 elements in, and reasons for, the appreciation of a particular 
 piece of music, or the work of a particular composer : we 
 may be attracted by the brilliancy of a pianist's execution, 
 by the greatness of a composer's conception, by the spirit 
 and vivacity which animates a particular piece, or by the 
 sentimental reminiscences that it arouses in ourselves. 
 These, however, are not reasons for our hking music 
 generally : they are reasons for our admiration of a par- 
 ticular piece. Of music generally we can say no more 
 than that it pleases us, because we are made like that. 
 
 Ultimate goods then are indefinable and unanalyzable. 
 
62 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 They are the objects of desires of which no account can be 
 given except that we have them. They are desired, that 
 is, irrationally and instinctively. 
 
 If follows therefore that if we wish to know what are 
 the ultimate goods, what are the valuable things by a 
 reference to which we can estimate the " best consequences 
 of an action," we have only to look into our hearts to find 
 out what things are actually desired for their own sake. 
 The question becomes a question of psychology. 
 
 Easy as it appears at first sight, however, this is a 
 remarkably difficult performance. Apart from the fact 
 that many of our desires are unconscious and that many 
 of our conscious desires are delusive, being reaUy desires 
 for something other than they profess,^ it is very difficult 
 to distinguish desires which are desires for things which 
 are valuable for their own sake, from those which are 
 desires for things valued for the sake of something else. 
 We have seen that many philosophers have maintained 
 that only pleasure is desired for its own sake and that all 
 other things are desired for the sake of pleasure. Although 
 we have cited reasons for regarding this psychology as 
 false, it is by no means easy to specify what things are 
 desired for their own sake besides pleasure. 
 
 One of the reasons for this difficulty is that different 
 people probably desire different things for their own sake. 
 
 It is considerations of this kind which lie at the basis of 
 what is known as the new Intuitionism, popularized by 
 Dr. G. E. Moore. 
 
 We have seen reasons for regarding the old Intuitionism, 
 which held that the moral sense provided us with unique 
 feelings or intuitions with regard to right and wrong actions, 
 as unsatisfactory largely because feeling was not an adequate 
 or trustworthy criterion of morality. It was not adequate 
 because it relied upon the help of reason to legitimize 
 itself among all the other feelings as the one feeling which 
 ought to be trusted, and to discredit the indulgence of 
 other feelings. So soon as reason was invoked in the 
 process, it proclaimed that actions must be judged by their 
 consequences. 
 
 Intuitions about conduct are therefore unsatisfactory. 
 
 ^ The phenomena of unconscious and delusive desires will be 
 dealt with at greater length in Chapter V. 
 
INTUITIONISM AND THE MORAL SENSE 63 
 
 An Intuition which says, " This is right," must give an 
 account of itself before the bar of reason, which is the only 
 faculty in a position to provide adequate or at least plaus- 
 ible grounds for the distinction between right and wrong. 
 
 But with regard to goods the case is different. We 
 have seen that reason plays no part in setting our ends, 
 and that our desires cannot therefore be expected to provide 
 rational grounds for themselves. 
 
 Here then is a more legitimate field for Intuition. 
 
 We can and do have Intuitions as to what is good, 
 which cannot be corrected by reason or expected to give 
 a rational account of themselves, simply because desire 
 for the good is not a rational process. Intuitions which 
 tell us, " This is good," are probably the best if not the 
 only means at our disposal of discovering what are those 
 goods which are desired for their own sake ; and these 
 Intuitions tell us that virtue, knowledge, beauty, pleasure, 
 intellectual and bodily activity are all so desired. 
 
 But this does not mean that they are desired in isolation 
 as if they were static, self-existent, independent entities. 
 The best consequences are not those which contain a 
 certain fixed percentage of truth, plus a certain fixed 
 percentage of pleasure, plus a certain fixed percentage 
 of virtue, and so on. What is meant is that truth, pleasure, 
 virtue and the rest, each constitute an element of ultimate 
 value, which must be taken into account in making our 
 estimate of what consequences are the best. Those 
 consequences which contain the greatest proportion of any 
 or all of these elements of value will be the best conse- 
 quences, just as those lives will be the best which contain 
 the greatest proportion of these same elements. 
 
 But people being differently constituted, will desire 
 different things, or different quantities of the same thing, so 
 that the proportions in which these elements of value will be 
 arranged will vary from person to person, the most desirable 
 proportion for each person being fixed by yet another intui- 
 tion or judgment of value on the part of the person concerned. 
 
 Good therefore is not a fixed unit. It is a collection 
 of heterogeneous elements each of which is good in itself, 
 in so far as it is desired for its own sake. One man's good 
 is different from another man's, and good will change for 
 the same man, as the proportions in which the various 
 
64 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 elements of value are arranged change, as the results of 
 changes of desire. 
 
 Results of Examination of Utilitarianism 
 and Intuitionism 
 
 In this and the first chapter I have considered two main 
 groups of ethical theories: the Utilitarian group which 
 looks for the criterion of rightness and wrongness to the 
 consequences of actions, and the Intuitionist or moral 
 sense group which looks to the judgments of the moral sense. 
 
 As a result of the examination of these theories we are 
 in a position to enunciate the following propositions : 
 
 1. The rightness or wrongness of actions does not 
 depend upon the feelings or opinions of any person or body 
 of persons with regard to those actions, whether those 
 feelings or opinions take the form of the emanations of a 
 free will, or of a moral motive on the part of the agent, 
 or of a unique sentiment of approval or disapproval with 
 regard to certain actions or classes of actions, which are 
 themselves regarded as unique. 
 
 2. Rightness or wrongness does depend upon actual 
 consequences, those actions being right which have the 
 best consequences on the whole. 
 
 This proposition remains true, although it is not humanly 
 possible to estimate the total consequences of any action, 
 and not therefore possible ever to judge of any action 
 that it is absolutely right. 
 
 3. In estimating the value of consequences with a view 
 to ascertaining what are the best, several elements of 
 value, each of which constitutes an object of desire for 
 its own sake, must be admitted. 
 
 4. Pleasure is not the only element of ultimate value, 
 although no mental whole is valuable without a certain 
 admixture of pleasure. 
 
 5. Elements of value are established by intuitions which 
 formulate our goods for us. These intuitions are intuitions 
 with regard to the goodness of ends, and not with regard 
 to the rightness of conduct. These intuitions also determine 
 the various proportions in which elements of value should 
 be combined to constitute the best life for each individual. 
 
 6. The best life for each individual is not constant, 
 but varies according to variations in individual desire. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE FORM OF THE GOOD 
 
 NO survey of leading Ethical theories would be com- 
 plete without some account of Plato's doctrine of 
 the Form of the Good. It is not a view which 
 numbers many adherents to-day, but it gives nevertheless 
 a very attractive and plausible explanation of what is 
 meant by calling an action good, and is very difficult if not 
 impossible to disprove. 
 
 In order to avoid confusion it will be convenient to use a 
 specific epithet to describe the ethical value of actions 
 judged by Plato's standard, as I have already done in the 
 case of actions judged by the Utilitarian and Intuitionist 
 standards. Actions judged by the Utilitarian standard of 
 the consequences they produced, I have called right and 
 wrong ; actions judged by the Intuitionist standard of the 
 deliverances of the moral sense, moral and immoral ; 
 actions judged in accordance with Plato's doctrine of the 
 Form of Good, will be called good and bad. 
 
 I do not mean by this distinction to imply that a good 
 action is necessarily different from a moral action or from 
 a right action : they are frequently the same ; nor do I 
 mean to suggest that there can be two equally true criteria 
 of right and wrong. The distinction is only adopted pro- 
 visionally for the purposes of discussion, so that in speaking 
 of a good action I may be understood to mean an action 
 which would be regarded as good on Plato's theory, with- 
 out necessarily saying so every time the words are used. 
 
 § I. Statement of Plato's Theory 
 
 Plato's theory of the Form of Good cannot be treated 
 independently of his general theory of Forms of which a 
 brief account must be given. 
 
 The theory is primarily a logical one, and raises logical 
 
 5 ^ 
 
66 - COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 and metaphysical questions of a most controversial char- 
 acter. It will not be possible to enter into a discussion of 
 these questions in a book which is concerned only with 
 Ethics ; but some of them wiU be briefly indicated in so 
 far as they constitute objections to the ethical criterion 
 which the theory sets up. The theory falls into two parts 
 which will be considered separately. 
 
 What the Forms are 
 
 I. Plato's theory starts from the consideration of such a 
 conception as " whiteness." In endeavouring to discover 
 what whiteness is, he proceeds to consider a number of 
 white objects with a view to discovering what they have in 
 common. Whatever differences a number of white objects 
 may present they all possess a common quality, namely the 
 quality of being white. This quality of being white or 
 whiteness is not any one of the objects which possess it ; 
 nor is it their sum, for if all the white objects that existed 
 in the universe were collected together they would not 
 constitute whiteness, but simply the sum total of white 
 objects. Whiteness then is something other than the 
 various objects which are white. Not only is it something 
 other than these objects, but it exists in its own right apart 
 from them. Whiteness by itself is clearly something, for 
 we cannot entertain a thought about nothing, and the word 
 does have a meaning for us, which enables us to think of it. 
 If whiteness were nothing, a thought about whiteness would 
 be the same as a thought about blackness, or about redness ; 
 the fact that a thought about whiteness is different from a 
 thought about redness, shows both that whiteness exists to 
 be thought about, and that it possesses qualities which 
 distinguish it from redness. 
 
 Now while the many things which are white are different, 
 the whiteness in virtue of which we call them white is 
 always one and always the same. White things may 
 change, becoming white at one time and ceasing to be 
 white at another, but whiteness remains unaffected by these 
 changes and is eternally identical with itself. 
 
 For reasons into which we need not now enter, Plato 
 regarded the world with which we are in touch by means of 
 our senses, the world of changing white objects, as an unreal 
 
THE FORM OF THE GOOD 67 
 
 world. It is different at different moments ; and different 
 for different people. What is blue for one man is grey 
 for his colour-blind brother, and unless we are slavishly to 
 accept the judgment of the majority as a criterion of truth, 
 there is no more reason for asserting that it is really blue 
 than that it is really grey. 
 
 With regard to such a world it is not possible to possess 
 exact knowledge, we can entertain opinions about it only. 
 
 The real world must be a world of which it is possible to 
 have exact knowledge : it must therefore be static and 
 unchangeable ; it is in fact a world composed of just those 
 conceptions, such as whiteness, which have been seen to 
 remain one and unchanging, while white objects change at 
 different times and for different people. 
 
 Plato held that such a world did in fact exist ; that as 
 opposed to the world of objects which are known by means 
 of the senses, it is known by reason only, and that the 
 entities which compose it are the cause of the existence of 
 objects like white posts, and white cream, which appear to 
 be real because they are known to the senses, but are in 
 fact only half real. 
 
 Conceptions such as whiteness Plato calls the Form of 
 whiteness. White objects he speaks of as particulars which 
 partake of the Form of whiteness. Cream, the conduct of 
 Christ, and the triangle ABC, are particulars of the Forms 
 of whiteness, goodness and triangularity, whiteness, good- 
 ness and triangularity being always something other than 
 the particular instances of them with which we are 
 acquainted. 
 
 For Plato there exists a Form for every group of objects 
 which have a common quality, and it is because of their 
 participation in the Form that the objects exhibit the 
 characteristics they appear to possess. Thus a table is 
 round and smooth by virtue of its participation in the 
 Forms of roundness and smoothness. It is not round and 
 smooth in its own right. 
 
 While the Forms are perfect and complete, the objects 
 which participate in them are only imperfect representations 
 or manifestations of the Forms. Plato speaks of objects as 
 approximating to the nature of the Forms, and trying as it 
 were to be more perfect embodiments of the Forms in which 
 they participate. It may be asked how, if we can never 
 
68 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 know the Forms completely, but only know the particulars 
 or objects in which they are imperfectly manifest, we can 
 know that the Forms exist, or recognize their manifestation 
 when we see it ? 
 
 Plato answers this question with the doctrine of metem- 
 psychosis or the transmigration of souls. 
 
 The soul, which is immortal, is from time to time embodied 
 in a corporeal form for life upon the earth. During the 
 period intervening between any two such lives the soul 
 sojourns in a heavenly place, wherein she is in constant 
 and complete communion with the Forms, which are there 
 completely manifested, instead of being dimly apprehended 
 through the distc rting medium of physical objects. When 
 the soul returns to earth encased in her bodily prison, the 
 faint remembrance which she has of her vision of the Forms 
 enables her to recognize their manifestation in the various 
 objects of which the body is aware by means of the senses. 
 
 While perception of a white object then is in the first 
 place due to the stimiilationof the senses, the apprehension 
 of its particular quality of whiteness is the work of the soul, 
 and is in reality an act of recognition. 
 
 In the light of this doctrine we can now state the first 
 part of Plato's theory of the good. A good act is one which 
 partakes of the Form of goodness, and is recognized as such 
 by the remembrance which the soul possesses of the Form 
 of goodness which it has known in a previous state of 
 existence. 
 
 A brief examination of some of the implications of this 
 doctrine will reveal some of the objections to which it is open. 
 
 The Forms not Mental 
 
 (a) It has frequently been supposed by commentators on 
 Plato that the Forms are intended to be some kind of mental 
 entity. This supposition has been reinforced by the fact 
 that the usual English name fc r the Greek word which I have 
 translated as " Form " is " Idea." This view of the Forms 
 is a complete travesty of Plato. It is indeed suggested by 
 him in one of the Dialogues, but only to be promptly 
 repudiated. 
 
 The Forms are non-mental entities, the objects of thought, 
 but not in any way the content or substance of thought. 
 They are not thought by any mind, in the sense that they 
 
THE FORM OF THE GOOD 69 
 
 are ideas or thoughts in that mind : they are thought of as 
 something existing apart from mind. 
 
 It follows that their existence is completely independent 
 of the physical world. They exist separate and apart, 
 eternal and immutable entities. They are the patterns on 
 the model of which God created the world, existing before 
 the world, and independently of God. 
 
 Relations between Forms and Particulars 
 
 (b) The relation between the Form and the series of 
 particulars which part ke of it, is sometimes spoken of as 
 one in which the Form is the cause of the existence of the 
 particulars, sometimes as one in which the particulars are 
 created on the model of, or in the likeness of the Form, but 
 owe their existence to some other source. Either view 
 leads to difficulties. 
 
 As a result of the implications considered in (a) above, 
 we have to suppose that the world of Forms is one which is 
 different in substance and reality from the world we know 
 by means of the senses ; it exists neither in time nor in 
 space ; if therefore the world of physical objects were swept 
 into oblivion and all human consciousness perished with 
 it, the world of Forms would remain unaffected. 
 
 If this is a true account of the Forms, it is argued that 
 the nature of their being must be so different from that of 
 objects of sense, that the Forms cannot enter into any 
 relation with such objects, much less be their innermost 
 essence, the cause of their being endowed with such reality 
 as they have. 
 
 Yet if the particular is a mere copy of the Form, that 
 part of the theory which ascribes the possession of any 
 quality, such as whiteness, by any object, such as cream 
 to the presence of a Form in the object, falls to the ground. 
 
 Our Knowledge oj the World oj Forms 
 
 {c) These difficulties are not altogether insoluble, although 
 an attempt to reconcile them would t ke us far from our 
 present theme. It must be admitted, however, that the 
 theory gets into difficulties which border on the absurd, 
 when it deals with physical objects of a mean and sordid 
 character, such as hair and mud. It is difficult to believe 
 
70 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 r 
 
 in the existence of a transcendent Form of hair, or of a 
 chimerical entity such as a purple quadratic equation, 
 which we may choose to invent for the purpose of postulat- 
 ing a Form to endow it with the peculiar combination of 
 qualities in virtue of which it is what it is. 
 
 Although these difficulties are brought to light when all 
 the implications of the theory are pushed to their logical 
 conclusion, there is no doubt that with regard to certain 
 spheres of knowledge, it provides as satisfactory an answer 
 as has yet been given to that quest for objectivity which we 
 have seen to be at the basis of most ethical inquiry. 
 
 These spheres are pre-eminently those of Ethics and 
 Mathematics. 
 
 For Plato the physical world, as we have already noted, 
 was incapable of being an object of accurate knowledge ; 
 simply because it could not be analyzed into those combina- 
 tions of static logical concepts with which scientific know- 
 ledge was supposed to dead. 
 
 As scientific knowledge is possible, it must be knowledge 
 of something other than this irrational physical world ; 
 therefore it deals with a world of entities which lie entirely 
 beyond the range of any possible experience on the part of 
 the senses. 
 
 In giving examples of the sort of scientific knowledge we 
 possess of this world, Plato draws his illustrations mainly 
 from two spheres, those of Mathematics and Ethics. Now 
 Ethics was, for Plato, subject to the same laws as Mathe- 
 matics, the qualities of order, measure and proportion being 
 essential characteristics of the morally good. It follows 
 therefore that the real world, including the real basis of 
 morality, is a world of fixed entities, subject to mathemati- 
 cal laws and known with a precision which is applicable only 
 to mathematical objects. Of the world of Forms then we 
 have true knowledge : of the half-real world of sensible 
 objects we have probable opinion only. 
 
 This distinction admirably suits the approximate and 
 controversial character of ethical judgments. 
 
 Just as in mathematics the straight line we draw is not 
 the straight line we reason about, or to which our conclu- 
 sions apply, for it has breadth as well as length and is not 
 entirely straight ; so in passing judgments upon human 
 ethical actions, we never pass judgment upon what is purely 
 
THE FORM OF THE GOOD 71 
 
 good, but upon an imperfect manifestation of it imperfectly 
 recognized. 
 
 Because our ethical judgments are matters of opinion 
 only, they differ at different times, and among different 
 people at the same time. But the fact of their differences 
 does not alter our unanimous conviction of the reality of the 
 good itself, although we may never fully apprehend it. 
 We all know that there is such a thing as morality, much 
 as we may differ about its meaning and its significance. 
 
 The Unique Position of the Form of Good 
 
 2. Plato conceives of the Form of the Good in two 
 different ways. The first conception is that which we have 
 just described. The Form of the Good is regarded as one 
 among a n;imber of Forms, possessing greater reality and 
 greater importance than the various particular acts in 
 which it is manifested, but not more real or more important 
 than the other Forms. It occupies no special or unique 
 place in the hierarchy of reality, and the particulars in 
 which it appears and of whose being it is the cause form a 
 strictly limited class. According to this conception the 
 Form of Good is regarded as tending to manifest itself more 
 particularly in actions, while the Form of Beauty appears 
 in physical objects, and the Form of Truth in judgments. 
 It is true that there are passages where Plato speaks of 
 objects or institutions as participating in the Good, but 
 these are rare, and as a rule the Good is regarded as a purely 
 ethical conception which is the source of such ethical value 
 as actions possess. There is, however, a famous passage in 
 the Republic in which the Form of Good is treated in a very 
 different manner. 
 
 In this passage Plato is speaking of the function which 
 Philosophy has to play in examining the axioms and hypo- 
 theses of the special sciences, as for instance the postulates 
 which the geometrician takes for granted in his reasoning. 
 By a process of rigidly testing and sifting these hypotheses, 
 Philosophy reduces them to a still smaller group of ultimate 
 hypotheses, from which they can and have been derived. 
 This smaller group of hypotheses or ultimate principles will 
 upon further examination be found to reduce itself to one 
 which is the cause of such truth as the others possess and 
 
73 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 the ground from which they may be deduced. This ulti- 
 mate principle is self-evidently true, and when it has once 
 been perceived by the philosopher, he will proceed from it 
 to deduce the real ultimate principles upon which the special 
 sciences are founded, and to substitute these for the errone- 
 ous ultimates hitherto assumed as hypotheses by scientists. 
 
 The process may be compared to ascending a ladder by 
 stepping upon the rungs of scientific hypotheses until the 
 top is reached. The top is contiguous to the top of an 
 adjoining ladder, which the former climber will then descend, 
 manufacturing as he proceeds the rungs upon which he steps. 
 It may also be noted that the process is closely akin to the 
 speculations of modern mathematicians, such as Peano, who 
 are inclined to regard the whole of mathematical science as a 
 system of deductions from a few logical premises. 
 
 It is, however, a matter of some surprise to find that the 
 all-important logical principle from which the hypothesis of 
 the special sciences are derived is the Form of the Good. 
 Just as each particular in the world of sensible objects is a 
 manifestation or aspect of its own appropriate Form which 
 is exhibited in it and is the source of its being, so the Forms 
 themselves are regarded as stretching in an ordered sequence 
 or hierarchy up to the Form of the Good, of which they in 
 their turn are but aspects, and to which they owe the source 
 of their being. 
 
 The Form of the Good has a twofold function. It is at once 
 the cause of the existence of the other Forms, and through 
 them of the objects of the world of sense, and also the cause 
 of their being known. In this connection it is compared 
 with the sun, which is at once the source of the warmth and 
 heat which are the cause of growth and vitality in nature, 
 and also of the light whereby the objects of nature are beheld. 
 
 The Form of Good is not beautiful or true, nor is it 
 identical with the Forms of Beautj^ or Truth, but it is the 
 source of both. All being and all existence may be regarded 
 as emanations of the Form of Good, possessing an ever 
 diminishing degree of reality, as their distance from the 
 source of their being increases, so that we may i entify the 
 Form of Good with what in another of the Dialogues Plato 
 describes as the " Maker and Father of all." 
 
 Plato's description of the nature and functions of the 
 Form of Good is generally clothed in such mystical language 
 
THE FORM OF THE GOOD 73 
 
 that it is difficult to grasp his meaning with any degree of 
 precision. It is clear, however, that he meant to convey 
 much more by the conception than a poetical faith that 
 " God is in his heaven," and hence that " All is well with 
 the world," or in other words, that the essence and purpose 
 of the Universe is good. 
 
 Reduced so far as possible to logical statement the theory 
 amounts to this : it is always possible to distinguish 
 between two kinds of causes : the first is the true cause ; the 
 second may be described as the sum of the accessory con- 
 ditions. Now the true cause cannot operate or become 
 efficacious without the presence of the accessory conditions, 
 which may themselves therefore be looked upon as being in a 
 sense a kind of cause. The true cause of the existence of 
 the world and of every arrangement and object in the world 
 is the principle of the Form of Good which is that " It is 
 best that things should be so." The accessory conditions 
 for the creation of the world are found in the existence of 
 the chaotic disorderly matter out of which the world is 
 made, and through which the principle, "It is best that 
 things should be so," strives to manifest itself. It is 
 because of the disorderly material in which it has to work 
 that the principle, of good, though always present as the 
 underlying factor in the arrangements of the world, is 
 frequently obscured and overlaid, and hence arises the 
 appearance of evil and imperfection in the world. The 
 Forms, however, which possess no ingredient of matter in 
 their structure, are pure embodiments of the principle of 
 good. 
 
 Hence we may regard the second or more mystical treat- 
 ment of the Form of Good as a statement of the doctrine 
 that the fundamental structure of the universe is ethical in 
 character, and that it is not only ethical but ethically good. 
 
 Although it may be a little fanciful to interpret the Form 
 of Good, as one writer does, as " a rational, consistent con- 
 ception of the greatest possible attainable human happiness, 
 of the ultimate laws of God, nature or man that sanction 
 conduct, and of the consistent operation of those laws in 
 legislation, government, and education," there can be no 
 doubt that it constitutes an assertion that the fundamental 
 nature of things is neither mechanically neutral, nor purpos- 
 ivtly and spiritually benevolent, but consists of something 
 
74 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 which is strictly good although it is not necessarily good as 
 the expression of any willing mind. 
 
 The refusal to identify the principle of good with a bene- 
 volent personal deity is important. The Form of Good is 
 not to be confused with any conception of God. It may be 
 regarded as that on the model of which God made the world, 
 but it existed antecedently to God, and is known by God 
 as something which is independent of Himself. But this 
 latter conception is by no means certain, for Plato's language 
 about God is always of a mystical and poetic character, and 
 creating it is not certain that he definitely thought of God 
 as the world. There are passages, it is true, which sug- 
 gest such a conception, but the idea of God is in no 
 way essential to Plato's system, the existence of the 
 world as we know it being adequately accounted for by 
 the manifestations of the world of Forms in sensible 
 objects. 
 
 § 2. Implications of the Theory 
 
 If we leave out of account the import of the more tran- 
 scendent and mystical developments of the Form of Good, 
 described above, the significance of the theorj^ for Ethics 
 may be briefly summarized as follows : 
 
 I. The theory differs from the Intuitionist and UtiUtarian 
 theories in a very important particular. 
 
 The Intuitionist theories held that the ethical value of an 
 action depended upon some person or class of persons 
 having a certain attitude with regard to it, namely an 
 attitude of moral approval. 
 
 The Utilitarian theory held that the ethical value of an 
 action depended upon its consequences, and that a right 
 action was one which had the best consequences on the 
 whole. Since, however, the total sum of the actual conse- 
 quences of an action can never be known to any person but 
 can only be guessed at, the theory states in effect that what 
 is of importance in estimating the rightness or wrongness of 
 an action is not the total consequences which remain un- 
 known, but the attitude of some person or class of persons 
 towards such consequences as are known. A right action is 
 therefore, for practical purposes, one whose observed conse- 
 
THE FORM OF THE GOOD 75 
 
 quences are such as to excite an attitude of approval in the 
 mind of the person judging. 
 
 Both groups of theories therefore have this in common, 
 that their ethical judgments, which profess to be judgments 
 about actions, are in fact judgments about people's attitude 
 towards actions. 
 
 They never succeed in valuing the action itself : they 
 always value people's opinions about it, or attitude towards 
 it, and in so doing they make the ethical criterion of an 
 action depend not on any intrinsic quality possessed by the 
 action or by its consequences, but upon the quality of 
 people's sentiments towards the action or its consequences. 
 
 As opposed to these theories Plato's doctrine of the Form 
 of Good (I am here referring only to the first part of the 
 doctrine) does succeed in formulating a criterion which 
 applies directly to actions in themselves. 
 
 It states that the goodness or badness of an action does 
 not depend upon its consequences, nor does it depend upon 
 the opinions of any person or body of persons about it, but 
 it does depend upon the extent to which it participates in 
 the Form of Good. 
 
 Ethical judgments therefore on this theory are judgments 
 with regard to the presence or absence of the Form of Good 
 in the action under consideration. 
 
 2. Not only is the Form of Good manifested in different 
 degrees in different actions, but people possess in different 
 degrees the power of recognizing it. 
 
 Just as in art persons of good taste and of bad taste are 
 persons who possess respectively different capacities for 
 recognizing the Form of Beauty in objects, so a person with 
 a highly developed moral standard is a person who possesses 
 in a high degree the power of recognizing actions which 
 participate in the Form of Good. A highly developed com- 
 munity with an elaborate code of morals is a community 
 consisting largely of persons of this character ; whereas a 
 community which regards it as moral to roast persons whose 
 opinions, though enlightened, are unpopular, has a low 
 capacity for recognizing the absence of the Form of Good 
 and the presence of the Form of Badness. 
 
 Progress therefore means growth in the power to recog- 
 nize those actions in which the Form of Good is present. 
 
 3. As we never completely apprehend the Form itself 
 
76 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 during our earthly existence, and as it is never completely 
 apparent in any particular action, no moral judgment can 
 be more than approximately correct, just as no action can 
 be more than approximately good. 
 
 It is therefore never possible to say that such and such an 
 action is absolutely good, any more than it is possible to 
 predicate absolute certainty for one's belief that a certain 
 action is good : it is possible, in Plato's words, to have 
 " probable opinion only." But this does not mean that 
 some actions are not better than others, nor does it mean 
 that some people's moral judgments and moral codes are 
 not better than the judgments and codes of others. 
 
 The fact that you cannot tell which of two conflicting 
 moral judgments about an action is right, does not alter the 
 fact that one is more nearly right than the other : and this 
 remains true although it is not humanly possible to state 
 with certainty which of the two judgments is in fact the 
 one which is more nearly right. To take an analogy, we 
 may assume that at the bottom of the Atlantic, exactly 
 midway between Ireland and America, there is a rock 
 which has never been seen by human eyes. Now it is 
 clear that such a rock possesses a temperature of its own, 
 although that temperature has never been measured. If 
 two people make two different guesses at the temper- 
 ature of this rock, it is clear that nobody will be able 
 to tell which of the two guesses is more correct. That does 
 not, however, alter the fact that one of the two guesses is in 
 fact more correct than the other, although nobody can with 
 certainty identify it. 
 
 But just as one guess at the temperature might be palp- 
 ably absurd, while the other might be clearly approxi- 
 mately correct, so.it is possible to say that of two conflicting 
 estimates of the morality of an action, one is much more 
 likely to be correct than the other ; and it is possible to say 
 this although an absolutely certain affirmation in the matter 
 is impossible. 
 
 Advantages of Plato's Position 
 
 The advantages of Plato's theory are therefore fourfold * 
 I. It does provide for judgments about the value of 
 
 actions themselves and not about people's attitude towards 
 
 them. 
 
THE FORM OF THE GOOD 77 
 
 2. It does provide an objective standard of goodness to 
 which some actions can be said to approximate more than 
 others, instead of regarding differences of morality as 
 equivalent to subjective differences of taste. 
 
 3. It explains how it is that the opinions of different 
 people and of different communities with regard to morality 
 differ, showing such differences to be differences in the 
 capacity for recognition. 
 
 4. It also provides a meaning for the conception of moral 
 progress, and a practical, although not an absolute, stan- 
 dard by which to measure the respective values of different 
 ethical codes. 
 
 Under all these heads the theory squares to a remarkable 
 degree with the facts of morality as we know them, satis- 
 fying as it does that desire for objectivity and a standard, 
 which we all instinctively feel to exist in morals, and at the 
 same time reconciling the existence of such a standard with 
 the notorious differences of moral judgments. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SUMMARY OF ETHICAL THEORIES 
 
 § I. Reconciliation of Utilitarianism, Intuitionism 
 AND THE Theory of Forms 
 
 IN the preceding three chapters I have considered three 
 main groups of ethical theories. These theories may be 
 said to be roughly representative of the great majority of 
 the views that have been historically entertained by philo- 
 sophers on ethical questions. I do not mean that there have 
 not been theories which fall outside any of the three groups 
 described ; such theories of course have existed, but they 
 have been either unimportant or unphilosophical. By 
 unphilosophical I mean that they have been held by persons 
 who were not accredited philosophers. The Ethics of 
 Swedenborg, and even of Schopenhauer, are not philosophi- 
 cal in the strict sense of the word. They are not tricked out 
 in philosophical garb, they are not defended by dialectical 
 methods, nor are they maintained on logical grounds ; more 
 particularly their exact import and significance is not 
 brought out by that discussion and criticism of rival ethical 
 theories which is usual in Philosophy. Jesus Christ also 
 propounded a highly elaborate code of Ethics, but this 
 code has been considered too practical to come within the 
 scope of philosophy, although no community has yet 
 attempted to practise it. 
 
 The fact that ethical systems like those of Christ or 
 Schopenhauer do not appear in the usual trappings of 
 philosophical dress, and are not presented by the usual 
 methods of philosophical discourse, does not mean that they 
 are not philosophically important, although it may explain 
 why they have been commonly neglected by philosophers. 
 On the contrary the importance of what I may call these 
 unofficial systems of Ethics is very great, and will be touched 
 
 78 
 
SUMMARY OF ETHICAL THEORIES 79 
 
 upon in later chapters. They frequently draw their inspira- 
 tion from observation of life, instead of from the manipula- 
 tion of theory, and gain thereby in freshness and insight 
 what they lose in logical presentation. It is in part to the 
 refusal of philosophical Ethics to take cognizance of such 
 systems, that its barren and abstract nature (of which 
 mention was made in the introduction) may be attributed. 
 
 There is a sense, however, in which it may be asserted 
 that systems such as that sketched in the " Sermon on the 
 Mount " are not strictly philosophical, and we may there- 
 fore assert that so far as the important philosophical 
 theories which have been propounded with regard to Ethics 
 are concerned, they do in point of fact approximate in 
 type to one of the three main groups of theories described 
 in the first three chapters. 
 
 These groups of theories are, with regard to most of the 
 assertions they make, radically different from one another, 
 and philosophers who have held theories belonging to any 
 one of the groups have usually indulged in keen controversy 
 with the supporters of the theories of other groups. The 
 battles waged by J. S. Mill against the critics of Utilitarian- 
 ism were Homeric. 
 
 We have seen that these three groups of theories differ 
 both in the criterion of morality they assert, and in the 
 meaning they apply to the terms good and bad. The 
 Utilitarians believed happiness to be the meaning of good, 
 and the criterion of the morality of actions to depend upon 
 their consequences. The older Intuitionists as a general 
 rule believed virtue to be the meaning of good, and the 
 criterion of the morality of actions to depend upon the 
 approval of the moral sense. Plato and his followers 
 believed the meaning of good to be indefinable, and the 
 criterion of morality to depend upon the presence or the 
 absence of the Form of Good in actions. 
 
 The question may be asked whether it is possible to 
 effect any kind of reconciliation between these views appar- 
 ently so widely divergent. 
 
 I think that such a reconciliation is possible, at any rate 
 with regard to the form in which these different theories 
 have been maintained, if not with regard to the spirit which 
 underlies them. A hint that they are not in all respects so 
 irreconcilable as they seem, has already been afforded by an 
 
8o COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 instance of combination presented in a previous chapter. 
 It will be remembered that although we saw reason to 
 adopt the Utilitarian view in so far as it asserted that the 
 rightness and wrongness of actions depended upon their 
 consequences, it was found desirable to resort to some kind 
 of intuition in estimating the value of different kinds of 
 consequences, and there has been in recent times a marked 
 tendency to adopt an Intuitionism of ends or values, in 
 conjunction with a Utilitarian view of the nature of the 
 criterion of rightness and wrongness. 
 
 I believe, however, that a more complete combination of 
 these theories can be achieved than the reconciliation which 
 is involved in this selection and combination of one only of 
 the leading propositions of each. 
 
 We have seen that the group of theories which were 
 considered under the term " moral sense theories " in- 
 sisted upon the unique and inalienable character of our 
 judgments of right and wrong. They took the view that 
 the moral sense was a unique instrument directly inherited 
 from God, of which the main function was to deliver ultimate 
 judgments with regard to certain classes of actions and 
 motives. Every human being, it is asserted, possesses 
 this sense in some degree or other, and although it may 
 vary in different periods of the world's history and in 
 different individuals in the same periods, and although 
 it partakes sufficiently of the nature of instinct to be occa- 
 sionally liable to error, its dictates are not only the most 
 trustworthy guide to what is right and wrong, but they 
 constitute the sole means we possess of distinguishing them. 
 The theory proceeds to draw the inference from the strength 
 and directness of this feeling or intuition, that certain actions 
 must be right and others must be wrong, or we should not 
 all feel so strongly that they are. 
 
 Now with regard to the existence of this moral sense there 
 can be no doubt : we have only to look into our own experi- 
 ence for evidence that we do possess it. 
 
 The criticism which may be directed against this view does 
 not take the form of denying the existence of the moral 
 sense, but it asserts : 
 
 I. That where the moral sense is so largely composed of 
 feeling, and is so obviously subservient to and conditioned 
 by the code of ethics prevalent in a particular community 
 
SUMMARY OF ETHICAL THEORIES 8i 
 
 at a particular time, when in short it is so often purely con- 
 ventional, it is difficult to regard it as a trustworthy guide 
 to what is really right and really wrong ; and 
 
 2. That it is difficult to distinguish any principle of pro- 
 gress in the successive deliverances of the moral senses of 
 successive human communities. The actions of which the 
 moral sense approves and disapproves appear to be chosen 
 in a purely arbitrary manner ; their selection reveals no 
 principle of discrimination between good and bad. 
 
 It was also urged that the moral sense of communities has 
 frequently sanctioned the most outrageous actions, which 
 were in the highest degree inimical to human happiness. 
 
 Assuming the substance of this criticism to be valid we 
 may assert the following propositions as the outcome of the 
 theories of the moral sense school. 
 
 1. Every man has an instinct to call certain things moral. 
 In so far as he does not possess this instinct he is not wholly 
 a man. 
 
 2. The nature of the things he will call moral depends 
 almost entirely upon the society in which he happens to live. 
 
 Thus if he lives in Turkey he will call the possession of six 
 wives moral : if in England the possession of one only. A 
 Spanish Inquisitor in the sixteenth century would call it 
 moral to roast persons whose views about transubstantiation 
 differed from his own, but in the twentieth century even 
 Father Bernard Vaughan would call such actions immoral. 
 
 Similarly the moral promptings of what is called duty 
 vary enormously within the limits of twenty years, encourag- 
 ing the individual to kill Boers in 1900 if he happens to have 
 been born in England, and Frenchmen in 19 18 if he happens 
 to have been born in Germany, — while refusing in peace time 
 to sanction the killing of any one unless he happens previ- 
 ously to have killed some one else. 
 
 Turning to the Utilitarian theory, we saw reason to believe 
 that it was correct in asserting that the rightness and 
 wrongness of actions depended upon consequences, but 
 incorrect in asserting that the only consequence of value was 
 happiness. It was incorrect because there are other ele- 
 ments of value besides happiness, the precise proportion in 
 which such elements will be associated in a good life being 
 determined by a further judgment of value. 
 
 A right action therefore is that which has consequences of 
 
 6 
 
82 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 value in the sense described in Chapter II, while a moral 
 action is that which secures the approval of the moral sense. 
 Now it is clear that all the actions which have secured the 
 approval of the moral sense have not always had conse- 
 quences of value, although most of them do have such 
 consequences. It is difficult to describe the burning of 
 heretics or the imprisonment of persons of unpopular 
 political views as actions which have consequences of value. 
 On the other hand, truth- telling, honesty, kindness and 
 tolerance do on the whole have better consequences than 
 lying, dishonesty, cruelty and intolerance. They also 
 obtain the almost universal approval from the moral sense. 
 Moral actions therefore, in the Intuitionist sense, are not 
 always right actions in the Utilitarian sense : they are, 
 however, usually identical with them. 
 
 Now it is reasonable to suppose that if moral progress 
 means anything, it will involve a gradual identification 
 between these two criteria, an increasing identity that is to 
 say between moral actions and right actions. In early 
 stages of society, when the use of force in settling disputes 
 and the right of the stronger prevailed in relations between 
 individuals as well as in relations between nations, actions 
 which were morally approved rarely had the best conse- 
 quences for mankind as a whole. To-day we may say that, 
 leaving aside exceptional moral judgments such as those 
 which are made in war time, they usually do have such con- 
 sequences. In an ideal society they would invariably do so. 
 . A society with a high moral standard therefore is one 
 \ which tends to give the name of moral to those actions which 
 have the best consequences, that is those consequences which 
 i contain most elements of value for society as a whole. 
 We thus get a criterion of morality and a conception of 
 progress in the moral standard, which embodies what is of 
 value both in the Utilitarian and the Intuitionist theories. 
 It may be asked whether the Platonic theory of the Form 
 of Good has any place in this reconciliation : it seems some- 
 how to stand aloof, perilously near to the preserves of 
 mysticism, alien alike to the hard-headed logic of the theo- 
 ries of Jeremy Bentham and Henry Sidgwick, and to the 
 sentimentalities of some of the moral sense views. It is 
 true that the majority of those who have been attracted by 
 the theory have been of a mystical turn of mind, and have 
 
SUMMARY OF ETHICAL THEORIES 83 
 
 found their satisfaction rather in the aloof majesty and 
 singleness of the Form of Good as an object of contem- 
 plation, than in the explanation it affords of the logical 
 problem of the objectivity of morality. 
 
 The mystical twist which has been given to the theory 
 is, however, rather the outcome of the proclivities of that 
 school of Plato's followers, known as the Neo-Platonists, 
 than of any intention on the part of Plato. To Plotinus 
 and Porphyry the Form of Good was an object for the 
 contemplation of the mystic, possessing attributes which 
 are more usually associated with the Deity : to Plato it 
 was the ground and explanation of the purely approximate 
 nature of our moral judgments and of the incomplete 
 morality which is all that can be predicated of any physical 
 act. A good action is regarded by Plato as not entirely 
 good but as trying to realize more completely the goodness 
 of the Form which is manifest in it. 
 
 Let us endeavour to fit this conception of Plato's, viewed 
 strictly as a logical theory, into the framework of the 
 ethical criterion of which the outlines were sketched 
 above. 
 
 In order4:o do this with any success it is necessary to bear 
 in mind the second and more elaborate conception of the 
 nature and being of the Form of Good which is found in the 
 Republic. 
 
 The Form of Good was there conceived of as the source 
 and cause of the existence both of the real world of Forms, 
 and of the half -real world of objects and actions. Progress 
 would therefore mean a more complete approximation on 
 the part of the material world to the Form of Good which 
 is indeed the source of its existence, but whose manifesta- 
 tions are overlaid by matter and distorted by unreality. 
 The Form of Good was also the cause of our knowledge 
 both of the world of Forms, and of the physical world. 
 Growth in our knowledge would therefore be a process of 
 increasing realization of the fundamental truth stripped of 
 irrelevant accretions, that the principle and nature of the 
 Universe is good, and an increasing power of recognition of 
 the Form of Good when it is manifested. 
 
 The theory then amounts to a statement of the conviction 
 that the underlying purpose of the Universe is, in spite of 
 all appearance to the contrary, good. It follows from this 
 
84 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 that morality is not purely arbitrary, nor is our moral sense 
 a purely irresponsible guide, leading us without rhyme and 
 reason to approve of certain actions and to disapprove of 
 others. If the Universe is not a complete hoax, the moral 
 sense must necessarily lead us to approve of those actions 
 which further its real purpose and reflect its real nature : 
 it will lead us to approve therefore of those actions which 
 participate most in the Form of Good. 
 
 Now there is no meaning in the conception of good unless, 
 as regards its manifestation in the physical world, it has some 
 bearing upon human welfare. Good is not for Plato a 
 barren and arbitrary concept ; actions which are good, 
 in the sense that they participate in the Form, promote 
 human welfare and happiness. It is expressly stated as a 
 matter of fact by Plato that the actions of the just or good 
 man will promote the happiness of his neighbour, and the 
 ideal state which Plato creates in the Republic, whose laws 
 are moulded on the pattern of the Forms of Good and 
 Justice, will produce happy citizens. 
 
 We may assume therefore that actions in which the Form 
 of Good is manifest will necessarily tend to be the same as 
 those actions which are called right actions according to the 
 Utilitarian standard, that is actions which have conse- 
 quences of value ; and we may assert this proposition, 
 despite the proviso which it is necessary to make that 
 Plato's idea of value was not in agreement with the theory 
 of a combination in proper proportions of different elements 
 of value described in Chapter II. Plato, who was always 
 anxious to introduce unity into his conceptions, constantly 
 endeavoured to derive all kinds of apparently different 
 values from one supremely valuable thing. This source of 
 supreme value was usually, as we have seen, the Form of 
 Good : sometimes, however, Plato asserts that it is virtue, 
 in other cases he affirms that it is knowledge, while some- 
 times he speaks of the contemplation of beauty as if it 
 were the only good. Whatever meaning, however, we 
 may give to the word value, it may, I think, be safely 
 assumed that Plato would regard an action which partici- 
 pated in the Form of Good as being one which would have 
 consequences of value. A good action in Plato's sense is 
 therefore identical in this respect with a right action in 
 the Utilitarian sense. 
 
SUMMARY OF ETHICAL THEORIES 85 
 
 It may be, but is not necessarily, identical with a moral 
 action in the Intuitionist sense. 
 
 People possess different capacities for recognizing the 
 Form of the Good when it is manifest. We have seen that 
 the deliverances of the moral sense are largely conventional, 
 being for most people conditioned by a slavish acceptance 
 of the code of the community into which they happen to 
 have been born. Thus during the history of mankind 
 every variety of moral judgment has been passed upon the 
 same kind of action. 
 
 Now it is clear that the same action cannot both partake 
 and not partake of the Form of Good. No two contrary 
 moral judgments about the same action can therefore be 
 equally correct : one will be more correct than another ; 
 the form of the correct judgment being that judgment which 
 approves as moral an action in which the Form of Good is 
 manifest. 
 
 Now just as moral progress has been described as an 
 increasing tendency on the part of the moral sense of a 
 community to approve of those actions which are also right 
 actions in the sense that they have consequences of value, 
 so may it with equal truth be described as an increasing 
 tendency to approve of those actions in which the Form of 
 Good is manifest. If a moral action is one which receives 
 the approval of the moral sense, a good action is one in 
 which the Form of Good is manifest. Moral actions are 
 not always good actions, because moral judgments are 
 liable to err, in wrongly detecting the presence of the Form 
 when it is absent. Similarly good actions are not always 
 called moral, because the presence of the Form of Good is 
 not always recognized. 
 
 If progress in the moral standard means increasing capa- 
 city on the part of society to recognize the presence of the 
 Form of Good, an ideal society will be one in which the 
 presence of the Fonn is increasingly, and ultimately i nva ri- 
 al ly, recognized. The result will be that actions which 
 obtain the approval of society will be at once those which 
 partake of the Form of Good, and those which have the 
 best consequences. 
 
 We have thus established a moral standard and arrived at a 
 meaning? for morality which combines the elements of value in 
 each of the three groups of theories we have been considering. 
 
86 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 We have reconciled the divergent criteria, which are 
 expressed in the different terms right actions, moral actions, 
 and good actions, and by the introduction of the Form of 
 Good have liberated our moral judgments from the charge 
 of subjectivity. 
 
 § 2. Unreality of Methods Pursued 
 
 To many it might seem that such an achievement is of 
 value. It is the main purpose of this book to show that 
 whatever merits or demerits such an exposition and recon- 
 ciliation of divergent theories may have for the purposes of 
 philosophy, it is of practically no value for the purposes of 
 life. 
 
 This may sound like undue modesty on the part of the 
 author. It is perhaps needless to urge that it is not : for 
 the scepticism which is entertained with regard to the value 
 of the above reconciliation applies equally to the conclusions 
 of the various theories which it reconciles, and arises from 
 the particular view with regard to the nature of the result 
 arrived at, and the methods by which it has been reached, 
 which it is the purpose of this book to develop. 
 
 The preliminary survey of leading ethical theories upon 
 which we have been engaged has been undertaken mainly in 
 order to throw into relief the scepticism with regard both 
 to the value and significance of their conclusions which the 
 rest of this book will be largely concerned to elaborate : and 
 the composite conclusion with which the survey has ended 
 has been drawn with the same object. 
 
 Before proceeding to a more detailed statement of the 
 grounds for this scepticism, I wish to prepare the way by 
 some preliminary remarks about the nature of the reasoning 
 and theorizing upon which I have been engaged. Although 
 these remarks will have reference primarily to the composite 
 conclusion with regard to the meaning of moral progress 
 which I have just reached, they may be taken as applying 
 to each of the ethical theories which have played their part 
 in the formation of that conclusion. 
 
 What I have been engaged upon in this chapter is a kind 
 of mental game : the game of making inconsistent theories 
 consistent : to use a more accurate analogy, I have been 
 playing with a kind of mental jigsaw puzzle, in which the 
 
SUMMARY OF ETHICAL THEORIES 87 
 
 component pieces were theories, and of which the object 
 was to fit the pieces into a rounded and complete whole. 
 Where one of the pieces has had a jagged edge which made 
 it unsuitable for the general design, the recalcitrant part has 
 been ruthlessly lopped off, and only that part of the theo- 
 retical piece allowed to remain which could be harmoniously 
 fitted into the general scheme. 
 
 Now much of philosophy in general, and of ethical philo- 
 sophy in particular, has been an essay on similar lines in the 
 game of manipulating theories. The object has been to 
 create a logical structure which would be watertight in 
 every compartment, and of which no one part would be 
 inconsistent with any other. 
 
 The process is an interesting one, and if successful arrives 
 at a result which is gratifying to the mind. In particular it 
 satisfies the desire for logical unity which is always oper- 
 ative, and which doubtless plays no small part in uncon- 
 sciously directing the process, with a view to a predestined 
 arrival at the goal to which it points the way. 
 
 The important thing to notice, however, is that the 
 process is one in which we drift right away from life, and 
 which leads to conclusions which have no bearing upon life. 
 
 The conclusion at which we arrived above is a statement 
 about the nature of certain mental processes : it is not a 
 statement about life. It would only be necessarily true of 
 life, if life were like mathematics. This point is important 
 and needs elaboration. 
 
 Many philosophers, particularly those philosophers who 
 belong to what is known as the Rationalist school, have 
 believed that the nature of the Universe was like the nature 
 of mathematics, in the sense that truths about the Universe 
 could be arrived at in the same way as truths about mathe- 
 matics. Now truths about mathematics can be arrived at 
 by the exercise of the reasoning faculty. If a mathematician 
 were to shut himself up in his study, and to reason about the 
 postulates and axioms of Euclid, he could, provided that his 
 reason was good enough, deduce the whole of the proposi- 
 tions of geometry from those postulates and axioms. 
 
 Similarly by reasoning about the properties of integers, 
 he could, again provided that he was sufficiently clever, 
 construct for himself the whole of arithmetic, and it would 
 not be necessary for him to hold intercourse with the world 
 
as COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 or to correct his results by observation at any stage in the 
 process. 
 
 Now if the world is like mathematics, it is clear that 
 truths about the world can be arrived at in the same way, 
 and many philosophers have accordingly believed that the 
 exercise of reason alone, independently of observation, is the 
 proper method for reaching ethical and metaphysical truth. 
 
 The world, however, is not like a mathematical problem, 
 and it is accordingly not surprising to find that many ethical 
 theories, however much they may redound to the credit of 
 the reasoning powers of those who evolved them, have no 
 relation to life in the world. Life eludes this mathematical 
 treatment. The properties of the Universe, unlike those of 
 the multiplication table, exhibit a reluctance which, in many 
 cases, amounts to a definite refusal, to group themselves 
 under a few comprehensive formulae which remain univer- 
 sally and unchangeably true. Life is not a static entity 
 whose constancy wDl ensure that truths discovered about it 
 to-day will necessarily be true next week. Life is changing 
 and dynamic, and any goal which we may set before our- 
 selves is as much subject to change and development as our 
 efforts to reach it. 
 
 Rules of conduct and statements of ethical value are 
 themselves conditioned by the changing nature of the 
 material which rules of conduct seek to regulate, and state- 
 ments of value to estimate. In practical Ethics there is no 
 ultimate criterion of morality just as there is no ultimate 
 good, because human nature perpetually changes, both as 
 regards its conception of right and wrong, and as regards its 
 conception of value. 
 
 All that can be said of moral values and moral criteria is 
 that they change. It cannot be said that they progress, for 
 that would involve a conception of a single static goal or 
 good with reference to which their progress could be mea- 
 sured : nor has any age or individual any right to claim 
 finality for the particular good or standard which happens 
 to appeal at the time. 
 
 For practical Ethics there are no ultimates. 
 
 For theoretical Ethics there may be : such, for example, 
 is the Utilitarian criterion that any action which has the best 
 consequences on the whole is always and universally right. 
 But theoretical Ethics has no direct relation to the problems 
 
SUMMARY OF ETHICAL THEORIES 89 
 
 of life : it is a record of the attitude of the minds of philo- 
 sophers to those problems. 
 
 It is furthermore important to note that by the standard 
 of logical consistency invoked by rationalist philosophical 
 theories (among which many ethical theories may be num- 
 bered), it is possible for several contradictory theories to be 
 each of them equally true, because each of them is equally 
 consistent. 
 
 If, for example, geometricians were to assume for the 
 starting point of their investigations a number of postulates 
 and axioms which were different from those of Euclid, it 
 would be possible to construct from them an entirely differ- 
 ent but equally logical system of geometry. Similarly by 
 altering the accepted scale of notation it is possible to evolve 
 a new arithmetic. Mind has in fact only to start from a 
 number of sufficiently plausible hypotheses to deduce from 
 them a perfectly logical structure on principles which them- 
 selves form part of the deduction. 
 
 ' The history of philosophy presents a number of examples 
 of perfectly logical philosophical systems, constructed by 
 philosophers on the assumption that the nature of the 
 Universe, like the nature of mathematics, must necessarily 
 conform to the laws of their own reasoning. 
 
 The philosopher Hobbes, for example, on the basis of the 
 hypothesis that every one is naturally selfish, and that 
 every one values security above everything else in the world, 
 constructed an elaborate scheme of political autocracy. 
 Its logical completeness led him to believe that it must 
 necessarily be admirably adapted to the needs of human 
 nature. But in constructing his system he overlooked the 
 fact that in certain circumstances people prefer the dangers 
 of rebellion even to the security of obedience, and the 
 whole structure as a workable political theory is vitiated by 
 Hobbes' neglect of the psychological phenomenon presented 
 by the citizen who voluntarily undergoes the perils of the 
 soldier, in what he believes to be a righteous cause. 
 
 Similarly Hegel, reasoning with perfect logic from certain 
 premises with regard to what he assumed to be the nature 
 of the State, produced an elaborate theory of what the State 
 ought to be, and disposed of those critics who pointed out 
 that actually existing States entirely failed to conform to 
 his conception, by bluntly asserting that in so far as existing 
 
90 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 States failed to represent the Hegelian picture of what the 
 State ought to be, they were just simply not States. The 
 audacity of this method of punishing life, for refusing to fit 
 into one's preconceived theory of what life ought to be, by 
 bluntly convicting it of not being life, has imposed so com- 
 pletely upon the world that philosophers are still to be found 
 insisting that it is approximation to Hegel's conception, and 
 not the fact of being actually in existence, that confers 
 reality upon States. 
 
 But the whole Hegelian conception is vitiated by his 
 neglect of the fact that the State was made for man, instead 
 of man being made for the State, with the result that if a 
 particular state fails to meet the individual's demand for as 
 much freedom as is compatible with order, and insists on 
 complying with Hegel's requirement of as much discipline 
 as the demand for unity and the interest of the rulers 
 requires, it is broken up by the revolt of its disgusted citizens, 
 instead of attaining to a greater degree of reality through its 
 approximation to the Hegelian ideal. 
 
 The creation of literary Utopias falls within the same 
 category. A Utopia is the expression of its creator's mind : 
 it is not necessarily a reflection of life, nor does it necessarily 
 embody the desires of men. The authors of Utopias fre- 
 quently labour under the delusion that the workings of their 
 minds bear a necessary relation to the facts of human 
 aspiration, and are filled with surprise that the mass of men 
 view their ideal societies with repulsion, simply because they 
 do not happen to want to lead the kind of lives that the 
 Utopiast thinks they ought to live. 
 
 Theories of this character have no relations, except to the 
 mind from which they emanate. They do not hitch on to 
 the needs of the real world, and the fact that they are enter- 
 tained does not mean anything more than that a particular 
 mind entertains them. The whole process is like drawing 
 up the rules of a new game of cards which nobody has 
 played, and then expecting people to wish to play it because 
 you have drawn up the rules. 
 
 Elaborate theories that evolve absolutes at the expense 
 of the facts are not confined to political philosophy. In 
 metaphysics there have been several theories of this type. 
 
 They may roughly be classed under the name of a 
 priori theories, that is theories which are based on a 
 
SUMMARY OF ETHICAL THEORIES 91 
 
 priori knowledge. By the term a priori knowledge is 
 meant that kind of knowledge which is independent of sense 
 experience, and is not derived from it. As applied to these 
 theories, a priori means, among other things, that the 
 theories depend on a few general principles of an ultimate 
 character, which are recognized by the mind to be true, but 
 which are not deduced or inferred from any other principles 
 or any other kind of knowledge. 
 
 These general principles are intuitively perceived by the 
 mind to be true independently of any evidence : their 
 ultimate nature in fact makes it impossible that any evidence 
 could be adduced in their support, just as propositions such 
 as " health is good," " happiness is better than misery," and 
 other propositions of ultimate value are recognized by the 
 Intuitionists as ultimate truths upon which all Ethics are 
 based. From these general principles philosophers have 
 proceeded to deduce what the nature of the Universe must 
 be, by means of logical laws which are themselves numbered 
 among the principles which are intuitively apprehended by 
 the mind to be true. The process is one which takes place 
 entirely within the philosopher's study, and deductions as 
 to what the nature of the Universe must be are never cor- 
 rected by a reference to what the nature of the Universe, 
 as it presents itself to the senses, obviously is. In so far as 
 the nature of the Universe, as it is known to the senses, con- 
 flicts with a priori deductions as to what the nature of the 
 Universe must be, what we know by means of the senses 
 is penalized for its recalcitrance by being convicted of 
 unreality, and labelled as an " appearance," by which is 
 meant a delusive appearance. 
 
 Many mathematical systems purporting to state what the 
 nature of the Universe must be have been constituted on 
 these lines, 
 
 Descartes, starting from his famous first principle of 
 " Cogito, ergo sum," " I think therefore I exist," deduced by 
 means of the laws of logic the whole structure and nature 
 of the Universe. 
 
 Leibnitz constructed a mathematical universe on the basis 
 of a number of homogeneous units, established by logical 
 processes, called monads. 
 
 The most striking example of this tendency is, however, 
 afforded by Hegel's theory of the Absolute, which has been 
 
92 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 developed in England by the philosophers, Mr. Bradley and 
 Mr. Bosanquet. 
 
 According to Hegel there is only one thing in the Universe 
 which is absolutely real : this thin^^ is the Absolute. All 
 existing things which appear to be real are only partially so : 
 upon investigation by Hegel's logical method they show 
 themselves to be riddled with contradictions. Not only are 
 things not real in their own right, but they are not really 
 distinct and different from one another as they appear to be. 
 Logical examination shows all apparent differences to be as 
 partial and unreal as the things they differentiate. There is 
 no distinction between mind and its objects, just as there is 
 no distinction between any two physical objects. Mind 
 itself, in the sense of the individual's mind, being partial is 
 not truly real, and because of its imperfect reality it neces- 
 sarily entertains a view of the Universe which is also partial 
 and incomplete. This incompleteness of view is the cause 
 of the apparent diversity which the universe presents to us, 
 and the reason why we attribute reality to finite individual 
 things. The view which a divine intelligence would have of 
 the Universe would show all these apparent differences to be 
 delusive, and would reveal the Universe as perfect unity and 
 oneness. This perfect unity and oneness is the Absolute ; 
 but as, short of the Absolute, there is no being possessed of a 
 sufficient comprehension of view to realize the oneness and 
 perfection which is the Absolute, the Absolute is not only 
 the sum total of reality known, but the sum total of the 
 mind or minds which know it. The Absolute reconciles 
 therefore the differences between knowing mind and known 
 matter, by asserting them to be ultimately one, a oneness in 
 which perfect reality and perfect knowledge of that reality 
 are united. The ultimate reality is therefore mental in 
 structure, and matter is a delusion. 
 
 It may be asked what this apparent d^'gression upon 
 rationalist metaphysical systems in general, and Hegel's 
 system of the Absolute in particular, has to do with the 
 ethical conclusions arrived at in this chapter, and the 
 stigma of unreality which, in an apparently dogmatic 
 manner. I have placed upon them. 
 
 The connecHon is not far to seek. 
 
 Concurrently with the rationalist movement in meta- 
 physics there has grown up what is known as the empirical 
 
SUMMARY OF ETHICAL THEORIES 93 
 
 school. This school has roundly asserted that all knowledge 
 is derived from some sense experience, has denied the 
 existence of intuitively apprehended general principles, or 
 has at least denied their validity as guides to the nature of 
 the Universe, and has in some cases impugned the validity 
 even of the so-called laws of logic by means of which the 
 rationalists have constructed their systems on the basis of 
 their general principles. In reply to the rationalist proofs 
 of what the nature of the Universe must be, they have 
 asserted that you must go and see what the nature of the 
 Universe is, and their observation has led them to widely 
 different conclusions. 
 
 Locke, with his attack on the " innate ideas " of Des- 
 cartes, was the first of the important empiricists. Berkeley 
 and Hume followed in his footsteps, and the main tradition 
 of English philosophy has been empirical, as opposed to the 
 rationaUst tradition of the Germans. To-day under the 
 influence of William James the chief upholders of the 
 empiricist school come from America. 
 
 This empiricist movement, which is largely in the nature 
 of a reaction, has had a profound effect upon metaphysics. 
 
 It scarcely seems to have touched philosophical Ethics. 
 
 Yet in no sphere of philosophy has a priori rationalization 
 been so prevalent. All the ethical theories which we have 
 been considering base themselves on a priori principles 
 which are regarded as intuitively known, and from these 
 principles are constructed by logical steps the theories 
 described in the first three chapters. These general 
 principles are as a rule principles of ethical value, such as 
 that knowledge is more desirable than ignorance, happiness 
 than misery, goodwill than hatred. The intrusion of 
 experience is only admitted by these theories, because our 
 knowledge of these principles can only be elicited by experi- 
 ence. Ethical values are not realized until we have had 
 some experiences of the world ; but when experience has 
 once turned our mind towards the truth, as Plato would put 
 it, our knowledge of these values is seen to be independent 
 of experience, and incapable either of proof or disproof by 
 experience. 
 
 From this point onward no appeal is made to experience 
 in ethical theorizing, which proceeds by a manipulation of 
 theories and arguments, which is at no stage corrected by 
 
94 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 reference to life, and of which our method of arriving at the 
 logical amalgam of theories which formed our conclusion 
 earlier in the chapter, affords a good example. 
 
 The conclusion which we reached is like the conclusion 
 of Hobbes about the State, or Hegel about the Absolute. 
 Although it may possess a kind of logical truth, it fails to 
 apply itself to the problem of actual life. 
 
 In order to arrive at a conception of Ethics which will 
 bear a direct relation to life, we must start as the empiricists 
 did in metaphysics with observation instead of with general 
 principles. Ethics wiU become therefore more psycholo- 
 gical than it has been in the past, and will devote itself to 
 observing what people do in fact desire. 
 
 Its conclusions will be provisional instead of ultimate, and 
 fluid instead of static. We shall arrive at no one good which 
 is good for all men in all ages, and no one criterion of right 
 and wrong which is valid for all men in all ages. 
 
 On the contrary we shall draw up a sort of catalogue of 
 elements of value which will be true, in so far as it is true, 
 only of the particular age in which we live, and we shall 
 experience no disappointment if the items in our catalogue 
 fail to group themselves under a few comprehensive formulae. 
 
 An indication of the lines upon which such an inquiry 
 into empirical or common-sense Ethics should proceed, will 
 be given in the following chapters. 
 
PART II 
 
 EMPIRICAL OR COMMON-SENSE 
 ETHICS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 
 
 § I. Relation of Ethics to Psychology and Politics 
 
 THE last chapter concluded by setting before the 
 student of what I have called empirical Ethics the 
 task of drawing up a catalogue of elements of value, 
 the standard of value being nothing more nor less than what 
 is in fact desired. 
 
 It is not possible within the limits of this book to attempt 
 to compile such a catalogue, nor is the task one which could 
 be attempted without an adequate psychological equipment. 
 Our desires are elusive things ; they are rarely simple, and 
 they are frequently cheats. A desire for something which is 
 commonly regarded as disreputable, disguises itself in a 
 properly conducted mind, and masquerades as a desire for 
 something else, while many if not most of our desires are 
 unconscious and are only revealed by psycho-analysis or by 
 some analogous process. 
 
 In formulating our list of ethical values with reference to 
 the facts of desire, it would be necessary to rule out fictitious 
 desires, and to bring to the surface those desires which are 
 unconscious, and a thorough understanding of the works of 
 such writers as Freud and Jung would be an indispensable 
 preliminary to the inquiry. 
 
 The most that I can hope to do in this and the following 
 chapters will be to give an indication of the method to be 
 pursued in such an inquiry, by directing attention to the 
 ethical significance of one or two aspects of human psy- 
 
 95 
 
96 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 chology which appear to have been somewhat overlooked 
 by philosophers. The conclusions at which I hope to 
 arrive should not be regarded as providing a complete 
 contents list of the catalogue of ethical values, but they 
 will at least furnish the catalogue with one or two very im- 
 portant entries. 
 
 It is clear in the first place that an ethical inquiry which is 
 conducted on empirical lines will be more closely related to 
 other sciences than traditional philosophical Ethics has been 
 in the past. In particular it will poach extensively on the 
 preserves both of psychology and of politics. As regards 
 psychology it will be remembered that we drew attention in 
 the last chapter to the methods of the empirical meta- 
 physicians Locke and Hume. In contradistinction to the 
 rationalistic speculations of their predecessors, which 
 asserted what the nature of the Universe must, according to 
 the laws of reasoning, necessarily be, these philosophers 
 insisted that the philosopher must go and see what the 
 nature of the Universe really was. Similarly if we hold 
 that any attempt to lay down by a priori reasoning 
 what the nature of the good must be, or to deduce the 
 nature of the criterion which distinguishes right from 
 wrong from certain data which are regarded as unchange- 
 able, is bound to lead to conclusions which aie unrelated to 
 life, we have no alternative but to go to life itself, and 
 observe what people's experience pronounces to be good, 
 and what they appear to mean by morality. 
 
 Our question becomes in the first place, " What do men in 
 fact desire ? " and in the second, " Which of their desires 
 make for those things which are as a matter of fact univer- 
 sally regarded as good, as for instance happiness and 
 freedom ? " These are questions of psychology, and it is 
 from the observations of psychologists that we must borrow 
 material for the inquiry. The task is complicated by the 
 complexity of the phenomena of human desire. Man is a 
 complex machine, and to discover his real views on ethical 
 value we must take him to pieces and see what he is made of. 
 
 Our relation to politics is equally close. 
 
 If we hold that there is no one good which can be dis- 
 covered by reasoning about the nature of the good, and no 
 one criterion of right and wrong which remains inalienably 
 the same, it follows that our ideas of good and our ideas of 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 97 
 
 morality will be subject to constant change. Furthermore 
 there will be many goods instead of one, and many different 
 conceptions of the relation between right and wrong, each of 
 which may be equally correct at the time. 
 
 Now people are invariably influenced in their notions both 
 of good and of morality by the community in which they 
 live. Apart from the influence of public opinion the com- 
 munity may in certain cases consciously direct and mould 
 the individual's ideas of good and right, and may devise 
 systems and institutions which to a greater or less degree 
 make it possible for him to realize his conception of good, 
 and to live up to his conception of right. A community, 
 for instance, which allows a man to starve who happens 
 to hold the view that stealing is wrong and respect for 
 property right, does not make it easy for him to live up to 
 his moral principles when he sees an unwatched leg of 
 mutton hanging outside a butcher's shop. 
 
 It is not sufficient then for us to ask what it is that men do 
 desire : we must go on to inquire how their desires may be 
 realized and their ideals achieved ? This is largely a 
 question of politics. Some political systems make the 
 possibility of a good life much easier to realize than others : 
 some make a good life as it is usually conceived almost 
 impracticable. 
 
 In England to-day the political system is more favourable 
 to the realizations of a life of ethical value than the despot- 
 ism exercised in Russia under the Tsar. But it is pertinent 
 to inquire whether any other social system could in theory 
 be devised which would be more likely to achieve the 
 desired result than the present one. Reverting to Schopen- 
 hauer's definition of human society, as a collection of hedge- 
 hogs driven together for the sake of warmth, we may regard 
 it as the business of politics to blunt the bristles, and so by 
 means of greater proximity to increase the warmth. 
 
 I propose to consider in this chapter the relation of Ethics 
 to Psychology, and in the next the relation of Ethics to 
 Politics. 
 
 § 2. Is Ethics Simply a Catalogue of Desires ? 
 
 It may be asked at the outset whether the reduction of 
 Ethics to a mere catalogue of what is actually desired leaves 
 any room for Ethics at all. 
 
 7 
 
98 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 It may be argued that if all you mean by the good is what 
 is desired, if in fact good and desired are equivalent and 
 interchangeable terms, the only criterion of good is intensity 
 of desire, while right and wrong cease to have any meaning. 
 You cannot say that some desires are good because they 
 achieve good ends, while others are bad because they 
 achieve bad ends : all desires are equally desires ; all 
 desires are therefore, with the exception of degrees of 
 intensity, equally desirable, which means that all desires are 
 equally good. 
 
 Intensity of desire is therefore the only measure of value. 
 
 It follows from this line of argument that the statement 
 made above, that it is necessary to find out which of our 
 desires make for happiness, freedom, and other things 
 which are universally approved, involves a superfluous 
 inquiry. The inquiry is superfluous, says the critic, 
 because inasmuch as the objects of all desire, in virtue of 
 the fact that they are objects of desire, are upon the premises 
 you have been assuming, aU equally good, there is nothing to 
 be gained by separating off certain of those objects such as 
 happiness and freedom, and saying that the desires which 
 pursue them are ethically good and importajit, in some sense 
 in which other desires are not good and important. 
 
 If on the other hand you assert (the argument continues) 
 that happiness and freedom are in some imique and dis- 
 tinctive way good and valuable, and the desires which 
 pursue them ought therefore to be encouraged while 
 contrary desires ought to be suppressed, you are guilty of 
 the same kind of a priori rationalizing for which you have 
 been indicting other philosophers. You are segregating two 
 elements which are undoubtedly valuable as -though they 
 possessed ultimate objective and unchanging value, quite 
 irrespective of the different sentiments which people in 
 different ages have entertained towards them, and the 
 different v^ues which different people in the same age may 
 ascribe to them, the prisoner regarding freedom as the only 
 good and counting happiness merely as an incidental 
 appanage of it, while a man in the throes of sciatica insists 
 that cessation of pain is the only good, remaining indifferent 
 to happiness or freedom, both of which he regards as super- 
 fluous irrelevancies. 
 
 This is an important objection, and I must hasten to clear 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 99 
 
 myself of the charge of a priori rationalizations about 
 value. 
 
 By instancing happiness and freedom as objects of desires 
 which should be encouraged, I do not mean to suggest that 
 they alone of all the things which are desired are really 
 desirable in the sense that they alone ought to be desired ; 
 nor do I mean that there is anything fundamentally unique 
 or important about happiness and freedom in the sense that 
 they can be shown by a process of logical deduction to be the 
 only true objects of desire, while other desires resolve them- 
 selves on analysis into desires for happiness and freedom. 
 
 I do not mean in fact to argue as the Utilitarians have 
 argued that because a visit to a concert to hear Beethoven's 
 Fifth Symphony gives me pleasure, the motive which took 
 me to the concert was therefore the desire for pleasure, and 
 not the desire to hear music, and that all apparent desires 
 for other things are in a similar way really desires for the 
 pleasure which the attainment of those other things will 
 bestow. I think on the contrary that there are a number 
 of things which are desired for their own sake, and that any 
 attempt to analyze these desires into desires for other and 
 more ultimate things, for the sake of which the first things 
 are desired, though it is logically irrefutable, is a falsification 
 of what actually happens in the psychology of the person 
 entertaining the desire. 
 
 I cited happiness and freedom not as being the only two 
 real objects of desire, but simply as two instances of things 
 which are in fact desired for their own sake, and I base this 
 statement not on a process of logical reasoning showing that 
 all other kinds of desires can be resolved into desires for 
 happiness and freedom, but on observation. 
 
 The statement is an empirical generalization, which 
 appears to be true on the whole of most men at the present 
 time. It is not put forw^ard as an a priori principle which 
 is necessarily true for all men and holds good for all time. 
 
 The statement is in fact analogous to the kind of assertion 
 made by empirical metaphysicians when rebutting the logical 
 reasoning of those who seek to prove that there can be no 
 such thing as knowledge. " The fact that you can show by 
 argument," they retort, " that there is no such thing as 
 knowledge is not of any importance. You can by means of 
 argument in these matters arrive at any conclusion to which 
 
100 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 your iconoclastic temperament naturally predisposes you. 
 Although it may be impossible for us to prove that there is 
 such a thing as knowledge, since to do so would involve the 
 assumption of the validity of that very knowledge which we 
 should be trying to establish, nevertheless we have not the 
 slightest doubt about the facts that we do know, and also 
 that we know that we know." 
 
 Similarly I am assuming not only that people do as a rule 
 desire happiness and freedom, but also that they know 
 roughly what they mean by these terms. The latter 
 assumption is convenient not only because it enables me to 
 assume that everybody means roughly the same thing by the 
 terms happiness and freedom, but also because it avoids the 
 necessity of having to evolve complex definitions with which 
 everybody would be anxious to quarrel. 
 
 The assumption that people desire, among other things, 
 happiness and freedom involves on my premises the further 
 assumption that that conduct is ethically good which tends 
 to promote them, and that conduct ethically bad which 
 tends to impede them. We have therefore, in taking to 
 pieces the human machine, to pick out those psychological 
 elements which make for happiness and freedom, as ele- 
 ments to be encouraged, and to indicate those which make 
 against them as elements which ought to be discouraged. 
 
 In this way it is hoped to indicate the lines upon which 
 empirical Ethics should proceed : it will start, that is, on the 
 basis of what is generally desired, and will then proceed to 
 ascribe ethical value to those desires and those lines of 
 conduct which bring these generally approved ends nearer, 
 and to condemn on ethical grounds those which oppose their 
 realization. I must, however, be excused for again pointing 
 out that as this book does not purport to give an exhaustive 
 treatment of empirical or common-sense Ethics, but only 
 to indicate a method to be pursued, I have only selected 
 instances of valuable ends in citing happiness and freedom, 
 and I am only going to cite one very important instance of 
 the kind of life and conduct which seems to me likely to 
 promote them. I am not covering the whole field of value, 
 but selecting certain ends of value only, and I am not 
 treating of all the kinds of conduct and desire likely to 
 promote these selected ends, but am proposing to emphasize 
 one element of psychology which appears to me to have been 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY O^ mPUll!l&;';.[.- k<ii 
 
 overlooked, although it is of great importance for the attain- 
 ment of these ends. 
 
 § 3. Distinction between Impulse and Desire 
 
 The element of human psychology which I desire to 
 emphasize as having an important bearing on the reali- 
 zation of happiness and freedom, is that element which 
 is summed up in the use of the word " impulse." 
 
 I do not propose at this stage to give a definition of 
 impulse, partly because it is not definable in strict terms of 
 logic, and partly because it is more convenient to define a 
 thing when you have finished talking about it, rather than 
 when you begin. Every definition begs the question at 
 issue in the sense that it presupposes the truth of that 
 particular view of the entity in question which you are 
 proposing to adopt ; and although the reasons given in the 
 course of your discussions may not completely justify the 
 particular form of question-begging you adopt in your 
 definition, it nevertheless creates a better impression to beg 
 the question after you have given at length your reasons for 
 doing so, than it does to beg it by defining your terms at the 
 beginning. 
 
 The value of impulse is brought out in a significant way by 
 a distinction which Mr. Bertrand Russell draws between 
 impulse and desire. 
 
 " All human activity," says Mr. Russell, " springs from 
 two sources, impulse and desire." Speaking of desire he 
 says, " When men find themselves not fully contented, and 
 not able instantly to procure what will cause content, 
 imagination brings before their mind the thought of things 
 which they believe would make them happy. All desire 
 involves an interval of time between the consciousness of a 
 need and the opportunity for satisfying it . The acts inspired 
 by desire may be in themselves painful. . . . Will as a 
 directing force consists mainly in following desires for more 
 or less distant objects, in spite of the painfulness of the acts 
 involved and the solicitations of incompatible but more 
 immediate desires and impulses." 
 
 Speaking of impulse as opposed to desire, Mr. Russell 
 continues : "In all the more instinctive parts of our nature 
 we are dominated by impulses to certain kinds of activity, 
 
.to;; : .: ; / : ; \ CQJ^MON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 not by desires for certain ends. Children run and shout not 
 because of any good which they expect to realize, but be- 
 cause of a direct impulse to running and shouting. Dogs 
 bay at the moon not because they consider that it is their 
 advantage to do so, but because they feel an impulse to 
 bark. It is not any purpose that prompts such actions as 
 eating, drinking, love-making, quarrelling, boasting." 
 
 As preliminary distinctions then we may note the follow- 
 ing characteristics of desires and impulses respectively : 
 
 1. Desires are for conscious ends. Impulses, even where 
 we are conscious of them, are not towards any specific end. 
 Desires for ends of which we are not conscious may more 
 properly be termed impulses. 
 
 2. Desires involve a need, and a lapse of time between 
 feeling the need and its satisfaction. Impulses also involve 
 a need, but in so far as the need is satisfied, it is satisfied so 
 soon as it is felt. 
 
 3. Desires usually invoke the aid of the will to subdue 
 contrary desires and impulses which impede their accom- 
 plishment. Impulses do not involve the use of will and are 
 not helped by it ; they are only related to will in so far as 
 they are repressed by will. 
 
 4. The fulfilment of an impulse always brings immediate 
 pleasure. The pursuit of desires frequently involves pain 
 during the period before the end is achieved. 
 
 It is not claimed that this distinction between impulse 
 and desire can always be upheld if it is subjected to strict 
 logical analysis ; it is a distinction based rather on obser- 
 vation than deduced by reasoning, and is not therefore 
 completely watertight. For practical purposes, however, 
 it will serve well enough, and although certain classes of 
 impulses and desires may shade into one another (and 
 indeed I hope to show later that many so-called desires are 
 in their real natm'e more closely akin to impulses), the 
 distinction is as a rule clear-cut enough. Thus as a typical 
 example of desire, we may take the case of the boy who 
 desires to pass an examination, and in order that he may get 
 through the necessary work subdues his desire to go to the 
 cinema. As a typical example of impulse, we may take the 
 feeling which prompts some Londoners to get out into the 
 country at all costs on the first fine morning in spring. In 
 these two cases the distinction is obviously clear enough. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 103 
 
 While the importance of desire has been generally 
 recognized in Philosophy, the importance of impulse has 
 been much overlooked. Tlie result has had a profound 
 effect on the philosophy both of politics and Ethics, which 
 have been based almost entirely upon the phenomena of 
 desire, and make scarcely any provision for the satisfaction 
 of impulse. It is upon the recognition and encouragement 
 of the life of impulse that I wish to lay emphasis in indicat- 
 ing those elements in the make-up of the human machine, 
 which seem to me to be ethically valuable, — valuable, that is, 
 in the sense that they tend to promote desirable ends such as 
 happiness and freedom. 
 
 I think we can distinguish four reasons why philosophers 
 have overlooked the importance of impulse in forming their 
 ethical systems. The first two of these reasons, though they 
 have exercised a sufficiently important influence, are of a 
 comparatively superficial character, and can be treated 
 briefly. The other two are more significant, and as they 
 throw considerable light not only on the nature of impulse 
 and desire, but also on the unconscious motives underlying 
 the traditional systems of a priori Ethics which we have 
 been considering in earlier chapters, I shall treat them in 
 some detail. 
 
 Man's Belief that Man is Rational 
 
 I. Most men have a predilection in favour of believing 
 that they are rational creatures, inspired in the main by 
 desires for rational ends. 
 
 Even Aristotle's proof that reason was the servant of 
 desire, in the sense that desire sets the end and reason 
 discovers the necessary steps for its achievement, was at 
 first received with incredulity owing to the implied aspersion 
 upon reason. Wlien it was admitted that some form of 
 desire was the mainspring of all action, it became necessary 
 to save the face of reason by showing that reason as the 
 servant of desire was engaged on a reputable task. The 
 phrase rational desire was therefore coined, to indicate that 
 the ends which desire set reason to achieve were of a credit- 
 able character, for which good arguments could be found. 
 It has usually been thought that most human activity, 
 though occasionally misguided, was yet in a position to give 
 a sufficiently rational account of itself and to justify itself, 
 
104 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 at any rate to its author, on grounds which could pass 
 muster as reasonable without undue self-deception. Irra- 
 tional £tction was accordingly supposed to be the special 
 prerogative of animals, or at best of women, whose irrational 
 impulses and capacity for what is called intuition were 
 referred to in terms of condescension, as betokening an 
 inferiority in that capacity for rational conduct which is 
 regarded as specifically male. 
 
 The enunciation and general acceptance of the theory of 
 evolution has only intensified this prejudice in favour of the 
 belief that most of our actions are rational. 
 
 The discovery of our near relationship, as regards most 
 of our characteristics, to the animal creation, rendered it 
 doubly important to emphasize our power of rational action, 
 as the only feature of real distinction and superiority which 
 was left to us. 
 
 There has always existed therefore an instinctive impulse 
 to repress any suggestion that the mainspring of our actions 
 was to be found in the generality of cases rather in in- 
 stinctive impulse than in rational desire. Samuel Butler 
 records of his father that he never would admit to himself 
 that he did anything because he wished to. The whole 
 tenor of our upbringing and education is to make us despise 
 and distrust instinct and impulse, and to disguise from our- 
 selves the enormous extent to which they prompt our actions. 
 
 Thwarted Impulses become Desires 
 
 2. Mr. Russell points out that when an impulse is re- 
 pressed we immediately desire the results which would have 
 attended the indulgence of the impulse. By frustrating 
 what is originally an impulse we transform it into a desire. 
 
 Impulses therefore " bring with them a whole train of 
 fictitious desires : they make men feel that they desire the 
 results which wiF follow from indulging the impulse^, and 
 that they are acting for the sake of these results, when in fact 
 their action has no motive outside itself." 
 
 A man will walk ten miles across country in the belief that 
 he desires to inspect some antique carving in the church of 
 a remote village. But when he arrives at the church he 
 finds that the carving has little interest for him, and that the 
 real motive of his ten-mile walk was the impulse towards 
 open-air exercise and exploration. He would not perform 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 105 
 
 a similar feat with a similar fictitious object if the waylay 
 through the streets of a London suburb. 
 
 Thus we habitually interpret to ourselves actions whose 
 real motive is impulse, as actions prompted by a specific 
 desire, and in this way the importance of impulse is over- 
 looked. 
 
 Does Consciousness Exist ? 
 
 3. A new light has been thro^\^l upon the psychology of 
 impulse and desire by the work of the psycho-analysts, such 
 as Freud and Jung on the one hand, and the Behaviourist 
 school of Psychologists on the other. The work of these 
 two schools of thinkers has profoundly modified our view of 
 consciousness. 
 
 The ordinary view of consciousness, held for example by 
 the writers on Ethics whose theories we have been consider- 
 ing, presupposed as the basis of desire a consciously con- 
 ceived object, which embodied the purpose of the desire. 
 In the desire to pass an examination, for example, it was 
 supposed that there existed, to begin with, a clearly-defined 
 conception of the results of passing the examination, which 
 prompted the desire to pass. 
 
 The investigations of psycho-analysts, however, have 
 shown that many if not most of our desires are unconscious, 
 and that there is no necessity for a conception of the result 
 or purpose of the desire to enter into consciousness in order 
 that the desire should exist. The phenomena associated 
 with multiple personality make the results of these investi- 
 gations even more significant, and it is impossible to explain 
 either these phenomena or the fact of unconscious desire on 
 the basis of the ordinary psychology which regards desire as 
 presupposing a consciously conceived end or purpose. 
 
 Among certain modern schools of psychology, the signifi- 
 cance of these phenomena has been used as the basis for 
 a complete denial of the existence of consciousness, as a 
 unique and separate item in the human make-up. 
 
 The Behaviourist Psychology 
 
 It is argued, for instance, by the psychologists known as 
 Behaviourists that since people are shown by the experiments 
 of psycho-analysts to be unconscious of desires and thoughts 
 which are apparently being entertained by them, being able, 
 for example, unconsciously to remember all sorts of occur- 
 
io6 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 rences of which they are unaware, it is not a necessary 
 condition of normal behaviour, that the agent should be 
 conscious of his behaviour. It is not therefore necessary 
 that self-consciousness should exist at all. It is true that 
 we invariably think and speak of ourselves as acting for 
 certain definite ends and desiring certain definite objects. 
 But these apparent desires are the result of later reflection 
 which rationalizes a purely instinctive impulse into desire 
 for an end. The end exists only for an outside spectator 
 who, observing the phenomena which result when a person 
 is acting under an impulse or an unconscious desire, and 
 noting that the activity in question frequently results in the 
 attainment of an end or state which is pleasant, describes 
 the whole process as resulting from an original desire for that 
 end or state. But this is a description based on the appear- 
 ance the process presents to an observer. It is not an 
 accurate psychological account of the process. 
 
 It should be noted that for thinkers of this school there is 
 no such thing as Introspection : that is to say, it is held to be 
 impossible for any person, by means of what is called Intro- 
 spection or by any other means, to acquire a knowledge of 
 himself other than and additional to the knowledge which 
 other persons may obtain from observing him from outside. 
 
 It follows therefore that when we refer to the fictitious 
 appearance which a person's motives and actions present to 
 outside observers, fictitious because leading them to inter- 
 pret actions proceeding from unconscious impulses, as 
 actions prompted by a conscious desire for an end, we must 
 include the agent himself as one of the outside observers. 
 Hence arises on the part of the agent that mistaken 
 identification of impulses with conscious desires, of which 
 we are all guilty when observing our own psychology. 
 
 There is reason to suppose that this identification is 
 facilitated by the habit of language which in describing 
 actions insists on speaking of actions of such-and-such a 
 character, as desires for such-and-such objects. Thus we do 
 not say that X acted in such-and-such a way when we 
 observed him running to catch a train this morning : what 
 we do say is that X desired to catch such-and-such a train, 
 and it is inferred from this statement that the motive of his 
 action was a conscious desire to catch the train. 
 
 This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 107 
 
 merits of Behaviourist psychology. It is sufficient to point 
 out here that if it is correct in all that it asserts it ren- 
 ders Ethics impossible. That this result follows from 
 Behaviourist premises it is not difficult to show. 
 
 As expounded by its most thorough-going supporters, it 
 is a theory which holds that the only data which can legiti- 
 mately exist for psychology are those which can be obtained 
 from an observation of animal and human behaviour. It 
 follows therefore that there is no reason to assume that 
 there is anything in the human mental make-up beyond 
 what can be observed : for anything additional to what can 
 be observed, such as consciousness, is sheer inference from 
 observation, and unwarranted inference at that. 
 
 Now the sum total of the phenomena of human behaviour 
 which can be observed is a series of stimuli producing a 
 series of reactions. We infer that these stimuli pass into 
 consciousness and produce certain effects : one of these 
 effects may be the will to perform the actions which the 
 psychologist observes ; another may be a thought process 
 which results in a number of figures being wTitten on a piece 
 of paper ; but since neither the consciousness, nor the will, 
 nor the thought process can be observed, the Behaviourist 
 simply denies their existence. We may, for instance, have 
 thought ourselves justified in supposing that when we 
 produce a pound note in payment for a pair of stockings 
 priced at ^s. iif^., we do a rapid mental calculation before 
 we assert that lis. o\d. is the change due to us. The 
 Behaviourist denying the mental calculation because it 
 cannot be observed, explains the demand for us. ojtf. by 
 attributing it to the fact that we have acquired certain 
 habits of speech, which prompt us to enunciate the words 
 eleven shillings and a farthmg, when giving a name to the 
 series of automatic reactions caused by the respective 
 stimuli, of a pound note, a pair of stockings, and the price 
 of 8s. iif^. 
 
 The result is to abolish will, consciousness, and thought, 
 and to explain the whole of human activity as a series of 
 reactions to the outside world. Thus we arrive at a form 
 of psychological determinism which reduces our personality 
 to a series of desires for which we are not responsible, 
 resulting in a series of actions which are only by courtesy 
 called ours. 
 
io8 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 There is no place for Ethics in such a psychology. Ethics 
 necessarily involves the admission of the principles of free 
 will, and of human responsibility ; it stands upon the twin 
 pedestals of praise and blame ; and if we remove those 
 pedestals by eliminating the will which makes people 
 responsible for their actions, and regard human beings 
 merely in the light of mediums for the registering of external 
 stimuli, Ethics falls to the ground. 
 
 But although we may refuse to swallow the whole of the 
 Behaviourist psychology, we must admit that that part of it 
 which emphasizes the scope and significance of unconscious 
 desire by restricting the province of the will to the com- 
 paratively small sphere left for conscious desire, consider- 
 ably diminishes the field of our activity over which Ethics 
 may claim to exert a sway. 
 
 It will be remembered that one of the main distinctions 
 drawn above between desire and impulse was that desire 
 presupposed a definite end consciously conceived as the 
 motive for action, while impulse sprang up spontaneously 
 and was devoid alike of end and purpose. Impulse is a push 
 from behind, whereas desire is a pull from in front. Now 
 unconscious desires fall within the same category as 
 impulses, in the sense that they do not involve any purpose 
 or prevision of an end, and prompt actions of whose real 
 motive the author is unconscious. 
 
 * Impulse is in fact only another name for unconscious 
 desire. I do not mean by this that we are always uncon- 
 scious of our impiTlses : we are all of us, for instance, con- 
 scious of an impulse to sing in pur_^bath ; but impulse is the 
 name we frequently give to the promptings of an unconscious 
 desire when we become aware of them, and these prompt- 
 ings, like the unconscious desire which produced them, are 
 not directed to achieving any consciously conceived end. 
 
 Importance of Unconscious Desires 
 
 Unconscious desires and the impulses which they produce 
 are of the greatest importance for psychology ; and the fact 
 that they have been so largely neglected, or interpreted as 
 conscious desires — a neglect which has profoundly affected 
 the views of philosophers about the facts of human motive — 
 makes them equally important for our study of Ethics. 
 
 Before, however, we are in a position to establish their sig- 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 109 
 
 nificance and importance, it is necessary to examine a little 
 more closely why they have been so generally overlooked. 
 
 Unconscious desires presuppose a state of restlessness or 
 unsatisfied want. This state of restlessness prompts a 
 series of actions which persist until the want is satisfied 
 and the restlessness allayed. This result which brings the 
 series of actions to an end is usually called the purpose of the 
 series of actions. The word purpose is, however, misleading, 
 because it conveys the impression that the result achieved 
 was a definite end, consciously pursued by the author of the 
 actions, and serving as a motive for the actions. But the 
 mere fact that a series of actions persists until a so-called end 
 is achieved, does not mean that the end was ever consciously 
 pursued, and indeed with regard to most of our actions 
 this is not the case. The end is in most cases simply a series 
 of pleasant sensations. These pleasant sensations, by allay- 
 ing the unpleasant sensations, which produced the feeling 
 of restlessness, which in turn produced the series of acts, 
 bring the series of acts to a close. The notion of purposive- 
 ness in the series of acts, a notion which causes the series of 
 pleasant sensations to be described as an end, with all that 
 the word end connotes, is a mental construction, the result 
 of later reflection upon a series of phenomena. The later 
 reflection thinks of the whole series as purposed from the 
 beginning and therefore rational, because the effect of 
 reflection is to rationalize the instinctive : but such an 
 account is not in most cases a coiTcct version of psycholo- 
 gical history. It explains, however, why many actions 
 springing from miconscious desires are regarded as actions 
 prompted by desires for specific ends. 
 
 There are of course cases in which our desires are con- 
 scious, and are consciously directed to a particular end ; but 
 although as civilization advances these cases increase in 
 number, they are still in a minority. Actions proceeding 
 from so-called conscious desires may be described as 
 series of actions which are prompted by an unconscious 
 desire in the way already described, with the addition 
 of a true judgment or belief in the agent's mind as to 
 the so-called object of the series of actions. In the 
 case of familiar desires our belief as to the end in question 
 is usually correct : in the case of new desires we fre- 
 quently have a mistaken belief as to the nature of the end, 
 
no COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 and it may be noted as a curious but not uncommon compli- 
 cation, that a false judgment or belief as to the purpose or 
 end of a desire frequently produces a real desire for the false 
 end which our judgment attributed to the series of acts 
 prompted by the former desire. 
 
 Thus it is notorious that the attraction which takes many 
 unmarried women to church, is the quasi-satisfaction which 
 the practice of religion affords to thwarted sex instinct. 
 Although they entertain what is originally a false belief as 
 to the motive which prompted the series of church-going 
 acts, attributing them to a desire for the consolations of 
 religion, people of this class in course of time frequently 
 experience a real desire for the end which they innocently 
 believed themselves to be pursuing in the first instance, so 
 that the originally false belief as to the motive of the series 
 of acts becomes a true one. 
 
 In the case of most of our desires, however, the process by 
 w^hich we attribute to them design or purpose is a misleading 
 one. Putting the matter shortly we may say that we come 
 to attribute consciously pursued ends to unconscious desires 
 and impulses : 
 
 {a) Because the process of subsequent reflection causes 
 the notion of an originally conceived purpose to be applied 
 to the pleasant sensations which conclude a series of acts 
 springing from a state of restlessness. 
 
 (b) Because the ends which we falsely believe to be the 
 objects of a series of unconscious desires, frequently become 
 in course of time the real objects of desire. 
 
 (c) Because when an unconscious desire or impulse is 
 thwarted, a conscious desire does in fact spring up for the 
 results which would have attended the fulfilment of the 
 impulse. 
 
 It will be seen from the above considerations why it is 
 that while the part played by conscious desire has been 
 considerably over-rated in psycholog}^ the part played by 
 impulse has been generally overlooked. 
 
 The above conclusion with regard to the scope of uncon- 
 scious desire has an important bearing upon Ethics. If 
 most of our actions are the results of a push from behind and 
 not of a pull from in front, the traditional ethical systems 
 with which we have been dealing in the earlier chapters are 
 for the most part beside the point. They erect criteria by 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE iii 
 
 which, as we have seen, the value of actions is estimated 
 either with reference to the motive with which they are 
 performed, or to the end which the agent pursues, or to the 
 consequences which the actions produce. But if most of 
 our actions are the result of impulse or desires which are 
 unconscious, it is clear that they are not performed with any 
 motive, nor do they seek to achieve any end. 
 
 The Intuitionist or Moral Sense theories therefore, 
 which insist that motives or ends must be taken into 
 account, establish criteria which are completely irrelevant 
 to the great majority of our actions. Their standard of 
 value will not work, simply because the considerations 
 which it takes into account are not there. To apply the 
 moral sense criterion to the actions which proceed from 
 impulse and unconscious desire, is like getting a six-foot 
 ruler to measure the quantity of bad temper in men with 
 red hair. 
 
 The Utilitarian theories fare little better when applied to 
 the psychology of impulse. It is true that they make their 
 criterion of the rightness and wrongness of actions inde- 
 pendent of the psychological state of the agent. Whether 
 the agent did or did not intend to produce the consequences 
 which in point of fact followed from his action does not, 
 according to these theories, affect the ethical value of the 
 actions, and questions of aim and motive are therefore irre- 
 levant. But the Utilitarians, as will be remembered, erected 
 a series of moral " oughts " on the basis of their principle that 
 everybody " ought " to promote the greatest happiness of 
 the greatest number ; and in working out this principle they 
 introduced another "ought" by asserting that everybody 
 ought to be reckoned as one, and nobody as more than one, 
 and so forth. These " oughts " presuppose the phenomenon 
 of conscious desire on the part of the agent, namely the ever 
 present desire to promote the greatest happiness of the 
 greatest number, and in so far as his actions are not con- 
 tinually prompted by this conscious desire he is accounted 
 morally blameworthy. 
 
 But it is absurd to blame a man for what he cannot help, 
 and if most of his desires are unconscious he cannot be 
 expected to be responsible for them : he. cannot even be 
 responsible for checking them, because ex hypothesi he does 
 not know they are there ; and he cannot be held as respon- 
 
112 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 sible for the actions which proceed from them. Now it is 
 essential for ethical systems that they should be able 
 to administer praise and blame for observance or non- 
 observance of the criteria which they set up. 
 
 As applied therefore to the majority of our actions the 
 criteria of the Intuitionist and Utilitarian systems are 
 meaningless. They involve the presupposition that our 
 actions are rational and are prompted by the desire for ends 
 consciously conceived, and they make ethical merit de- 
 pendent upon the selection of good ends instead of bad ones, 
 and the unremitting pursuit of the good ends selected. 
 
 Like most a priori theories they fail to apply to the 
 problems of life, because they are constructed irrespective of 
 the facts of psychology. According to the criteria which 
 these theories have set up, most of our actions are ethically 
 neither good nor bad : they are ethically neutral. Faced 
 therefore with the failure of the old standards to apply to 
 actions proceeding from impulse and unconscious desire, it 
 is clear that we must look in other directions for the ethical 
 standard, if any, which we are to apply to actions of this 
 class. 
 
 How Impulse Conditions Beliefs 
 
 4. A further set of reasons can, I think, be distinguished 
 for the comparative neglect of the importance of impulses 
 by ethical writers. These reasons are of a different class 
 from those we have just considered. We have been dealing 
 with impulse as a motive to action : we have now to 
 consider its influence in the formation of belief. There is 
 a kind of conspiracy to ignore the part played by impulse in 
 conditioning beliefs. What are the reasons for this state of 
 affairs ? 
 
 We have seen how in the sphere of conduct men, wishing 
 to believe that their actions were prompted by rational desire, 
 have been reluctant to ascribe them to instinctive impulse. 
 In the sphere of thought, which should more properly be 
 called belief, this reluctance is greatly increased. Even if 
 men can be brought to admit that their actions are fre- 
 quently not rational, few men are rational enough to admit 
 that the same is true of their beliefs. Yet the part played 
 by impulse in governing our beliefs appears to be as impor- 
 tant as its role in prompting our actions. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 113 
 
 I have dealt elsewhere with this subject, in an essay on the 
 importance of temperament in conditioning thought. It is 
 argued in this essay that with a few exceptions in favour of 
 mathematics and certain propositions about morality, our 
 intellectual beliefs spring from and are conditioned almost 
 wholly by our temperaments. Temperament is funda- 
 mental and is responsible both for what we want and what 
 we feel. It is the function of reason to invent justifications 
 and excuses for what we naturally want to do, and argu- 
 ments for what we naturally want to believe. Thus what 
 we believe depends very largely upon what we feel, and our 
 intellectual beliefs, instead of being, as we fondly imagine, 
 freely formed by reason, upon an impartial investigation of 
 the evidence for and against the belief in question, are 
 unconsciously dictated by our natural impulses, which 
 predispose us to certain beliefs rather than to others. ^ 
 
 Now by temperament I mean the sum total of our various 
 impulses, inherited, acquired, instinctive and so forth, and 
 I have tried to show in the discussion referred to that the 
 influence of this factor of temperament may be most clearly 
 discerned in our religious and political beliefs. The experi- 
 ence of giving a course of lectures on this subject has shown 
 the writer that it is difficult to evolve any conclusion which 
 is more repugnant to the human mind. 
 
 It has been pointed out above that people are taught to 
 despise and distrust their impulses, and to be sentimentally 
 proud of their reason. They like to think of the latter as free ; 
 it is to them a guiding and controlling power ; a sort of a 
 charioteer holding the reins that guide the various impulses, 
 able to indulge and to check them at will, and as life 
 proceeds obtaining increasing control over his unruly steeds. 
 
 As a result there are few beliefs more repugnant to a 
 proper pride in reason than the belief that our beliefs are 
 moulded and conditioned by our impulses, are in fact little 
 more than rationalizations of them. 
 
 Yet in the sphere of Ethics, no less than in politics and 
 religion, this seems to be pre-eminently the case. 
 
 Morality as the Impulse to Blame 
 Most ethical systems arise from the impulse to blame* 
 
 * See for a fuller discussion of the subject my "Essays in Common- 
 Sense Philosophy," Chapter on Thought and Temperament. 
 
 8 
 
114 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 This impulse is a very strong and a very important one. 
 It is sufficiently strong to account for most of our taboos, 
 and for a large part of our morality. Let us see how this 
 result is brought about ? 
 
 The origin and growth of many of our moral maxims 
 must have followed some such course as the following. If 
 we revert once more to Schopenhauer's definition of human 
 society as a collection of hedgehogs driven together for the 
 sake of warmth, it is obvious that many will find their 
 quarters uncomfortably close. Other people will be con- 
 tinually performing actions which are inconvenient to the 
 individual personally : sometimes they wUl be irritating to 
 the community as a whole. 
 
 The individual feels an impulse to disapprove of such 
 actions, and, if he can obtain the support of his neighbours, 
 will get society to stigmatize the action as wrong. In 
 extreme cases it will become punishable by law. In less 
 extreme cases the disapproval of society expressed in what is 
 called public opinion is usually sufficient to prevent its 
 repetition. 
 
 The important point to notice is that the action is re- 
 garded as ethically wi'ong only because somebody in the first 
 instance had an impulse to blame its author for doing some- 
 thing inconvenient to him. This somebody, in order to 
 justify his natural impulse of disapprobation and annoy- 
 ance, set his reason to work to establish good grounds for the 
 blame which he desired to administer, partly to make the 
 culprit uncomfortable, partly to preclude a repetition of the 
 offence. The result is the coining of some moral maxim 
 such as " Honesty is the best policy," or " A rolling stone 
 gathers no moss," or " More haste less speed." 
 
 A man's reason habitually follows his impulses much as 
 the feet of a hungry dog follows his nose, and the power of 
 reason, when informed and impelled by a strong impulse, 
 like the blaming impulse, is very remarkable. Reason 
 can find the best possible justifications for the most 
 outrageous conduct under the sun, and the best possible 
 arguments for the most demonstrably fallacious beliefs. 
 The belief, for instance, that " Honesty is the best policy " is 
 still sincerely held and defended by men who would never 
 dream of conducting their business activities for a moment 
 upon such an assumption, experience having taught them 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 115 
 
 that such a course would speedily bring them to ruin at the 
 hands of their neighbours, who, though subscribing to the 
 same belief with equal sincerity, are not accustomed to take 
 their beliefs literally, or to regard them as a basis for action. 
 
 This activity of reason in building up ethical structures 
 for the purpose of countenancing and as it were giving a 
 purchase to the impulse to blame may be continually 
 observed in practical life. If A has stood in a queue at a 
 ticket office for five minutes, and observes B who has just 
 come upon the scene edging his way into the queue in front 
 of him, he feels a natural impulse to blame B for his con- 
 founded pushfulness. If B, possessing a turn for impudent 
 logic, demands in answer to his protest why he has not as 
 much right to indulge his immediate desire to get a ticket as 
 A, the latter would probably support his protest by an 
 appeal to some moral aphorism to the effect that people who 
 come first should be first served, and would, if pressed 
 further, indulge in some generally discursive remarks as to 
 the effects of anti-social conduct such as B's, if emulated by 
 others, upon society as a whole. " It would be a fine thing 
 if every one were to go on like that," he would say. 
 
 Now it is important to point out that A did not first 
 disapprove of B's conduct on rational grounds as anti-social, 
 and likely if generally adopted to subvert the foundations of 
 , ordered society, and then administer a reproof upon the 
 |. basis of his ratiocinations. He might allege that this was 
 |\ an accurate account of his mental workings, but his account 
 ,if would not be psychologically honest. Such a version in 
 ^1 fact amounts to putting the cart before the horse. Wliat 
 * usually happens in such cases is the occurrence of a strong 
 feeling of resentment and annoyance coupled with an 
 impulse to blame. This impulse is of a purely self-regarding 
 character and does not involve any consideration of the 
 possible effects upon the community at large of a univer- 
 salization of the conduct reprehended. Such a consider- 
 ation, bringing with it a condemnation on moral grounds of 
 anti-social conduct, is the work of reason which rushes to the 
 rescue of impulse when the latter is required to give an 
 account of itself, and pretends that natural instinctive 
 feelings are really the result of high moral consideration. 
 
 The same process which makes the man in the ticket 
 queue talk about anti-social conduct, has, in a widely 
 
ii6 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 extended and glorified form, prompted the elaboration of 
 ethical philosophies. 
 
 It is not difficult to see, for instance, in the moral sense 
 theories a glorification of the impulse to blame, a glorifi- 
 cation which elevates the impulse into a sort of universalized 
 moral sense, in which form it immediately becomes a 
 tremendous engine for the discomfiture of those who insist 
 on the performance of actions to which we have an impulse 
 to object. In the hands of writers like Kant, a double 
 process of rationalization occurs. Not content with ele- 
 vating the impulse to blame into a categorical imperative, 
 thus endowing it with a status which enables it to wield 
 complete authority over the world of action, he further 
 supports it by giving it a metaphysical foundation, and 
 linking it on to his theory of the Practical Reason. 
 
 Hedonistic and some Utilitarian theories have too often 
 sought by destroying the canons of ordinary morality and 
 insisting that pleasure is the only good, to glorify another 
 impulse, the impulse to gratify bodily appetites. Where 
 the moral sense theories are rationalizations of the self- 
 denying and inhibitory impulses, the naturalistic and 
 hedonistic theories rationalize the impulses to indulge. 
 
 The theories of the greater Utilitarians, Bentham and 
 J. S. Mill, seem to have been rational embodiments of the 
 meddling or political impulse, to which I shall come in the 
 next chapter, rather than of the purely sensual impulses. 
 
 In this way we must regard the place of impulse in 
 formulating our creeds as no less important than its function 
 in dictating our actions. Reason is merely the machine 
 which constructs the creed and plans the action. And in 
 setting reason to justify impulse, impulse has the cunning to 
 bribe reason to do the work, by fostering the delusion that 
 reason is working autonomously, obeying no laws but its 
 own and subject to no master. We have only to invert the 
 simile used above to arrive at the real relationship 
 between impulse and reason : impulse is the charioteer and 
 reason draws the chariot, but the charioteer drives with a 
 loose rein, giving his steeds their head, so that they may 
 believe that it is they who select the course and dictate the 
 pace. 
 
 The considerations set forth in this and the three foregoing 
 sections will, I hope, sufficiently explain how the part played 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 117 
 
 by impulse, both in prompting action and determining 
 thought, has been so largely overlooked. I have been led 
 perhaps in these sections to give undue emphasis to the 
 importance of impulse, if only to redress the balance 
 which has been so overweighted in favour of reason and of 
 desire. I have also been led for the convenience of dis- 
 cussion to speak of impulse as if it were a distinct and 
 isolated entity in the human make-up, and could be dis- 
 tinguished from and set over against reason as clearly as 
 two individuals can be distinguished from each other. This 
 of course is not the case. I do not mean to suggest either 
 that impulse prompts all our actions, or that it determines 
 all our beliefs ; nor do I wish it to be supposed that impulse 
 can be thought of as an independent entity, which does not 
 shade into desire, and is not to some small extent informed 
 by reason. All I wish to do is to establish the very great 
 importance of impulse as a factor in human psychology. 
 It remains to consider how far the life of impulse is at pre- 
 sent provided for, and in what directions it can be developed, 
 with a view to increasing the sum total of human happiness 
 and freedom. 
 
 § 4. Importance for Good Life of Liberation of 
 Impulse 
 
 If the above outline of the psychology of impulse is 
 correct, it will be realized how important a part impulse 
 plays in our lives, and how necessary it is for Ethics to 
 take the factor of impulse into account in estimating the 
 conditions necessary for the production of the good life. 
 
 A general description of the place of impulse in the life of 
 the modern civilized individual will be found in Mr. Ber- 
 trand Russell's " Principles of Social Reconstruction," 
 Chapters I and VIII. It is not part of my purpose here to 
 discuss or to recapitulate his theory, with which I largely 
 agree, but only to consider its bearing upon Ethics. It will 
 be sufficient therefore very briefly to indicate the attitude 
 Mr. Russell adopts. 
 
 Impulse is the most important factor in the individual's 
 make-up : it is the direct expression of his individuality, 
 that which more than anything else distinguishes him from 
 his fellows, and constitutes the peculiar essence of his 
 personality. 
 
Ii8 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 It is the dynamic element in life which is constantly spring- 
 ing up anew in the individual ; the principle of growth, and 
 the source of change and progress. It is the driving force 
 both of action and of thought : it impels men alike to 
 satisfy their bodily needs at the table, and to gratify their 
 intellectual curiosity by conducting recondite researches 
 into the nature of infinity. It is in fact the expression of 
 life itself. 
 
 In order therefore that the individual may live a full, 
 rich and varied life, it is necessary that his impulses should 
 have scope for expansion and development. The individual 
 cannot be said properly to live unless his impulses are given 
 free play, since it is only by following his impulses that he 
 can develop his full nature and realize all that he has it in 
 him to be. 
 
 If impulses are starved and thwarted therefore, two results 
 may be said to follow. In the first place there is a general 
 reduction in the vitality of the individual, which expresses 
 itself in boredom and lack of interest. A life in which 
 impulses are starved, or are subordinated to desires for 
 distant ends, is a tiring and tedious affair, without joy and 
 without zest, and the loss of vitality which results from an 
 individuality at war within itself, renders the achievement of 
 the end, in the interests of which the impulses have been 
 suppressed, a source of little real satisfaction. 
 
 Both for communities and for individuals the suppression 
 of impulse practised over a lengthy period saps vitality, and 
 robs life of interest. 
 
 In the second place impulses which are thwarted are 
 driven imderground and either form the repressed com- 
 plexes of whose danger psycho-analysts are never tired of 
 warning us, or reappear in a form more undesirable, because 
 perverted, than the original impulse. 
 
 Thus the healthy impulses of rivalry and contention 
 which finds their proper outlet in games of strength and skill, 
 when denied adequate expression, issue in the impulse of 
 aggression which makes for war. This fact constitutes one 
 of the reasons why the old who are precluded by sloth, 
 feebleness or overeating from continuing the pursuits they 
 followed at public schools, are more inclined to those 
 aggressive and contentious policies which produce war, to 
 a domineering love of power and authority, and to a 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 119 
 
 pugnacious and irascible habit of mind, than the young, who 
 are provided by the football field and the boxing ring with 
 other outlets for this particular set of impulses. 
 
 Excessive discipline which looks with disfavour upon the 
 impulse to self-expression, as rendering the individual in- 
 capable of fitting in to the uniform system required, 
 frequently causes these impulses in men who are subject to 
 it to transform themselves into impulses to cruelty and 
 destruction. 
 
 In general either lack of vitality, or impulses which are 
 oppressive or against life, will almost always result, if the 
 spontaneous impulses are not able to find an outlet. 
 The perpetual springing up of impulse may be compared 
 to the flow of a river which, if it is artificially dammed, is 
 driven underground or spreads over the countryside in the 
 form of a foul and sullen marsh, and loses its brightness, its 
 clearness and its energy. 
 
 Mr. Russell proceeds to show that the promptings of 
 impulse are in fact thwarted to an unprecedented extent in 
 the life of the modern civilized world. 
 
 In part this is the inevitable result of the highly organized 
 industrial system under which a modem man obtains his 
 livelihood. It is a system which consistently subordinates 
 impulse to the desire to obtain a sufficient income ; and the 
 methods by which this income is obtained, instead of them- 
 selves affording scope for the expression of creative impulses, 
 as is the case for instance with the work of the artist or the 
 skilled craftsman, involve for the most part the rigorous 
 suppression of all impulses that conflict with the necessity 
 of concentrating attention upon some unending and mono- 
 tonous process. 
 
 The business of getting a living, in fact, involves a constant 
 process of immolating impulses, from the suppression in the 
 early morning of the impulse to lie in bed, through the 
 thwarting during the hours of work of the impulse to vary 
 the uniformity of the articles which the demands of machine 
 production require to be turned out in one unvarying mould, 
 to the suppression of the impulse to sit up late at night in 
 the interests of the desire to be in time at the factory next 
 morning. The modern industrial system has divorced the 
 business of production from the life of impulse, and the con- 
 ditions under which a man's work afforded the chief scope 
 
120 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 for the play of his creative impulse have gone past recall. 
 
 Nor can men feel that this subordination of impulse is 
 effected in the interests of their own desires. A man works 
 under direction in order to achieve the ends not of himself 
 but of others, and he becomes involuntarily subservient to 
 purposes which he has no share in forming, and no interest, 
 beyond the immediate interest of keeping his job, in 
 achieving. 
 
 The growth of organization, especially in industry, is also 
 inimical to the expression of impulse. Organization de- 
 mands the subordination of the desires and impulses of a 
 number of individual units to a general end. In the inter- 
 ests of this end all recalcitrant impulses which demand 
 satisfaction for themselves at the expense of the general 
 purpose in view must be rigorously suppressed. As 
 civilization grows more complex, this is perhaps a necessary 
 result, but it is one which unless counteracted by the en- 
 largement of the scope of impulse in other directions, tends 
 to produce that listlessness and lack of vitality which are 
 salient characteristics of large and complex communities, 
 and which have been remarked by historians to be at the 
 root of the decay of societies such as that of ancient Rome. 
 
 Most important of all perhaps is the thwarting under 
 modern conditions of what may be called the social or politi- 
 cal impulse. All men have a strong desire to meddle with, 
 and if possible to control, the lives of other individuals living 
 in the same community. Most men have the well-being of 
 the state deeply at heart, and wish to devote their energies 
 and capacity to making the world more like the world they 
 would wish to see. The political impulse is as strong as any 
 of the great impulses which all men possess in common, and 
 expresses itself in the desire of the individual to take hold, 
 in however small a degree, of the forces that control society. 
 The individual wishes to feel that he counts, that his views 
 matter, and in face of the enormously complex organism of 
 the modern state he cannot but feel that he does not count : 
 his efforts to take hold are futile. 
 
 I will deal in more detail with this subject in the next 
 chapter. 
 
 The conclusion would seem to be that it is necessary, if we 
 wish to restore joy and vitality to life, to pay more attention 
 to the demands of impulse, and to devise conditions under 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 121 
 
 which these demands can be more adequately met. An 
 important distinction, however, should be drawn between 
 two classes of impulses, of which the former requires en- 
 couraging, while the latter already receives encouragement 
 to the detriment of happiness and freedom in the world. 
 These are the class of creative impulses and the class of pos- 
 sessive impulses respectively. 
 
 " Some of our actions," says Mr. Russell, " are devoted to 
 creating what would not otherwise exist, others are directed 
 to acquiring or retaining what exists already. The typical 
 creative impulse is that of the artist : the typical possessive 
 impulse is that of property." Now the best life " is that 
 in which creative impulses play the largest part and posses- 
 sive impulses the smallest." Our theory therefore is not 
 one which tells us that all impulses are to be encouraged 
 and indulged merely because they are impulses. Some im- 
 pulses, the creative ones, are to be encouraged at the expense 
 of the others. 
 
 And for this distinction there is a very obvious reason. 
 The creative impulses can be encouraged and indulged to an 
 unlimited extent without interfering with the impulses of 
 others. When the creative impulse of the artist produces a 
 picture, the result does not impede the production of other 
 artists, but rather acts as a stimulus to activity, by challeng- 
 ing their emulation. The possessive impulse, however, 
 which leads a man to acquire and retain a large fortune can 
 only be gratified by the deprivation of others. 
 
 Creative impulses issue as a rule in the production of 
 things which may be enjoyed by an indefinite number of 
 people. A symphony or a poem is like the air, the country, 
 or the sea in this, that the fact of its being enjoyed by any 
 number of people, however great, is no obstacle to its 
 enjoyment by others. The possessive impulses on the other 
 hand, instead of increasing the possibilities of enjoyment, 
 limit them by confining them to the possessor and his 
 friends. It is easy to see how the indulgence of the posses- 
 sive impulses leads to strife and conflict, whereas creative 
 impulses may be harmoniously developed to an indefinite 
 extent. 
 
 Modern societies, however, besides penalizing the creative 
 impulses, as we have seen above, by necessarily subordinat- 
 ing them to desires for economic ends, are constituted in 
 
122 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 such a way as to place an undue value upon the activities 
 of the possessive impulses. 
 
 It is possible to instance important social institutions 
 such as education, marriage and religion which, though essen- 
 tially creative in origin, have become bulwarks for the 
 maintenance of the status quo, and for guaranteeing the 
 continued enjoyment of the possessive impulses of those 
 who control them. 
 
 We live under a system which, though paying lip service 
 to the religion of Christ, who waged unceasing war upon the 
 possessive impulses — " Take no thought, saying, what shall 
 we eat ? or What shall we drink, or Wherewithal shall we be 
 clothed ? " — creates a scale of values which counts 
 only the achievements of the possessive impulses, by making 
 income and property the chief criterion of importance and 
 success. We are governed by the " stomach and pocket " 
 point of view ; the impulses that demand beauty and spa- 
 ciousness and leisure, spaciousness for romance and leisure 
 for creation, being brushed aside as incompatible with the 
 all important business of getting on, which being inter- 
 preted means the acquisition of the means for increasing 
 our material possessions. 
 
 The possessive impulses are not a direct expression of the 
 principle of growth ; they are the outcome of what is static 
 and conservative in human nature, rather than of what is 
 dynamic and changing. In those who are old the possessive 
 impulses have achieved an almost complete victory over 
 their inconvenient creative brethren, and it is for this reason 
 that our institutions, which are the embodiment and ex- 
 pression of the ideals of the old, aim at perpetuating 
 possession by setting upon it the seal of security and 
 respectability. 
 
 Impulses can be changed and diverted by circumstance, 
 education and environment. Almost every boy has an im- 
 pulse towards cruelty ; he wishes to pull the wings off flies, 
 to stick pins through the bodies of butterflies, and to destroy 
 birds' nests for the mere pleasure which these activities 
 bring him. By education which is devoted to developing 
 contrary impulses, the impulse to cruelty may be trans- 
 formed into one of kindness and fellow-feeling towards 
 other sentient creatures. The reverse process is alleged by 
 some to occur in the case of surgeons, who having begun to 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 123 
 
 practise vivisection in the interests of scientific knowledge, 
 have continued it for its own sake, not having perceived 
 its effect of unwittingly developing their hitherto latent 
 impulse towards cruelty. 
 
 It should be part of the study of practical Ethics to con- 
 sider the conditions which are most favourable to the growth 
 of creative impulses, and to value political and social insti- 
 tutions in proportion as they encourage them or provide 
 scope for their development. The supreme principle both 
 in politics and in private life should, according to Mr. 
 Russell, be " to promote all that is creative, and so to 
 diminish the impulses and desires that centre round pos- 
 session." 
 
 § 5. Possible Objections to Theory of Impulse 
 
 I have outlined in brief, expanded and adapted this 
 theory of Mr. Russell's as to the function of impulse because 
 it appears to me to have an important bearing upon the 
 problems of Ethics. It also provides a good example of 
 the method which should, I think, be pursued by students 
 of empirical Ethics.. Yet I am aware that it may be termed 
 unphilosophical in appearance and presentation, and that 
 it is perhaps open to a series of formal objections on 
 philosophical grounds. 
 
 Although the theory does not pretend to the logical com- 
 pleteness of the a priori systems we considered earlier, 
 and is indeed based on the supposition that both the 
 method and conclusions of those theories are ill adapted to 
 deal with the multifarious diversity of human psychology, it 
 is important that it should be able to provide a defence for 
 itself against philosophical attack. 
 
 The main objection that can, I think, be brought against 
 it is that it provides no adequate means for discriminating 
 those imipulses which it is desired to express from those 
 which should be kept under. 
 
 We have seen that the theory does not advocate the 
 indiscriminate indulgence of all impulses, concentrating 
 rather on the encouragement of creative impulses, nor do I 
 think that the proposition that all impulses should be 
 indulged can seriously be entertained as an Ethical maxim. 
 Plato draws in the Republic a terrif5dng picture of the life of 
 
124 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 the man who is completely at the mercy of every passing 
 impulse. He divides the soul into three parts, the reason- 
 ing part, the spirited part, and the part that is composed of 
 impulse and desire, and conceives of three different kinds of 
 lives that can be lived, according as one part or another is 
 given the predominance. 
 
 The desiring part of the soul is graphically compared to a 
 many-headed monster, who, by demanding constant satis- 
 faction for his insatiable appetites, makes the life of the 
 " desiring man " a miserable slavery to the whims of his 
 unchecked passions. Such a life is without unity or pur- 
 pose ; it is a mere succession of desires which confer only a 
 momentary pleasure when sated, and grow in imperious- 
 ness when disappointed. Plato concludes that the soul 
 can only be at peace within itself, and that man's lives can 
 in consequence only attain to a degree of unity and tran- 
 quillity, when the desiring part of the soul is in subjection 
 to the reasoning part. 
 
 We have seen reason above to doubt this particular con- 
 clusion, which overlooks the facts, first that reason must in 
 a very real sense always be the servant of desire, and second 
 that recalcitrant desires and impulses which fail to fit in 
 with the general scheme of life pursued by the individual can 
 only be checked, not by reason, but by other impulses and 
 desires. 
 
 There can, however, be no question as to the justice of 
 Plato's indictment of the life of unbridled desire. We may 
 agree with Oscar Wilde that the only way to get rid of a 
 temptation is to yield to it, on a question of fact, but as a 
 question of expediency we know that such a course only 
 results in substituting another desire for the one we have 
 sated. 
 
 We are driven, therefore, to the conclusion that even 
 when attempting to enrich and develop the life of impulse, 
 we must exercise a rigid censorship over certain impulses in 
 the interests of others. 
 
 On what principle is this to be done ? A hint as to where 
 we are to look for the answer is to be found in the Ethics of 
 Aristotle. A sketch of the place of desire and will in Aristo- 
 tle's theory of Ethics was given in Chapter II, but it will be 
 convenient here briefly to recapitulate his conclusions. 
 Aristotle describes with the same kind of disapproval as 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 125 
 
 Plato, the life of the man who is a prey to his own conflicting 
 desires and impulses. These desires and impulses are for 
 the most part bHnd and irresponsible. In demanding 
 satisfaction for themselves, they take no heed for the good 
 of the individual as a whole, and would have him obey their 
 dictates irrespective of the resultant loss to the whole, 
 which includes the deprivation of other desires. 
 
 Besides these irresponsible desires and impulses, however, 
 Aristotle recognizes a further desire which he calls the desire 
 for the good of the whole. This desire for the good of the 
 whole is by some identified with what we will call, and by 
 others is thought of as being, that desire which is able to 
 enlist the will in its service. We have seen above that it is 
 misleading to speak of any desire as rational, in the sense 
 that it can be said to spring from rational reflection, or can 
 give a rational account of its origin, or a rational justification 
 for obtaining its fulfilment. At the same time it is possible 
 to speak of one desire as being more rational than another, 
 in the sense that a life devoted to the attainment of its 
 end is more likely to bring real satisfaction and enjoyment 
 than the momentary or illusory satisfaction which waits on 
 the fulfilment of the so-called irrational desires. 
 
 A rational desire is thus one which in the interests of 
 general satisfaction it is worth while to pursue : it is a better 
 investment than an irrational one. Now it is clear that 
 what Aristotle calls the desire for the good of the whole is a 
 rational desire in this sense. It is obvious that if we can 
 determine what the good of the whole is, we are more likely 
 to gain in satisfaction by pursuing it, than we are by yielding 
 to a crop of indiscriminate desires and impulses, changing 
 and repeating themselves from day to day, whose satisfac- 
 tion is probably detrimental to what we call our real good. 
 
 In the interests of the good of the whole then, the good, or, 
 as Aristotle tends to call him, " the happy " or sometimes 
 " the prudent man," will use his will to police and discipline 
 the indiscriminate desires and impulses, reducing them to 
 order, and permitting them only that amount of satisfac- 
 tion which is compatible with the good of the whole. They 
 will be dovetailed into one another : compromises will be 
 made : and the line of action that is actually pursued will 
 often be a resultant of a number of desires none of which 
 it actually represents. 
 
126 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 The trouble about this account is that although it is 
 easy enough on paper to define the good of the whole, estab- 
 lishing it by the irrefutable methods of a priori reasoning as 
 pleasure, virtue, aesthetic enjoyment, or what not (Aristo- 
 tle himself identified it with the undisturbed contemplation 
 of certain unchangeable entities of a mixed mathematical 
 and theological character), this good of the whole is not 
 in practice easy to determine. 
 
 We may pursue an ideal, but we can never aihrm that its 
 attainment will be good for us. No general aim or ambition 
 is constant : it changes as we change and recedes as we 
 approach ; nor is it possible as a rule to state it even to 
 ourselves in definite terms. 
 
 What we can do, however, is to pursue certain definite 
 purposes or groups of purposes. They may be of a provi- 
 sional character : they may not be comprehensive : and 
 their apparent desirability may be illusory : but if stead- 
 fastly approached they do give an aim and unity to our 
 otherwise masterless lives, and incidentally they provide a 
 stick with which to beat unruly impulses. A man is free only 
 when he does so govern his life according to some such 
 dominant purpose, and it is in the interest of such a purpose 
 that he will use his will to check impulses that conflict 
 with it. 
 
 Two provisos must, however, be carefully kept in mind. 
 
 In the first place the purpose must be voluntarily sub- 
 scribed to on the part of the individual, and the use of will 
 to check conflicting impulses in the interest of the dominant 
 purpose must also be voluntary. Will is too often used to 
 check impulses in order to serve the purposes of others, 
 and the occasions on which impulses are repressed are too 
 often forced upon the individual by outside pressure instead 
 of being voluntarily chosen. Economic necessity is the 
 most frequent occasion of the use of will to repress impulses 
 which might endanger the all important business of earning 
 a living. The forces of convention and public opinion are 
 often effective, especially among women, in the strangling 
 of impulses whose indulgence might be derogatory to the 
 reputation or good name of the individual. 
 
 The repression of impulses by will in such cases is not 
 freely chosen ; it is forced upon the individual from without, 
 and the slavery to will which is set in motion by outside 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 127 
 
 pressure is as inimical to real freedom as the slavery to 
 impulse and desire which the will is designed to check. 
 It is desirable not that a man should always indulge his 
 impulses, but that he should always be able to indulge them 
 if he wants to. 
 
 In the second place it should be borne in mind that the 
 repression of impulse by will, even in cases freely chosen by 
 the individual, is not really desirable, and should be minim- 
 ized as far as possible. Will should be used externally to 
 overcome obstacles to the fulfilment of impulse, rather than 
 internally to check impulses. The frequent suppression of 
 impulse is the sign of an individual at war within himself. 
 If constantly practised it dries up the springs of energy and 
 vitality, and produces a barren and listless life. It is 
 often more desirable to take risks through the follow- 
 ing of impulse than to play for safety by repressing the im- 
 pulse to new and adventurous courses. People are too 
 inclined to let their little wisdoms stifle their big impulses, 
 and to seek consolation by regarding themselves as moral, 
 rational, or what not, for doing it. Life may be regarded as 
 a discipline or as an opportunity, according as we tend to 
 repress or to indulge our impulses. In the first case we shall 
 be oppressed by the continual fear of mistakes, in the second 
 we shall be inspired by the glorious possibilities of experi- 
 ment. 
 
 " A life governed by purposes and desires, to the exclu- 
 sion of impulse, is a tiring life," says Mr. Russell : " it 
 exhausts vitality and leaves a man, in the end, indifferent 
 to the very purposes he has been trying to achieve." 
 
 Such a life may be compared to the common practice 
 of the man who spends his youth and middle age repressing 
 his impulses in saving and scraping to acquire the means to 
 retire and travel in his old age, only to find that in the 
 process of acquiring the money he has lost the taste for 
 travelling. 
 
 In stating therefore that as a necessary condition of a free 
 and happy life, impulses which conflict with a dominant 
 purpose or set of purposes must frequently be suppressed, 
 I do not mean to imply that the word " must " has any 
 binding force, comparable to that usually attached to the 
 moral " ought." I mean that as a matter of empirical fact, 
 it is found that greater satisfaction attends a life which 
 
128 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 achieves a measure of unity from the pursuit of certain 
 definite purposes, in the interests of which conflicting 
 impulses are suppressed, than a Hfe which is the slave of 
 passing whims, and is supported by no central unity or 
 principle of growth. A man ascending a Sussex down from 
 time to time experiences an impulse to turn and look back 
 upon the gradually expanding view. If he is wise he wiU as 
 a rule suppress the impulse in order that when he reaches 
 the top, the full view may burst upon him with a freshness 
 undiminished by previous acquaintance with a merely 
 partial aspect. It is in incidents of this kind that we see the 
 desirability of suppressing certain impulses in the interests 
 of a more important impulse, whose fruition would be im- 
 paired by the premature indulgence of its forerunners. 
 
 I have thought it necessary to mention cases of this kind 
 through fear, had I omitted them, of conveying the impres- 
 sion that the Ethical life as I conceived it was a process of 
 simply doing what one wanted to. 
 
 It is of course not so simple as that : inhibition is fre- 
 quently necessary ; we must economize our wants, and 
 concentrate on some to the exclusion of others, simply 
 because it is humanly impossible to satisfy all. 
 
 Morality : the Substitute of the Old for the Impulses 
 of the Young 
 
 But the necessity of inhibition, control and self-discipline 
 has been stressed too often in the past to require elaboration 
 here. Moralists have unduly weighed the scales against 
 impulse, and to redress the balance our emphasis must be 
 placed on the other side. It is not the desirability of sup- 
 pressing impulse that requires stressing, the moralists 
 will see to that : it is the desirability of encouraging it. 
 
 I am well aware how far removed are the suggestions I 
 have put forward from the traditional systems which have 
 hitherto held the field in Ethics. I do not think, however, 
 that this consideration in itself need trouble us, or cause 
 suspicions as to the soundness of our analysis. For reasons 
 already enumerated, there has been a kind of conspiracy on 
 the part of philosophers to ignore the claims of impulse. 
 It is a conspiracy in which the world of common sense has 
 been only too ready to participate. The moral maxims 
 and precepts of any age are usually the expression of the 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPULSE 129 
 
 wisdom of its older men. They are the means by which the 
 old lay down rules of guidance for the young. They draw 
 their inspiration not only from the impulse to blame, of 
 which we already have spoken, as the substructure which 
 underlies and informs most moral codes, but from the 
 subconscious working of the principle of sour grapes in 
 those who, no longer capable of enjoying the sweets of 
 life, would accordingly deny them to those who are. 
 
 " Old men give young men good advice, no longer being 
 able to give them bad examples," wrote Wycherly. As 
 regards women, the dog-in-the-manger attitude of older 
 members of the sex towards pleasures from which they are 
 themselves debarred by timidity or age is notorious. The 
 Greek doctrine of self-expression has filtered down to us 
 through centuries of Roman Stoicism and English Puritan- 
 ism, which forbid with envy lurking at their hearts — the 
 envy of the incomplete man for him who dares express him- 
 self. This morality which is founded on fear finds its 
 extreme expression in prudery. Prudery is the old woman's 
 caricature of morality. It is the fig leaf of the imagination. 
 
 Thus it comes about that the old, who have in the past 
 set the standard of behaviour for the young, have combined 
 to paint for their edification a picture of a gloomy and 
 treacherous world in which the young rush to destruction, 
 until they learn to know better ; a destruction which can 
 effectually be averted only by following the inhibitory 
 advice of those who have learned to know better. The 
 young may not, it seems, judging from the example of and 
 spectacle of their elders, achieve any positive joy or 
 freedom by following this advice, but they can at least 
 live safely and avoid catastrophe. 
 
 It is envy of the capacities of the young which has largely 
 inspired the doctrine of original sin, a doctrine which has had 
 much to do with the general distrust of impulse. It is 
 because the heart of man has been held to be at bottom 
 wicked, that the practice of listening to its promptings 
 has been so universally discouraged. In the case of 
 children who are subject to a greater degree than adults to 
 the promptings of impulse uninformed by reason, the results 
 of this pernicious doctrine are most clearly manifest. It is 
 only to-day that we are beginning to outgrow the Victorian 
 attitude to children as vessels of wrath and imps of Satan, 
 
 9 
 
130 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 whose main function in the world is to give grown-ups an 
 opportunity first to prepare hot water for them to fall 
 into, and then to scold them for falling into it. 
 
 The distrust of impulse is thus at bottom a doctrine of 
 despair in human nature. It assumes that if human nature 
 is to have its way it must necessarily go to the devil. Yet 
 if we are to increase the happiness and freedom in the 
 world, if we are to believe in the possibility of a fuller and 
 richer life for man, we must base our Ethics on an attitude 
 of hope and trust. We must beUeve that impulse instead of 
 being an emanation of our lower nature to be rigorously held 
 in check by reason, is the source of our greatest good, just as 
 it may contain the seeds of our greatest evil. And we must 
 also believe that if human nature is allowed to have its 
 head, the impulses to good will triumph over the impulses 
 to evil. The following passage from Shaw's pamphlet, " The 
 Sanity of Art," finely expresses the grounds for our faith 
 in the sanity of impulse : "If the heart of man is deceitful 
 above all things and desperately wicked, then truly the man 
 who allows himself to be guided by his passions must needs 
 be a scoundrel. . . . But how if the youth thrown helpless 
 on his passions found that honesty, that self-respect, 
 that hatred of cruelty and injustice, that the desire for 
 soundness and health and efficiency, were master passions : 
 nay that their excess is so dangerous to youth that it is part 
 of the wisdom of age to say to the young : * Be not righteous 
 overmuch : why shouldst thou destroy thyself ? ' " 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PLACE OF IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND 
 SOCIETY 
 
 § I. Relation between Ethics and Politics 
 
 THE closeness of the relation between Ethics and 
 Politics does not need demonstration. Ethics is 
 concerned with the good of the individual, politics 
 with the good of the State : but the State is in fact an accu- 
 mulation of individuals, so that the good of the State really 
 means the good of the individuals who compose it. This 
 statement remains accurate, even if we concede the truth of 
 the view of many political philosophers that the State has a 
 kind of secondary or independent existence of its own, apart 
 from the individuals in it. Politics therefore is that brand 
 of Philosophy which considers the good of the individual 
 as a member of a community, while Ethics considers the 
 good of the individual as an isolated entity. 
 
 This near relation between Ethics and Politics was fully 
 realized by the Greeks. We have already had occasion 
 to note the belief of Greek philosophers that there was one, 
 and only one Good which it was the business of Ethical 
 philosophers to discover. It followed from this conception 
 of the one Good, that there was one good life which all men, 
 or at any rate most men, ought to lead, namely, the life 
 which consisted in the pursuit of the one Good. It is the 
 business therefore of the lawgivers to pass such laws as 
 will promote the one good life among the citizens. If the 
 laws are sufficiently good, the mere practice of obedience to 
 them on the part of the citizens wiU be sufficient to ensure 
 their living the good life. 
 
 (The fact that the lawgiver himself was conceived of as 
 
 131 
 
132 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 having a different good life from that of the ordinary citi- 
 zen, a life that consisted mainly in contemplation, need not 
 detain us here.) 
 
 While the Ethical philosopher is concerned therefore to 
 define the good life for the individual, it is the business of the 
 Political philosopher to help him to live it. Now the good 
 life can only be lived by individuals whose natures are 
 fuUy developed. Man is a political and social animal. He 
 cannot be moral all by himself, or live the good life on a 
 desert island : for the good life, as conceived by the Greeks, 
 is a full, rich, free life providing for the expression of every 
 part of our nature, and the development of all our tastes 
 and talents. That is why the good life can only be lived in 
 society, for it is only in society that a man attains to his 
 true nature, and to that complete development of all his 
 faculties without which he is not truly a man. It is only 
 through intercourse with his fellows that he can realize all 
 that he has it in him to be. The State or society was there- 
 fore for the Greeks an indispensable adjunct to the good 
 life, and the Ethical philosopher must of necessity embrace 
 the good of the State in his purview, when writing out his 
 prescription for the good of the individual. 
 
 This theory did not stop with the Greeks. In the hands 
 of German philosophers like Kant and Hegel it was devel- 
 't^ped and transformed until the notion that society, or the 
 State, was an indispensable condition of the good life for 
 the individual, grew into the conception that the individual 
 owed a debt of gratitude to the State for performing this 
 beneficial work of developing his personality. Further- 
 more the State, being representative of all the individuals 
 in it, came to be regarded as a kind of glorified expression 
 of their real selves, indissolubly linked with them by a mys- 
 terious bond of community, and representative of all that 
 was highest in their natures. In this conception a fresh 
 ground was found for unquestioning obedience to the 
 State, and the good life for the individual came to consist in 
 sacrifice and discipline for the State's sake. 
 
 I have thought it desirable briefly to sketch the results 
 arrived at by this school, in order to show that the intimacy 
 of the bond between Ethics and Politics is established from 
 whatever side we approach the subject, and so to avoid the 
 accusation of undue trespassing. It is not, however, part 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 133 
 
 of our task to follow the political speculations of Greek and 
 German philosophers further. Our method of approach 
 to the subject will be somewhat different. 
 
 As a result of the Liberal and individualist thinking of the 
 nineteenth century, we have largely abandoned the idea 
 that there is one good life for all men which ought to be 
 universally followed irrespective of individual idiosyncrasy : 
 we have come to hold, on the contrary, that it is not the 
 business of anybody, even though he be a lawgiver, or an 
 Ethical philosopher, to prescribe for others the sort of life 
 which they ought to lead. We believe that different 
 people ought to lead different lives and, with occasional 
 lapses in war time, we believe that they should be permitted 
 to live their own lives without interference, provided that 
 their doing so does not interfere with the good lives of 
 others. 
 
 It is not therefore in our view the business of the politi- 
 cian or the lawgiver to preach or prescribe codes of morals 
 for the citizens. But the State is in theory only an organ- 
 ization for securing human happiness, whatever it may be in 
 practice, and we must accordingly concede to the politician 
 that concern with the happiness of individuals that we deny 
 him with regard to their morals. 
 
 But happiness is generally held to be unattainable with- 
 out freedom, and as we are taking as an example for our 
 experiment in the methods of empirical Ethics, the investi- 
 gation and encouragement of those impulses which make 
 ^ for happiness and freedom, we are bound to consider how 
 these impulses fare at the hands of society. We have tried 
 to show in the last chapter that the life of impulse is intim- 
 ately bound up with human happiness and freedom ; and 
 since it is the object of the lawgiver to promote happiness 
 and freedom, it would seem to be his business to make pro- 
 vision for the life of impulse, and the business of the student 
 of empirical Ethics to consider how far he does so. 
 
 I propose therefore to proceed to consider in what ways 
 the necessary relationship between Ethics and Politics 
 expresses itself in practice, and what conditions a political 
 system should necessarily fulfil if it is to make adequate 
 provision for the expression of impulse. 
 
 In so doing it will not be necessary to treat definitely of 
 any existing political organization ; it will be sufficient to 
 
134 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 indicate generally the type of institution which is favourable 
 to the life of impulse, and the type of institution most 
 inimical to it. 
 
 § 2. Forms of the Relation 
 
 I think it is possible to distinguish four different ways in 
 which the necessary relation between Ethics and Politics 
 expresses itself. I propose to consider these ways in some 
 little detail because our consideration of them will throw 
 much light on the part played by impulse in social and 
 political life. In the first two forms of this relation the 
 role played by Politics is that merely of a background to 
 the good life, or as I prefer to call it for the purposes of this 
 discussion, the fuller life of impulse ; the third exhibits 
 political or social activity as being in itself an important 
 expression of the life of impulse ; the fourth requires that 
 Politics shall provide an outlet for the creative impulse in 
 the sphere of work. 
 
 The State as the Background of the Good Life 
 
 I. The first form of the relation is sufficiently obvious. 
 However we conceive of the good life, it cannot be lived 
 without order and security. It is the business of the State, 
 and it is therefore one of the objects of Politics to enforce 
 order and to ensure security. 
 
 This result is accomplished by the State in two ways. 
 It protects the individual by the law and its instrument the 
 police force from physical violence, and it acts as a check, 
 or should do so, upon the blind operations of economic 
 force. 
 
 The Necessity oj Security 
 
 {a) Protection from physical violence is an essential 
 condition of the pursuit of the good life. Most men are 
 subject to an impulse to do harm to those whom they happen 
 to dislike, or whom they believe to have injured them. 
 Though most of us are able, as the result of the traditions 
 and habits of civilized life, to subdue such impulses, yet 
 there exists in every society a small number of anti-social 
 individuals, who, whether as a means of avenging a private 
 spite, or as a method of gaining their livelihood, would form 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 135 
 
 the practice of preying upon their neighbours unless deterred 
 by fear of the law. That the veneer of civilization which 
 veils the primitive man in all of us is of the thinnest, is 
 sufficiently evidenced by the comparatively recent survival 
 of duelHng, and the satisfaction experienced by most men in 
 witnessing a bull fight or a boxing exhibition. To safeguard 
 individual security, and to establish some method of settling 
 disputes other than the resort to violence is one of the chief 
 functions of the State, and it is to the desire for such a safe- 
 guard that we may attribute one of the chief causes which 
 have predisposed men to live in societies. 
 
 As Plato puts- it in the Republic, every man in a state of 
 nature desires to do injustice to his fellows ; finding, how- 
 ever, that such a state of existence was intolerable, people 
 decided to live in societies, thereby surrendering their right 
 to do injustice to their fellows, on condition that they were 
 guaranteed a similar immunity from the desires of others. 
 And although it is untrue that men ever made a definite con- 
 tract to live in society on these terms, the bargain is never- 
 theless implied in all our social arrangements. Translating 
 Plato into modern language we may say that in the interests 
 of order and security we restrain our impulse to vent our 
 justifiable annoyance on the person of a red-haired man who 
 wears a straw hat, on condition that he exercises a similar 
 restraint with regard to our pernicious habit of smelling of 
 eucalyptus. 
 
 Order and security do not in themselves form a part of the 
 good life, but they are the indispensable background of it, 
 the permanent condition of the possibility of there being a 
 good life. We may regard the good as intellectual contem- 
 plation or the pursuit of knowledge ; but the philosopher 
 cannot philosophize if he is in constant danger of having his 
 throat cut. We may regard it as social service and the 
 betterment of the lives of others ; but the philanthropist 
 cannot philanthropize if his stomach craves for a meal and 
 a burglar has stolen his loose cash. The good man, it 
 has been said, can be happy on the rack. This state- 
 ment may have been true provided he was a very good 
 man, and it was a very bad rack ; but generally speak- 
 ing the spectacle of any philosopher with the toothache 
 is sufficient to demonstrate the necessity of immunity fr om 
 the cruder forms of physical want or discomfort, before we 
 
136 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 can indulge in the luxury of morals, or the cultivation of the 
 intellect. 
 
 The security therefore which is necessary for the possi- 
 bility of Ethics can be provided by the State and only by 
 the State. In all the ages of the world, moral, intellectual 
 or aesthetic advance has become possible only when the 
 politician sufficiently performed his function of guaranteeing 
 the necessary background of the lives of the reformer, the 
 scholar, and the artist. A certain degree of leisure and 
 spaciousness is required before we can afiord the time or the 
 energy to pursue the good. It is only when men have lived 
 for a considerable period under conditions which have freed 
 them from the grosser cares of life that they have been 
 disposed to produce good and beautiful works. These con- 
 ditions are security, freedom, and a sense of self-respect, and 
 they can be attained for men as a whole only as the result of 
 good government. 
 
 Blindness of Economic Law 
 
 (b) The importance of the economic factor in the good 
 life is not less than freedom from physical violence, and is 
 almost as directly the concern of the State. Economic 
 freedom, like security from violence, is not necessarily a 
 constituent part of morality or of happiness, but it is to an 
 equal degree the indispensable condition of the pursuit of 
 the one or the achievement of the other. It is a common- 
 place that wealth does not make men happy : it is equally 
 true that they cannot be happy, and we may add that they 
 cannot be moral, without at least a competency. That 
 part of morality for instance which consists of respect for 
 private property is meaningless to a man with a starving 
 wife and children, who sees the opportunity of stealing a leg 
 of mutton from a butcher's shop ; nor is it reasonable to 
 expect a hungry person to tell the truth, when by a secure lie 
 he can obtain a square meal. 
 
 Thus the practice of virtue is a luxury dependent upon 
 the possession of a sufficient income ; and many thinkers 
 have accordingly regarded it as lying within the State's 
 function to assure a competency to each of its members 
 irrespective of the value of their services. Hence arise 
 schemes for providing an equal income for all men whatever 
 work they perform ; hence Anarchist and Communist 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 137 
 
 theories which insist that aU men should receive in accord- 
 ance with their needs instead of being as at present paid 
 in proportion to their deserts, their good fortune, their push 
 or their unscrupulousness. 
 
 It is not possible here to enter into a discussion as to the 
 merits of these theories, even if they can be regarded as 
 practicable. Such a discussion belongs more properly to 
 the realm of political theory. It is important, however, to 
 note that they have an ethical basis and are propounded 
 with an ethical object. They say in effect, " Since it is 
 impossible to live the good life unless men are economically 
 secure, it is the business of Politics to see that men are 
 economically secure." If these theories are right, they point 
 us once more to the conclusion that it is the business of 
 Politics to provide the background of Ethics. 
 
 There is another respect in which the interference of the 
 State in economic matters is necessary for the good life. 
 Under modern conditions the economic action of small 
 groups of men produces an enormous effect upon the lives 
 and welfare of others. As a rule this effect is neither fore- 
 seen nor intended. Hence arises the so-called " blindness " 
 of economic action. Economic action is blind in the sense 
 that it aims only at the good of a small group of people 
 without considering the rest, whereas political action aims, 
 or should aim, at the good of the community as a whole. 
 It is the function of the State therefore to check the blind 
 results of the economic action of a few people upon the lives 
 and happiness of the citizens as a whole. If for example a 
 rumour is spread to the effect that a certain bank is likely to 
 fail, the effect is an immediate rush on the part of all the 
 clients of the bank to withdraw their money before the 
 threatened collapse takes place. The inevitable result is 
 the failure of the bank, a result which nobody either willed 
 or intended, but which was on the contrary the exact 
 negation of the hopes and wishes of everybody concerned. 
 It is results of this kind which are produced by the blind 
 effects of economic law, and the abandonment of the 
 laissez faire theories of the nineteenth century, as evid- 
 enced by the passing of the Factory Acts, the more recent 
 measures against profiteering and the control of food 
 prices, show that the function of the State in checking such 
 results is sufficiently realized. 
 
138 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 But in assuming this function for the State, Politics is 
 once again acting as the handmaiden of Ethics. It is be- 
 cause the bUnd results of economic action are inimical to 
 the pursuit of the good life, that it is admitted to be the 
 business of the State to check them. 
 
 The art of Politics therefore must be sufficiently under- 
 stood and efficiently practised not as a part of Ethics, but 
 as an indispensable condition of the possibility of there 
 being Ethics. 
 
 Obligation of Politics to Needs of Impulse 
 
 II. It is necessary to bring the function of Politics, in 
 guaranteeing the background of the good life, into more 
 explicit connection with the position taken up in the last 
 chapter as to the importance of the life of impulse. 
 
 If one of the means to the good life is the fuller expression 
 of impulses and in particular of the creative impulses, it 
 will be necessary for politics to establish the conditions 
 most favourable for this expression. Impulses, as we have 
 already noticed, can be changed by environment : they 
 can be given new directions, and fresh scope ; impulses 
 that make for life can be developed by encouragement ; 
 impulses that make for death or strife can be sublimated 
 or directed into more beneficial channels. 
 
 It is the business of politics to discover the soil most 
 suitable for the growth and expression of the creative 
 impulses, and to remove the incentives which at present 
 exist for the exclusive expression of the possessive impulses. 
 
 It is not possible here to work out in detail how this 
 could be done ; but it is sufficiently obvious that many 
 institutions, which have at present become the chief strong- 
 hold of the possessive impulses, might be transformed by 
 Politics into what is creative. 
 
 In the institution of marriage, for example, the economic 
 dependence of women and the rigidity of the divorce laws 
 put a premium upon possession, the former establishing 
 the claim to possession on the part of the husband who 
 provides a livelihood, the latter making it impossible for 
 the wife to resist the claim short of actual crime or 
 cruelty on the part of the husband. Thus the higher 
 creative aspects of marriage are thrust into the back- 
 ground by the sense of possession, which precludes that 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 139 
 
 freedom which is the necessary condition of the nobler 
 forms of human intercourse. 
 
 In reUgion God is still for most men a kind of tribal or 
 national possession of reliable patriotic sympathies, made 
 by man in his own image to supply a need of human nature, 
 and to invest the intolerable insignificance of the individual's 
 life with the importance that comes from the belief in an 
 all-powerful being, caring for and interested in his welfare. 
 The religious insight of individuals, which is the source of 
 all advance in moral and spiritual conceptions, is unable 
 to find an outlet within the narrow and inelastic boundaries 
 of the creeds that tell us of this semi-human god. 
 
 Education has been devoted to perpetuating the tradi- 
 tions and handing on the possessions of the past, rather 
 than to encouraging the creative vision which is to mould 
 the future. It is designed to fill the pupil's mind with 
 dead and unassimilated facts, rather than to assist him 
 to strike out sparks of inspiration from his own soul : it 
 has taught him what to think rather than how to think. 
 
 By changing the spirit of institutions it is possible to 
 make them stimulate the expression of impulses which 
 they now suppress. If the life of impulse is good and 
 ought to be encouraged, it rests with the art of Politics 
 so to mould our institutions that they make adequate 
 provision for its encouragement. 
 
 Importance of Political Impulse 
 
 III. Of all the impulses which it is desired to encourage, 
 the political or social impulse is perhaps the most important, 
 as it is certainly the most commonly neglected. When Mill 
 made the test of right and wrong in conduct, the promotion 
 of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, his 
 criterion was not so much at odds with the facts of human 
 psychology as has sometimes been thought. For oddly 
 enough people do care intensely about the happiness and 
 welfare of others. And because it is true of almost all men 
 that they do care about the well-being of their fellows, they 
 desire vaguely to influence the lives of others and to make 
 the world a better place. 
 
 The flood of Utopias, which has inundated the bookstalls, 
 is only the literary expression of this fundamental impulse 
 of all of us to induce other people to lead the kind of lives 
 
140 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 which we think they ought to lead. It is this impulse 
 which I have called the political or social impulse, and for 
 its outlet and recognition the structure of the modern 
 world makes little provision. It is because people are 
 unable to express themselves politically, to influence the 
 lives of men, and to feel that they count in public affairs, 
 that they come to seem to others, and in the course of time 
 to themselves, self-centred and cynical, with no interests 
 outside the circles of family and business, within which 
 their immediate activities lie. Thus the political impulse 
 is thought not to exist, where in most men it has once 
 existed and has become atrophied. The suppression of 
 this impulse, which is the fault neither of individuals nor 
 of society as a whole, reacts unfavourably upon the good 
 life in two ways. If we are able to establish that these 
 reactions are in fact harmful to the individual, we shall be 
 in a position to ask that politics should make more adequate 
 provision for the expression of this political impulse than 
 it has done in the past. 
 
 Thwarting of the Political Impulse 
 
 {a) Whether the political or social impulse, as I have 
 termed it, is or is not fundamental in human nature I 
 do not know. The question is one for the biologists to 
 answer. It is sufficient that it is of long standing, its 
 strength and persistence arising from the circumstance that 
 man is a political and social being who has lived for the past 
 five hundred generations in society. And since the welfare 
 or misfortune of society produce an undeniable effect for 
 good or ill upon the individual, it is only natural to put 
 the matter on its lowest ground, that the individual should 
 care enormously about the well-being of society, that is, 
 of the other people who belong to society besides himself. 
 
 Thus it comes about that most of us have the salus 
 populi deeply at heart, and that people do, in spite of 
 all appearances to the contrary, bother themselves about 
 the happiness and welfare of others, especially of those 
 others who happen to be poor. The widespread interest 
 in Politics in the narrowly accepted sense of the word. 
 Politics being professedly concerned with the good of society 
 as a whole, is only one expression of this deep-seated impulse. 
 
 It follows from this general interest in the lives and 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 141 
 
 welfare of others, that the individual desires to influence 
 and if possible to control their development. It is not 
 enough to be interested in the " well-being of the people " 
 if you cannot lift a finger to change their lot for good or 
 for ill, if you are powerless to meddle with their lives, or 
 to set before them your own particular ideals of how life 
 ought to be lived. Hence arises the almost universal 
 desire for some sort of influence or control, however 
 limited, in the affairs of the State. Men wish to feel 
 somehow that they count, that their thoughts and actions 
 matter, and that it is not beyond the bounds of possibility 
 that some one of their thoughts or actions might really 
 influence the State, and through the State the lives of 
 others. 
 
 In certain cases this desire to count may simply be due 
 to the impulse for self-assertion, and the number of such 
 cases no doubt appears to be on the increase : sometimes 
 it is based on mixed motives, the desire for notoriety and 
 the desire to influence and control the lives of others being 
 blended : more usually, however, it springs directly from 
 the political impulse, which makes us desire weight in the 
 councils of our society in order that we may counsel it 
 for what we believe to be its good. 
 
 Whatever be the mainspring of the feeling, the impulse to 
 take hold somehow or somewhere is, broadly speaking, 
 universal. Yet this impulse must, under modern conditions, 
 inevitably be thwarted. So vast are the forces at work in 
 society, so complex and elaborate the structure of Govern- 
 ment, and so intricate and difficult to disentangle the 
 different strands that condition events, that so far from 
 controlling them men are unable even to understand them. 
 In face of the complex organism of society the individual 
 feels helpless and impotent. Events which occur seem to 
 be not so much the result of human will and effort, as of the 
 interplay of blind and uncontrollable forces whose genesis 
 escapes detection, and whose object, if any, is shrouded in 
 mystery. Men are driven more and more to that interpreta- 
 tion of phenomena with which Mr. Hardy's novels have 
 made us familiar, to the notion of a blind, unthinking 
 Thing, which conditions the march of events without 
 apparent design or will, which furthers human efforts with- 
 out purpose and thwarts them without malignity ; a Thing 
 
142 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 before whose power man's endeavour is powerless, or if 
 it succeeds, successful by chance and not by intrinsic merit. 
 
 And this conception is thrust upon men not through an 
 intellectual adhesion to the doctrines of determinism, nor 
 from any spiritual flirting with fatalism, but simply from 
 the spectacle of a world mechanism so vast that the 
 individual man seems powerless to modify its workings or 
 to mould its ends. It is this notion of a canvas too big for 
 htmian designs that seems to have inspired Mr. Keynes' 
 famous comment on the working of the forces that went to 
 produce the Peace Treaty : " One felt most strongly the 
 impression described by Tolstoy in War and Peace, or by 
 Hardy in the Dynasts, of events marching on to their 
 fated conclusion uninfluenced and unaffected by the 
 cerebrations of Statesmen in Council." 
 
 It is the size of the machine which thwarts the individual's 
 impulse to take hold, to feel that his opinions count, and 
 that his actions can be made to matter, and not any 
 necessary characteristic of Politics which makes them 
 unamenable to human control. 
 
 Apathy resulting from Size oj Modern State 
 
 As a result of this feeling of impotence, the impulse to 
 politics either perishes from inanition, or becomes diverted 
 into untoward channels whose outlets would be humorous 
 if they were not pathetic. Those whose impulse seeks an 
 emotional rather than an intellectual outlet, whose hearts 
 are, in common parlance, better than their heads, seek in 
 social work and meddling with the lives of the poor that 
 satisfaction which they fail to find in real political activity. 
 The respect which their superior culture, wealth and 
 manners obtain for them amongst the lower classes, create 
 the fiction that here at last is to be found that sphere of 
 influence in which they may mould the lives of others after 
 the ideals approved by themselves. Thus the political 
 impulse finds its vent in investigating the habits of the 
 poor, cataloguing their deficiencies, stigmatizing their waste- 
 fulness, and distributing coal and blankets to mitigate the 
 more acute forms of distress among the so-called deserving. 
 
 Those whose characteristics are pre-eminently intellectual, 
 whose heads are better than their hearts, finding that the 
 magnitude and impersonality of the forces that govern 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 143 
 
 society deny their talents their natural scope in the 
 control and improvement of the lives of others, sink into 
 that spirit of soured cynicism, satirical flippancy, and 
 political apathy which is so characteristic of the intelligent- 
 sias of the modern world. 
 
 They cry sour grapes at politics, stigmatize it as a dirty 
 game in which the stakes are personal ambition instead 
 of the welfare of the community and retire, as did the 
 Russian intellectuals in the last years of the Tsardom, to 
 dilettantism, introspection, the cultivation of their souls, 
 and the pursuit of art for art's sake. 
 
 Such a picture as that drawn in Shaw's " Heartbreak 
 House " of the best brains in the country, refusing to 
 interest themselves in politics, and centring their lives 
 round the interplay of personal relations and of sexual 
 intrigue, is a successful attempt to crystalUze in the pre- 
 sentation of a few individuals the withering effects upon the 
 intellectuals produced by the failure of the political impulse 
 to find its true outlet. " A Fantasia in the Russian Manner " 
 is the title of the play, and restlessness, hysteria and futility 
 are shown to be the Nemesis that waits on those who 
 endeavour to find in the world of personal relations a sub- 
 stitute for the life of politics and affairs, which they have dis- 
 carded in disgust. The weariness of such pursuits and their 
 inadequacy as a dominating purpose for men of intelligence, 
 is brought out by comparison in an account by Mr. Ransome 
 of the effect upon a modern Russian audience of a Tchekov 
 play written under the Tsardom and produced under the 
 Bolshevik regime. 
 
 " Tchekov's irony places before us wasted lives, hopeless- 
 ness, exaggerated interest in personahties, vain strugglings 
 after some better outlet for the expression of selves not 
 worth expressing. 
 
 " That play, acted to-day, seemed as remote as a play 
 of the old regime in France would have seemed five years 
 ago. A gulf seemed to have passed. The play had become 
 a play of historical interest ; the life it represented had 
 gone for ever. '' People in Russia no longer have time for 
 private lives of such a character. Such people no longer 
 exist ; some of them have been swept into the flood-tide 
 of revolution, and are working as they never hoped to 
 have the chance to work ; others, less generous, have 
 
144 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 been broken and thrown aside. The revolution has been 
 hard on some, and has given new life to others. It has 
 swept away the old life so absolutely that, come what may, 
 it will be a hundred years at least before anywhere in 
 Russia people will be able to be unhappy in that particular 
 way again." 
 
 The characters in Tchekov's play suffer from the lassitude 
 that characterized the intellectuals of most western 
 countries before the war : nor has the establishment of 
 peace really improved their lot. Finding that their talents 
 fail to obtain recognition in a world in which the main 
 passport to eminence is a vulgar self-advertisement, a 
 cultivation of the arts of popular appeal and display, at 
 which their sensitive natures revolt, they are forced to 
 save their self-respect by making a virtue of their impotence, 
 which takes the form of ostentatiously renouncing the 
 affairs of the world, and leaving them to take their own 
 course, while they seek consolation in the realms of art 
 and personal intrigue. 
 
 About art, they urge, there is something quintessential 
 and sublime, which invests it with a reality which is greater 
 than the illusory interests of the common world of men, 
 and makes it the only object deserving the pursuit of men 
 of intelligence. " Since the world of common men is ugly, 
 and incidentally will have none of us, let us," they argue, 
 " devote ourselves to the cultivation of those things of 
 beauty which the world is so lamentably unable to appreci- 
 ate." " Personal relations," they cry with Mr. E. M. Forster 
 in " Howard's End," " are the real life for ever and 
 ever," a phrase which has become a watchword among 
 artistic and intellectual cliques. Thus a decadence of the 
 intelligentsia sets in with the result that the direction of 
 society passes to other and to less worthy hands. Where 
 the platform grows too big for the still small voice of 
 reason, it is captured by Cleon the leather-lunged, who 
 feeds the mob with a carefully prepared diet, and comes to 
 power by exploiting the simpler emotions of greed, hatred 
 and intolerance. 
 
 Thus in the later da5^s of the Roman Empire, when Rome, 
 who controlled the destinies of the world, was too big to 
 be controlled herself, we find the intellectuals straining 
 every nerve to escape the onerous duties of public service. 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 145 
 
 The one ideal of the circle of Pliny the Younger was to get 
 the bothersome business of public administration over as 
 soon as possible, in order that one might pass into literary 
 retirement, cultivate the society of one's friends and edit 
 the poets. As the years passed and the Empire grew more 
 unwieldy, the process of devitaUzation proceeded apace. 
 The complexity of the organization and the inabihty to 
 exert effective control presently produced such a deadening 
 of interest among those who should have been the governing 
 classes, that it was necessary to compel people to hold 
 public office under payment of a heavy fine. The contrast 
 with the public spirit exhibited by a small community like 
 Athens is too obvious to require emphasis. 
 
 The difficulty of preserving the feehng that one counts 
 in a society of such dimensions is not only the factor which 
 contributes to the dearth of political interest : where the 
 society is sufficiently large the pohtical impulse is denied 
 even that minimum of satisfaction which comes from the 
 feeling of adequate representation, and which might 
 otherwise have sufiiced to keep it alive. 
 
 In a society of ten which is directed by two of the 
 number, elected by the remaining eight, the impulse 
 towards governance among the eight, although not satisfied 
 by the direct exercise of power, receives nevertheless a 
 kind of modified expression. The eight electors possess at 
 least the feeling that they are adequately represented by 
 the elected, who hold authority only by their act for the 
 purpose of pursuing their objects. In a community such as 
 that of ancient Athens, where public affairs were decided 
 by the vote of the assembled citizens, the feeling of his own 
 significance was still sufficiently strong to make of politics 
 the dominating influence in the life of the citizen. But 
 where the society grows to the dimensions of a modern 
 civilized state, the numbers involved make this feehng of 
 direct representation impossible. Where the political 
 system is based upon a territorial unit of fifty miUions or 
 more, it is probably impossible to devise a machine which 
 secures really direct representation. It is a commonplace 
 that members of governing bodies are elected upon unreal 
 issues, and that the ordinary voter exercises not the power 
 of selection, but the power of rejection of one of two or 
 more candidates presented to him by a kind of invisible 
 
 10 
 
146 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 agency. It is difficult, even for a committee, except on 
 those rare occasions when it is unanimous, to devise a 
 measure which expresses the real will of a majority of its 
 members : hence the invention by political philosophers of 
 the fiction of the " General Will " to delude people into the 
 consoling belief that the General Will must necessarily 
 express something ! But for a community of many millions 
 of people to devise a system which gives to each member 
 that feeling of direct representation, which involves a sense 
 of indirect control, and which is necessary for the mainten- 
 ance of the self-respect of the political impulse is a practical 
 impossibiUty. 
 
 Arl and Literature as a Second String 
 
 When the many sink to apathy, and the few turn to 
 art and literature, it is perhaps not irrelevant to point 
 out that art and literature themselves suffer in the pro- 
 cess. Their position, which is that of a second string, is 
 sufficiently indicated by their quality which is second class. 
 The ages of over-blown societies in which the intellectuals 
 turn in disgust and despair to the creation of things of 
 beauty, have been the Silver Ages of literature, the ages of 
 minor poetry and realist novels, of erudition and of clever- 
 ness — the ages when inspiration was lacking. 
 
 The paralysis of the impulse to politics is a paralysis 
 which pervades the whole system and deadens whatever 
 it touches. When men turn to art as a substitute for 
 politics, their art becomes bad art. 
 
 We pointed out in the fu'st chapter how pleasure eludes 
 us if pursued directly, and occurs incidentally when we are 
 actively engaged upon something else. The same evasive- 
 ness is characteristic of beauty. All great literature has 
 been a by-product of some kind of propaganda, the work 
 of men vigorously engaged in saying something else, and 
 when the interest in the outside world that bids us change 
 it fails, it is useless to turn for inspiration to interest in 
 ourselves. 
 
 Shaw remarks somewhere that the secret of being happy 
 is not to have leisure enough to wonder whether you are 
 miserable or not. We might add that the secret of produc- 
 ing great Hterature is to be too interested in your subject 
 to wonder whether you are producing great Hterature or 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 147 
 
 not. An exhibition of an author's moods in the shop- 
 window of his novel, will not compensate for the burning 
 interest in the world at large which produces a Swift or a 
 Moliere. Where the impulses are starved, and in particular 
 where the impulse to take hold in the world of affairs is 
 suppressed, men's interest in the objective world of fact 
 wanes and perishes. Inevitably they turn for consolation 
 to the mysteries of religion, to the cult of beauty, and to the 
 introspective contemplation of themselves. 
 
 But the process of introspection into our own idiosyn- 
 crasies and impulses, besides withdrawing us from the 
 service of society, tends to reduce our value and interest 
 even as objects of introspection. Men should not turn 
 inward on themselves and the world of feeling, but outward 
 upon the world of fact ; for it is from an absorbing interest 
 in the world around them that men draw both the inspira- 
 tion that enables them to produce great art, and the joy 
 and energy that enable them to live happy lives. 
 
 Our impulses were not made to be understood or reasoned 
 about : they were made to be expressed in contact with 
 the world, and the chief link that binds us to the outside 
 world of men is the political impulse. 
 
 Effects oj Thwarting oj Impulse on Morality 
 
 (b) In the second place the size of the modern State 
 and the consequent thwarting of the political impulse, 
 produce an adverse effect upon the general morality of 
 the community. 
 
 Let us assume for the moment that the ethical life does 
 in fact consist, as so many have thought, in the observance 
 of the accepted code of morality of the particular society 
 into which one happens to have been born. It is not 
 difficult to show that where the State grows so large that 
 the sense of political significance among individuals is 
 lost, the accepted code ceases to win acceptance, and Ethics, 
 even in the narrowly restricted sense of the word, falls 
 into disrepute. 
 
 It will be remembered that in Chapter II, page 38seq., 
 certain arguments of Professor Muirhead's were considered, 
 which sought to show that the moral code of any particular 
 age, instead of being a purely arbitrary collection of 
 prohibitions, could be regarded as the objectified social 
 
148 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 conscience of the sum of the individuals in the community, 
 and that moral codes progressed because they were the 
 reflection of a progressive moral sense in individuals. 
 
 The notion is derived from Hegel, who held that, just as 
 the form of Government could be regarded as the concrete 
 expression of the sum of the different wills of the individuads 
 in a community, so the moral sense of the community was 
 to be found embodied in the whole system of institutions 
 and influences that make for righteousness in the State. 
 This system of institutions and influences was summed up 
 by Hegel in the term Sittlichkeit or Social Ethics. It is 
 argued therefore that in any state of society the existing 
 moral code does deserve recognition and respect, on the 
 ground that it really represents the moral nature of the 
 members of the community, just as its political institutions 
 must necessarily represent their political nature. But in a 
 community of the size and character of the modern State 
 we have been describing, it is neither true to say that 
 people do as a fact observe the accepted moral code as 
 being representative of their own ideas about right and 
 wrong, nor is it necessarily desirable that they should. 
 
 With regard to the question of fact, it is not necessary 
 to enlarge here upon the complete contempt and disdain 
 for the moral standards of our parents, which animates 
 the existing generation, although those standards still 
 receive acceptance and endorsement as representative of 
 the official morality of the civilized world. Volumes have 
 been written on the " revolt from convention " of the 
 younger generation, and the conflict between the rigid 
 ideas of the parent and the comparative libertinage of the 
 children, is the stock theme of the modem realist novel. 
 
 It is true indeed that every generation embodies to some 
 extent a revolt and reaction from the ideals of its pre- 
 decessor, which provoke the querulous, " I don't know what 
 the world's coming to ! " on the part of the aged, who see 
 their standards disregarded. Morals in all ages have 
 presented the appearance of becoming at once looser and 
 more complicated to those who insist on regarding them as 
 static, and as a consequence we find the old in every age 
 deploring each departure from the rigidity of their own 
 standard as a subversive lapse into immorality. " When 
 I was young, Mr. Lydgate," says old Mrs. Farebrother in 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 149 
 
 " Middlemarch/' " there never was any question about right 
 and wrong. We knew our Catechism, and that was enough : 
 we learned our creed and our duty. Every respectable 
 Church person had the same opinions. But now, if you 
 speak out of the Prayer Book itself, you are liable to be 
 contradicted." Mrs. Farebrother might well have been 
 speaking in the twentieth century : as a fact, she was 
 speaking in the reign of King George IV. It is probably 
 true that for this reason each generation seems to itself 
 to have moved further in the way of reaction from the 
 morals of its fathers than is in fact the case. 
 
 Admitting that these considerations may bias our 
 judgment, we may nevertheless assert, with something 
 amounting to conviction, that there is a special difference 
 in moral standards and values between the present genera- 
 tion and those that have gone before, which is too acute 
 to be accounted for merely by the normal swing of the 
 moral pendulum. 
 
 The crust of morality remains the same, but the spirit 
 has changed. 
 
 If this is indeed the case the question arises, how far it 
 is desirable that the nominal code of society should be 
 observed, seeing that in fact it is not observed ; or, in 
 other words, how far is the existing neglect of the morality 
 of our elders a regrettable development. It is possible to 
 consider the question both generally in regard to Professor 
 Muirhead's doctrine that the State morality ought to be 
 observed because it is the State's, and more particularly 
 with regard to the morality of the over-blown, impulse- 
 thwarting State of the modern world. 
 
 The State's Interest in the Maintenance oj Morality 
 
 (i) With regard to the general question, it should be noted 
 that the Hegelian notion of morality as developed by 
 Professor Muirhead and described in Chapter II, involves 
 the duty of obedience to the existing moral notions, whether 
 embodied vaguely in what is known as public opinion, or 
 more concretely in the system of State laws and institutions, 
 on the ground that they represent the consensus of the 
 moral instincts of the citizens. This standard of public 
 opinion, this system of laws and institutions form together 
 the highest expression of the morality of the time : in 
 
150 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 them the individual finds " the objective side of the organic 
 system of impulses and desires that constitute his inward 
 nature." The system of laws and institutions, which are 
 the repositories of the moral standard, comes to the 
 individual "as a species of objectified conscience. It 
 supplies him with an objective expression of the chief 
 content of the ideal which he himself, as sharing the 
 intelligence and conscience embodied in these forms, is 
 called upon to make actual." Thus it presents him with a 
 standard whereby to correct his own instinctive moral 
 judgments, and to which he should endeavour to make his 
 personal conduct and notions of morality approximate. 
 The moral order applies somewhat differently to each, 
 owing to the differences of station and duties that exist 
 for different individuals ; but in accordance with these 
 differences of station, the moral duties and conduct of 
 each individual should be set in relation to the general 
 standard. 
 
 Stripping this doctrine of the somewhat difficult Hegelian 
 language in which it is enshrined, we may assert that, on 
 this view, the laws and institutions of the State, together 
 with the public opinion which they mould, may be re- 
 garded as setting the standard of morality which each 
 individual should endeavour to observe, and that he will 
 only stray outside them at the risk of betraying the highest 
 which is in him. They are in fact the reflection of the 
 highest which is in him. 
 
 Need for Changes in the Moral Code 
 
 This doctrine appears to me to cut at the basis of the 
 possibility of moral progress. Progress in morals has always 
 arisen from the insight and penetration of a few individuals. 
 These individuals have invariably thrown out a rigorous 
 challenge to the accepted morality of the State, which 
 has done its best to suppress them. Every step in morals 
 is in fact made by challenging the validity of the existing 
 conception of perfect propriety of conduct. Heterodoxy in 
 morals is regarded as scoundrelism, and what is worse, 
 propagandist scoundrelism, which if successful will under- 
 mine society and bring us back to barbarism after a period 
 of decadence like that which caused the ruin of Babylon, 
 of Nineveh and of Rome. 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 151 
 
 Thus where the insight and vision of religious teachers 
 and reformers have disclosed to men new conceptions of 
 right and wrong and good and bad, every effort is made to 
 arrest the development of the new standards by using the 
 force of the State to suppress all departures from those 
 habits of the majority which it pretentiously calls its morals. 
 
 Every moral reformer from Socrates to Christ, and from 
 Christ to Tolstoy, has been ruthlessly persecuted by the 
 State, and by the majority, for refusing to acknowledge the 
 accepted code of his age, and insisting that it must be 
 changed in accordance with the higher conception of 
 morality which he had to announce to the world. Yet it 
 is to such as these that moral progress is due. The fact 
 that such men are usually posthumously ennobled, the 
 world tumbling over itself to do them honour after it has 
 murdered them, shows not that improvements in moralit}^ 
 are welcomed and accepted, but that they sometimes 
 succeed by sheer force of merit in getting themselves 
 established at least in name, in spite of the inevitable 
 opposition both of the State and of public opinion. 
 
 If the Hegelian theory were correct the opposition of 
 the State in such cases would be justified on the ground 
 that it was never possible for individuals rightly to refuse 
 to make their conduct and moral judgments approximate 
 to the laws and institutions of their time, or rightly to ques- 
 tion instead of respecting that " objectified conscience " of 
 the citizens, which is the outward expression of all that is 
 highest in their inward selves. 
 
 It is because of this opposition that moral progress is 
 always slow, slower than the changes in conditions and 
 circumstances which imperatively demand it. It is slow 
 because the proletariat, who, after strenuously resisting 
 any attempt at change, becomes the self-appointed 
 guardian and preserver of each innovation, so soon 
 as it gets itself accepted, changes slowly if at all. 
 There is probably little difference between the crowds 
 of ancient Babylon and modern Shoreditch : hence their 
 peculiar monopoly, the observance and retention of existing 
 moral traditions, varies but little and slowly. It is possible 
 in a few sentences to sum up nearly all the modifications of 
 morality that have occurred during the whole of recorded 
 history. A modern vice, such as mendacity, was accounted 
 
152 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 a virtue by the greatest nation of antiquity. A modern 
 virtue, that of forgiving one's enemies, was accounted a 
 vice proper to slaves. Drunkenness, stigmatized by 
 ancients and moderns alike, became the mark of gentle 
 breeding in the intermediate period. There are a few 
 changes such as these, and what besides ? 
 
 The ordinary man does not contribute anything to 
 morality. He accepts his moral standards ready-made, 
 just as he accepts his boots, his bacon or any other com- 
 modity. He accepts them because by acceptance he saves 
 time and trouble. " The professional thinker," says Mr. 
 Shaw, " may on occasion make his own morality and 
 philosophy, as the cobbler may make his own boots : but 
 the ordinary man of business must buy at the shop so 
 to speak, and put up with what he finds on sale there, 
 because he can neither make a morality for himself nor 
 do without one." 
 
 And it is because the change and progress in morality 
 that comes from the vision or thought of exceptional 
 individuals, involves the trouble and labour of readjusting 
 one's moral values, that it is always violently opposed by 
 the conservative instinct of society as a whole, which 
 prefers to be able to count on the expected thing being 
 done to taking the trouble to inquire whether the right 
 thing is being done. 
 
 As a result the needs and conditions of society change 
 more rapidly than the moral ideas of society ; the divorce 
 laws continue to enshrine the official morality of a com- 
 munity which has long since passed beyond them ; and 
 most men continue to accept outworn moral codes, like 
 the Ten Commandments, which are ridiculously out of 
 touch with the circumstances of their time, instead of 
 putting up with the trouble and bother which would be 
 caused by taking a Christ seriously. 
 
 Thus it comes about that the system of laws and institu- 
 tions, which are at once the prop and the mirror of public 
 opinion, instead of being the expression of our highest 
 selves to which we should endeavour to make our conduct 
 approximate, are more truly the petrified husk of the living 
 morality of a past age. Instead of making society better 
 than its best unit, they make it worse than its average 
 unit, because they are never up-to-date. 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 153 
 
 The truth is that a community, instead of reverently- 
 respecting the institutions and ethics it inherits from its 
 parents as the embodiments of the wisdom of the ages, 
 requires to change its morals as often as it changes its 
 clothes, changes of morals being demanded by changes of 
 circumstances, almost as frequently as changes of clothing 
 are required by the changing seasons. 
 
 Experiments in morality should therefore be welcomed 
 on the ground that they may point the way to a newer 
 and better conception of the good life, instead of being 
 reprobated because they set aside the current system of the 
 time. It pays in fact to let such experiments take their 
 course, although it is impossible to tell at the outset whether 
 they will involve retrogression or progress. It pays because 
 there is always the chance that they may involve progress, 
 and it is only through such experiments, which are at the 
 same time necessarily departures, that progress can come. 
 
 We may assert generally, then, that the Hegelian doctrine 
 of Social Ethics is wrong, inasmuch as by insisting on 
 respect for existing institutions and moral standards as 
 such, it fails to make adequate provision for change and 
 progress in the morality of society. It is only where the 
 existing code is challenged that progress becomes possible. 
 
 Morality as an Ally oj the Existing Order 
 
 (ii) How does this conclusion affect our consideration of 
 the special case of the over-blown, modern society ? 
 
 It will be remembered that our discussion of Hegelian 
 Ethics arose out of the statement made above (p. 149), 
 that one of the results of the suppression of the political 
 impulse in the modern over-blown society is that Ethics 
 itself falls into disrepute. 
 
 This result arises in the following way. 
 
 Although the majority of individuals in a modern society 
 continue to identify morality with the observance of the 
 currently accepted code, embodying the tradition of the 
 community and supported by the authority of the State, 
 there has arisen in modern societies a class who fiercely 
 denounce the whole of the existing system of society, 
 including the code of Ethics which it maintains. 
 
 Finding that society offers no scope for their political 
 
154 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 impulse, is too big for their guidance and control, and sets 
 no store by their capacity, they roundly demand the 
 abolition of the whole structure of society as it exists at 
 present, and stigmatize its codes of Ethics as a device on 
 the part of the ruling classes for the maintenance of the 
 status quo. 
 
 Reference has already been made in Chapter II to the 
 arguments by which this school of thinkers, which is not 
 by any means confined to extreme political theorists or to 
 industrial revolutionaries, seeks to discredit what it calls 
 State-manufactured Ethics. If the State is properly to 
 be regarded, as Marx regarded it, as "an organization of 
 the exploiting class for the maintenance of the conditions 
 of exploitation that suited it," it is sufficiently clear that 
 the existing code of Ethics, which is the best guarantee of 
 the maintenance of law and order, and so of the power and 
 security of the State, is not only conservatively obstructive 
 to moral experiment and progress, but definitely immoral 
 in the sense that it helps to maintain an immoral system of 
 society. Marx's indictment of the State has been enthusi- 
 astically developed by Syndicalists and Anarchists, who, in 
 demanding its abolition, contemplate with equanimity the 
 ruin of the system of bourgeois Ethics which maintains it 
 and which it helps to maintain. 
 
 Without entering into a discussion of the merits of these 
 extreme political views, it is important to notice their 
 adverse reaction upon current morality, and to point out 
 that it is from the over-developed and over-complex nature 
 of the modern State that they derive their strength. 
 
 Socialist Attack on State Morality 
 
 It is impossible to avoid observing how persistently 
 modern Socialist literature, which is in the main thoroughly 
 antagonistic to the State, bases its indictment of existing 
 States upon the charge that they embody and express what 
 Mr. Russell calls the possessive as opposed to the creative 
 impulses. To an extreme Socialist of the type we are 
 considering the State represents a capitalist institution, 
 designed and controlled by a number of rich men, for the 
 purpose of guaranteeing to them the fruits of their enter- 
 prise. In the strength and size of the modern State the 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 155 
 
 possessive impulse of the rich man finds a perfect instrument 
 for guaranteeing its own permanent satisfaction ; the 
 strength of the State in the shape of the police force 
 providing immunity from the possessive impulses of others 
 which he terms predatory, while its size throws a cloak of 
 concealment over the control which he exercises in the 
 background, and renders the work of purification and reform 
 doubly difficult owing to the complexity of the machine. 
 
 The Socialist who takes this view of the modern State, 
 whether from the urge of thwarted possessive impulses of 
 his own, or from the prompting of that form of the creative 
 impulse which I have termed the political impulse, is not 
 likely to view with respect the code of Ethics which it 
 sanctions and which supports it. He will see in this code a 
 device for putting the poor man in prison for stealing on a 
 small scale, and for conferring a knighthood on the big 
 business man for stealing on a large scale. He will observe 
 that not only Ethics but religion is deliberately used by 
 the rich for the purpose of keeping the poor in their place, 
 and deliberately flouted by the rich for the purpose of 
 maintaining themselves in theirs. 
 
 Mr. Shaw points out that, just as the distribution of coal 
 and blankets is undertaken by the rich in times of acute 
 want with the object of taking the revolutionary edge off 
 poverty, so doctrines of hope, cheerfulness, submission, and 
 meekness, the leading doctrines of Christian Ethics, are incul- 
 cated by the rich with the object of making the poor their 
 more willing, obedient and economical servants, the whole 
 process being rounded off by the bribe of unlimited and 
 inexpensive happiness in the next world, as a reward for 
 doing one's duty in one's proper station of life in this. 
 
 This attitude to Christian Ethics is tellingly brought out 
 in his play, " Major Barbara," where the rich capitalist, 
 Undershaft, gives the game away by disclosing the value to 
 his class of religion and ethical propaganda among the 
 poor, which he rates so highly that he regards it as worth 
 his while to buy and maintain religious organizations such 
 as the Salvation Army simply in order that they may 
 continue the good work. 
 
 The following quotation serves to illustrate the point : 
 
 " Cusins. Do I understand you to imply that you can 
 buy Barbara ? 
 
156 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 Undershaft. No, but I can buy the Salvation Army. 
 
 C. Quite impossible. 
 
 U. You shall see. All religious organizations exist by 
 selling themselves to the rich. 
 
 C. Not the Army ; that is the Church of the poor. 
 
 U. All the more reason for buying it. 
 
 C. I don't think you quite know what the Army does 
 for the poor. 
 
 U, Oh, yes, I do. It draws their teeth : that is enough 
 for me — as a man of business 
 
 C. Nonsense ! It makes them sober 
 
 U. I prefer sober workmen. The profits are larger. 
 
 C. —honest 
 
 U. Honest workmen are the most economical 
 
 C. Attached to their homes 
 
 U. So much the better. They will put up with anything 
 sooner than change their job. 
 
 C. —happy 
 
 U. An invaluable safeguard against revolution. 
 
 C. — unselfish • 
 
 U. Indifferent to their own interests, which suits me 
 exactly. 
 
 C. — with their thoughts on heavenly things 
 
 U. And not on Trade Unionism or Socialism. Excellent ! 
 
 C. You reaUy are an infernal old rascal." 
 
 That passages of this kind are not merely the exaggerated 
 fantasies of a dramatist, but do in fact rest upon a historical 
 foimdation, there is no lack of evidence. From the days 
 of the Industrial Revolution onwards efforts on the part 
 of the working-classes to improve th«ir condition have 
 frequently been opposed on ethical grounds. The guardians 
 of the current code of morals have sought to show that a 
 menace to the morality of society was involved in the 
 material betterment of the lowest classes, and have invoked 
 the system of ethical values approved by the State and 
 Church to discredit attempts to secure higher wages. 
 
 One instance quoted from J. L. and B. Hammond's book, 
 " The Skilled Labourer, 1760-1832," must suffice to 
 illustrate a tendency which goes far to discredit the ethics 
 of State and Church with advanced political thinkers. 
 Early in the nineteenth century the framework knitters 
 did " a little bit of good for themselves," to the extent of 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 157 
 
 earning 14s. or 15s. a week for a twelve to thirteen-hour day. 
 A clergjnnan at Southwell expressed his indignation at this 
 incident as follows : " Abundance thus rapidly acquired 
 by those who were ignorant of its proper application has 
 hastened the progress of luxury and licentiousness, and the 
 lower orders were almost universally corrupted by a profu- 
 sion and depravity scarcely to be credited by those who 
 are strangers to our district." 
 
 Comment on this extract is superfluous ; but it is not to 
 be expected that those who, on whatever ground, seek to 
 change or to modify the existing system of society will feel 
 any respect for a code of Ethics which, as they believe, is 
 used to thwart their efforts and to maintain the status quo. 
 Those who repudiate the State on moral grounds are not 
 likely to accept the State's morals : and the current 
 morality of the community instead of being the objectified 
 expression of what is highest in the conscience of individuals, 
 comes to be regarded as an affront to their moral sense, and 
 an impediment to the realization of their ideals. 
 
 The fact that a current system of Ethics ceases to secure 
 respect would not in itself be a matter for regret, having 
 regard to that need, referred to above, for a community to 
 change its moral values in accordance with changes in its 
 needs and circumstances. What is peculiar in the position 
 of Ethics in the vast political organizations of the modern 
 world, is that those whose superior vision might have 
 prompted them to offer to the world a substitute for the 
 morals the community has outgrown, are rendered impotent 
 by the size of the State, and have no outlet through which 
 to make their vision actual. 
 
 In the modern world the proper outlet for the ethical 
 reformer is through politics ; but where the political 
 impulse is thwarted, a feeling of impotent despair ensues. 
 The man whose vision and insight might have been of 
 service to the world abandons the task of influencing the 
 affairs of men in disgust and turns to the realization of 
 some mystical Nirvana for his soul, instead of endeavouring 
 to achieve a practical Utopia for his fellows. The aim of 
 such men is to forget their impotence and shame by 
 believing that the world, like themselves, is an illusion, 
 and that tnie happiness is to be sought in the life 
 within instead of in the world without. " We do not 
 
158 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 exist, we do not exist/' cry the characters in Tchekov's 
 plays. 
 
 But it is not in some mystical idealism that pronounces the 
 world an illusion that true happiness and freedom are to 
 be found, but in the liberation of the political impulse, 
 and the recovery by men of the feeling that they count 
 in the affairs of the community. Men must be made to 
 feel again that they matter, and then they will cease to 
 bother their heads about ethics, happiness, art, or any 
 other substitute for the life of outward effort and achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 Summary of Preceding Argument 
 
 It will be desirable to summarize in a few words the 
 argument of this section. 
 
 1. One of the most important of the impulses which are 
 at present unduly suppressed, and for whose expression it 
 is desirable to find an outlet, is the political impulse. 
 
 This may fiurther be described as the impulse which 
 prompts us to take an interest in the welfare of others and 
 to improve their condition. Politics is the natural sphere 
 for the expression of this impulse, since politics alone takes 
 account of the good of the community as a whole. 
 
 2. The modem State has grown so large and its machinery 
 of Government so complex, that the individual finds himself 
 helpless to control its workings or to influence its decisions. 
 
 His political impulse is thwarted by the impersonality 
 of the State, and the feeling that he counts in the affairs 
 of society is lost. 
 
 3. This produces a devitalizing effect upon society as a 
 whole, while the individual turns for a substitute for 
 political activity to social work, to cynicism, to satire, or 
 to the production of beauty for its own sake. His political 
 impulse is driven underground and his brains are lost to 
 the State. 
 
 4. Incidentally this produces an adverse effect upon art, 
 the production of great literature tending to elude those who 
 aim only at producing great literature. 
 
 5. Equally adverse is the effect upon the currently 
 observed code of Ethics. 
 
 {a) In this connection, however, it is not necessarily 
 desirable, as the Hegelian philosophers would have us 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 159 
 
 believe, that the current standard should always be 
 respected as the outward expression of what is highest in 
 the individual. Such a theory would lead to the suppression 
 of all departures from the existing code on the part of the 
 individual, whereas such departures are to be welcomed as 
 bringing with them the possibility of ethical advance. 
 They are desirable as substituting a new code of Ethics for 
 the existing one, which has usually been outgrown long 
 before it is changed. 
 
 (b) In the modern impersonal State, however, the existing 
 code falls into disrepute and is suspected, not by those 
 who have a higher vision to offer to the world, but by those 
 who see in it a device for maintaining institutions which 
 they regard as bad. Whilst they are impotent, owing to 
 the size of the State, to realize their own ideals, they are 
 yet sufficiently powerful to induce others to neglect and to 
 despise a code which they refuse to observe themselves. 
 
 If the political impulse could find expression, men would 
 be able to create new institutions to replace those which 
 have been outgrown, and through them to create a respect 
 for the newer conception of morality which these institu- 
 tions would embody. 
 
 The Creative Impulse in Work 
 
 IV. We have still to consider the bearing of politics 
 upon the creative impulse as it is expressed, or rather not 
 expressed, in the sphere of work. 
 
 Much has recently been written on the psychology of 
 work. As opposed to the older school of thinkers, who 
 tended to regard the normal man as an invariably lazy 
 animal only to be spurred to effort by the prospect of 
 monetary gain if he worked, and of starvation if he did not, 
 there is a growing body of opinion in favour of regarding 
 man as a being who is only able to attain happiness through 
 continual effort, and who is bored to the point of suicide 
 by lack of employment. Psychology of the first kind is used 
 as the basis for the belief in the incentive provided by 
 private enterprise and competition, as the only method of 
 getting the work of the world done, while the second view of 
 human nature is adopted by .Socialists, Anarchists, and others 
 who believe that the incentive of social service and the innate 
 
i6o COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 pleasantness of work provide a sufficient guarantee that 
 people will perform the work that is necessary. These 
 latter thinkers insist that the erroneous impression that 
 man is lazy, is created not because he has any fundamental 
 aversion to work, but because he gets too much of it, 
 because it is too monotonous, and because it is performed 
 under wrong conditions. A normal child has a natural 
 desire for chocolate cakes : feed him with chocolate cakes 
 at every meal and his innate liking will give place to violent 
 aversion, sufficient to lead superficial critics to believe 
 that a child is by nature a simple feeder. 
 
 We find Prince Kropotkin writing in a similar vein about 
 work : " Overwork is repulsive to human nature, not 
 work. . . . Work, laboiu: is a psychological necessity, a 
 necessity of spending accumulated bodUy energy, a neces- 
 sity which is health and life itself. If so many branches of 
 useful work are done involuntarily now, it is merely because 
 they mean overwork, or they are improperly organized." 
 Kropotkin used this view of human psychology to justify 
 his argument that in an Anarchist State the necessary work 
 of the world would be willingly performed, on a basis of 
 four hours a day all round, the unpleasant work being 
 divided, or paid more highly either in cash or in public 
 esteem. 
 
 As to whether this is so or not I do not pretend to hazard 
 an opinion ; but there is, I think, no doubt that to most men 
 work is a necessity of life, which could in many cases 
 be transformed into an outlet for what I have described 
 in the last chapter as the creative impulse. A cursory 
 inspection of the lives of people who are sufficiently well 
 off to be emancipated from the business of earning a living, 
 provides numberless examples of the necessity under 
 which they find themselves of having to invent work which 
 they do for nothing as a substitute for the work which other 
 people are paid to do. Persons who are economically 
 independent either work themselves to the bone over a 
 hobb}/ such as gardening or poultry farming, or adopt pur- 
 suits such as exploration or rock climbing, which will re- 
 quire them to do the most disagreeable and dangerous 
 things in order to give their lives a purpose and themselves 
 an appetite for dinner. 
 
 Human restlessness must find an outlet, and the one 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY i6i 
 
 which affords the most permanent satisfaction is that 
 which issues in creative work. Most men are in fact so 
 constituted that they find happiness and freedom not in 
 giving rein to their passions and gratifying the whim of 
 the moment, but in losing themselves in something out- 
 side themselves and greater than themselves, which demands 
 unsparing effort and subordination of self to a dominant 
 purpose. 
 
 This dominant purpose could be, but is not at present 
 found in work. It is a commonplace, upon which it is 
 unnecessary to enlarge, that the industrial revolution has 
 substituted for creative work a series of highly specialized 
 processes the performance of which requires the monotonous 
 repetition of certain actions, varying so little that they 
 become mechanical. In a factory, as in a business house, 
 there is no sense either of completion or of achievement. 
 One man does not begin one thing, continue it, mature it, 
 and see it through to the end. He plays a small part, 
 unendingly the same, in the production of an infinite 
 number of the same kind of things, of none of which does 
 he see either the beginning or the end. 
 
 To a certain extent the demands of large-scale production, 
 coupled with the increasing use of machinery, have rendered 
 this result inevitable ; nor is it possible to restore the con- 
 ditions of the Middle Ages under which the craftsman, 
 sitting in his own workshop, performed all the different 
 processes necessary for the manufacture of the finished 
 article. But it may still be possible to restore something 
 of the creative element to work, by giving to the workman 
 the control of the condition under which he works. 
 
 To a fortunate few, to artists and to some writers, there 
 still remains this sense of freedom in work, which enables 
 them to invest their labours with something of the joy of 
 creation. They work as they like, how they like, and where 
 they like. They may, within limits, take their work away 
 to some beautiful place and perform it when the spirit 
 moves them. They may, if they are great enough to be 
 able to dictate to the public taste instead of servile enough 
 to pander to it, put of themselves what they will into their 
 work, instead of what they think the public will like. They 
 are not tied to any definite place, nor are they compelled 
 to work within fixed hours : in short they control their 
 
 II 
 
i62 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 conditions. Work is for such as these, and can be made 
 for more, a dominant purpose in life, providing expression 
 for man's eternal impulse to create what is new, and through 
 creation to impose his personality upon the outside world, 
 instead of being, as it is now, a slab of blank hours com- 
 pulsorily subtracted by economic necessity from the time 
 during which a man may live, an interruption in the 
 business of living only to be rendered tolerable by a self- 
 obliteration on the part of the individual, who must aim 
 to model himself in the likeness of the machine which it is 
 his business to serve. 
 
 How the conditions of work can be changed so that it may 
 express instead of thwarting impulse is a problem of indus- 
 try. How industry can be modified so that more provision 
 can be made for the needs of those who work in it, is 
 principally a problem of politics. 
 
 But it is the business of Ethics to point out that the needs 
 of the good life as we have tried to describe it, and in 
 particular the need to provide fuller expression for the life 
 of impulse, urgently require such a change. The needs 
 of the good life require such a change in order that the 
 devitalizing process which is directly due to the overgrowth 
 of the modern State, may be arrested in society by the 
 liberation of the political impulse, and in industry by the 
 liberation of the creative impulse. 
 
 Summary of Relation between Ethics and Politics 
 
 In the preceding pages I have considered the relations 
 between Politics and Ethics from four points of view. 
 
 I dealt first with the function of politics in providing the 
 necessary background of order and security, without which 
 the ethical life, however we conceive of it, is impossible. 
 This function would appear to be adequately performed 
 by the State to-day. 
 
 In the second place I assumed the validity of that inter- 
 pretation of at least some part of the good life, which I 
 endeavoured in the last chapter to identify with the greater 
 liberation of the creative impulses, and sought to establish 
 the necessary function of politics in so moulding our institu- 
 tions, that they provided greater scope for the expression 
 of impulses than is on the whole the case at present. 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 163 
 
 In the third place I treated of the specifically political 
 impulse, of its importance in the good life, and of the 
 desirability of making greater provision for its expression 
 in the political and social structm^e, which is at present 
 too large and too complex to afford scope for the impulses 
 and aspirations of the individual. 
 
 In the fourth place I considered the important outlet 
 for the creative impulse which is to be found in work, and 
 endeavoured to establish the right which Ethics has to 
 demand from Politics that it should so mould the conditions 
 of work, that they provide adequate expression, so far as is 
 compatible with the needs of machine production, for the 
 requirements of the individual. 
 
 In all these ways empirical Ethics seems to me to be 
 intimately connected with Politics. When taking to pieces 
 the machinery of the individual to find out what was in 
 fact desired, we came to the conclusion that one of the 
 most important things which is desired, but not as a rule 
 obtained, is the liberation of the instinctive or impulsive 
 side of human personality. But it is only through politics 
 that such a liberation of impulse, if it is in fact desirable, can 
 be achieved ; for the conditions of our lives, which make 
 for the expression or suppression of impulse, are largely 
 determined by the nature of the community in which we 
 live. If it is a problem of Ethics to determine the place 
 and importance of impulse, it is a problem of Politics to 
 give it scope. 
 
 I hope I shall not be thought to be trespassing too far 
 beyond the preserves of Ethics if I consider, in the next 
 few pages, whether pohtical theory has as yet made any 
 overtures to impulse, and how far such overtures take the 
 form of proposals which would provide for the need which 
 has hitherto been so neglected. 
 
 § 3. New Conception of State required by 
 Theory of Impulse 
 
 I have tried to show in the preceding pages that the 
 suppression both of the political impulse and of the creative 
 impulse in work arises inevitably from the size and com- 
 plexity of the modern State. It is not because of any 
 special wickedness on the part of the Government, it is 
 not because the stage of democracy which has been reached 
 
i64 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 is incomplete or is already too advanced, that the impulses 
 of the individual fail to find expression in public and indus- 
 trial life, but because the State has grown so large that what 
 actually happens is not so much due to the will of any 
 individual, or group of individuals, as to the interplay of 
 forces which nullify the attempts of human will to express 
 itself in controlling them. Treated then from the 
 standpoint of the particular ethical theory from which we 
 have approached politics, the function of politics may be 
 regarded as the provision of means for the expression of 
 human will and impulse, and the problem of politics the 
 problem of how to make actual the will and impulses of 
 the community. 
 
 Hitherto the view has usually been taken in political theory 
 that only in the State is the will of the community made 
 actual, and that it is in the State, and in no other form of 
 organization but the State, that this will can find expression. 
 
 Reasons for this view, which finds its chief supporters in 
 Germany where it was fully developed by Hegel, were 
 briefly given in Chapter IV as an illustration of the methods 
 of a priori reasoning. For our present purpose it is suffi- 
 cient to note that in order that the theory of the State as 
 representative of the will of the community can be plausibly 
 maintained, a philosophic fiction called the " General Will " 
 is invented in order that the State might exercise the func- 
 tion of expressing it. The General Will is held to be some- 
 thing different from the aggregate of aU the different wills 
 of all the individuals in a community. This aggregate is 
 known as the " Will of All " and can clearly reside only in 
 the community. The General WiU, on the other hand, is 
 something new, which is brought into being by the fact of 
 the wills of a number of individuals who have a common 
 purpose coming together, and is also something over and 
 above the sum of those wills. It resides therefore not in 
 the community, but in something else which is also 
 brought into being by the fact of a number of individuals 
 coming together into society, and which, like the General 
 Wni, is something over and above the sum of those indi- 
 viduals : this something else is the State. 
 
 The State has come therefore to be regarded as necessarily 
 expressing the wills and impulses, not so much of the aggre- 
 gate of all the individuals in it, but of the General Will, 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 165 
 
 which is created by the fact of their being such an aggregate, 
 and is in some mystical way more really representative 
 than a sum of unanimous wills. Also the General Will is 
 thought of as being always right. 
 
 To the body called the State, therefore, there has usually 
 been attributed some unique and special function, a function 
 which could be performed by no other body, the function 
 of necessarily representing, whatever its character, the 
 wills of the individuals in it, and of being the sole repository 
 of sovereignty and power in the community. 
 
 I have given elsewhere at some length reasons for rejecting 
 this view of the nature of the State, ^ into which it is not 
 necessary to enter here. 
 
 It is necessary, however, to point out that if the diagnosis 
 of the reasons for the frustration of the political impulse, 
 given above, is in any measure correct, this theory of the 
 nature of the State will not hold. It is not true that the 
 State from its very nature necessarily represents the wills of 
 everybody in it, — although some States may in fact do so — 
 if other States, namely those modern States which both in 
 size and complexity have outgrown the possibility of 
 adequate control, stifle the natural outlet of the political 
 impulse to a marked extent. We may also point out that 
 if the State, whenever it acts, must necessarily take action 
 which expresses the will of the community, the question 
 naturally arises whence this controversy about the limits 
 and scope of State action ? 
 
 The conception of the State to which we have referred 
 is in short another of the products of a priori reasoning, 
 which lamentably fails to fit the facts about States as we 
 know them. For these, and a variety of other reasons, there 
 is a growing tendency among political thinkers to regard 
 the State merely as a rather special piece of machinery, 
 the political machinery of Government, and not as a unique 
 form of human organization. This view immediately 
 suggests the reflection that if the State is only a piece of 
 machinery, other kinds of machinery might conceivably 
 be designed, which would work at least as efficiently and 
 would provide greater scope for the direct representation 
 of individual will and the direct expression of individual 
 
 ^ " Essays in Common-Sense Philosophy," Chapter VI. 
 
i66 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 impulse. It is clear that if we conceive the main obstacle 
 to the expression of the political impulse to lie in the size 
 of the State, a process of devolution and decentralization, 
 with federation of the decentralized units, will be a move 
 in the right direction ; for where the unit of Government 
 is smaU, as in the case of the Greek City State, it is easier 
 for the individual to feel that his wiU and impulses can find 
 expression. 
 
 Assuming that there is no special magic about the piece 
 of machinery called the State, such that no other form of 
 organization could carry out the same fimctions, the 
 problem with which political thinkers are increasingly 
 engaged, is how to devise a machinery which will perform 
 the same functions as the national State in each of a number 
 of small units, wherein the sense of political self-respect 
 may be restored to the individual. 
 
 Proposals of Guild Socialists 
 
 With this end in view a number of interesting experi- 
 ments have recently been made in political theory, which, 
 whether or no they would prove practicable, would at 
 least assist in the all-important work of liberating the 
 political impulse, and restoring the sense of political signifi- 
 cance. One of these experiments, the experiment known 
 as Guild Socialism, started life as an industrial theory, 
 concerned primarily with problems of the organization 
 of industry, and has only recently, in the hands of writers 
 Hke G. D. H. Cole, entered the field of political theory. 
 One of its aims, and indeed the aim which it originally 
 chiefly set before itself, was the restoration of the creative 
 impulse in work, and it will be therefore most convenient 
 for our purpose to examine briefly some of its proposals, 
 since in so doing we shall be dealing with a theory which, if 
 practicable, would achieve the double object which we 
 formulated for politics earlier in the chapter, the object 
 both of liberating the poHtical impulse and providing in 
 industry an outlet for the creative impulse. 
 
 In giving a brief outline of these proposals, our object 
 will be not so much to consider whether they are practicable 
 or not, a question which belongs more properly to the 
 domain of political and economic theory, but, bearing in 
 mind the ethical standpoint from which we are approaching 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 167 
 
 the subject, to judge whether, supposing that they were 
 practicable, they would or would not achieve that liberation 
 of impulse which we believe to be a desirable end. 
 
 The proposals of the Guild Socialist occupy a kind of 
 intermediate position between those of the State Socialist 
 and the Syndicalist. The former considers the individual 
 only in his capacity as consumer, the latter in his capacity 
 of producer. " Both are open to the same criticism," says 
 the Guild Socialist. " You cannot reconcile two points of 
 view merely by denying one of them." Now the State has 
 usually been considered to be the chief organization of 
 the consumer, as being representative of all those people 
 who live in a particular territorial area. It has also been 
 regarded as the repository of sovereignty in the community. 
 But if the individual in his aspect of producer is not to be 
 subordinated to the individual in his aspect of consumer, it 
 is clear that this sovereignty must be divided ; and it will 
 be divided between the State on the one hand, and the 
 Guild Congress, a representative body of all the producers 
 organized in their different Guilds, on the other. 
 
 The Guild Socialist therefore encourages an elaborate 
 system of checks and balances to preserve and maintain 
 this division of sovereignty ; and, what is of the greatest 
 significance for our own particular angle of approach, he 
 encourages them not only in the interests of efficiency, but 
 of individual freedom. "If," says Mr. Cole, " the individual 
 is not to be a mere pigmy in the hands of a colossal social 
 organism, there must be such a division of social powers, 
 as will preserve individual freedom, by balancing one social 
 organism so nicely against another, that the individual 
 may still count. If the individual is not to be merely an 
 insignificant part of a society in which his personality 
 is absorbed, society must be divided in such a way as to 
 make the individual the link between its autonomous but 
 interdependent parts." 
 
 In advocating this principle of a division of sovereignty 
 as an indispensable requisite for the restoration to the 
 individual of a sense of freedom and independence, the 
 Guild Socialist bases his claim upon a somewhat peculiar 
 view of the nature of the State. In contradistinction to 
 the Hegelian theory briefly outlined above, he regards the 
 State simply as one among a number of associations for 
 
i68 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 common purposes, primarily territorial in character. It 
 is further defined as " the political machinery of Govern- 
 ment in the community " (Mr. Cole, " Self-Government 
 in Industry," Chapter V). 
 
 An important distinction is therefore made between three 
 separate entities which are frequently confused, the State, 
 Society, and the Community. It is clear that there are 
 many other forms of associations of individuals for common 
 purposes besides the State. There are, for instance. Labour 
 bodies, churches, colleges, business companies, and all 
 manner of voluntary associations of individuals for ethical 
 and economic purposes, which instead of being composed, 
 as the State is composed, of all the individuals living in a 
 particular territorial unit, cut right across the boundaries 
 of the nation State, sometimes falling entirely within them, 
 sometimes including members of a number of different 
 States. The whole complex of these associations, in- 
 cluding the particular association called the State, is termed 
 Society. The State is the governmental machine in Society : 
 and that sum total of all individuals in a particular 
 territorial unit, which stands behind and maintains both 
 the State and Society, is called the Community. The 
 Community is the only repository of what philosophers 
 have called the General Will, and this General Will is not 
 therefore vested either in the State or in any other of the 
 associations which go to form Society ; for it is only 
 an association which represents all the purposes, which man- 
 kind has in common, which can properly be regarded as 
 expressing and representing the General Will, and no one 
 association of this character exists, or could exist. 
 
 What then is the nature of the particular kind of common 
 purposes which the organization called the State exists to 
 represent ? The answer to this question can be most 
 clearly discerned if we consider the functions and character 
 of a local authority or municipality, which is in miniature 
 an organization of essentially the same character as the 
 State. 
 
 A municipality is an organization representative of all 
 the people resident in a given locality, which is marked out 
 by its nature for the expression of those particular purposes 
 which they have in common by reason of the fact that they 
 live in the same neighbourhood. It is therefore equally 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 169 
 
 representative of all the persons in the locality by virtue 
 of the fact that they are neighbours ; and it represents 
 those purposes which they have in common in connection 
 with the provision and administration of public utilities 
 and amenities for that neighbourhood. Its business lies 
 therefore with public tramways and parks, with public 
 health and housing, with public lectures and entertain- 
 ments, with the pubHc supply of gas and water, and with 
 a variety of things which affect in an equal degree every one 
 in the locality, and it represents people in so far, and only 
 in so far, as they are interested in and affected by these 
 common things. It represents them, that is, not as Pro- 
 testants or Catholics, bakers or railwaymen, merchants or 
 labourers, but as dwellers together in the same neighbour- 
 hood. It is argued that the State is in essence an organiza- 
 tion of this kind ; primarily territorial in basis, it represents 
 people only in so far as they have interests and purposes in 
 common, in virtue of the fact that they dwell together 
 in the same territorial unit. It is not fitted to represent 
 them in so far as they have purposes in common, arising 
 from differences of creed or vocation, and does not in 
 point of fact do so. 
 
 Having defined and delimited the essential functions 
 which the State must perform, the Guild Socialist proceeds 
 to consider in what way it may best perform them, and, 
 bearing in mind the importance of restoring the sense of 
 political self-respect to the individual, which has been lost 
 through the over-development and centralization of the 
 modern State, goes in for a process of wholesale devolu- 
 tion. 
 
 In considering this view it must be remembered that 
 theories of this type have already worked out a scheme of 
 devolution on a similar scale in industry. The workers 
 are to be organized in Guilds which will control the con- 
 ditions under which work is done, and will be autonomous 
 in the sphere of production, just as the State is autonomous 
 in the political sphere. Factories will be controlled by 
 workshop committees and local Guilds elected by the 
 workers, and these workshop committees and local Guilds 
 will be represented on a National Guild body, which will 
 be a Federation of all the local Guilds engaged in the 
 production of a particvilar commodity such as cotton goods, 
 
170 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS * 
 
 or upon a particular kind of service, as for instance the 
 railways. By giving to the National Guilds complete 
 control of all matters appertaining to the conduct of indus- 
 try, it is hoped to restore to those actually engaged in indus- 
 try the sense of freedom and importance that comes from 
 the knowledge that they are working directly for the com- 
 munity under self-imposed conditions. 
 
 The various National Guilds will themselves be federated 
 in a Guild Congress, which will exercise in relation to 
 industry the same kind of authority and functions as that 
 which to-day is wielded by Parliament in the community 
 as a whole. 
 
 Recent developments of Guild Socialism have applied to 
 the machinery of the State a process of devolution similar 
 to that already worked out in industry. Just as the 
 structure of National Guilds in industry starting from the 
 bottom, bases itself upon the workshop committee in the 
 local factory, so the structure of the State is based upon 
 the municipal authority which is the governing body in 
 each of a number of local territorial units. 
 
 Starting with the notion of the State as a neighbourhood 
 association expressing a limited number of common pur- 
 poses, the Guild Socialist proceeds to ask what those 
 common purposes are in any particular territorial unit. 
 
 The purposes which dwellers in a particular region, 
 province or city, have in common in virtue of their " neigh- 
 bourhood " relation to each other may be divided into three 
 or four main groups. In pursuance of his principle of 
 functional organization, that is, the principle of committing 
 the management of certain things to persons who have 
 special knowledge and a special qualification for the work in 
 question, the Guild Socialist envisages the establishment of a 
 special local or regional committee to deal with each group 
 of purposes in each locality. In the introduction to the 1919 
 edition of " Self-Government in Industry," Mr. Cole 
 groups the various functions for the performance of which 
 local committees will be required on the following lines. 
 
 In the first place there will be required a local body of 
 consumers, to represent and safeguard consumers' interests 
 in relation to the Guilds of small-scale producers, tailors, 
 bakers, butchers, and so forth, and to the Distributive 
 Guild, in which the workers who distribute these products 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 171 
 
 will be organized. The nucleus of such a body is to be 
 found in the existing Co-operative Movement. Composed 
 largely of housewives, it will represent the consumers' 
 point of view in the given area in relation to these 
 services. 
 
 Secondly there will be a local body which will deal 
 with public amenities and the necessary provision for 
 the mental needs of the citizens. It will be responsible 
 for education, public lectures, parks, literature, theatres, 
 museums, and so forth. Such functions will clearly be 
 most adequately performed by persons differently qualified 
 from those who will sit on a third body, which will deal 
 with public utilities, the provision of gas, water, and light, 
 restaurants and trams. 
 
 A fourth body will probably be necessary to administer 
 questions of health and housing, and will again consist 
 of persons with some expert knowledge of these matters. 
 The necessity for each of these bodies for the purposes of 
 Government in each local unit is defended on the Guild 
 Socialist principle that, instead of expecting that public 
 business will be most efficiently transacted by one body of 
 all-round amateurs . who will deal with local matters 
 falling under each of these heads, we must consent to divide 
 functions and to constitute special bodies of specially 
 qualified people to perform the different classes of functions 
 that result from the division. 
 
 It will be clear from what has been said above with re- 
 gard to the Guild Socialist theory of the State, that, having 
 started with the local authority as the primary unit of 
 Government, we can now proceed to regard the State for 
 most practical purposes as simply a federation of local 
 authorities. Just as the Guild organization of industry 
 and the professions encourages the federation of local 
 Guilds or workshop committees into National Guilds upon 
 which the various local Guilds wiU be represented, and in 
 which they will be united, so the work of co-ordinating and 
 unifying for the country as a whole the various neighbour- 
 hood associations, which have been outlined above, will be 
 entrusted to national bodies composed of elected delegates 
 from each of the associations. 
 
 Four new bodies are thus brought into existence ; a 
 National Co-operative Congress, a National Congress of 
 
172 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 Public Education and Amenities, a National Congress of 
 Public Utilities, and a National Congress of Public Health. 
 These Congresses will co-operate with the appropriate 
 National Guilds in settling national questions in regard 
 to which the interests of producer and consumer may 
 diverge. Possessing equal authority with the National 
 Guilds of producers, they will, with the Guilds, be autono- 
 mous in their respective spheres. 
 
 The functions considered up to the present are those 
 which arise directly out of the performance of services, the ,; 
 provision of amenities, or the production of commodities ; 
 and most of the local and national organizations of con- 
 sumers which have been described will be directly related 
 to one or more Guilds of producers. 
 
 There are, however, a number of functions in the State 
 which fall outside this classification. Such are questions 
 of finance, methods of taxation, the police and judicial 
 systems and the administration and regulation of questions 
 of personal relationship. All these questions at present 
 fall within the sphere of the same national body, which also 
 deals with the industrial and other services to which we 
 have now allocated special Guild and neighbourhood 
 associations. Proceeding upon the principle of vocational 
 qualification for the performance of special functions 
 adopted in the other cases, we shall now require a new local 
 set of bodies, federated in a national body, to deal with 
 these miscellaneous questions. 
 
 One further body remains to be described, and our out- 
 line is complete. It may be that some questions which 
 arise between two National Guilds, or as is more likely 
 between a National Congress of consumers and a National 
 Guild of producers, will be incapable of adjustment. It 
 will be necessary therefore to refer such questions to a 
 final body or court of appeal, representative both of the 
 National Guilds Congress and of the various Consumers' 
 Congresses, and possessed of executive powers. Here, if 
 anywhere, will be the final repository of such sovereignty 
 as is left in the State. But this final court will not be in a 
 position to initiate measures : it will only be empowered 
 to decide such questions as are referred to it. 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 173 
 Provision for Impulse in Guild Socialist Proposals 
 
 I have given this brief outUne of the organization of 
 society on devolutionist lines proposed by Guild Socialists, 
 not because I desire either to express agreement or disagree- 
 ment with it, but because it will serve to illustrate the kind 
 of results which must necessarily be worked out by political 
 theory, if adequate expression is to be found for the ethical 
 life, with which I have identified in part the liberation of 
 impulse. The outline should therefore be read as an x^ppen- 
 dix to this chapter which is primarily concerned to define 
 the nature of the relationship between Politics and Ethics, 
 and in particular to emphasize the importance for Ethics 
 of the political impulse. 
 
 I do not think, however, that we are in possession of suffi- 
 cient evidence to hazard an opinion as to whether the 
 organization of society, which would be involved by the 
 adoption of such a plan, would be practicable, and it is 
 obvious that much remains to be done in the way of 
 amplifying questions which are only briefly treated, and 
 of working out details which are not even mentioned. 
 
 The significance of this experiment in political theory 
 lies in the fact that starting from the conception of the 
 State as a purely administrative machine, — a conception 
 which, as opposed to the Hegelian view, is, I am convinced, 
 a sounder one — it proceeds to apply to the business of 
 administration which the machine performs, a process of 
 wholesale devolution, which would in all probability have 
 the effect both of liberating the political impulse in indivi- 
 duals and of restoring to the individual the sense that he 
 counts in society. The importance of these results I have 
 tried to show in this chapter ; and I have tried in doing 
 so to point out how their attainment is inevitably precluded 
 to-day by the colossal size and complexity of the modern 
 State. 
 
 The result of the process of devolution which we have 
 outlined has been to establish in theory no less than ten 
 different kinds of administrative bodies, upon every one 
 of which the individual may serve, of which five, those 
 namely which will be set up in regional areas for the 
 transaction of public business of a local character, will be 
 easily accessible to every inhabitant of the region. There 
 
174 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 would furthermore be nothing to prevent any individual 
 from obtaining a seat upon one or more than one of these 
 bodies, and once elected, he would during his period of 
 office have ample scope and opportunity for that influence 
 and control over the lives of his fellows to which the 
 political impulse specifically prompts him. 
 
 To-day, he possesses in theory the same right of securing 
 election to the one great executive body, but he is pre- 
 vented from making his right effectual in practice by the 
 strength of the forces against him, the fierceness of the 
 competition involved and the prohibitive economic con- 
 ditions attaching to the business of getting elected : while 
 even if he secures election, the vast impersonality of the 
 State precludes the exercise of that influence over his fellows 
 and that sense of significance in society which the political 
 impulse seeks to attain. 
 
 By multiplying the number of controlling and admin- 
 istrative bodies, by rendering them accessible to the 
 individual, and by reducing to manageable dimensions 
 the areas and the sphere of duties for which they would be 
 responsible, the scheme we have been considering would 
 at least provide scope for the political impulse, and thereby 
 create an environment more favourable to the good life as 
 we have conceived it. 
 
 When it is remembered that the same theory which, in 
 the poHtical sphere, endeavours to emancipate the individual 
 from the obsession of the uncontrolled and impersonal 
 State, seeks in the industrial sphere to place him in control 
 of the conditions under which he works, — the machinery of 
 control being again a network of workshop committees 
 and Guild organizations not less numerous than those we 
 have outlined in the political and administrative sphere- 
 it becomes clear that whatever merits or demerits the 
 theory may possess from the political and industrial point 
 of view, and however trenchantly it may be attacked on the 
 ground of impracticability, it would at least secure from the 
 point of view of empirical or common-sense Ethics, an envir- 
 onment more favourable to the vitality of the individual 
 through the expression of his impulses than that engendered 
 by the modern State. It would restore* the sense of indi- 
 vidual importance in social affairs, and it would afford an 
 opening for the creative impulse in the sphere of industry. 
 
IMPULSE IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 175 
 
 But this estimate of a theory which is primarily poHtical 
 and industrial, is only valid on the assumption that our 
 diagnosis of the importance of impulse in the psychology 
 of the individual, — a diagnosis which we undertook as an 
 illustration of the method of empirical Ethics — is correct. 
 
 As this diagnosis is the basis of all our subsequent rea- 
 soning, it is perhaps desirable to inquire whether it can 
 itself be based upon a more secure foundation than we have 
 hitherto attempted to establish. Is there in fact any 
 metaphysical justification for the importance which we 
 have attributed to the purely impulsive and instinctive 
 elements in human nature ? This question I shall attempt 
 I to answer in the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 IMPULSE AS THE EXPRESSION OF THE LIFE 
 FORCE 
 
 § I. Metaphysical Basis for Theory of Impulse 
 
 1WISH in this final chapter to endeavour to relate what 
 has been said with regard to the importance of impulse 
 in Ethics to some sort of general view of the constitution 
 of the Universe as a whole. In order to do this I must 
 leave altogether the sphere of what is generally regarded as 
 Ethics, and indulge in metaphysical speculation as to the 
 purpose and design, if any, of the Universe, and the signifi- 
 cance of human life and consciousness in the light of that 
 purpose. Such speculations are not far removed from the 
 a priori reasoning as to what the nature of the Universe 
 must be, whose results in Ethics we saw reason to deplore 
 in an earlier chapter : they require mind to pass beyond the 
 bounds of experience, and to indulge in conjectures as to 
 the nature of what lies behind and beyond it. But such 
 reasoning, provided that we do not claim a dogmatic cer- 
 tainty for its conclusions, may not be without its uses : 
 the criticism we passed on a priori speculation about 
 Ethics was not that it was necessarily untrue to life, but 
 that it could never be sure that it would be true to life ; 
 that, in short, it was only necessarily wrong in so far as it 
 claimed that it must be necessarily right. 
 
 Let us admit then with regard to what follows, first that 
 our reasoning will be in the form of conjecture and inference 
 rather than of certain deduction from facts we have ex- 
 perienced, and secondly, that inasmuch as we shall be 
 reasoning about the conditions of experience rather than 
 about experience, conditions which, from their very nature, 
 
 176 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE 177 
 
 cannot be known, there is no guarantee of truth in any 
 conclusions we may reach. 
 
 Although it is not possible for us to prove by a priori 
 reasoning what the purpose and constitution of the Universe 
 must be, it is the function of such reasoning to suggest 
 fruitful hjrpotheses as to what it may be. Philosophy, 
 while failing to establish the actual, enormously extends 
 the horizon of the possible. By following its peculiar 
 method of a priori reasoning on the presuppositions of our 
 experience, it increases the breadth and scope of our 
 speculations, setting us free from the prison of what is taken 
 for granted, and suggesting hypotheses to act as signposts 
 for scientific research in the realm of metaphysics, and for 
 psychological research in the realm of Ethics. 
 
 Ethics has never been able to refrain from poaching on 
 metaphysical preserves. It is difficult to discuss the alleged 
 unique position of morality, or the meaning of right and 
 wrong, without taking for granted some conception of the 
 nature of the Universe and the business and significance 
 of human life within it ; you cannot make up your mind 
 about the good, until you have tried to make up your mind 
 about God. 
 
 There seem to me to be two equally important, though 
 distinct, reasons why it is desirable to endeavour to hitch 
 what I have said about impulse on to some theory about 
 the Universe as a whole. 
 
 In the first place, all attempts to treat Ethics as a distinct 
 study, apart either from religion or metaphysics, have 
 failed. If we consider man as an isolated entity apart 
 from the meaning and content of the rest of the Universe, 
 we take all the stuffing out of morality, and all the driving 
 force out of right conduct. That is why Rationalist and 
 Secularist movements, which inculcate the pursuit of 
 morality while denying God, have produced little else 
 than a dull catalogue of moral affirmations, tending to the 
 glorification of some hypostatized spirit of righteousness 
 or an impersonal goddess of moral progress. 
 
 Progress without God has somehow meant progress with- 
 out sympathy and without humour ; and although we 
 may admit that the pull of morality based on religions has 
 mainly lain in a selfish appeal to the individual to do well 
 for himself in the next world, at the cost of being dull on 
 12 
 
178 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 Sunday in this one, it is nevertheless true that ethical 
 conceptions are for the mass of men divested alike of meaning 
 and binding force unless they are treated as the expression 
 of some fundamental law, spirit, force, deity, call it what 
 you will, that animates the Universe. 
 
 Thus the Secularists preach only to the elect few in 
 little back rooms in big cities, pursuing with a sort of 
 intensive culture a barren faith in being rational, which is 
 divested alike of beauty and inspiration — a Rationalist 
 hjnmn-book is one of the most unaesthetic things I know — 
 whereas the religious revivalist makes converts and gets 
 them to do good by the thousand, with the aid of an aesthetic 
 and emotional appeal and a supernatural machinery which 
 will not stand two minutes' rational examination. If then 
 the Ethics of impulse is not to remain as barren as the creed 
 of the Rationalists, it must be brought into relation with our 
 general notion of the purpose and business of the Universe. 
 
 In the second place, I am conscious that the advocacy 
 of the expression of impulse as I have tried to present it, 
 looks uncommonly like another form of the pleasure 
 philosophy discussed in the first chapter. I have tried to 
 show that more adequate attention to the needs of impulse 
 would mean a fuller life for the individual, and would in- 
 crease the sum total of happiness and freedom. To the 
 question why happiness and freedom are so important that 
 they should be increased, even at considerable risk, as it 
 might appear to some, to the observance of strict morality, 
 no answer has been suggested up to the present, beyond the 
 fact that happiness and freedom are pleasant, and the 
 increase of individual pleasure is to be desired as an end in 
 itself. But though pleasure is undoubtedly a good, I 
 do not believe that the increase of pleasure is a sufficient 
 foundation upon which to build an ethical doctrine. If it 
 were, we should be committed to saying that glorified 
 selfishness is the only incentive to morality, and that man 
 is not capable of being swayed by considerations other 
 than those which affect his own pleasiue, a doctrine which 
 we have already seen reason to suspect. 
 
 It is necessary therefore to seek some other support for 
 our advocacy of impulse, a support which will derive its 
 compelling force from something outside the narrow circle 
 of individual pleasures and pains. 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE 179 
 
 § 2. Schopenhauer's Doctrine of the Will 
 TO Live 
 
 A convenient starting point for such a quest is supplied 
 by the philosophy of Schopenhauer. The philosophy of 
 Schopenhauer is not easy to foUow, and his conception 
 of Ethics is perhaps the least satisfactory part of it. The 
 basic doctrine, however, both of his metaphysics and Ethics 
 is one which I believe to be essentially sound. 
 
 This doctrine is that the fundamental, formative principle 
 of the world is something which is neither rational nor 
 conscious, — although it is the source of the activities both of 
 reasoning and of consciousness, — which Schopenhauer called 
 Will. By Will he meant all impulse, striving, or wanting 
 of whatever character, and the characteristic feature of 
 the conception, is that this Will instead of being subordinate 
 to thought and controlled by it, is more fundamental than 
 thought itself. 
 
 As opposed therefore to Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and the 
 traditional line of great German philosophers, Schopen- 
 hauer held with regard to thought that instead of being 
 the fundamental thing in the Universe, of which both the 
 human mind and the manifold objects of sense experience, 
 which appear to be different from mind, are modifications, 
 thought itself was deducible from this non-rational Will 
 or striving. 
 
 This Will expresses itself, or, to use Schopenhauer's lan- 
 guage, is objectified in a number of different ways : these 
 different ways are called Presentments. 
 
 The first form of Presentment is in the world of material 
 objects with which science deals. In the second form the 
 will appears in the individual consciousness as the Will 
 to live. In the third form the Will is presented in the 
 objects of art, which Schopenhauer conceives very much in 
 the nature of the Platonic Forms described in the third 
 chapter. The fourth form of the Presentment of the Will 
 is its second manifestation in the individual, as the enemy 
 and annihilator of the Will to live, and the emancipator 
 of the individual from the wants and strivings of the 
 world. We are concerned here only with the second and 
 fourth forms of the Will as Presentment. 
 
 The Will to live as manifested in the individual in the 
 
i8o COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 second form of Presentment is the motive and driving 
 force of the individual's Hfe. It is the source of his desires, 
 passions, instincts, impulses and reason. It is itself 
 irrational. " The foundation and preliminary step to all 
 knowledge of men is the conviction that the conduct of 
 man as a whole and essentially is not guided by reason and 
 its dictates. Hence no man becomes this or that because 
 he has the wish to be so, however strong it may be." He 
 does become this or that because of the Will within 
 him, the Will which is the same Will in all of us, but 
 differently objectified or manifested in each individual. 
 A man's actions, thoughts, and instincts therefore, the 
 sum total of all the mental, bodily, and emotional activities 
 which he calls his Hfe, are to be regarded not as the fulfil- 
 ment of a moral law, or the logical deductions from some 
 rational principle, but as the satisfaction of a prompting or 
 urge within him of which he can give absolutely no rational 
 account whatever. This prompting is the prompting of 
 the Will to live, in whose service intellect and the faculties 
 are, at any rate for most men, bound hand and foot. 
 
 The second form of the WiU as Presentment is expressed 
 therefore in the life of the normal unreflecting man. The 
 philosopher, however, when he comes to reflect upon the 
 operations and promptings of the WiU to live, cannot but 
 recognize that all willing im-plies a want, and all want 
 implies suffering. But since the activity of the Will to 
 live is continuous, we must not expect that the satisfaction 
 of a particular want will lead to peace and quiescence. 
 It will, on the contrary, be immediately succeeded by 
 another want arising again from the promptings of the 
 Will. Schopenhauer comes to the conclusion therefore that, 
 from the very nature of the case, the pains of life must 
 exceed the pleasures so long as we remain the servants of 
 the WiU. 
 
 In the philosopher, therefore, is manifested the fourth 
 form of the Presentment of the WiU, in which the WUl so 
 to speak turns against itself and endeavours to secure its own 
 annihilation. It is only when this desirable result is accom- 
 plished and the intellect abstracted from the service of the 
 Will, that we begin to approach the supreme good for man, 
 which is to be found in the hfe of the Hindoo Yogi, who 
 has emancipated himself from aU those desires and wants 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE i8i 
 
 tending to the continuance of life in which the Will 
 expresses itself. 
 
 Victory over the sexual impulse, which is the expression 
 of the Will to renew life, and over the impulse to self- 
 preservation by the abstention from all acts calculated to 
 preserve life, are the final stages in the victory of the Will 
 over its second manifestation as the Will to live. 
 
 The ascetic succeeds therefore where the suicide fails ; 
 for where both are satisfied that life is not worth living, 
 the suicide gains nothing towards the destruction of the 
 Will, since on his death it immediately realizes itself anew in 
 another individual, while the ascetic who destroys the Will 
 by means of itself, cuts away the root of all consciousness. 
 After the Will to live is destroyed, there remains no 
 Buddhist Nirvana, no haven of rest from the conquest of 
 the flesh and the passions, but just nothing. 
 
 The continuance of life in such a victor is of no import- 
 ance, for the Will being destroyed, life becomes the mere 
 functioning of an automatic machine. The aim and 
 object therefore of life which is bad, is extinction which is 
 neither bad nor good. 
 
 This brief sketch of the famous philosophy of ethical 
 pessimism is sufficient for our purpose, in that it will serve 
 as a guide to that principle which is to justify our philosophy 
 of impulse. But it is not fair to abstract from this system of 
 Ethics what happens to be of use to us, without indicating 
 the criticisms which may validly be brought against the 
 remainder. 
 
 Criticism of Philosophy of Pessimism 
 
 There are, I think, three reasons why, while accepting 
 the Will-to-live principle, we may refuse to deduce from it 
 the pessimistic conclusions which Schopenhauer draws. 
 
 (a) The first is a somewhat technical one, but cuts at 
 the root of that renunciation of the Will to live which 
 Schopenhauer identified with the ultimate end of Ethics 
 in the fourth form of the Will as Presentment. It is clear 
 that the ideal which Schopenhauer sets before himself is 
 the ultimate extinction of human life in the Universe. 
 This consummation is regarded as a good because the 
 human individual, being from his very nature animated 
 
i82 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 continually by the Will to live, is in consequence, for so 
 long as he remains animated by the Will, a creature in 
 whom pain predominates over pleasure. The extinction 
 of want and passion with the consequent achievement of 
 oblivion of the world is therefore regarded as a negative 
 sort of good, since each individual who attains it adminis- 
 ters one more rebuff to the Will to live. 
 
 But this conclusion does not follow. It does not follow 
 because the nature of the Will, as Schopenhauer conceives 
 it, is one and indivisible. It is the fundamental all-pervad- 
 ing spirit of the Universe. It appears indeed to be divisible 
 under the forms of space and time, in which it is manifested 
 in a number of different individuals ; but this appearance 
 is an appearance only, an appearance which belies its real 
 nature. Hence it is not a divided part or section of it 
 which is present in the individual : it is the whole Will, one 
 and indivisible. " For the thing in itself, the Will to live 
 is in every being, even the least — is present whole and 
 undivided as completely as in all that ever were, are and 
 wiU be, taken together. On this is based the fact that every 
 being, even the least, says to himself : Dum ego salvus sum 
 per eat mundus." 
 
 But if this is the case, it is clear that the renunciation of 
 the Will to live in any particular individual does not affect 
 the Will in itself : there can be no question of degree in the 
 extent to which the Will is affirmed or denied, since if it is 
 affirmed by one only, the whole Will is nevertheless 
 affirmed, and not only that particular section of it which 
 would be present in a single individual, if it were possible 
 for the Will to be divided into parts. Hence so long as one 
 individual remains unconverted, so long as there is one who 
 refuses to mortify his desires and renounce the Will to live, 
 the Will to live is as completely affirmed as if all mankind 
 continued passionately to pursue the life of need and 
 satisfaction of need, their one recognized aim to drain the 
 cup of desire to its dregs. 
 
 The only way, upon Schopenhauer's premises, in which 
 the Will to live could be annihilated, would be by the single 
 unanimous act of all conscious beings in the Universe, in 
 whom the Will was present. Such an act might have been 
 held out by Schopenhauer as the goal of human endeavour, 
 had he not been precluded by his intensely individualistic 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE 183 
 
 view of Ethics from contemplating as a good any act in which 
 the individual merges his will in that of his fellows for the 
 purposes of joint action. 
 
 Schopenhauer, therefore, while remaining entitled to 
 recommend the attainment of self-extinction as a good to 
 individuals, is not justified in predicating it as an absolute 
 good for the whole human race, since the object which 
 self extinction is designed to achieve, namely, the extinction 
 of the Will to live itself, eludes it. 
 
 Basis of Pessimism in Egoism 
 
 (b) But even for individuals, the Schopenhauerian 
 renunciation can only be considered a good if we assume a 
 frankly hedonistic attitude to life. If we regard life as a 
 sort of commercial speculation, success in which is only 
 to be measured in terms of profits in pleasure over pain, 
 then it is probably true, as Schopenhauer asserts, that life 
 is not worth living. It is probably true because for most 
 men pain does predominate over pleasure. 
 
 Schopenhauer's advocacy of asceticism follows directly 
 from this estimate of the poor yield of pleasure in an 
 ordinary life, and is based on the implied assumption that 
 satisfaction for the individual is the only thing that matters. 
 His asceticism is in fact only an inverted egoism. He says 
 in effect, " Since if you live an ordinary life pursuing 
 pleasure and avoiding pain, you are bound to get more 
 pain than pleasure, because of the urge of the Will to live, 
 the best thing you can do is to get rid of both pleasure and 
 pain. It is true that by doing so you will be renouncing 
 the possibility of pleasure, but you will be immune from 
 the possibility of pain ; and no pleasure at all is better than 
 a minus quantity of pleasure." 
 
 Asceticism and the renunciation of the Will is therefore 
 only advocated on the ground that, where the individual's 
 satisfaction is the one thing that counts, it affords the only 
 chance of escape from a sort of business enterprise in plea- 
 sure and pain which is bound to fail. 
 
 Is Life Worth Living ? 
 
 (c) Not only does the Ethical ideal of asceticism impli- 
 citly assume the validity of the Utilitarian standard of 
 
i84 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 pleasure as the only thing of value, a standard which we 
 saw reason to doubt in our first chapter, but it regards the 
 individual as an end in himself to be considered in isolation 
 from his fellows. Schopenhauer had no use for social 
 Ethics. An intense individualist himself, he tended to 
 attribute disproportionate value to his own states of 
 feeling, which he finally came to regard as so important that 
 he was unable to conceive that others did not necessarily 
 base their interpretation of the design of the Universe, and 
 their estimate of its success, solely in terms of the favourable 
 or unfavourable character of the effects it produced upon 
 themselves. A merely introspective morality is bound in 
 the end to regard the individual's psychological states as 
 the only thing of supreme importance, and if what the 
 individual finds in his own soul is not as agreeable as he 
 could wish, he cannot avoid concluding that the Universe 
 must be as disagreeable as himself, and condemning life 
 as a whole because of his own lack of success in it. If the 
 Universe is not to be condemned as a total failure, we must 
 emancipate ourselves from the tendency to value it in terms 
 of the individual's satisfaction or dissatisfaction with it, 
 just as we must refuse to value that satisfaction in terms 
 of pleasure and pain. 
 
 Apart from the technical objection which we have just 
 mentioned, it is clear that men do not, as a whole, apply 
 to the Universe those standards to which Schopenhauer 
 would implicitly have us appeal. The odd thing about 
 Schopenhauer's philosophy is that we can accept almost 
 all his premises and refuse to draw any of his conclusions. 
 He may demonstrate to the point of conviction that by his 
 standards life is not worth living, and yet people, perversely 
 enough, insist on continuing to live it. We can only 
 conclude that where his facts are right, the rules by which 
 he measures them must be wrong ; that since by the 
 pleasure and pain standard life is a failure, we do in fact 
 measure success in life by something else, just as the 
 Universe must be judged by something else. 
 
 For there is no doubt about the correctness of Schopen- 
 hauer's premises in the matter. Practically all the great 
 poets and philosophers have concurred with him in thinking 
 that the yield of life in pleasure does not compensate for 
 its loss in pain. Sophocles in some famous lines concludes 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE 185 
 
 that the happiest lot of all is that of the man who has never 
 been born, and that short of that, the lot most nearly 
 happy is that of the man who, being bom, quits life as soon 
 as possible. Most of us, I believe, if asked before birth 
 whether we would choose to live or not, — we being then 
 assumed to be in possession of all the knowledge and 
 experience of life that we have acquired in our present 
 lives, — would prefer to remain unborn, on the ground that 
 the game of life was not worth the candle. And yet if 
 instead of presenting the question in this abstract way, 
 we put it concretely to ourselves at this particular moment, 
 the question namely of whether, holding the conviction 
 we do, as to the unsatisfactory character of life considered 
 merely as a device for the production of happiness, we would 
 wish voluntarily to cease living now, the answer is equally 
 in the negative. We cannot contemplate the extinction 
 of our own personalities with equanimity, for the simple 
 reason that the real question at issue is not whether we 
 want life, but whether life wants us. 
 
 Existence as the Fulfilment of Definite Purpose 
 
 Here at last we get the glimpse of a new standard, which 
 makes the Schopenhauerian assessment of life in terms of 
 pleasure and pain unreal. If the solution of the paradox 
 that we do not cut our losses and get rid of life, however 
 deep our conviction of its poorness as a speculation from 
 our own point of view, Hes in the fact that life refuses to 
 let us go, it is a solution which points on to the suggestion 
 that Hfe may have some purpose with us, which we are 
 bound to carry out, a purpose for the fulfilment of which the 
 question of our own profit in pleasure and pain is irrelevant. 
 
 If, in short, our existence is to be interpreted not in terms 
 of our claims upon life which it is the business of life to 
 fulfil, but of life's claims upon us which it is om: business to 
 fulfil, we have an answer at once to the paradox of why 
 individuals persist in living although they get more misery 
 than fun out of it, and to Schopenhauer's pessimism, which 
 urges asceticism and the renunciation of life because life 
 is bound to disappoint. And the answer lies simply in 
 asserting that it is not our business to get fun out of life, 
 but to accomplish the particular purpose of life with us 
 
i86 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 which is working in us. Our question then becomes, has 
 Hfe a purpose, and if so, what is it ? 
 
 Here we are in the region of pure speculation. It is not 
 possible for a man to give any answer to the question 
 propounded that will win the assent of any, except those 
 who happen to think as he does. Questions of metaphy- 
 sical truth are not capable of demonstrably irrefutable 
 answers, which, like mathematical truths, have only to be 
 stated to win immediate assent from all minds whatever. 
 With regard to the proposition two plus two make four, 
 for instance, we know not only that it is true, but that any 
 other mind which had had no previous acquaintance with 
 this particular proposition, would, if suddenly confronted 
 with it, know that it was true also. It is not possible in 
 fact for reason to think otherwise on the point. 
 
 But with regard to metaphysical questions as to the 
 nature and constitution of the Universe, it is not possible 
 to make any statement which may not be just as reasonably 
 denied as asserted. It is in fact not possible either to 
 deny or to assert purpose in the Universe with conviction, 
 just because purpose may be both asserted and denied with 
 plausibility. 
 
 It follows that answers to this, as to most other metaphy- 
 sical questions, will depend almost entirely upon consider- 
 ations of temperament, which always guide our conclusions 
 with regard to matters which are not capable of logical 
 proof, and often enough with regard to those which are. 
 
 The most therefore that I can hope to do is to describe 
 very briefly certain alternative views, with regard to this 
 question of purpose or design in the Universe, and to 
 indicate that one of them which affords particular support 
 to the theory of impulses already described, and brings it 
 into relation with Schopenhauer's doctrine of the W^ to 
 live, with which I began the chapter. 
 
 § 3. Possible Views as to Nature and Purpose 
 OF THE Universe 
 
 Materialistic View of Universe 
 
 I. We may take a frankly materialistic view which 
 denies the existence both of purpose and of spirit in the 
 Universe. Such an outlook regards human consciousness 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE 187 
 
 as a merely temporary passenger in a fundamentally 
 hostile and alien environment, an incidental throw up 
 that has no connection with the fundamental Reality 
 around it. Human life has no peculiar significance, for 
 Reality has no purpose for the fulfilment of which it can be 
 significant ; and manhood has no guarantee of permanence 
 in the world. Not only human consciousness but life itself 
 may be regarded as a mere eddy in the primaeval slime, 
 which happened as a fluke, and will one day ingloriously 
 fizzle out. Such a view is only too strongly supported 
 by the facts of geology and astronomy, tending as they 
 do to show the insignificant part which life has played in 
 the Universe both in point of time and of space. To 
 quote from Mr. Wells's " Outline of History " : " Not only is 
 space, from the point of view of life and humanity, empty, 
 but Time is empty also. Life is like a little glow, scarcely 
 kindled as yet, in these void immensities." 
 
 The researches of modern physics and biology corroborate 
 geology in strengthening this conception, by showing that 
 consciousness is an outgrowth of life which has been gra- 
 dually evolved as an incidental phenomenon on a globe, 
 originally incapable of bearing it. 
 
 On this view^ human life appears in an environment which 
 is completely indifferent to it ; it is a matter of mechanical 
 adaptations and chance variations seized upon for various 
 purposes by purely material forces, and the individual has 
 no purpose and no object but to play out his little drama 
 with the maximum amount of satisfaction to himself. 
 There is no God either to reward the good or to punish the 
 wicked, and there is no point therefore in cleaving to the 
 straight path of duty or in refraining from the primrose path 
 of pleasure. If the mind shrinks from the contemplation 
 of a blank nothingness, we may, if we will, identify the 
 vast indifference of the Universe with a sort of blind 
 chance, which encourages human endeavours without 
 design and thwarts them without malignity. Something 
 of the kind is the conception which runs through most of 
 Mr. Hardy's novels, and finds perhaps its most definite 
 expression in the Dynasts. 
 
 The blind, mute, unseeing Thing, of which Mr. Hardy 
 speaks, as passionless and unpitying as Fate (though even 
 Fate might be said to have a purpose which the Thing 
 
i88 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 has not), may be taken as symbolical of the nature of the 
 Universe in which the individual finds himself ; if things 
 go well with him, it does not mean that he has deserved 
 well ; if misfortunes occur, they can be interpreted neither 
 as punishment nor as discipline. 
 
 In a world so constituted things just happen, and it is 
 meaningless to ask why they happen. It is typical of 
 this attitude of Mr. Hardy's that he makes the tragedies 
 of his novels spring logically from events which are nobody's 
 fault, and over which nobody has any control. Thus the 
 tragedy of the Return of the Native follows from the 
 circumstance that when Mrs. Yeobright goes to call on her 
 son Clym, he happens to be asleep as the result of the heat 
 of a morning's work in the fields, and fails to hear her 
 knock ; she goes away in sorrow, and from her imagined 
 rebuff there spring directly her own death, and more 
 indirectly, yet equally as the result of the workings of a 
 blind but inescapable law, the deaths of Eustacia and 
 Wildeve. 
 
 Where human weal and woe are the result of flukes for 
 which no one is responsible, and which none may control, 
 there is no place for Ethics. Ethics presupposes a purpose 
 or design which we may or may not carry out. But where 
 there is neither God nor purpose, but only individuals 
 chancing in an indifferent world, we can have no duties 
 beyond our pleasures. 
 
 God as a Practical Joker 
 
 2. Sometimes, however, Mr. Hardy adopts a less non- 
 committal attitude towards the Spirit, if any, that guides 
 the Universe, and we have outbursts of righteous indig- 
 nation against a God whose apparent object in creating 
 mortals is to derive amusement from their vagaries under 
 affliction. Thus there is the famous passage at the end of 
 " Tess of the D'Urbervilles," where we are told that " Jus- 
 tice was done and the President of the Immortals had ended 
 his sport with Tess." 
 
 This view finds perhaps its most vigorous expression 
 in Goethe's Faust. Here we are asked to conceive of God 
 as one who, becoming bored with the incessant praise and 
 blessings of angels, — for why should they not praise him 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORGE 189 
 
 since he had done them nothing but good ? — determined to 
 create as a diversion a being called man, to afflict him with 
 every kind of misery and evil, and yet to constitute him of 
 so ridiculous a nature that the more he was tormented 
 and afflicted by God, the more he would turn to Him to 
 thank Him for his misfortunes and bless Him for his 
 sufferings. 
 
 This view of God as the malignant practical joker, 
 creating man, and providing him with a religious sense as a 
 huge jest, tolerable as it is only to those in whom misfortune 
 has developed a satirical bitterness, may nevertheless 
 derive much evidence in its support from the phenomena of 
 the Universe. The very incredulity with which it is re- 
 ceived and denounced as impious by the many, would, 
 if rightly regarded, be seen but as the subtlest part of the 
 jest. It would be a good joke enough on the hypothesis of 
 God's cynical malignity, for man to reject the true explan- 
 ation of his sufferings as an affront to the supposed goodness 
 of the Being who sent them. And when the cynic reads 
 that " At San Juan in the Province of Cosoomatepec during 
 an earthquake, the collapse of a church steeple which fell 
 on the crowds of refugees who were praying inside the 
 building, caused many casualties," it is difficult to convince 
 him that his sense of perverse malignity belongs rather to 
 himself than to God. 
 
 When we read too of the frustration of early genius in 
 men like Keats and Barbellion, of lives such as theirs 
 charged with fine possibilities, continuing long enough to 
 prove their brilliance and variety, only to be suddenly 
 extinguished, it seems to most of us such a futile trick on 
 the part of the showman, and so strong the evidence it 
 affords for the practical joker God, that we cannot believe 
 that the significance of such things is just what it appears. 
 Rather than believe that God was indeed one of whom it 
 could be truly said " Those whom the Gods love die young," 
 — as part of the joke, I suppose, — I for my part would 
 prefer the view of Hardy, the view that would have us 
 believe that circumstance has developed blindly a puppet 
 intelligence in the midst of the Universe, which though 
 impotent to control the strings that move it, and 
 unable to save itself from a tragic part in the play (the 
 beginning and end, plot and plan of which were out- 
 
190 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 side its knowledge), could yet prove itself superior to all 
 that made and compelled it, and learn to mock the blind 
 force whose victim it was. A futile and meaningless 
 business enough, yet better than the caustic humour of 
 Goethe's God ! 
 
 God as Omnipotent and Benevolent 
 
 3. At the other end of the scale there is the view that 
 the Universe is the creation of a personal, benevolent and 
 Omnipotent God. This view is immensely prevalent 
 among the many, and has a special appeal for those who 
 mistake the promptings of emotion for the deliverances 
 of reason ; but as an explanation of the phenomena of the 
 Universe as we know them, there is little ground for suppos- 
 ing it to be true. 
 
 The belief in an Omnipotent and benevolent God derives 
 much of its popularity from the gratifying importance that 
 it confers upon human life. We know that om* lives are/ 
 immensely insignificant. We know this for a fact, and yet 
 the knowledge is to most of us intolerable. We cannot 
 endure that we should be of no account to anybody, and it 
 is a natural process therefore to invent an immensely 
 important and powerful being whose main purpose it is 
 to watch over our welfare, and to guide and assist our 
 footsteps. We conceive him as a terribly jealous and 
 watchful gentleman, who carefuUy notes down the misdeeds 
 of our enemies with a view to settling their account in an 
 after life, and as carefully registers our own unrequited 
 merit with a view to settling our account in somewhat 
 different terms. In war time he inevitably takes the same 
 view of the rights and wrongs of the dispute as we do our- 
 selves, and can be relied upon in due course to see that 
 right coincides with might. 
 
 By making our lives and welfare a matter of interest and 
 care to a Being of such tremendous importance, we un- 
 doubtedly add to the significance of human life : and when 
 we tack on the notion that this Being has expressly created 
 us in his own image, even the demands of human conceit 
 are in a fair way to being satisfied. 
 
 Under the name of theology this view has been so 
 exhaustively discussed, criticized and defended that I do 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORGE 191 
 
 not wish to enlarge on it here ; nor upon the serious 
 logical difficulties to which it is exposed. There are, 
 however, three observations which I should like to make, 
 more particularly with regard to its ethical significance. 
 
 Criticism of Omnipotent God Belief 
 
 Morality as glorified Selfishness 
 
 {a) It tends to reduce Ethics, as the business of being 
 good, to the mere necessity for pleasing some higher power 
 in the interests of the person who is good. That this view 
 necessarily and in all cases has this particular result I am 
 not prepared to assert. It is, however, sufficiently clear 
 that its practical effect upon the morality of the great mass 
 of those who believe in it, is to make the observance of 
 morality identical with the practice of far-sighted 
 selfishness. 
 
 Much religion springs from the desire to lick the boots 
 of some higher power, and apart altogether from the cruder 
 conceptions of residence in heaven as a reward for belief 
 and doing good, and in hell as a punishment for disbelief 
 and doing ill, the identification of human goodness with 
 the performance of God's will must necessarily tend to 
 substitute as the motive for morality the desire to do God's 
 will for the purer desire to do good as such. 
 
 It is indeed difficult on this conception to see how there 
 can be any sanction for morality, or any incentive to the 
 individual to be moral, except in so far as morality is 
 pleasing to God. But the desire to be moral because it 
 is pleasing to God cannot easily be divorced from a fairly 
 definite conception of what the comparative effects of 
 pleasing and displeasing God are, in so far as they touch 
 the individual. Just as it is impossible to separate the 
 idea of doing good from the idea of doing God's will, so 
 it is impossible to divorce the notion of doing God's will 
 from the effects of obedience or disobedience to the will 
 upon oneself, with the consequent reduction of the basis 
 of morality to the hedonistic calculus of quantity of pleasure 
 and pain for the individual, discussed in the first chapter. 
 
 The belief in an omnipotent God can in fact have little 
 use for Ethics. Its aim is rather to make Ethics super- 
 fluous. Where, as in the case of the religious mystic, the 
 
192 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 religious sense expresses itself in the highest and purest 
 form of which human beings are capable, we have such a 
 complete absorption in the oneness and goodness of God, 
 that the petty series of trivial observances in which human 
 morality must necessarily find its chief expression, become 
 irrelevant to the pursuit of the good life, which is once 
 again identified with that life of contemplation to which 
 both Plato and Aristotle pointed the way. 
 
 This is assuredly a noble conception of the good life : 
 but it has as little need of the specific behefs usually 
 associated with the view we are considering, as it has for 
 the Ethical codes that spring from them. It is a concep- 
 tion that would seem to have been common to great men 
 living in all ages, and holding all kinds of different philo- 
 sophies : it does not necessarily presuppose the belief in 
 an omnipotent benevolent God, although it has doubtless 
 derived strength from it. 
 
 In the last resort the truth of the belief in the existence of 
 an omnipotent and benevolent God must depend upon the 
 nature of the religious experience of those who believe in 
 Him. For those who possess such experience, their faith 
 is a matter of mystical feeling and insight which, from its 
 very privacy, is not capable of being explained to others or 
 defended by the ordinary methods of reasoning. 
 
 Such individuals are beyond the reach of argument, 
 not because their position is necessarily unsound, but 
 because its truth is grasped by intuition and embraced by 
 feeling. But just in so far as their faith remains unshaken 
 by the assaults of rational criticism, they are unable to 
 communicate it to others. Religious experience is like 
 the toothache : it is an intensely private feeling which you 
 cannot communicate to others, and of whose existence for 
 yourself you cannot convince them. Thus the religious 
 experience of the mystically devout is not necessarily 
 evidence of the truth of their position, since it can have 
 no meaning for those who are strangers to it. The words 
 of the mystic are as words spoken to the wind, because his 
 position depends not upon reason but upon feeling, and the 
 truth which he would wish to convey belongs to a sphere 
 in which argument is barren. 
 
 Thus the phenomena of religious mysticism are not 
 only independent of ethical considerations, being an affair 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORGE 193 
 
 of private experience and not of social good, but are 
 irrelevant to the question we are asking, namely, " Is the 
 existence of an omnipotent, benevolent God the best 
 explanation of the phenomena of the Universe as we know 
 them ? " I wish to emphasize the form in which the 
 question is put, because it forces the discussion into the 
 region of rational controversy, in which reasoned consider- 
 ations may be put forward both for and against the answer 
 we give to it. And there is, I think, no doubt that the 
 arguments against an affirmative answer are so strong as 
 to be almost conclusive, if the problem is treated as a purely 
 rational one in which feeling is not to guide our answer, 
 except in so far as we may be unable to exclude it. 
 
 These objections may be briefly summarized under two 
 heads, which I put forward as the second and third of the 
 observations which I wish to make on this view. 
 
 Problem of Pain and Evil. 
 
 {b) Few thinkers have been able to reconcile the existence 
 of pain and evil with the idea of a benevolent God who is 
 at the same time Omnipotent. Volumes of controversy 
 have been written on this subject, to which I do not wish 
 to add anything beyond the observation that none of the 
 numerous attempts which have been made to explain away 
 evil and pain as illusions, due to our partial vision, or as 
 temporary and unreal, seem to me in any way satisfactory. 
 Even if we regard evil as due to the wickedness of man and 
 not of God, man is himself one of God's creatures, and has 
 the seed of wickedness implanted in him by whom ? 
 
 Nor is the presence of pain and evil confined to human 
 affairs. Nature herself is cruel, selfish, and terribly 
 wasteful. The young cuckoo ejects its foster brothers 
 from the nest ; some birds which lay five eggs habitually 
 construct nests which are so small that one of the young 
 birds is invariably squeezed out to die upon the ground. 
 Mr. W. H. Hudson, the eminent naturalist, tells us of 
 ** slave-making ants and of the larvae of the Ichneumonidae 
 feeding on the live tissues of the caterpillars in whose bodies 
 they have been hatched." He describes too how wasps 
 paralyse their prey by stinging its nerve centres, and 
 store it in a closed cell, so that the grub to be hatched by 
 
 13 
 
194 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 and by shall have fresh meat to feed on, — not fresh killed 
 meat but live meat. Instances might be multiplied 
 indefinitely. Nature's method in its waste and cruelty 
 has been compared to the proceedings of a man who, 
 wishing to kill a hare, caused a field to be surrounded by 
 sportsmen and all the guns to be let off together, or, wishing 
 to build a house, built a whole city and abandoned all 
 the houses to decay except one. 
 
 Waste involves pain, and pain is evil. If God is 
 omnipotent as well as benevolent, why does He not stop 
 it ? Thus the assumption of the omnipotence of God seems 
 inevitably to call for the conclusion as to his character 
 described in the second view just considered. 
 
 Contradictions in the Conception. 
 
 (c) I said above that the theory of the omnipotent God 
 was open to serious logical difficulties : " God is riddled 
 with contradictions," says Mr. Bradley. Some philoso- 
 phers have endeavoured to minimize these by making God 
 so vaguely all-embracing as to cease to have any definable 
 characteristics whatever. He is described as the " Eternal 
 Witness," " Absolute Experience," " Blessed Community," 
 " Indwelling Spirit," and so forth, each aspect, as it is called, 
 being emphasized in turn according as it happens to be 
 most convenient for evading the contradiction of the 
 moment, or refuting an objection to the theory. 
 
 These contradictions may be crystallized into the ques- 
 tion : " How out of perfect oneness and goodness can 
 diversity and evil be generated ? " 
 
 If we answer the question by saying that diversity and 
 evil are illusory, a mere appearance which conceals an 
 underlying unity and a fundamental goodness, our question 
 still subsists ; for the appearance of diversity and evil 
 is as difficult to explain as the reality. From a source 
 which is perfect unity, purely good and entirely real, it is 
 no less impossible that error and the illusion of pain and 
 evil should spring, than that pain and evil themselves 
 should be generated. 
 
 And the question of motive is insoluble. 
 
 Advocates of this view tell us that pain and evil will 
 disappear in the long run, and diversity be reconciled in 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE 195 
 
 a heavenly paradise, where we shall again be united with 
 God ; they explain that our time on earth is a probation, 
 a period of training, in order that the paradise may be 
 worthily achieved. But so it was at the beginning I 
 Was not God always perfect ? 
 
 What can be the motive of a process involving pain, 
 error and evil by the way, of which the appointed end will 
 be identical with the beginning ? Why should what is 
 evil ever be allowed to emerge from what is good, even if 
 it were possible for it to do so, for the sole purpose of again 
 being merged into it ? It is impossible to conceive why 
 such a process should ever have been begun. 
 
 Questions like these are not answered by upholders of 
 this view ; they are indeed unanswerable. The commonest 
 form of reply is to the effect that these things are too diffi- 
 cult for finite human understanding, though they are 
 doubtless plain enough to God. This reply is all very 
 weU as coming from the mystic, ""who definitely abrogates 
 the claims of reason as the proper authority for dealing 
 with such matters, and takes his stand upon his private 
 feelings. Such a position is, as we have already remarked, 
 unanswerable by reason, simply because it denies the 
 validity of rational argument. But for those who endea- 
 vour to support by reason their behef in an omnipotent, 
 benevolent God these difficulties which cannot be explained, 
 appear to be so insurmountable as to put their theory 
 out of court as an answer to the particular form in which 
 we insist on putting our question, namely, " Is the existence 
 of such a Being the best explanation of the phenomena 
 of the Universe ? " It is because of these very difficulties 
 that the theory seems to me to fail to supply the best 
 answer that can be given to this purely rational question, 
 and it is presumably these same difficulties which have 
 precluded most modern minds from holding it. It is 
 indeed very difficult outside the Church to find any man 
 of intelligence who really entertains this particular belief. 
 
 I turn therefore to the fourth of the views which I wish 
 to discuss as to the ultimate purpose and constitution of 
 the Universe. 
 
196 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 Schopenhauer's Will as Fundamental 
 
 4.' We saw that Schopenhauer's view of Ethics, a view 
 inspired by the Wni to live theory, was open to criticism 
 on the ground that it insisted on valuing human life in 
 terms of profits in pleasure and pain to the individual, and 
 that it treated the individual as an isolated entity whose 
 well-being could be considered for the purposes of Ethics 
 apart from his relation to society. But this criticism though 
 it is valid against the pessimism which leads to asceticism 
 and Nirvana, does not touch the metaphysical theory of 
 the Will to live upon which Schopenhauer based his Ethics. 
 This theory is, I believe, correct in its postulation of some 
 illogical, irrational principle as the fundamental thing in 
 the Universe, as opposed to the views both of idealist 
 philosophers, who have mrged that the nature of thought, 
 ideas or knowledge is the key to the constitution of the 
 Universe, and of the materialists who insist that the 
 Universe is fundamentally material. 
 
 The peculiar interest of this theory, which asserts as 
 fundamental an irrational principle which Schopenhauer 
 called the Will, is that it evades the difficulty which besets 
 the frankly sceptical materialist, who puts the question 
 " why any principle at all ? " Why, it may be asked, 
 should we go beyond the view described under (i) above, 
 the view that chance is the guiding principle, or lack of 
 principle, in a Universe which is in structure fundamentally 
 alien to human consciousness, mind and spirit, when the 
 evidence does not warrant our doing so ? 
 
 The difficulty of this position, a difficulty to which the 
 work of all purely sceptical writers is subject, consists in 
 the fact that the existence of some principle in the Universe 
 is involved in the very assertion that there is no principle. 
 It must be some kind of use which makes us say that 
 nothing is any use ; the assertion of principle is involved 
 in the very denial of it. Just as we cannot say there 
 can be no knowledge, since the fact of knowledge is involved 
 in our very statement that there is none, the knowledge, 
 namely, that there is no knowledge, so it is that a principle 
 of life manifests itself perforce in the very statement that 
 there is no principle of life. We cannot deny nothing. 
 Something must be there to enable us to deny it, and in a 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE 197 
 
 statement such as that we are considering, it is the very 
 principle which is denied that prompts us to make the state- 
 ment. 
 
 If therefore we are to escape from a logical contradiction 
 we must accept the fact of there being some principle, 
 and this much being granted, I wish to call attention to 
 the very marked tendency which has manifested itself 
 in modern thought to identify the principle with something 
 very like Schopenhauer's. 
 
 It will be remembered that for Schopenhauer the Will, 
 the fundamental principle of the Universe, was a constantly 
 active and dynamic thing, manifesting itself in individuals 
 as the Will to Live, in the various phenomena of changing 
 Nature and the material world, and in the objects of art. 
 It is not rational, though it manifests itself in reason, and 
 uses reason as the instrument whereby in the Fourth form 
 of the objectivication of the Will as Presentment, through 
 reflection upon the alleged inevitable conditions of life, 
 it turns upon itself and destroys itself. 
 
 This conception of an active, changing, dynamic principle 
 as the fundamental thing in the Universe, constantly 
 reappears in modern thought. It appears, to mention 
 only a few names, in the writings of Bergson, of Bernard 
 Shaw and of H. G. Wells. Bergson calls it the elan vital, 
 Shaw the Life Force, while Wells personifies it as a kind 
 of limited^but benevolent deity. 
 
 God as Personal and Limited 
 
 With Wells, indeed, this principle is elaborated in such 
 books as " God the Invisible King," and " The Soul of 
 a Bishop," into a militant though limited God, fighting 
 with and for mankind against the principles of chaos and 
 deadness and evil. We have a dualistic conception of two 
 contradictory principles at work in the world, a conception 
 not dissimilar from that of the Persian religion of Zoroast- 
 rianism with its good deity Ormuzd, " the spirit of wisdom 
 and light, the very great and very good, the lord of perfection 
 and activity, of intelligence, growth and beauty," and its 
 evil deity Ahriman, " the spirit of darkness and malice, of 
 crime, sin, and ugliness," who is constantly thwarting the 
 efforts of Ormuzd to rule the world with wisdom and 
 
198 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 benevolence. Mr. Wells seems to conceive of the spirit of 
 evil, a spirit of chaos and darkness and blankness, as 
 somehow passively in possession of the world to begin with, 
 and then being confronted with an active principle of good 
 which appears, as it were, somewhat later upon the scene, 
 and fights to rescue the world from the passively opposing 
 dominion of the power of darkness. With this object the 
 God of light and goodness evolves human beings to act as 
 his allies and helpers, and looks to their brains and intelli- 
 gence to carry on the struggle for him, by emancipating 
 the world from pain, evil and error. The conception of a 
 God who asks us to fight on his behalf, who indeed possesses 
 no weapons for his age-long struggle, but those supplied by 
 human will and intelligence, constitutes an inspiring appeal 
 to mankind. It makes the conquest of pain and evil and 
 error a conquest to be achieved by human will alone ; it 
 provides a hope of ultimate victory ; and it sufficiently 
 explains, what the theory of an omnipotent God cannot 
 explain, how such things came to exist in the world. They 
 exist not because God wills them to be there, but because 
 they were there somehow before God, who desires through 
 us and with our help to uproot them from the Universe. 
 
 Stimulating as this view is, I should prefer not to follow 
 it, in so far as it personifies our principle into a limited God, 
 with attributes akin to the human. In so doing it en- 
 deavours to make religion square with the phenomena of 
 the Universe as revealed by science, only at the cost of 
 affronting both religion and science. It deprives religion 
 of its highest expression, the mystical merging of the self 
 into something immeasurably greater and better than the 
 self, by turning it into a sort of implied contract for business 
 purposes where the life of mystical contemplation is 
 tantamount to idling in office hours. It affronts the scien- 
 tists by its tremendous conjectural leap beyond the 
 evidence. Such evidence as we have is evidence for a 
 dynamic changing force : it is only a projection of oneself 
 that transforms it into a God. " It is," said Hobbs, " with 
 the mysteries of religion as with wholesome pills for the sick, 
 which swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure, but chewed 
 are for the most part cast up again without effect." Let 
 us therefore divest our principle or force of religious 
 attributes, and see in what other terms we can describe it. 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE 199 
 
 Conception- of the Life Force 
 
 Mr. Shaw's Life Force is a principle which, like Schopen- 
 hauer's Will, expresses itself alike in human beings and in 
 the phenomena of Nature. It is universal and all-pervading, 
 manifesting itself in all the infinite phenomena of the 
 Universe both mental and material. It is constantly 
 thrusting, and pulsing, and throbbing, and it abhors the 
 static. It is the leitmotif, the driving force of evolution 
 in Nature, and of new thoughts, new emotions, new aspira- 
 tions, and new impulses in man. 
 
 It proceeds by the method of trial and error, aiming 
 always at the new, and discarding alike the old and unfit. 
 It is this method of experiment and trial, involving the 
 elimination of the experiments which are unsuccessful, 
 which accounts for the appalling waste and extravagance 
 in Nature. " Nature, we see," writes Mr. Hudson, " takes 
 risks . . . with a very light heart : her busy brain teems 
 with thousands, millions of inventions, and if nine hundred 
 and ninety-nine in a thousand go wrong, she simply scraps 
 them and goes cheerfully on with her everlasting business. 
 An amusing person ! One can imagine some Principality 
 or High Intelligence, a visitor from Aldebaran, let us say, 
 looking on at these queer doings on her part and remarking : 
 ' My dear, what a siUy fool you are to waste so much energy 
 in trying to do an impossible thing ' ! " 
 
 But the Life Force is after the same business in human 
 beings as it is in nature. The Life Force, we must presume, 
 has a purpose, though we may not know it. Our conception 
 of the nature of that purpose will depend upon our tempera- 
 ments. If we are what WiUiam James calls tough-minded, 
 we shall refuse to commit ourselves by asserting it to be 
 either good or bad : if we are tender-minded we shall 
 believe that it is a purpose for good, which aims at the 
 elimination of evil, pain, and deadness from the world. 
 That such a purpose exists, however, we may be fairly 
 certain, for all the evidence of our lives goes to show that 
 we are brought into being for the fulfilment of purposes 
 not our own : that in fact human beings are not ends in 
 themselves, but means to an end outside themselves. 
 
 It is the Life Force that brings us into life, whether we 
 like it or not. It is the Life Force which, having its purpose 
 
200 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 to achieve in the continuance of Hfe through us, pushes us 
 into love despite our well-meant resolutions to the contrary. 
 And it is again the Life Force which keeps us in life, however 
 little we may like it, until it has done with us, despite 
 Schopenhauer's rational demonstration that life is not 
 worth living. All the important things in life, being born, 
 falling in love, and dying, are matters which lie entirely 
 outside our control : in them we are the involuntary 
 agents of something else. 
 
 As to birth it is a notorious fact, which provides an 
 ironical commentary upon human pretensions to the 
 rational control of life, that the most important thing about 
 life for us, namely, whether we shall be at all, is decided for 
 us and not by us : the only question in life about which we 
 are never consulted is whether we shall live. 
 
 As regards love, it is true that the Life Force permits 
 the appearance of free-will ; but it is much too concerned 
 with the production of more life for the carrying on of its own 
 purpose to pay the slightest attention to our determination 
 not to be guilty of the crowning folly, should we ever be 
 foolish enough so to determine. Thus pride, honour, 
 convenience, considerations of expediency, and even of 
 economics, all go by the board when the Life Force impels 
 us into activities so ridiculous, that they have made love 
 (in others) a stock subject for comedy in all literatrues in 
 all ages. 
 
 Mr. Valentine, in Shaw's play, " You Never Can Tell," 
 catches the right tone exactly in his speeches on falling in 
 love : " As if Nature, after allowing us to belong to our- 
 selves and do what we judged right and reasonable all 
 these years, were suddenly lifting her great hand to take 
 us, her two little children — by the scruff of our little necks — ■ 
 and use us, in spite of ourselves, for her own purpose, in 
 her own way." 
 
 And as to death, it is the unfortunate tendency of people, 
 as a whole, to fail to be either suicides or Yogis, which 
 convicts the Ethics of Schopenhauer of the old fault of a 
 priori system.s, the fault of not squaring with the facts : 
 and this failure, as hinted above, is due to the circumstance 
 that death is not determined by the need which men may 
 or may not have of life, but by the need which the Life 
 Force may or may not have of them. 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE 201 
 
 Proceeding as it does by the method of trial and error, 
 the Life Force from time to time creates objects and people 
 who, so far from carrying out its own instinctive purpose, 
 tend to thwart and obstruct it. Obstructive objects, hke 
 people's appendices, are allowed to atrophy ; obstructive 
 people, like the Jews who crucified Christ, or the Athenians 
 who poisoned Socrates, are corrected by the appearance of 
 a genius among them ; a genius being a specialized person 
 who is produced by the Life Force from time to time, to 
 give conscious expression to its own peculiar purpose. 
 That is why geniuses are extolled after their death, and 
 their ideas become the catchwords of the populace. 
 
 Purpose of Human Life 
 
 It will be obvious that if there is any truth in this concep- 
 tion, it is the business of individuals to carry forward the 
 purposes of the Life Force. Some will do this weU, some 
 ill, and in proportion as they do it well or ill they will be 
 happy or miserable. 
 
 It was remarked in the first chapter as a peculiarity of 
 pleasure, that if pursued directly it eluded the pursuer, 
 and always occurred as it were incidentally in the course 
 of the pursuit of something else. Bringing this remark 
 into connection with our conception of the Life Force, we 
 may observe that it is true just in so far as it is the function 
 of individuals not to aim at happiness for themselves, but 
 to carry out the purpose of something outside themselves : 
 and, if this is their function in life, it is to be expected that 
 they should find pleasure only in the adequate performance, 
 and miss it in the neglect of that function. The experience 
 of mankind bears out our statement, both as to the achieve- 
 ment of pleasure, and as to the identification of success 
 and happiness with the pursuit of impersonal aims. 
 " The teaching of history," writes Mr. Wells in the " Out- 
 line of History , " "... is strictly in accordance with the 
 teaching of Buddha. There is, as we are seeing, no social 
 order, no security, no peace or happiness, no righteous 
 leadership or kingship, unless men lose themselves in 
 something greater than themselves. The study of bio- 
 logical progress again reveals exactly the same process ; 
 the merging of the narrow globe of the individual experience 
 
202 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 in a wider being. To forget oneself in greater interests is 
 to escape from a prison." 
 
 In this way it comes about that the service of the Life 
 Force, which is chiefly expressed in devotion to impersonal 
 ends, instead of being a slavery, offers the only avenue of 
 escape from the narrow circle of petty wants and desires 
 that circumscribes the self. For those who remain in that 
 circle, the Schopenhauerian indictment of life as not worth 
 living is valid, for they have no standard of value but that 
 of preponderance of pleasure over pain ; but for those who 
 have gone beyond it, the standard that measures in terms 
 of satisfaction of self is meaningless. For them life is 
 worth living, not because of its yield in happiness, but 
 because of its fulfilment of a purpose greater than itself. 
 
 Impulse as Expression of Life Force 
 
 What that purpose is we may not know. But if intellect 
 and reason are given us as the instruments by which we 
 are to pursue it, it is to the instinctive and impulse side of 
 our natures that we must look for hints as to the direction 
 in which we should travel. 
 
 We must regard our incurable and instinctive persistence 
 in life and love, a persistence of which we can give absolutely 
 no account, except that we are made like that, as a type 
 of the more direct manifestation of the Life Force. To 
 the promptings of all those impulses in us which seem most 
 irrationally unaccountable, we must most of all give ear, 
 as to the restless ever-welling surge of the Life Force 
 within us. 
 
 Impulse is the expression of the principle of change : 
 reason of the principle of conservation. We have already 
 seen that all advances in social morals, originally due to 
 the instinctive insight of the few, are caught by reason, 
 and crystallized into a static code for the guidance of the 
 many. This process is typical of the workings of thought, 
 which endeavours to cast into hard and rigid forms- the 
 enthusiasm and inspiration which spring from impulse. 
 And thought would leave it at that, unaware that the 
 fundamental principle of the Universe is perpetual change, 
 which will set impulse at work to break through the moulds 
 cast by thought in morals as well as in anything else, 
 before even they are set. 
 
IMPULSE AS EXPRESSION OF LIFE FORCE 203 
 
 It is for this reason that the mere observance of moral 
 codes is not a satisfactory fulfilment of the purpose of the 
 Life Force. A moral code is a hard set thing ; springing 
 itself from impulse in the past, it refuses to give way to 
 succeeding impulses until they break it down. Morality 
 is petrified impulse ; it is a conservation of the status quo, 
 a conservation abhorrent to the Life Force, which immedi- 
 ately brings forth a first brood of impulses to affront it 
 and substitute a new morality in its stead. That is why 
 every man knows in his heart that the business of being 
 good is not enough for the good life. That is why abstract 
 virtue, meaning the abstention from sin and error, has 
 become almost a term of reproach, and a man may become 
 so worthy that people speak ill of him. The good die 
 young it has been said, because they are so bored with 
 the prospect of a life of being good ; and indeed the Life 
 Force has as little use for goodness as it has for happiness. 
 It goes on its way to its own appointed goal, oblivious 
 alike of human virtue and pleasure, caring only that human 
 beings should become instruments adequately fitted for 
 the ends for which it has created them. 
 
 The Life Force spirings eternally in our hearts in the shape 
 of impulse and instinct, to make us aware of the purpose 
 it has with us, and to prompt us continually to the tasks 
 which it would have us perform. To refuse to give ear to 
 this prompting in the name of morals or of reason, to 
 suppress it and to starve it is to misconceive the purpose 
 of our lives, to renounce our function and to prove false 
 to the principle which brought us into the world. 
 
 Summary of Metaphysical Argument 
 
 I have tried in this chapter to justify the peculiar 
 importance attributed to impulse, by adopting a meta- 
 physical view as to the purpose and principle of the 
 Universe, which enables us to regard impulse as the most 
 direct expression of that principle. 
 
 I believe that this view, though it is at best a matter of 
 probable guessing only, is less open to objection than any 
 of the alternative views considered in this chapter, <with 
 the single exception of that which refuses to admit that 
 the operation of any principle in the Universe has been 
 
204 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 detected up to the present, and insists accordingly that, in 
 the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must beheve 
 that events in the Universe have happened as the result 
 of blind chance. 
 
 This position of complete agnosticism is admittedly 
 little open to attack, and whether we can see fit to 
 accept it is, I think, mainly a matter of temperament. 
 If it is true, it reduces Ethics simply to the question of 
 how to satisfy the individual. To answer that question 
 we have only to find out enough about the individual, and 
 we shall know how to satisfy him. Ethics, therefore, 
 becomes psychology. 
 
 If, however, we adopt the Life Force view, it is clear 
 that Ethics once again assumes the status conferred upon 
 it by the fact of there being morality, and may invoke the 
 necessary notion of duty as its basis. It becomes, in fact, 
 our duty to further the objects of the Life Force as best 
 we may ; and one of the means of furthering them is 
 undoubtedly by giving freer play to the expression of our 
 impulses, in which the Life Force may be conceived as 
 directly embodied. 
 
 But this principle is not the whole of Ethics. It is simply 
 the principle at which we happen to have arrived, as the 
 result of an experiment in the methods of what I have 
 called empirical or common-sense Ethics. It has no 
 pretensions to be the sum of ethical truth : it purports 
 only to state what I believe to be a truth, arrived at by 
 following what I regard as the only method likely to 
 yield results which are related to life. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absolute, The, 91, 92, 94 
 
 Aldebaran, 199 
 
 Anarchists, 154, 159, 160 
 
 A priori theories, 89-93 
 
 Aristippus, 3 
 
 Aristotle, 7, 23, 24, 26, 103, 124, 
 
 125, 192 
 Athos (Mount), 38 
 
 Barbellion, 189 
 Beethoven, 99 
 Behaviourism, 105-108 
 Bentham, 2, 11, 13, 14, 28, 82, 
 
 116 
 Bergson, 197 
 Berkeley, 93 
 Bosanquet, 92 
 Bradley, 92, 194 
 Buddha, 201 
 Butler, Bishop, 30 
 Butler, Samuel, 60, 104 
 
 Categorical imperative, 25 
 
 Charity, 4 
 
 Chesterton, 48 
 
 Christ Jesus, 14, 55, 78, 122, 151, 
 
 152, 201 
 Church, The, 195 
 City State, The Greek, 36, 43 
 Cleon, 144 
 
 Cole, G. H. D., 166-168, 170 
 Commandments, The Ten, 43, 
 
 152 
 Comte, 43 
 Conscience, 29-31 
 Co-operative Movement, 171 
 
 Darwin, 45 
 
 Definitions, 10 1 
 
 Descartes, 91, 93 
 
 Desires (Unconscious), 105, 108- 
 
 iio 
 " Dynasts," 187 
 
 Economic law, 136, 137 
 Elan vital, 197 
 Elixir of Life, 59 
 Empiricists, 92-94 
 Euclid, 87 
 Evolution, 38-40 
 
 Factory Acts, 46, 137 
 Fichte, 179 
 Forms, 65-75, 179 
 Forster, E. M., 144 
 Freud, 95, 105 
 
 General Will, 146, 164, 165, 168 
 God. 69, 73. 74, 139, 177. 187, 
 
 188-195, 197, 198 
 Goethe, 188 
 Good, The, 59, 71. 74. 75. 79. 
 
 82-85 
 Greek City State, 36, 43 
 Guild Sociahsm, 166-175 
 
 Hamlet, 34 
 
 Hammond, J. L., and Barbara, 
 
 46, 156 
 Hardy, 141, 142, 187-189 
 " Heartbreak House," 143, 144 
 Hedonism, 3-10 
 
 205 
 
206 
 
 COMMON-SENSE ETHICS 
 
 Hegel, 89-92, 94. 132, 148-15 1. 
 
 153, 164, 167, 173, 179 
 Herodotus, 37 
 Hobbes, 89. 198 
 Hudson, W. H., 193, 199 
 Hume, 54, 93. 96 
 
 Imperative (Categorical), 25 
 Intuitionism of ends, 61-63 
 Introspection, 106 
 
 James, William, 93, 199 
 
 Jesus Christ, 14, 55, 78, 122, 151, 
 
 152, 201 
 Jung, 95. 105 
 Justice, 18, 19 
 
 Kant, 23-25, 26, 32, 36, 116, 
 
 132, 179 
 Keats, 189 
 Keynes, 142 
 Kropotkin, Prince, 160 
 
 Leibnitz, 91 
 Locke, 93, 96 
 
 " Major Barbara," 155, 156 
 
 Marx, 41, 154 
 
 " Middlemarch," 149 
 
 Mill, J. S., 2, 10, 12-20, 25, 79, 
 
 116, 139 
 Moliere, 147 
 Moore, G. E., 62 
 Motive, 27-29 
 Mount Athos, 38 
 Muirhead,38, 39, 40, 42, 147, 149 
 
 Nietzsche, 36, 48 
 Nirvana, 157, 181, 196 
 
 Objectivity, 51-54 
 
 " Outline of History," 187 
 
 Pater, Walter, 56 
 Patriotism, 4 
 Pessimism, 183, 196 
 Philosopher's Stone, 59 
 Plato, 65-76, 83, 84, 93. 123, 
 124, 179, 192 
 
 Pleasure philosophy, 3-10 
 
 Pliny, 145 
 
 Plotinus, 38 
 
 Porphyry, 83 
 
 Progress (dogma of), 42-49 
 
 Psycho-analysis, 105 
 
 Puritanism, 129 
 
 Ransome, 143 
 Rashdall, 6 
 Rationalists, 87, 178 
 " Return of the Native," 188 
 Russell, Bertrand, 46, 10 1, 104, 
 117, 119, 121, 123, 127, 154 
 
 San Juan, 189 
 
 Schopenhauer, 78, 97, 114, 179- 
 
 186, 196, 197, 200, 202 
 Secularists, 177, 178 
 Self-Government in Industry, 
 
 168, 170 
 Sermon on the Mount, 43, 47, 79 
 Shaw, 130, 143, 152, 155. 197. 
 
 199 
 Sidgwick, 10, 33, 82 
 Socialism (Guild), 166-175 
 Socrates, 151, 201 
 Spencer, Herbert, 42, 47 
 Stoicism, 129 
 Subjectivity, 51*54 
 Suicide, 181, 200 
 Swedenborg, 78 
 Swift, 147 
 Syndicalists, 154, 167 
 
 Tchekov, 143 
 
 Temperance, 4 
 
 Ten Commandments, 43, 152 
 
 " Tess," 188 
 
 Tolstoy, 142, 151, 188 
 
 Tussaud, Madame, 36 
 
 Unconscious desires, 105, 108- 
 
 IIO 
 
 Vaughan, Father Bernard, S.J., 
 
 81 
 Virtue, 16, 17 
 
INDEX 
 
 207 
 
 Wells, H. G., 187, 197, 198, 201 
 
 Whitehall, 48 
 
 Wilde, Oscar, 56, 124 
 
 Will, 125-127 
 
 Will, The General, 146, 164, 165, 
 
 168 
 Will of All, 164 
 
 Will to Live, 179-185, 197 
 Wycherly, 129 
 
 " You Never can Tell," 200 
 Zoroastrianism, 197 
 
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