2799 IRLF ' . . /:; -- KANTIAN ETK AND THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION. Aofete S'az/ IV&>9 j3e\Tiov elvat, KOI elv eirl atorripiq je rr?9 a\i)6eias KOI ra ol/ceia avaipelv, aXXw? re /cal ap^^olv i The Categorical Imperative begins with the notion of action. We are so to act that the maxims of our conduct may adapt themselves to universal law. Now an act is the translation by volition of a thought into reality, as, conversely, knowledge is the translation of reality into thought. The idea on the one hand is a mere state of our consciousness, the change in the world on the other hand is a mere event of nature. For action there is required a union of both through the will. A volition actualizes the idea. But this is impossible unless the idea to be realized is something definite, some particular end and no mere abstract principle. There can be no volition in general, no realization of a thought, whose universality stands directly opposed to the particularity of existent things. Now the Imperative is such an abstraction. It requires you to realize something, and yet gives you nothing that you can realize. And the will to which this Imperative addresses itself is likewise an abstraction. It is its essence to be formal, but the law requires you to materialize it, to give it a content, to contradict its essence. Only as formal is it good, and yet as good it ordains an activity which it cannot under- take without ceasing to be formal. Its object is the mastery of the sensuous nature, and yet it is denied by any contact with sense. Such a pure will is, in short, a contradiction : as will it must have a definite content or matter for its activity, but as pure will it must be merely formal, that is, it can have no content. j The other element in the Categorical Imperative is that of conformability to universal law. The maxim on Ethics of Evolution. 55 which you act must adapt itself to a principle for others. But as anything you choose for your own maxim is susceptible of this universal application, so far as the law alone is to decide, we must say with Hegel that " there is nothing whatsoever which in this way could not become a moral law." * The law forbids you making any prin- ciple and the contradictory of it, at the same time, maxims of your conduct; but it does not prevent you choosing either one or the other of these two. Which it shall be, is left entirely undetermined. If deception be the maxim of your conduct, you must not will truth- fulness for universal law; or if truthfulness be your maxim, deception cannot be willed as principle for others ; but there is no way of determining from the law alone whether truthfulness or deception should be taken as starting-point. Suppose the question be put, " if, when 1 n difficulty, I may not make a promise with the inten- tion of not observing it ; " then, says Kant, " I soon perceive, it is true, that I can will the lie, but not a universal law to lie, for then there could be no such thing as promising/' f But what contradiction is there in the supposition that men have ceased to make and give promises ? We set out to prove that promise- breaking is immoral, and we show that if universally adopted it would lead to the abrogation of promise- making. But why should there be promise-making ? Though the absence of it might conflict with other conditions, it is certainly not forbidden by the formal law. Whatever of cogency the argument seems to carry with it, it derives from an illicit appeal to the consequences of actions in the real world, by descending, that is, from the a priori sphere of thought to the a posteriori of experience. Only if promise-keeping be * Hegel's Werlce, i. 352. f Werke, iv. 250-251. 56 Kantian Ethics and the moral, does the law pronounce promise-breaking immoral. And the law itself is incapable of determining whether morality itself consist in promise-keeping or in promise- breaking. But the point of interest is precisely to show that the one is moral and should be, the other immoral and should not be. The contradictions immanent in the Categorical Im- perative have now been developed ; and it will perhaps be admitted that they constitute a sufficient refutation of any merely formal principle of morality. If this be granted, it follows that an ethical system can be constructed only on a foundation which is not formal, that is, only on the basis of a law which has a material content. But Kant, in a proposition as closely reasoned as any of its prototypes in Geometry, claims to have demonstrated that "all material practical principles are, as such, of one and the same kind, and belong to a general system of self-love or individual happiness/'' * Now, if there is any fact of which our moral consciousness is indubitably certain, it is that duty does not consist in the pursuit of individual happiness, and it is on this account that egoistic hedonism fails as a philosophy of ethics. If, then, all material principles are of this nature, as the proposition asserts, then obviously they afford no explanation of the facts of our moral life ; and, since the same has been shown of all formal principles, it would follow that an ethical philosophy was for ever impossible. But before assenting to this conclusion, the proof must be examined by which Kant professes to have established the premise on which it rests. What is valid, what not valid, in his demon- stration of the egoism of all material principles ? First of all it must be granted, with Kant, that the pleasure arising from the idea of the existence of an * WerTcc, v. 22. Ethics of Evolution. 57 object rests on the receptivity of the subject, and belongs therefore to sense and not to understanding. It must further be granted that this expected pleasure deter- mines the desire towards the realization of the object. Nor can it be denied that a principle which makes such pleasure the highest determinator of the will is one of self-love. But it cannot be granted that all material principles are of this nature. And we must, therefore, affirm that Kant has not proved what he set out to prove. Indeed, this becomes obvious by a mere comparison of the enunciation and the conclusion of the proposition. The proof only warrants what the conclusion expresses, namely, that " all material principles, which put the deter- minator of choice in pleasure or pain, resulting from the existence of an object, are, so far, all of the same kind, that they belong to a system of self-love or individual happiness." But the enunciation affirms that all material principles as such belong to a system of self-love. And between this universal and that particular judgment there lies an area which, it requires little logic to teach us, is wholly untouched by the demonstration. If only the class of material principles specified is egoistic, it does not follow that the same can be predicated of all material principles as such. The result, accordingly, is that morality, which we have found inexplicable from the mere form of a universal law, is not incompatible with a principle that differs from the formal law, in that it has a content, but agrees with it, in that it is of universal extension. Such a principle cannot be the product of reason alone, which is only form -giving, nor yet of sense alone, which is only the source of matter. It is to be a principle for men, and differs therefore on the one hand from a law for merely 58 Kantian Ethics and the rational beings like the angels, as on the other, from a maxim for merely sensuous beings like the brutes. It must express the end for us as men, TavOpwTnvov ajaOov. -5<" It can be found only in the characteristics of human nature in the idea of man as such. Any other derivation of it misses the mark, either by aiming too high or not high enough. We believe that the conception of Aristotle must form the starting-point of any scientific ethic, though, as may hereafter appear, Aristotle did not apprehend, as Kant did, the significance of an a priori element in morality. But a rightly-developed Aristotel- ianism in ethics must mediate between Formalism and Empiricism, just as Criticism, in the theoretical sphere, brought together the truth of Sensationalism and nationalism. Against such a derivation of morality from the essential nature of man, no one has, however, protested more vigorously than Kant himself. " It is," he says (to quote only one of scores of passages), " of the last moment to be on our guard against supposing for an instant that the reality of this principle can be deduced from the peculiar character of human nature. For duty is to be the unconditionate necessity of an action, and must accordingly be valid for all rational beings (to whom an Imperative is at all applicable) and only on this account binding on the human will. Whatever is derived, on the contrary, from the particular constitution of human nature, from certain feelings or tendencies, or even if possible from a special bias peculiar to human reason but not necessary for the will of every rational being, may, it is true, be a maxim for us, but never a universal law, may, that is, be a subjective principle we like to follow, but can never be an objective law, ordaioing how to act, Ethics of Evolution. 59 even though the bent, inclination, and constitution of our nature were opposed to it. Indeed, the sublimity and internal dignity of the law show themselves the more conspicuously, according as the subjective motives are in opposition to it, without however weakening its deter- minative force or derogating from its validity."* In this passage Kant very emphatically rejects the deduction of the ethical principle from the peculiar nature of man. He will have it binding on man, solely because it is valid for all rational beings. But since we know of no other rational beings than man, it does seem a work of super- erogation to excogitate for them a system of morality, and a hopeless undertaking to reach in this way the definite rights and duties incident to human life. If the law, which it is Kant's merit to have shown must be universal, be yet elevated above the universal of human nature, so as to include within itself every rational being, then by leaving the actual world we know for an imaginary world of which we know nothing, we make it incapable of sustaining any content, without which, however, we have found morality wholly inexplicable. Why, then, did Kant here aim so high Kant, who had formerly meted out the domains and bounds of knowledge and cautioned us against those stormy and perilous seas of the Unknowable, which encompass on every side the tiny island of our knowable world ? He sought, in fact, to rid his morality of the empirical element, which could not be avoided if the idea of humanity were taken as its foundation. For Kant the empirical was always associated with the idea of the accidental; and he felt that its admission into morality would sully the purity of the good will and endanger the dignity of a law that was * Werke, iy. 273. 60 Kantian Ethics and the to be valid even though opposed by the appetites, the tendencies, or even by the constitution of our nature. But Kant here fails to distinguish what is essentially different. His grounds are valid against a system that makes pleasure the end and aim of action, but they do not touch a principle like that of Aristotle, which lays a foundation for morality in the essential and permanently- abiding nature of man. It makes all the difference in the world whether the principle be ^ovrj or evSaipovia, but it is just this that Kant failed to see. Versed as he was in the moral speculations of the French and English, it is more than probable that he knew only at second-hand the great masterpieces of antiquity; and so failed to profit by a distinction which Aristotle had so clearly developed. The ancient moralist, recognizing that the good after which all strive was universally named evSaifiovid, pro- ceeds to notice the variety of meaning covered by that term, and rejects ybovr} as an equivalent for it. The absolute good must be in itself sufficient and cannot, like pleasure, be dependent on anything else. What this self- sufficient good, which is desired only for its own sake, may be, will appear from a consideration of the work peculiar to man (TO eavrov epyov, TO ISiov, TO oiicelov). For as the flute-player and the sculptor and the artist find the good and the perfect in their respective works, so must the absolute good be found in the peculiar work of man, if such indeed there be. That, however, cannot be doubted; for nature that has assigned special functions to the flute-player and the sculptor would not have left man, as such, without an end. It is incredible that eye and hand and foot, and in general every member, have manifestly each a function of their own, but man as a totality, man apart from these individual members has Ethics of Evolution. 61 none. Granting, then, that man must have some work or activity peculiar to him as man, we must next determine its character. It cannot be merely to live, to nourish himself, and to grow, for that is common to him with the plants ; nor yet to live a life of feeling, for that he shares with the animals. What distinguishes man from these is reason, and the end of his being must therefore consist in an activity of reason. Is now the motive from which Kant forbids the deduction of morality from the peculiar nature of man justified by this view of the typical system of Aristotle ? Does it endanger either the purity of the will or the un- conditionality of the law ? The answer of course depends upon what we mean by our terms. If the will is good and the law is absolute only because they are both empty abstractions, then assuredly they are robbed of their dignity in a system like that of Aristotle, which requires that each should have a definite content. But a dignity that consists in barren formality and that cannot come in contact with reality without losing its essential character, it is at once absurd and impossible to maintain in a philosophy of our concrete morality. It is not necessary to repeat our criticism of the practical philosophy; it will suffice to recall that the one great truth we found in its principles was that the moral law and the good will are possible only by merging the particularity of sense in the universality of reason. But for this, which was excluded by the system of Kant, ample provision is made in the system of Aristotle. It provides for the law a form that is universal, and a matter that is concrete. The character of generality cannot be wanting to a principle which formulates, not the empirical and accidental nature of the individual, but 62 Kantian Ethics and the the inner necessary and unconditioned idea of the species itself. Nor yet can it lack a content, for it is not an abstract universal of reason, but the concrete universal of humanity. And the union of form and matter in actual living practice is guaranteed by an Imperative ordaining that reason, by which alone man is made what he is, shall permeate all the activity of his life and gain the mastery over his blindly self-seeking appetites and desires. In this way the individual while concretelv realizing the idea of his own being follows laws that are unconditioned, because given in the idea, and that are universal, because the idea is not peculiar to him, but valid for every human being. The principle of Aristotle accordingly satisfies the requirements of the moral law as explicated by Kant. The same may be said of the good will, which is how- ever not explicitly discussed by Aristotle. With the correlate question of freedom and necessity it came first with Christianity into the living consciousness of modern Europe. But it is not only in harmony with, it is really supplementary to, a principle that places the absolute good in the realization of the essential nature of man. The good will is, as Kant explains, one that wills the universal; and since, as we have seen, the universal cannot be abstract, the good will can be no other than that which wills the concrete universal. When man no longer follows blindly his selfish appetites and desires, but acts rationally in accordance with the idea he has of his own worth and dignity as man, then the will is good, for it is in the unhampered service of reason. Instead, therefore, of arguing with Kant that the moral law is not grounded in the peculiarity of human nature and is binding on man only because valid for all Ethics of Evolution. 63 rational beings, we must, in the spirit of Aristotelianism, maintain ' ' that no other task can be given to man than the realization of the idea of his own worth, and that no other than this can be comprehended, no other recognized by him/'* Had Kant really understood this principle, it may be doubted whether he would have cast it so lightly aside. But there is ample evidence that he had no right comprehension of it whatsoever. And his table of ethical principles-, a table professedly exhaustive, does not even contain the name of Aristotle, for whose principle there is in fact no representative. It omits the name of the greatest of moralists and passes over in silence the only principle Kant had been at pains specifically to refute ! It may now be considered as established that the moral law, which Kant rightly argued must be unconditional, can be no other than a material principle whose form and content are given in the idea of man as man. Kant's opposition to this view, if it be not a mere misunder- standing, must be held ungrounded and untenable. We have now to add that Kant himself by a very instructive inconsequence more than once assumes the principle he had so vigorously combated. Thus when he speaks of " the idea of humanity man carries in his soul as archetype of his actions," he concedes everything for which we here contend. f And this agreement is no accidental occurrence, but a result rendered inevitable by the logic of the moral consciousness. Hence Kant is obliged to carry this conception into the development of the practical philosophy, though, it is true, with a sacrifice of its unity and consistency. Without supposing * Trendelenburg's Naturrecht, p. 41 (2nd ed. 1861). t iii. 260. 64 Kantian Ethics and the that the last grounds of morality were contained in the idea of man as such, he could never have reached the second formula for the Categorical Imperative, the formula ordaining : so to act as to use the humanity in thine own person and in the person of every other always as an end, never merely as a means.* And only on the same assumption is it possible to classify duties as tending to the perfection of self or to the happiness of others, f Had Kant only meditated on the principle here un- consciously and illogically assumed he would have found in it the key to the solution of that unnatural antinomy between goodness and happiness, which was not to be avoided on his own conception of morality. True to the noble thought with which his ethical writings begin, that a good will is the only absolute good, he rightly refuses to identify the moral with the pleasurable, and, as a consequence, regards the pleasurable as an impure motive to the good will. The children of the kingdom take not the hireling's wages, nor give the hireling's service. Duty is the necessity of an act out of reverence for the law. On this side there is no compromise between virtue and happiness. But on another, the case is different. For, as we have already seen, in the highest good, which the moral law enjoins us to realize, happiness is an element not less than virtue. And, as is well known, the antinomy supplies grounds for postulating the existence of God. Without inquiring into the nature of the new eudae- monistic God that Kant thus sets up on the ruins of Deism, we may merely observe that He has no other function than the mediation of a contradiction which is due solely to the one-sidedness of Kant's ethical philo- * WerTce, iv. 277. f vii. 189. Ethics, of Evolution. . 65 sophy. If the moral principle had admitted pleasure, not as motive to, but as accompaniment of, moral volition and action, there would have been no need of a super- natural mechanism for the adjustment of happiness to virtue. But in Kant's eyes the least inclination to good seemed to detract from the worth of goodness, which, as he conceived, only the moral law could produce. And so sharply does he exclude inclination from morality, that he defines, in his last ethical work, duty as " necessitation to an end which is unwillingly adopted." * Thus Schiller could say that the Draco of his age expounded the idea of duty with a rigour that frightened away every charm. But, as Schiller rightly maintained, duty cannot be for ever opposed by inclination. The good will must become at last an abiding disposition which has its delight only in the good. The ideal of a moral man is a unity in which the " law of the mind" has taken up into itself " the other law that wars against it," and enlisted its energy in the service of the good. But Kant regarded as end what was only beginning, and placed, accordingly, duty in an eternal warfare between " flesh " and " spirit/' Starting from a law valid for rational beings alone, he was obliged, when he reached the specifically human nature, to suppress entirely the claims of sense. But the enemy is not completely conquered until reconciled ; and Kant's mistake consists in attempting to quench the fire of sense instead of turning it to account for the quickening of the moral life and the glow of moral feeling. Had he taken for his principle, instead of that formal universal of reason, the idea of human nature as such, he would have seen that morality, consisting as it does in the realization of the end to which we are destined, must necessarily * TFerfo, vii. 189. 66 Kantian Ethics and the be accompanied by pleasure in the attainment of that end. The idea is the essential and the original, the pleasure the accidental and the secondary. The ends in which the idea of humanity expresses itself must be the only motives of the good will ; but when these are honestly fulfilled, then pleasure springs up at once as consequence and as sign of the moral development. "An ethical philosophy which would exclude pleasure would be contrary to nature ; and one which would make a principle of it would be contrary to spirit/' * The doctrine of Epicurus and the doctrine of the Stoics are both false. Virtue does not consist in the pursuit of pleasure, nor yet in the pursuit of some imaginary sub- limity that excludes it. The truth of both, and the truth of ethics at the same time, is contained potentially at least in the system of Aristotle. There is still another point to which reference may be made for the sake of comparison between the two principles. It has been seen already that the Categorical Imperative is formal and empty, but we must now add that it is essentially subjective. The individual is supposed to be the source and the standard of all moral good, and no account is taken of the morality already existent in the world. But this wholly ignores the development of the individual consciousness, which is made up for the most part of the moral and intellectual substance it has assimilated from its environment. Unus homo, nullus homo. The individual has not to create from his own innate emptiness some new morality; in the main, he has only to make his own the morality of his people and his country. And his moral notions are accordingly conditioned by the history and circumstances of the * Trendeleuburg's Historisclie Beitrdge, iii. 212 (ed. 1867). Ethics of Evolution. 67 people among whom he is born, by the national religion which he early imbibes, and by the accumulated expe- rience of every kind of which he becomes a participator. In this spiritual atmosphere the individual is moralized. When the conscience within responds to the conscience without, his education is finished ; and then, if ever, but assuredly not till then, may creation take the place of assimilation. But Kant's principle assumes that the moral man is never assimilative, but always creative or self -originating. The formal universal is an idea of his brain, not the objectively realized universal of State, of Church, of Family, and of Society. And as Kant's prac- tical philosophy ignores the derivation of the individual consciousness from the objective consciousness as mirrored in these institutions, so it neglects, and could not help neglecting, these factors themselves. When, however, it is seen what a role they play in the develop- ment of morality, a philosophy of them will be inevitably demanded. They are, to use Schleiermacher's phrase, our ethical heritage (ethische Outer) ; and, as such, their origin must be traced and their rights justified. Into this question we cannot of course now enter. We have only to note that it is a defect of the Kantian philosophy to have ignored or even to have excluded it. An implicit explanation, on the other hand, is latent in the principle of Aristotle. For the absolute good, which he finds in the peculiar work of man, is to be sufficient in itself not only for the individual but also for the human species; and since the inner side of it consists in the activity of reason, in the realization of the "proper self," the outer side must be an objectivation in which humanity as a whole will find itself realized; and this, since man is a Zwoz> 7ro\iTifc6v, can be no other than the 5 * 68 Kantian Ethics and the civil community or the State. In other language, our social institutions are the objective expression of the idea of humanity as it embodies itself in the course of history. The view of the moral principle for which we have been contending rests on a metaphysical assumption that must now be indicated. If the account given be correct, duty consists in the realization of an end or idea, for the sake of which alone man exists as moral agent. Here we are in accord with Kant, who conceived the perfecting of the will through reason as the final cause of our existence. Ethics is inevitably driven to a teleological conception of the universe. We find morality explicable only if thought be assumed as prius, and force or matter as the sub- ordinate condition for the fulfilment of the ends which thought establishes. This organic conception of the world we are not now called upon metaphysically to justify. We have only to observe that it is forced upon us by the interpretation of the facts of the moral con- sciousness. By implication, therefore, we have already rejected an ethical philosophy built on a system of meta- physics directly opposed to the teleological. Where matter is taken as the primary and original, and thought as the secondary and derivative, there emerges such a system, which may, by way of contrast, be called the mechanical. A science of physics is possible, but a science of ethics is impossible under this conception of the universe. If man is nothing but a congeries of feelings and ideas, which a blindly working nature has set up, without purpose and without aim, if his actions are the necessary consequences of feelings which are neither caused by him nor subject to his control, does it not seem evident that moral responsibility is meaningless Ethics of Evolution. 69 . and duty a vain mocking word ? If we are merely the arena in which events happen, and not the self-centred personalities from whom actions take their source, then morality consists in a simple laissez-faire, and ethics is not distinguishable from physics. 4. Evolutionistic Hedonism. But though our final result is that the mechanical con- ception of the universe cannot be reconciled with the deliverances of the moral consciousness, it is notorious that evolution, as thus interpreted, has been applied and, as is widely supposed, with success to the problems of moral philosophy. Of this philosophizing Mr. Herbert Spencer's Data of Ethics may be taken as a typical example. And it now remains to examine the philosophy of ethics which that work contains.* Mr. Spencer makes no reference to the will in his work * It may be well to note that with Darwinism as a biological hypothesis we have in this essay really no concern. Certain metaphysical assumptions often associated with it we are however forced to reject. There are two spheres the sphere of nature and the sphere of spirit. And if Darwinism has shed light on that it has left this as it found it. Lange no biassed authority says : " The evolution of man from lower forms of life is from the point of view of natural science perfectly self-evident ; while, on the contrary, Ins conscious life ( Geisteslelen) remains still a problem when all the consequences of Darwinism hare been granted" (Geschichte des Materalismus, ii. 313 (3rd ed.) ). It is our effort to show what this conscious life, on its moral side, really implies. And we enter our humble protest against the illogical method of importing into the sphere of morality a hypothesis taken from other phenomena. We demand that the facts of morality shall be studied, as Darwin studied the facts of life, and then, but not till then, a theory of tkem given a theory deduced from the facts or framed with reference to them, and not with reference to a wholly different class of facts. 70 Kantian Ethics and the on ethics, but elsewhere he rejects the conception of freedom as an illusion. Not that he proves it such, not that he examines its validity at all ; but, simply setting out with the assumption, he shows how the <( illusion " has been generated. It arose, he informs us, from the belief "that at each moment the ego present as such in consciousness (I exclude the implied, but unknown sub- stratum which can never be present) is something more than the aggregate of feelings and ideas which then exists."* But the fact is, it seems, that the ego is nothing else than this "aggregate," and in no other sense can it be said that "I" determine this or that action or volition. As the influence of Hume is traceable in Mr. Spencer's Lockean theory of knowledge, here it meets us at the very threshold of the ethics. But the hypothesis is not on that account any the less mysterious. Why should all mankind have fallen into this strange error of supposing themselves something more than their " feelings and ideas "? This supposition, so marvellous in itself, needs some justification before being used as an axiom to account for real or imaginary illusions. And the next stage is equally wonderful. For even though we concede that men, under a strange infatuation, have come to believe in a "mental self" present to conscious- ness, apart from the aggregate of ideas and emotions, how can there arise from this the notion of freedom ? Because, says Mr. Spencer, we attribute the action to it and not to the causality of a feeling or idea. But why we should do this, there is no reason given ; and none perhaps could be given except the exigencies of a fore- gone conclusion. Without a previous belief that we were free, there would be no ground for assigning the * Psj/chulor/y, i. 500. Ethics of Evolution. 71 volition to the causality of the ego and not of the feeling that preceded it. Indeed, were inference at all possible for such a consciousness and that cannot be admitted would it not argue from the connexion between feelings and actions that the will was necessitated ? Even, then, though we grant the absurd supposition of that ghostly presence in consciousness that ego apart from ideas and emotions we must deny that it could throw such a deceptive halo about the mysteries of the human will. But how it ever got its seat there in consciousness ; how we, who are merely bundles of conscious states, could appear to the " aggregates" that we are more than ' ' aggre- gates," is a mystery without parallel, or paralleled only by the belief in freedom which this bastard ego imposes i upon our credulity. The genesis of the notion of freedom here given, is, we think, absurd ; but the fact remains that for Mr. Spencer the notion is an illusion. And holding with Kant that freedom is the ratio essendi of morality, it is not easy for us to see how ethics is possible on the denial of it. Mr. Spencer was, perhaps, dimly conscious of the same diffi- culty ; for it is only by changing the problem of ethics that his system is at all conceivable. With a naivete that is really surprising, he says in his well-known letter to Mr. Mill: "The view for which I contend is, that morality properly so-called the science of right conduct has for its object to determine how and why certain modes of conduct are detrimental and certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things; and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action 72 Kantian Ethics and the necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness."* That the science thus sketched in outline would, when realized, be useful, there can be no doubt whatever. And any one who has in the slightest degree observed how much needless suffering is entailed, through ignorance of the conditions under which we live, would welcome a hygienic almanac in which human actions were tabulated according to their " beneficial" or "detrimental" results, specific effects being set over against specific causes with explanation of their necessary connexions. The possi- bility of such a science may be doubted ; and the induc- tions it would bring together from almost all the other sciences, especially from Biology, Psychology, and Sociology, certainly imply an almost superhuman effort and grasp to adapt them to the infinite variety of human activities. In outline, however, the science is at least conceivable. But though its possibility be granted, and the benefits to be derived from it be emphasized, we must note that it would be the science of hedonistic action not of right conduct. It would have shown the causes and the conditions of pleasure, but it would not have touched the question of goodness. From the tables it could in any case be seen what it was prudent to do, but in no case what it was duty to do. To identify moral action with beneficial results, is to obliterate distinctions that are as important as they are manifestly obvious. If any one asserted thai/ the science of sound properly so-called had for its object to determine how and why certain relations existed among the phenomena of colour, it might be difficult to refute him, although you were certain he used words in a meaning entirely foreign to * Dal a of El hies, p. 57. Ethics of Evolution. 73 the popular usage. The case is precisely the same with Mr. Spencer. He asserts that ethics or the science of right conduct aims at determining how and why actions are beneficial or detrimental. But the voice of humanity, as caught alike in language and in thought, has pro- claimed the incommensurability of right with the bene- ficial and of wrong with the detrimental. It is sure that pleasure is not morality nor misery immorality ; and that the moral life does Hot consist in the pursuit of the one or the avoidance of the other. A " moral science" that proposes to deduce the laws and conditions of happiness is as much opposed to the facts of the moral conscious- ness as an acoustics of colours to the facts of external perception. A " moral science" must be a philosophy of our morality, not of our pleasures or our advantages, or anything else that is gratuitously identified with our morality. This false equation between the good and the beneficial has led Mr. Spencer to assign to the law of causality an important place in his evolutionistic theory of ethics. He blames moral philosophers for not erecting "into a method the ascertaining of necessary relations between causes and effects, and deducing rules of conduct from formulated statements of them."* And in " studying the various ethical theories," he has been " struck with the fact that they are all characterized either by entire absence of the idea of causation or by inadequate presence of it."t And the fact is not essentially different from Mr. Spencer's representation. Moralists have never attempted to show the causal connexion between specific modes of action and the feelings of pleasure or pain accompanying them, much less to construct on such a * Data of Ethics, p. 61. f Ibid. p. 49. 74 Kantian Ethics and the foundation a system of rules valid for all human conduct. " Already in possession of a moral estate, bequeathed by the spirit of past generations, they did not foolishly attempt to create it de novo by their own individual efforts. They found existing in the world a system of morality, which had formed the fibre of their spiritual being before as yet they had awakened to reflection and become fc ethical philosophers ." And this universal ethos, at whose breasts they had been suckled, naturally seemed better than any poor empty phantom of their own indi- vidual brain. It never occurred to them that the world had waited for "rules of conduct" till they appeared, like gift-bringing Gods from Heaven, to supply the universal want. Nor did they deem it any part of their task to construct from their own private minds a set of laws to which humanity must conform. Recognizing the superior wisdom of universal reason, as it exists not merely ideally in the moral notions of individuals, but actually in the objective realization of these into State and Society and Family, they proposed to themselves no other problem than the understanding of what actually exists the comprehension of the diesseits, not the creation of an imaginary jenseits. And the solution of this problem took them far beyond the " idea of causation/' which, if not entirely absent from their systems, is introduced only I to be excluded on the ground that morality is impossible, if spirit be in any way subject to the categories, which spirit itself has imposed upon nature. The ethics of evolution, however, has hitherto univer- versally, though, as we venture to think, not necessarily, followed a wholly different method. And it is this which Mr. Spencer adopts. Instead of setting out from the totality of facts to be explained, he begins with an Ethics of Evolution. 75 assumption borrowed from elsewhere, gratuitously im- porting into the realm of thought a category, which we know only as valid for nature. The law of causality which the knowing subject finds, because he has put, in the objective world, is, without any grounds except the needs of a mechanical hypothesis of the universe, pro- claimed a law for self-consciousness itself. If the facts cannot be explained on this dogmatic assumption, so much the worse fgr the facts. The hypothesis is not perhaps consonant with " morality as it is," but it is 'the source of tf morality as it should be !" Without appa- rently observing the infinite presumption implied in the impugning by any one man of the morality of humanity, or the ludicrousness of a " philosopher " creating from his own individual prejudices and prepossessions a " morality as it should be," our Evolutionists dilate upon more than one " defect in the current system of morality," develop points hitherto hidden from " men at large and moralists as exponents of their view," and, as if possessed of an insight at once poetic and prophetic, celebrate the coming triumph of " Industrialism," when man, who f< as at present constituted," is not in harmony with the requirements of the theory, shall have adapted himself " to the conditions of social life," or to the te guidance by proximate pleasures and pains," which all other animals have already accepted as Categorical Imperative in their " system of morality."* We ask for a philosophy of our existent morality, and we are presented with a dogmatic non-existent morality. This surely is to receive a stone, * See Data of .Ethics, pp. v., 70, 87, 132. " Hence there is a supposable formula for the activities of each species, which, could it be drawn out, would constitute a system of morality for that species" (p. 132). 76 Kantian Ethics and the when we have asked for bread. Bat that is not the worst. A philosophy of morality we may dispense with, not, however, with morality itself. Yet the Evolutionist requires that it be suppressed when it conflicts with his " Moral Science/' whose te deductions are to be recog- nized as laws of conduct, and are to be conformed to/' irrespective of the dictates of duty or the unmistakable voice of conscience. The facts, it would seem, exist for the sake of the theory, not the theory for the explanation of the facts. We have already advanced far enough to see that the Evolution-hypothesis does not really affect, because it never reaches, the problems of ethical philosophy. These lie in the moral consciousness of humanity, to which it simply gives the go-by. The conceptions of duty and responsibility may be taken as fundamental. Mankind, if we except a few philosophers, is certain that the con- ditio sine qua non of the first is the freedom of the will, and of the second, the self-sameness or identity of the person. If these be denied, it can see neither meaning nor content in the moral conceptions. The Evolutionist, however, enters the ethical sphere with a ready-made theory framed, irrespective of morality, from a wholly different class of phenomena. His premises are that the self is merely a collection of disconnected ideas, feelings, and volitions, and that will is only the name for a deter- mination towards action by any of these ideas, feelings, or emotions. An ego to which the " states of consciousness" belong, and by which they are held together, he regards as a fiction and an illusion. Not less illusory he pro- claims that belief of the uuphilosophical mind, which holds to a will that wills something, and not to the will of the " philosophers/' which is only another name for Ethics of Evolution. 77 the " movement" produced by the " composition" of the "forces" called motives, as they act and re-act in the chaotic region called self. But, as we have just said, the denial of freedom and of personal identity, and the extension of causality to mind which is only the other side of that denial lead inevitably to the annihilation of all morality. The problem of the ethical philosopher has therefore no existence for the Evolutionist, who has already excluded it* by the one-sidedness of his mecha- nical hypothesis. But he proposes a new problem to himself. Emptying morality of its content and iden- tifying the good with the pleasurable, he sets out " to deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of exist- ence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness." And these he enjoins upon men as laws of their conduct. Here, however, he falls into an inconsequence. For if man is necessitated like any material object, as the theory asserts, then you cannot enjoin anything upon him any more than you can command the sun to stand still, or the stars to change their courses. And though such a " Moral Science " may interest the theorist, it is of no use for practice, just because there would be no practice, when the life of man was reduced to a series of events causally happening within the arena he has somehow mis- taken for a personal self. If on the other hand man is not necessitated, as the theory has assumed, then it is evident that the "laws of his conduct" will be very different from those deduced from a hypothesis borrowed from the mechanical world. In any case, therefore, the " moral " speculations of the Evolutionist can have no interest for us as Moralists. If a consideration of the scope of the ethics of evolution 78 Kantian Ethics and the end in doubts as to the worth of such a science, an examination of its subject-matter will only confirm them. It has to deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of existence what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. It is at the outset assumed, in connexion with a hypothesis framed to fit a wholly different class of phenomena, that the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pains are the ultimate aims of all human conduct. Thus the inquiry into morality begins with the assertion that morality is not an end in itself, but merely a means to something else. t( The ultimate moral aim" is "a desirable state of feeling" (p. 46). You are to be virtuous, either that you yourself or that others may be happy. The ethics of evolution, though certain that " the good is universally the pleasurable " (p. 30), wavers as to whether it is the pleasurable for you or the pleasurable for Society. The incon- gruities that emerge from its fusion of egoistic and universalistic Hedonism will meet us later. Meantime we wish to dwell on the first assumption that pleasure is the end, " pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being " (p. 46). Meeting one assertion with another, why shall we not maintain that morality is an end in itself? This can be impugned only on the supposition that there is no absolute end, or, if there be, that it is not morality. The ethics of evolution rests on the latter assumption. It asserts that morality is only a means to an ulterior end, which is pleasure. But nothing could be more gratuitous than this dogmatic assumption with which Mr. Spencer begins. As he denies that morality is an end in itself, so is it open to anyone else to deny that pleasure is an end in itself. For the question, Ethics of Evolution. 79 Why should I be happy ? is just as little, or just as much justifiable as the question, Why must I be moral? The end can never be reached by simply asking Why. And it is no argument in favour of Hedonism that it gives a reason for virtue, so long as it gives no reason for that reason. Granted that you are to be moral that you may be happy, why then are you to be happy ? And the same may be asked of each and every end. If therefore we are to have a philosophy of our morality at all, it can only be by facing the facts of the moral world and observing with what end alone they are compatible or possible. That pleasure is the ultimate end Empiricism has generally taken for granted. Evolution, however, adduces a reason for it. It maintains that pleasure is the condition under which life has developed and the condition under which alone it can continue. If pleasure be not the end of conduct, then life would disappear. But just because you have given a reason for pleasure as end, it is not an ultimate end. You are moral that you may be happy, for without pleasure you could not live. Life is, therefore, taken as the ulterior end that for which you are at once moral and happy. But the old spectre again starts up in the question, Why shall I live ? And if, as we venture to think, no other answer can be given than that of Kant, which asserts that morality alone is that which makes life worth living, then with all our questionings we have merely described a circle and returned to the starting-point, that we are moral because morality itself is the end. Or if so much be not granted, it must at least be conceded that pleasure has no more claim to be the ultimate end than virtue itself. 80 Kantian Ethics and the But if de jure it cannot be shown that pleasure is the ulterior end and virtue only a means to it, there are de facto grounds for inverting that relation. For what- ever be the opinion of the speculator as to what, according to his theory, should be means, and what ends, the moral consciousness, whence alone the data of ethics can be taken, is indubitably certain that virtue must be an end in itself, and never a mere means to anything else. It is sure that the moral man, neither directly nor indi- rectly, aims at wages or perquisites in the performance of his duties. And it suspects of immorality the man who practises virtue only as a convenient way of attaining something beyond it. All this is too well known to call for further illustration. And yet, universally recognized as it is by the consciousness of mankind, it is habitually ignored by our Evolutionists. Their Ethics, as we have seen, sets out from a hypothesis which is the direct contrary of it from the assumption that pleasure is the only good and virtue merely a means to its attainment. Thus, instead of explaining the phenomena of the moral world, the ethics of evolution passes them over, or, at best, explains them away. The facts, however, abide ; and none is more certain than the fact that pleasure can never be the end of moral volition and action. Besides these objections to the fundamental assumption of the ethics of evolution objections which we venture to call insuperable there is another which leaves that science without any raison d'etre whatever. To put this position beyond doubt will occupy us in the remainder of this essay. Meantime the essence of the matter may be stated in a few words. The subject-matter of "moral science " is the content of the moral world. This con- sists, on its inner side, of certain conceptions, emotions, Ethics of Evolution. 81 and beliefs ; on the outer, of a realization of these in the State, the Family, and Society. Ethics has to explain these moral phenomena, just as astronomy has to explain the phenomena of the heavens. A science which fails to do that, whatever else it may be, is no " moral science/' and has from the point of view of morality no justification whatsoever. Now it is precisely this we maintain, this we hope to demonstrate, of the ethics of evolution. For that purpose .we might proceed at once to an examination of the relative parts of Mr. Spencer's Data of Ethics, which may be considered the classical, as it is the latest, exposition of ' ' moral science " from the stand- point of mechanical evolution. But before doing so, we shall attempt to establish our position by a few general considerations of a more abstract character. Our thesis is that the ethics of evolution can give no explanation of the facts of morality. The moral law, as Kant correctly interpreting the moral consciousness affirms, is universal and necessary. It prescribes some- thing to be done, not by any particular individual, but by all human beings, and not under certain conditions, but absolutely or unconditionally. The popular con- sciousness is clear on both these points; and even Mr. Spencer may here be in harmony with it, for he ordains that the laws to be deduced by his ( ' moral science" shall be observed by all men, irrespective of their own personal desires and estimates. But how now are these characteristics to be explained from the principle of Hedonism ? If the moral worth of actions be estimated by the feelings of pleasure and pain which accompany them, then it is obvious that the standard of morality cannot be objective and universally valid. For the agreeable and the disagreeable depend upon the relation G 82 Kantian Ethics and the of the object to the subject and manifestly vary with different persons and even with the same person at different times. Now, according to the theory, it must follow that A, who finds his pleasure in excessive sensual gratification, or in violating the rights of others, is equally moral with B, who pursues a conduct the direct contrary of this. Or how are you to prove to the former that his life is immoral, when by hypothesis pleasure is the only standard of what is right, and pleasure can be estimated only by each individual for himself ? Thus Hedonism knows nothing of the notion of duty of a something that is obligatory upon me whether I like it or not, and upon all others equally under the same circumstances. But this is one of the most prominent factors in the moral consciousness, which an ethical philosophy is bound to explain. It is not, however, necessary that momentary pleasure be taken as the end; and the theory next aims at freeing itself from its palpable defects by placing the end in the greatest possible happiness of the individual during the entire period of his life. It assumes that from the experience of the race a series of rules might be collected to show what activities were conducive to the highest and most enduring pleasures, and what brought the greatest quantum of enjoyment with the least alloy of pain. This is the " Nautical Almanack " of MilFs Utilitarianism, which Mr. Spencer endeavours to supersede by substituting for its empirical inductions a system of rational deductions from the laws of life and the conditions of existence. The Almanack is certainly open to the gravest objections. The rules of experience are at best only the expression of an average and probable calculation, and the individual Ethics jf Evolution. 83 can never be sure they have an application to his particular case. Even were that found to be so, they may be in conflict with the maturest judgments he himself has formed on the line of conduct to be pursued ; and since his pleasure is the end, he must, it might be supposed, be left free to follow the means he deems best. And this brings us to an objection which neither the Hedonism of Mr. Mill nor that of Mr. Spencer is able to overcome. Popular morality is aware of an obligation on the part of the agent to submit himself to laws, which it conceives as binding upon him. But what binding force have the rules of experience, what the deductions of the ethics of evolution ? I may follow them or I may not. The end is pleasure, and with that end no rules, no deductions are necessarily given. They come to it from without ; and, as their connection is external and artificial, it may be recognized or it may be ignored. Even though the rules are the surest way to the greatest sum-total of happiness, you can only call the individual who declines to follow them a fool, but you cannot compel or oblige him to act against his own views and wishes. What shall he care for the "groans of an abstraction ?" Hedonism endeavours to escape this objection, by placing the end, no longer in the happiness of the individual, but in the well-being of the community or even of the " entire sentient creation." It defines good as that which tends to promote the happiness of all sentient beings, bad as that which is detrimental to their welfare. And in the relation between the individual and society, it thinks it has found a basis for the notions of duty, responsibility, and accountability. This is, however, an illusion. If pleasure is the only good, 6* 84 Kantian Ethics and the neither the origin nor the validity of the moral notions admits of explanation. Not their origin : for though the end assumed is nominally a universal, it is incapable, because it is sensuous and not rational, of ever being in practice more than a particular. Grant that pleasure is the summum bonum, and it follows, not that the individual will seek to promote it in others, but only that he will pursue it for himself. And that he 'should ever have passed from the particularity inherent in the principle to the universality which it is framed to explain, is only then conceivable, if at the dawn of self-consciousness he possess, not merely a sensuous but also a rational nature, which makes it possible for him to compare himself with others and to give himself universal laws of conduct, and in which is already contained a priori the form of duty or moral obligation that furnishes at once the groundwork and the possibility of all personal morality. Utilitarianism, however, will not accept this position. It perseveres in the attempt to derive the universal from the particular, as though by a natural dialectic selfishness inevitably passed over into morality. Men, it is argued, soon perceive that their stock of pleasures is likely in the end to be increased if they abstain from those acts which excite the enmity and opposition of their fellow-men. And to a certain extent this is no doubt true. But even such a fact cannot explain the genesis of the moral character of the notions under consideration. On the contrary, it is inconsistent with the unconditionedness of all moral precepts, and its logical outcome is, not a system of morality, but a series of pliable rules of prudence and of cunning. And this brings us to the second point, which regards the validity of the moral conceptions. Ethics of Evolution. 85 Were they grounded only on prudential considerations, one would be free to do evil provided no bad con- sequences were to be feared. If I am to aim at the universal good only as a means of reaching my own individual pleasure, then there is no reason why I should not, e.g. violate the rights of others, provided I were cunning enough to avoid, or powerful enough to avert, the consequences which such an act would bring upon me. This conclusion can be invalidated only by the assertion of a harmony, whether accidental or pre- established, between the pleasures of each and the pleasures of all. What is disagreeable to a community is disagreeable to the individuals who compose it ; and similarly of the agreeable. And this argument has found favour with some who have been at pains to refute in Political Economy the fallacy of protection. Yet it is essentially the same logic in both cases. It is detrimental to the State as a whole to protect any industry for which its resources have no adaptation ; but the class protected may prosper, and that just because the State is the loser. So in the moral sphere, it may also happen, that what is detrimental to society as a whole brings the greatest advantage to some particular individual. New grounds must, therefore, be sought for his obligation to sacrifice himself to the community. And these are, last of all, found in the force exercised by the State and by the social institutions and conventions. The ultimate ground of morality is the fear of punishment. But such a bald statement makes very apparent the insufficiency of the theory. For though it may explain subjection, it can give no account of moral obligation. Its consequences are the suppression of all that is most characteristic in the phenomena of the moral consciousness; and, in 86 Kantian Ethics and the practice, disregard for rights and duties, so long as they may be neglected without present or future disadvantage. Besides, if, as the wisest philosophers assure us, the State and Society are themselves only morality on the objecties. side, then the hypothesis, besides its other defects, is chargeable with explaining a notion by itself with deriving morality from that whose sole content is morality. Thus all forms of Hedonism seem worthless as theories of morality. Has then the hedonistic ethics of evolution escaped this destiny ? Or, is it, as Mr. Spencer sup- poses, a rational philosophy of the moral world? To answer these questions is the only problem that remains. Evolutionists, as already pointed out, enter the moral sphere with a ready-made conception of the universe, framed for the explanation of physical, or at most of biological phenomena. If the entire visible universe has been evolved under a process of necessary causation, mind and conscience, it is assumed, must also be subject to the same laws and governed by the same necessities. Hence the great ethical problem is to trace the genesis of our moral notions. If they are the accidental products of a blindly-moving fate, called the " Unknown and Unknowable," the Evolutionist has only to examine into their origin without in any way testing their validity. And the general result of the ethics of evolution is that " experiences of utility organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race have been producing corresponding nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct."* This surely * Data of Ethics, p. 123. Ethics of Evolution. 87 is a wonderful attempt at graphic illustration. You see, as it were, with the eye of fancy, utilities adhering to the nervous system, gathering themselves about it as about a central germ, till they undergo ultimately a new birth and look out upon you as faculties of moral intuition ! But in the light of reason this whole process reveals itself as illusory. The experiences of utility can only mean experiences of pleasure, and these can neither be organized nor consolidated. A pleasurable feeling has only a transient existence : it is, it is not. It is perish- able, and in the moment of being ceases to be. If experi- ence of pleasures can in any way affect the nervous system, it is only by producing changes in its structure, as the reaction of function on organism. There is no " consolidated and organized " bundle of utilities which is handed from one generation to another, till it turns up at last as a system of morality. At most there is but a momentary nervous modification accompanying each experience of pleasure. These modifications may be repeated, but they cannot, properly speaking, be accu- mulated or transmitted. The nervous system, however, may be transmitted, and along with it the effects which have been registered on it by the experiences of pleasur - able feeling. And this is no hypercritical distinction. For Mr. Spencer's language implies that there is some- thing else transmitted than a nervous system, something which is "accumulated" into a faculty of "moral intui- tion." But though the pleasures experienced have produced never so many nervous modifications, though these, or rather the nervous system to which they belong, have been transmitted through never so many generations, they remain at last simply modifications of a nervous system nothing more. And to identify them with a 88 Kantian Ethics and the faculty of moral intuition is to leap at a bound from the outer world of matter to the inmost centre of self-con- scious thought. The transformation here sketched in outline, however, Mr. Spencer attempts to make clear by a four-fold view of ethics. The science, he says, has a physical, a biological, a psychological, and a sociological aspect. Is the metamorphosis as thus mediated conceivable ? Or, passing from the origin to the validity of our moral notions, is the science thus established a satisfactory philosophy of our morality ? Making causality the foundation of his system, Mr. Spencer first of all finds a " basis for morality in the physical order " (p. 59). Suppose, he proceeds, by tying a main artery we stop most of the blood going to a limb, there follows waste exceeding the repair and, in the end, disablement. This, he assures us, is " part of the physical order," and results " apart from any divine com- mand, or political enactment, or moral intuition/'' And that is so evident that we are only surprised it should have been thought to need specific mention. But the fact that has not been observed is that the moral judg- ment passed on the act is not based on the physical order. If the limb were tied by a surgeon for some beneficent end, then even though the present conse- quences the effects of the act are painful, we do not call the act wrong. Contrariwise, if a murderer has adopted this method of taking life he is condemned, not because death as effect followed tying the artery as cause, but because he has violated the supreme impera- tive of morality the law of reverence for mankind. Whenever a moral judgment is passed on an act, it will be found to have its grounds elsewhere than in the causal Ethics of Evolution. 89 connexion of the events to which it refers. Mr. Spencer, however, has another illustration of his thesis. The death consequent on a " cancer of the oesophagus " that pre- vents swallowing, is as ' ( independent of any theological or political authority " as that caused by a want of food brought about by the robbery or the fraud of others. But this merely amounts to saying that, if a man does not take food, he wilt certainly die, whether starvation be due to a ' ' cancer t>f the oesophagus " that prevents swallowing, or to an unmerited poverty that can supply nothing to swallow. So far both cases are alike ; but so far also there is no ethical judgment, and therefore no possibility of a " basis for morality in the physical order." When the moral sphere is entered the analogy ceases. In the first case no one is blamed, in the second we condemn the robbers who brought poverty and death on their victim. And were their action as necessary a product of nature as the cancer of the ossophagus, why do we hold them responsible for the effects they have wrought and yet leave the cancer uncensured ? We contend that on Mr. Spencer's theory of a " basis for morality in the physical order," the cancer deserves the same moral reprobation as the robbers ! In other words, the theory by reducing human actions to the dead level of physical causation is utterly incapable of explaining the facts of the moral consciousness. Duty, responsi- bility, and remorse imply a freedom of the will, which is wholly unknown and unjustifiable in the physical order. But Mr. Spencer does not in reality so much attempt to find a basis for morality in the physical system, as to discover analogies between the moral phenomena and the mechanical conceptions with which he approaches them. Be the foundation of morality what it may, he maintains 90 Kantian Ethics and the that since the process of evolution has been from an "indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite co- herent heterogeneity/' moral actions must differ from the actions of the lower animals in general, and from immoral actions in particular, by these characteristics. " Moral principles," he elsewhere observes, " must con- form to physical necessities " (p. 62.). And his affiliation of moral conduct with highly evolved conduct is unintel- ligible without this presupposition. The facts, however, do not bear out the requisites of the hypothesis. For it is obvious that many kinds of immoral conduct are characterized by definiteness and coherence, which Mr. Spencer predicates of moral conduct alone. The mechan- ical hypothesis of evolution may require that all immoral conduct should be indefinite and incoherent, but that is plainly not the case. The thief, acting on his principles, may lead just as coherent and definite a life as the hedon- istic moralist. For example, Mr. Spencer says : ' ' The conscientious man is exact in all his transactions. He supplies a precise weight for a specific sum ; he gives a definite quality in fulfilment of understanding ; he pays the full amount he bargained to do. In times as well as in quantities, his acts answer completely to anticipation, &c." Now all this may be asserted with equal propriety of certain classes of immoral men. Thus the burglar is exact in all his transactions ; he supplies a precise key for a definite door; he gives a fixed share to his comrades according to agreement ; he keeps his appointment to the day, to the minute ; and as father shall he not train his children to this definite and coherent mode of living ? In short, the difference between morality and immorality lies much deeper than these superficial and accidental marks. Evil is not made good by becoming definite and coherent Ethics of Evolution. 91 nor is right made wrong by the mere fiat of a mechanical metaphysic, because at times it may be indefinite and incoherent. It is, however, in the biological view that the peculiarity of Mr. Spencer's ethical system comes more distinctly into prominence. His treatment of pleasures and pains, and of their relation to morality, constitutes the essential moment of this aspect of ethics. Pleasure-giving acts, he argues, are those which increase life ; pain-giving, those which decrease it. This is shown by two consider- ations : first, that originally the act which an animal / tendsjto perform is the pleasure-giving, and, secondly, that each developed creature is kept alive by pursuing the pleasurable and avoiding the painful. This connexion between pleasure-giving acts and life-sustaining acts is sup- posed to supply to morality an ultimate basis. For if the pleasurable be the condition of existence, then morality, which is impossible without life, must be based on that which makes life possible, i.e., on pleasure. Ingenious as the argument must be admitted to be, it is never- theless exposed to serious objections. In the first place, by assigning a reason for the ultimateness of pleasure as an end, it really makes it only a means to something else, that is, to life. And the question, Why should I live ? requires that a reason be assigned for this end, which also becomes thus a means, and so on ad infinitum. But, secondly, even if this be passed over, the argument is still untenable. For granting that morality is based on the conditions of sentient existence, it must follow that my morality is based on the laws of my sentient existence. The lowest sentient beings seek their own pleasures and avoid their own pains ; and as tc this which holds with the lowest ponsciousness must hold throughout," it is obvious 92 Kantian Ethics and the that I am what I am in virtue of having pursued a similar line of conduct. Now as moral conduct is merely " highly evolved conduct," morality must consist alone in seeking by the safest and best and most numerous means my own pleasures and avoiding my own pains. It might be granted that each individual did not seek, and ought not to seek, merely the momentary pleasures. As somehow endowed with higher faculties than those of sense, he might compare present pleasures with one another and choose the highest of them, or he might even postpone them all for the sake of a future enjoyment. But Mr. Spencer requires no such concession. The theory of pleasures and pains on which the evolution of life has been dependent refers to present pleasures and pains. " Does the action tend to maintenance of complete life for the time being ? And does it tend to prolongation of life to its full extent ? To answer yes or no to either of these questions, is implicitly to class the action as right or wrong in respect of its immediate bearings, whatever it may be in respect of its remote bearings" (p. 77). From these words of Mr. Spencer's it is clear that every- thing must be right which gives either momentary pleasure or the possibility of increased future pleasure. But facts must be our tests for theories ; and they certainly are not in harmony with this dictum. The moral consciousness emphatically asserts that adultery is wrong, even though it " tend to maintenance of complete life for the time being/' and that forgery is not right even though it " tend to prolongation of life to its full extent." What- ever be the merit of Mr. Spencer's hypothesis as such, it is assuredly no theory of the moral world. He himself has recognized its inadequacy to the facts of the moral consciousness, but he traces this to anomalies which, in Ethics of Evolution. 93 his opinion, are merely "incidental and temporary. " They are due to misadjustments between man and his social environment, and must, he thinks, dis- appear in the course of development. But this ex- planation proceeds on the assumption that man can be isolated from his social environment, and that it exists apart from him. It would almost seem as if Mr. Spencer fancied that at certain epochs " social environments " fell directly from heaven, with which man was not in harmony till he had worked himself up, or rather had been forced up, to this higher celestial standpoint. But surely the social environment is made by man himself, and if he has been, and is now, misadjusted to it, we see no grounds for expecting a future harmony. The evils which, according to Mr. Spencer, evolution has brought, it must, we think, ever propagate, but can certainly never destroy. And the assumption he makes is only a very daring attempt to protect an otherwise untenable position. This, however, Mr. Spencer himself is far from admitting. Confident that nature will ultimately adjust itself to his theory, he says : " The connexions between pleasures and beneficial action and between pain and detrimental action, which arose when sentient existence began, and have continued among animate creatures up to man, are generally dis- played in him also throughout the lower and more com- pletely organised part of his nature, and must be more and more fully displayed through the higher parts of his nature, as fast as his adaptation to the conditions of social life increases " (p. 87). Our higher nature must be an annoyance to Mr. Spencer ; it will not keep within the limits of his theory. With his usual optimism, however, he does not despair even of it, when man shall have become adapted to his social life ! Having emerged, as 94 Kantian Ethics and the he conceives,, from the " militant " life, man still carries with him some of the old adjustments, which do not answer the requirements of the ' ( industrial " life into which he has come. But it is apparently forgotten that this emergence is man's own act, that he has created for himself alike his past and his present social environment, and that before he is adjusted to the " industrial " life (as the theory requires) he may already have enveloped himself in a more highly-developed tissue of social re- lations. For the social organism is not, as Mr. SpeDcer so inconsistently seems to suppose, a lifeless stationary mechanism, but a living and progressive organism. Were man merely sentient he would be subject to no other influence than that of the physical environment, which would in time bring him wholly into harmony with Mr. Spencer's hypothesis. But as rational and moral he is not merely law-obeying but also law-giving. It is this fact that explains the misadjustments of man's higher nature to the requirements of a hypothesis which is at best valid only for brutes. At this point we must expect remonstrances from the Evolutionists. Has not Mr. Darwin, they might ask, traced the descent of man from the lower animals ? Who dare in this generation speak irreverently of the brutes, or even of the matter from which they have been generated? If you distinguish man so antithetically from the other animals, then (( the implication is that the system of guidance by pleasures and pains, which has answered with all types of creatures below the human, fails with the human"" (p. 84). Now this implication I am certainly ready to accept. Nay, apart from it, I find the whole moral world an inexplicable riddle, upon which even the ethics of evolution has not thrown a ray of light. Brute- Ethics of Evolution. 95 guidance by pleasures and pains is probably not sufficient for man, just because he is more than a brute. But it is no problem of ours to determine what tf answers " or what (t suffices " for human or for other beings. Taking our stand on indubitable facts, we have only to ask what are the conditions of their possibility. And the facts of the moral world we find inexplicable if pleasure be the end for human beings. Mr. Spencer endeavours to strengthen his position by thrusting on his opponents a wholly irrelevant problem. " The admission being," he says, " that with mankind it [guidance by pleasures and pains] succeeds in so far as fulfilment of certain impera- tive wants goes, it fails in respect of wants that are not imperative.* Those who think this are required, in the first place, to show us how the limit is to be drawn between the two ; and then to show us why the system which succeeds in the lower will not succeed in the higher" (p. 85). Now that we are not obliged to show anything of the kind will be manifest by a slight survey of the situation. The fact is the moral world ; the ethics of evolution is the proposed explanation. It sets out with a biological theory of pleasures and pains in accord- ance with which man does and should seek the one and avoid the other. But on examining the actual facts, it perceives that man does not make this the end of his conduct, and that it could be at most valid only for his sentient nature. Does the Evolutionist now recede from the position he has taken up and confess himself van- quished by the logic of facts ? Quite the reverse. I grant, he says, that man's higher nature cannot be brought under my hypothesis, but I believe that in the course of development this disharmony will disappear. * These "wants that are not imperative" are, however, according to p. 87, those of " the higher parts of our nature !" 96 Kantian Ethics and the Have you not faith equal to that ? Then you shall explain why a system of guidance which " succeeds" in the lower nature will not " succeed" in the higher. But the obvious rejoinder to our Evolutionist is, that you are neither the Creator nor the critic of the Creator's ways ; and have, therefore, nothing to do with what " succeeds" and what does not te succeed." You have only to explain what actually exists. Whether guidance by pleasure and pain would succeed or not is a question in which you have not the slightest interest ; you are only certain that it does not " explain " does not, even on Mr. Spencer's own admission, explain the facts to which he has applied it. Nay, it is because he is obliged to make this con- fession of the inadequacy of his theory that he throws out that other vain problem to his opponents. His theory does not explain the facts, so he turns upon you with the question, Why do not the facts adapt themselves to my theory ? But the biological standpoint, from which everything must be judged right that brings a surplus of present enjoyment, is after all surrendered by Mr. Spencer with the admission that " in mankind as at present constituted, guidance by proximate pleasures and pains fails through- out a wide range of cases " (p. 85). It is important to observe that biology has not made the slightest contribu- tion towards the solution of moral phenomena. We leave it, with Mr. Spencer, in asserting that "special and proximate pleasures and pains must be disregarded out of consideration for remote and diffused pleasures and pains" (p. 85). And with this transition the Ethics of Biology becomes the ordinary egoistic Hedonism, which we have already found grounds for rejecting as a philosophy of our morality. Ethics of Evolution. 97 But the guidance by present pleasures and pains for which Biology so pathetically pleaded as the basis of ethics (how vainly we have already seen) is excluded by Psychology, which demands ' ' the subjection of immediate sensations to the idea of sensations to come" (p. 108), and which claims that the feelings shall " have authorities pro- portional to the degrees in which they are removed by their complexity and their ideality from simple sensations and appetites" (p. 109). What then, we ask astonished, was the need of listening to the vain story of Biology at all ? Why assert there what is denied here ? Mr. Spencer is not insensible to this objection, and forthwith adduces a new ground for his biological treatment of ethics. " The current conception," he says, ' ( is, not that the lower must yield to the higher when the two conflict, but that the lower must be disregarded even when there is no conflict" (p. 111). Without inquiring into the truth of this surprising assertion, we may merely remark that it supplies no raison d'etre for assigning a biological aspect to ethics, from which was deduced the Tightness of what gave momentary pleasure, and the wongness of what caused momentary pain, irrespective of " higher " and " lower," of greater and less degree of " ideality " and " complexity," or of any other limitation or qualification whatsoever it be. Passing however at once to the psychological view, we are told that ' ' the essential trait in the moral conscious- ness is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings" (p. 113). How one feeling controls another is not however explained. That we determine our acts in relation to feelings and desires, that we compare our motives, and, if we would be moral, act according to the higher, is no doubt quite true. And this might be taken as 7 98 Kantian Ethics and the the meaning of the above passage, had not Mr. Spencer elsewhere said, the " conscious relinqnishment of imme- diate and special good to gain distant and general good . . . . is a cardinal trait of the self-restraint called moral" (p. 114). But that this is no part of the self- restraint called moral, Mr. Spencer has been able to hide from himself and others only by using words that suggest a meaning to which he has no right. If we remember that by good he means the pleasurable, and if we make this substitution in the foregoing extract, it will be palpably manifest that it does not furnish any trait, much less the cardinal trait, of the self-restraint called moral. The traffic in pleasures doubtless involves self-restraint, but assuredly not of the kind called moral. On the con- trary, it may be highly immoral. Thus, if a thief relin- quish stealing 100 to-day, in order that by to-morrow he may have the increased pleasure of stealing 1000, nobody believes he has manifested " a cardinal trait of the self-restraint called moral/' But it is only after Mr. Spencer has in this way emptied morality of all its con- tent, that he attempts from the psychological standpoint a theory of its genesis. Thus his first problem is the " postponement of present to future " good or pleasure, which he is pleased to call the problem of "moral control." Among savages, we are informed, the only restraint to the following of every impulse is mutual fear of vengeance. When some advance in government has been made and the strongest has become chief, this restraint consists merely in the fear of his anger. When he dies, the restraint becomes a dread of his ghost. Social opinion strengthens this feeling, for everbody has the same fear. What then would be the issue of this ? Plainly all for which Mr, Spencer contends, Ethics of Evolution. 99 namely, that the individual savage gives up a present pleasure from dread of coming pain. The fear of punish- ment is his permanent motive. But this restraint is not yet moral. Mr. Spencer distinguishes it from the moral in this way, that the one is a restraint due to the "extrinsic effects " of actions, the other to their " intrinsic effects." Moral restraint is founded, that is, on an unchanging physical order, while this primitive restraint of the savage has its origin in a form of society that is necessarily changeable. Now arguing with Mr. Spencer on his own premises on the assumption that moral restraint has no other meaning than he alleges we are bound to maintain that his hypothesis does not explain the origin even of such a restraint. For no transition is possible from the restraint of the savage to the restraint of the Evolutionist, except on assumptions foreign to the theory. Why does the savage, whose self-control is not yet moral, forego the pleasure of scalping the comrade with whom he is angry ? Because of the " extrinsic effects" of the action, namely, the chief's vengeance, would be Mr. Spencer's reply. But why does the moral Evolu- tionist refrain from slaying his enemy even under the greatest provocation ? Because of the "intrinsic effects" of the action, namely, the destruction of the possibilities of happiness for the enemy and, in a certain measure, for his relatives and connections. Now these two cases have not the slightest analogy as regards the ground of restraint, which is the notion to be explained. The savage refrains from destroying life from fear of future pain to himself, the Evolutionist from concern for the pleasures and pains of others. The first motive is possible to a merely sensuous nature, the second presupposes the moral nature we are engaged in deriving. And between that stage of 100 Kantian Ethics and the the non-moral and this development of the moral, the hypothesis has not offered the slightest mediation. When Mr. Spencer says, " The truly moral deterrent from murder is not constituted by a representation of hanging as a consequence, or by a representation of tortures in hell as a consequence, or by a representation of the horror and hatred excited in fellow-men ; but by a representa- tion of the necessary natural results the infliction of death-agony on the victim, the destruction of all his possibilities of happiness, the entailed sufferings to his belongings" (p. 120) when he says all that, I repeat, he forgets that his own account of the genesis of morality can explain only those deterrents which he here rejects as not moral, and that it cannot by any possibility be brought into connexion with those deterrents which are here pronounced truly moral. In the selfishness which knows no restraint but that rendered prudent by the "extrinsic effects" there is no immanent dialectic that carries it over into a disinterested restraint constituted by an idea of the " intrinsic effects " of action. Mr. Spencer does, however, assert that guidance by extrinsic effects is the necessary antecedent to guidance by intrinsic effects. " Only after political, religious, and social restraints have produced a stable community can there be sufficient experience of the pains .... which crimes of aggression cause, so as to generate that moral aversion to them constituted by consciousness of their intrinsically evil effects " (p. 122). But does Mr. Spencer mean to say that the intrinsic effects of murder are not as soon perceived as the extrinsic effects ? That the death- agony of the victim is not, while the dread of punishment is, present to the consciousness of the murderer ? The difference lies not in the priority of perception, but in the Ethics of Evolution. 101 fact which Mr. Spencer attempts to ignore, and on which his hypothesis shipwrecks, namely, that the one series of effects (the extrinsic) concern the agent, while the other (the intrinsic) in no way affect him. Is it not evident to anyone who will see that the extrinsic effects, which are by hypothesis dread of coming pain to me, can never generate aversion moral or otherwise to anything that threatens another, or causes another pain or even death ? Thus the pyschological view of ethics presents us with nothing which is not fanciful and absurd as a theory of our morality. It may now be added that it presupposes, even for that, a Society, a Religion, and a State. But as these are nothing else than a realized morality, the ethics of evolution must once more be charged with deriving morality from morality itself. Or more correctly, while professing to deduce morality from pleasures and pains it assumes along with these a social, civil, and religious organism, which can only be described in terms of the morality not yet deduced. If Physics, Biology, and Psychology have failed to supply us with a philosophy of ethics, the case would seem nearly hopeless from the standpoint of evolution. There remains, however, the " sociological view;" and as Mr. Spencer has warned us that any of his conclusions regarding the correlative aspect of conduct becomes untrue if divorced from the other, it is necessary to follow him in this last stage. Were man not a social being, so begins the " sociolo- gical view," his " system of morality " or the ' f formula for his activities," would be limited to self and offspring, and would offer no contrast to the formula of other animals. And since there are other species which display " considerable degrees of sociality " it might be expected 102 Kantian Ethics and the that we should find a striking likeness between their te morality " and our own. But Mr. Spencer tells us that man is the only species which has a " formula for com- plete life.'' How strange that must appear to those who derive morality from adaptation to the environment physical, biological, or social he does not seem to have perceived. The formula, however, is not discordant with previous results, for though asserting that "the life of the social organism must as an end rank above the lives of its units" (p. 133), yet it is only because the individual happiness, which has all along been the ultimate end, can in this way be the better secured. The duties towards my fellowmen have, therefore, their final ground in the aim to secure for myself the greatest quantum of pleasure and the least of pain. But such a system makes us a mere collection of mutually repellent atoms that have no affinity with the moral agents to be explained. This insuperable difficulty for all hedonistic systems the impossibility of reconciling the universal in morality with the particular in feeling Mr. Spencer quietly passes over with the dictum that our present condition is one of transition, and the normal state is one in which all acts of aggression have been banished. In that Utopia "the relations at present familiar to us will be inverted; and instead of each maintaining his own claims, others will maintain his claims for him" (p. 252). With this hypothesis, framed to obviate objections to the fun- damental assumption of the ethics of evolution, we have surely touched the goal of the new "moral science." If it does not furnish any account of the moral world, it at least prophesies that its present form is only transitional. But, alas, the Arcadia which it discerns is not yet within the ken of ordinary mortals, and its dim margin fades Ethics of Evolution. 103 for ever and for ever as we move. And as moralists we have really nothing to do with that untrodden future. For the fact is that we have certain moral notions and beliefs in the present stage of our development, of which we ask for a philosophical explanation. Any theory which passes these over in favour of some imaginary reality of the future, may be ingenious enough, but is assuredly worthless as a philosophy of our actual morality. And thus the ethios of evolution has little to add to the hedonistic systems we had already found grounds for rejecting. It has, however, laid stress on one important fact, hitherto much ignored in all moral speculations on the gradual development of moral notions, feelings, and beliefs. But neither that fact itself nor the validity of the moral conceptions has it in any way philosophically explained. 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