ON THE .ETHICS OF NATURALISM BY W. E. SOELEY, M.A. FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ; AND EXAMINER IN PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXXY PBEFATOKY NOTE. THE Deed of Foundation of the Shaw Fellowship pro- vides that " it shall be in the power of the Senatus Academicus of the University of Edinburgh to re- quire the holder of the Shaw T Philosophical Fellow- ship, during the fourth or fifth year of his tenure of it, to deliver in the University of Edinburgh a course of Lectures, not exceeding four, on any of the subjects for the encouragement of the study of which the Fel- lowship has been founded." The following pages consist of four lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh, in accordance with this provision, in the month of January 1884. Since their delivery, the argument of the lectures has been revised, and in some places enlarged. I have also thought it better to modify their original form by dividing the discussion into chapters. W. K. S. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. PAGE 1. Connection of ethics with theoretical philosophy, . . 1 (a) Dependence of ethical on theoretical points of view, . 1 (b) Ethics necessary to complete philosophy, . . 3 2. The inquiry into the ethical end, .... 5 (a) Fundamental, ...... 5 (&) Implies a new point of view, .... 7 (c) Distinct from other ethical questions, ... 9 (a) From the inquiry into the methods of ethics, . 10 () From moral psychology and sociology, . . 13 3. Scope of the present inquiry, . . . . 14 PAET I. THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEOEY. CHAPTER II. EGOISM. Definition of Naturalism, . . . . .20 Pyschological hedonism, . . . . .21 Vlll CONTENTS. 1. Its theory of action ambiguous, . . . .22 Eef erring to (a) Actual consequences of action, . . .23 (b) Or its expected consequences, . . .23 (c) Or its present characteristics, . . .24 2. Ethical inferences from this theory, . .25 3. Transition from psychological to ethical hedonism, . 31 4. Possible objections considered, . . . .37 CHAPTER III. THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 1. Difference of the standpoints of individual and State, . 41 2. Connection between egoism and utilitarianism according to Bentham, ...... 45 (a) Utilitarianism not a political duty, . . .46 (b) Nor a moral duty, ..... 47 (c) Nor insisted on as a religious duty, . . .49 (d) Nor sufficiently motived in private ethics, . . 50 3. Exhaustive character of Bentham' s treatment from his point of view, ....... 51 (a) The religious sanction (Paley), . . .53 (b) Limits of the political sanction, . . .54 (c) Uncertainty of the social sanction, . . .55 (d} And of the internal sanction so far as a result of the social, ....... 56 4. Mill's logical defence of utilitarianism, . . .57 (a) Distinction of kinds of pleasure, . . .58 (b} Ambiguities in his proof, . . . .60 5. Actual transition to utilitarianism, . . . .62 (a) Recognition of sympathy, . . . .64 (b) The idea of equality, ..... 69 6. The two sides of utilitarian theory without logical connec- tion, ....... 73 7. Summary of the ethical consequences of psychological hedonism, ...... 75 CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER IV. MORAL SENTIMENT. 1. A uniform psychological theory not supplied by the oppo- nents of ethical hedonism, . . . .78 2. The non-hedonistic theory of action, . . .84 3. Ethics made to depend on the moral sense, . . .89 (a) As harmony of impulses, . . . .90 (b) As a separate sensitive faculty, . . .92 (c) As an internal law, . . . . .100 4. The ethics of moral sentiment a mediating theory, . .105 PAET II. THE THEOEY OF EVOLUTION. CHAPTER V. THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORALITY. 1. General characteristics of the theory of evolution, . .107 An assertion of the unity of life, . . . .109 Primarily historical, but capable of ethical application, . 110 2. The development of morality, . . . .116 (a) Historical psychology, . . . . .116 Its difficulties, . . . . .117 Its result, ...... 123 (b) Development of society, . . . .124 CHAPTER VI. t EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. Bearing of the theory of evolution, . . . .126 1. On theories depending on moral sentiment or intuition, . 127 X CONTENTS. (a) Ethical value of moral sentiments affected by their origin, ...... 130 (b) Organic character of moral sentiments, . .132 Resultant attitude of evolutionism to intuitionism, . 133 2. On egoism : relation of egoism to altruism, . . .134 (a) Social nature of the individual, . . . 135 (b) Limits to conciliation of egoism and altruism, . 141 (a) Continued existence of competition, . .142 ()8) Different and conflicting degrees of altruism, . 143 (7) Altruism of interest and altruism of motive, . 143 (5) Weakness of altruistic feelings, . . .146 (c) Tendency of evolution opposed to egoism, . .148 Evolution not the basis of psychological hedonism, . 148 Nor of ethical hedonism, . . . .150 3. On utilitarianism, . . . . . .152 Modification of the utilitarian method, . . .153 And of its principle, . . . . . .155 Evolutionist objections to utilitarianism, . . 155 (a) As prescribing an unprogressive ideal, . . 156 (6) As a theory of consequences, . . .160 (c) As related solely to sensibility, . . .161 CHAPTER VII. HEDONISM AND EVOLUTIONISM. 1. Alliance of evolutionism and hedonism, . . .164 (a) From interpreting greatest happiness by the laws of life, ...... 164 (b) From interpreting life by pleasure, . . .165 2. Evolutionist argument for concomitance of life and pleasure, . . . . . .167 3. Objections to this argument, . . . .168 (a) That life cannot bring more pleasure than pain,. . 169 (a) From the negative nature of pleasure, . . 171 (j8) From the facts of human life, . . .172 (b) That the evolution of life does not uniformly tend to pleasure, . . . . . .172 CONTENTS. xi (a) Incompleteness of the evolutionist argument, . 173 (0) The pessimist doctrine that life tends to/ misery, . . . . . .175 (aa) The hypothesis of the unconscious, . . 176 (66) The nature of volition, . . .177 (cc) The facts of human progress, . . .179 Individual progress, . . . .179 Social progress, . . . .181 The psychological analysis of pleasure and pain in relation to evolutionist ethics, . . . . .186 (a) The subjective nature of pleasure and pain, . . 187 (b) The conditions of pleasure and pain, . . .190 (c) Application of the theory of evolution, . .197 CHAPTER VIII. THE EVOLUTIONIST END. Necessity of inquiring into the ethical end suggested by the theory of evolution, ..... 201 1. Adaptation to environment, . . . .203 (a) As the end for present conduct, . . . 207 Opposed to progress, . . . .207 Does not fully represent evolution, . . . 209 (b) As describing the ultimate condition of life, . 210 Resultant absolute code, . . . .211 (a) Abstract principles of social relation, . * . 212 () Personal end only denned as adaptation, . 213 (7) Cannot be shown to lead to happiness, . 213 (c) Insufficiency of adaptation as evolutionist end, . 217 2. End suggested by the tendency to variation, . . 221 (a) Prescribes self - development rather than self- preservation, . . . . .222 (b) Standard for measuring development found in com- plexity of act and motive, .... 227 (a) Antinomy between social and individual ends, 231 (j8) Psychological defects, . . . .232 3. Development or increase of life as the end, . . 236 Xil CONTENTS. (a] Subjective standard: most persistent impulses, . 242 Cannot define life without an objective standard, . 244 (b) Objective standard : defined in two ways, . . 247 (a) Conformity to the type, . . . 248 Which can be reduced to ($) Abundance and variety of vital power, . 251 That is, to the subjective standard, . . 253 Summary as to the evolutionist end, . . . .256 (a) Difficulty of reconciling individual and social ends, . 256 (b) Hedonistic interpretation of evolution not possible, . 257 (c) No independent ethical ideal, . . . .259 CHAPTER IX. ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 1. Principles involved in theory of evolution, . . . 263 2. Unsuccessful application of these principles to ethics, . 264 (a) The principles being treated empirically, . . 265 (b) No logical transition having been effected from efficient to final cause, . . . .267 3. Difference between causality and teleology, . . .269 4. Reference to self -consciousness implied in evolution, , 277 (a) Attempt to trace the genesis of self -consciousness, . 278 (b) Attempt to trace morality from reflex action, . 283 5. The unity of self -consciousness, .... 284 (a) As making possible the transition from knowledge to morality, ...... 284 (6) As determining the character of the ethical end, . 286 (c) As showing that the realisation of the end must be progressive, ...... 291 1TY . THE ETHICS OF NATUEALTSM, CHAPTEE I. ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. IT is a common remark that a writer's ethical i. connec- doctrine is throughout conditioned by his attitude with theo- to the problems of theoretical philosophy. The main lines of dispute in questions of ethics may be regarded as prolongations of the controversies which arise in metaphysics and psychology. The Eealism or Idealism which marks a speculative system reappears in its ethics, whilst differences in the psychological analysis of mental states, or concerning the relation of pleasure to desire, are grounds of distinction between schools of moralists. And not only are the special controversies of ethics decided in different ways, but the scope of the (a) whole science is differently conceived, as the spec- ethtomion ulative standpoint changes. Thus, not for one JJJJJJfJf school only, but for a whole period in the history view A "2 ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. (a)teieoio- of reflection, ethics was regarded as an inquiry into the highest human good. Opposed schools agreed in looking from this point of view, however much they might differ from one another in defining the nature of that highest good. At other times, (&)jurai, according to the prevailing view, to investigate and systematise the rules of conduct has exhausted the scope of ethics controversies being carried on as to the nature of those rules, and their source in external authority or in the internal revelation of conscience. Again, ethical inquiry has been (c> empir- apparently identified with the analysis and history of the moral affections and sentiments ; while a purely external point of view seems to be some- times adopted, and ethics held to be an investiga- tion of the historical results of action, and of the forms, customary and institutional, in which those results find permanent expression. These different ways of looking at the whole subject proceed from points of view whose effects are not confined to ethics, but may be followed out in other lines of investigation. They corre- spond to ideas which dominate different types of thought and form different philosophical stand- points. The first starts from a teleological con- ception of human nature, as an organism con- sciously striving towards its end. The second assimilates ethics to a system of legal enactments, and is connected with the jural conceptions of ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. 3 theology and law. The two last are concerned to show that the subject-matter of ethics are facts which have to be treated by the ordinary inductive and historical methods. These different points of view, however, are to be regarded as complement- ary rather than as conflicting, although their com- to be con- . nected by plete synthesis must be worked out in the region philosophy, of general philosophy, and not on purely ethical ground. Philosophy has thus to deal with the notions which determine the scope and character of ethical thought ; and in this way it must neces- sarily pass from the purely speculative to the practical point of view. If it is the business of philosophy to bring into rational order the material supplied by experience, cosmical and anthropo- logical, it cannot be without bearing on the func- tion of man as a source of action in the world. The question, What are the ends man is naturally fitted to attain ? or if we prefer so to express it What are the ends he ought to pursue ? is not merely as natural as the question, What can a man know of the world and of himself ? But the two questions are inseparably connected. To know man is to know him not only as a thinking but also as an active being ; while to solve the problem of the ends of man implies knowledge both of his nature and of the sphere of his activity. Much distrust is often expressed of metaphysics. (&> Ethics But it is not denied that the philosophy whether n< 4 ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. to complete metaphysical or not in which our most compre- hensive view of the world finds its reasoned ex- pression, cannot neglect that aspect of things in which man is related to his surroundings as a source of action. Eecent ethical literature is itself a proof of this fact. In its speculative develop- ments, both realistic and idealistic, the philosophy of the present day has made the endeavour to con- nect its conceptions of the world of thought and nature with the ends contemplated as to be realised in the realm of action. Whatever difficulties may be involved in the transition from the " is " to the " ought to be," it is yet implied that the transition requires to be made, not merely in order that human activity may be shown to be rational, but that reason itself may be justified by leaving nothing outside its sphere. We must make no attempt, therefore, to draw a line of absolute separation between the first two of the three questions in which, as Kant says, 1 all the interests of our reason centre. The "What ought I to do ? " of ethics is for ever falling back on the " What can I know ? " of metaphysics. The question of practice must accordingly be treated throughout in connection with the question of knowledge, If we use Kant's distinction between speculative and practical reason, we must always bear in mind that it is the same reason which is 1 Werke, ed. Hartenstein (1867), iii. 532. ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. 5 in one reference speculative, in another practical. 1 We are not at liberty to assume with Butler 2 that "morality . . . must be somewhat plain and easy to be understood : it must appeal to what we call common-sense." Nor may we presuppose, as Hutcheson did, 3 that it is a subject "about which a little reflection will discover the truth." The question must be looked upon not so much as one of immediate practical as of scientific interest, and reason is to be regarded as the only court of appeal. The form just quoted, in which Kant states the 2. The in- problem, is not altogether free from ambiguity. tLethfcai "What ought I to do?" may be taken to signify, end What means should I adopt for the attainment of some end presupposed, perhaps unconsciously, as the end to be sought ? But it is evident, not only that this is not what Kant himself meant by the question, but that, as thus put, it necessarily im- plies a further and deeper question. Not the di covery of the means, but the determination of the end itself the end which cannot be interpreted as a mere means to some further end is the (a) funda- fundamental question of ethics. It is only by m misconception that this can be thought to be a trivial question. To say, as a recent scientific 1 Cf. Kant, Werke, iv. 237. 2 Sermons, v., towards the end. 3 Essay on the Passions and Affections, p. iv. 6 ETHICS AND ITS PKOBLEMS. writer does, 1 " that happiness in one disguise or another is the end of human life is common ground for all the schools/' is either to ignore what the schools have taught, 2 or else to use the word "happiness" merely as another name for the highest good. But, even were it still the case, as it was in the time of Aristotle, that nearly all men were agreed as to the name of the highest good, and that the common people and the cultured alike called it happiness, the difference as to what they meant by the term would still remain. To say that the ethical end is happiness is, to use Locke's terminology, a " trifling proposition " ; for in so doing we merely give it a name 3 and one which the controversies of philosophy have surrounded with confusion. That the end is happiness in any definite sense, for example, as the greatest balance of pleasure over pain, may be perfectly true, but stands very much in need of proof. That happi- 1 W. H. Rolph, Biologische Probleme, zugleich als Versuch zur Entwicklung einer rationellen Ethik, 2d ed., p. 21. 2 Not to mention Kant, the consistent opponent of every eudsemonistic principle, or the doctrines of a political idealist such as Mazzini (see Life and Writings (1867), iv. 223), reference may be made to a writer like W. K. Clifford, who looks from the scientific point of view, and yet holds that " happiness is not to be desired for its own sake." Lectures and Essays (1879), ii. 121, 173. 3 "Auch dieser Begriff [Gliickseligkeit] ist an sich ein bloss formaler, der jede beliebige materiale Bestimmung zulasst." Zeller, Ueber Begriff und Begriindung der sittlichen Gesetze (1883), p. 23. ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. 7 ness is the highest ethical end can be assumed as true only when " happiness " is nothing more than an abbreviated expression for " the highest ethical end." A difficulty of a more radical kind meets us, at (&) implies a ,1 P . , -, -, . , . . . , new point of the very outset of our inquiry, in the distinctively vieWj ethical notion expressed by the word "ought." Various attempts have been made to surmount or circumvent this difficulty ; and some of these will come under consideration in the sequel.. The very notion of conscious activity contains the idea of bringing about something which does not yet exist. It involves a purpose or end. The notion " ought," it is true, means more than this: it implies an obligation to pursue a definite end or conform to definite rules, regarded generally as coming from an authoritative source. In this clear and full sense, "oughtness" or duty is a comparatively recent notion, foreign to the classical period of Greek ethics. The force and defmiteness belong- ing to the modern conception of it are due to the juridical aspect which the Stoic philosophy, Eoman law, and Christian theology combined to impress upon morality. But even the notion of purpose or end implies a " preference " of the end sought : the state to be realised is looked upon as " better " or " more to be desired " than the existing state. We may ask for the reason of this superior desirable- ness ; but the answer must soon fall back upon the assertion of something held to be desirable in it- 8 ETHICS AND ITS PKOBLEMS. self. The question which we are always asking, and cannot help asking, " Why is such and such an end to be pursued by me ? " or " Why ought I to follow such and such a course of conduct ? " must soon lead to the assertion of an ultimate end. the transi- This end, therefore, must not be sought for some req^irel^- 11 ulterior end, nor desired as a means to satisfy any vestigation; O ther desire. But it is still necessary to inquire into the way in which the end, held to be ultimate in a practical regard, stands related to the con- stitution of man and his environment. And the question to which I would draw attention, as the fundamental problem of ethics, is, What is that which men have variously called happiness, the highest good, the ethical end ? or, more precisely, How can a transition be made from the notions of theoretical philosophy to the determination of that ethical end ? No assumption is made, at starting, as to the nature of this end, or the manner of arriving at it. It may be a transient state of feel- ing, or a permanent type of character; or it may by its very nature defy exact definition, the idea itself being perfected as its realisation is progres- sively approached. In any case it requires to be brought into connection with the ultimate concep- tions of thought and existence. This question of the ethical end or highest good is thus fundamental in ethical science, and upon it all other questions in ethics finally depend. But \ V ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. 9 it is easy to see that it does not cover the whole field, and that the other points of view already referred to have a legitimate application. Ethics has not only to determine the end, but to apply it to practice, and so to decide as to what is right or wrong in particular actions, and virtuous or vicious in character. And, in addition to the two questions thus implied the question as to the ethical end, and that as to the application of it to practical affairs there is another department of inquiry which has had a place assigned to it in most ethi- cal systems, and which has a right to be regarded as belonging to ethics. We may investigate the place, in the individual and the community respec- tively, both of the sentiments and ideas and of the social institutions and customs through which mor- ality is manifested; and this inquiry covers the twofold ground of what may be called moral psy- chology and moral sociology. Of these three questions, the first forms the sub- (c) distinct . . , ,, T from other ject oi inquiry in the following pages. It seems to ethical me that a great part of the obscurity which sur- que ' rounds ethical argument is due to confounding these different questions. It is true that no one of them is without bearing on the others ; but it is none the less necessary, in discussing any one of them, to keep its distinctness from those others well in view. In inquiring into the foundation on which the ethi- cal end is based, I do not intend to develop a code 10 ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. of ethics. of rules for practical conduct or a theory of human virtue ; nor shall I attempt to trace the origin and nature of moral sentiments and ideas, or of the social institutions and customs connected with mor- ality. If these subjects have to be introduced at all, it will be only in so far as they may be thought to decide, or tend to decide, the question more imme- diately in view. (a) from in- Thus it forms no part of the present inquiry to th^methods follow u ^ the application to conduct of different ethical ends, or to exhibit the different practical systems to which different ends naturally lead. It might seem indeed, at first sight, as if the develop- ment of their practical consequences might solve the question as to the nature of the ends them- selves. If we assume certain possible and primd facie reasonable ethical ends, and then see what codes of morality they will yield, surely (it may be thought) that one which affords the most consist- ent and harmonious code for the guidance of life will be the end to be sought in preference to all others. But in order that the criticism of what Professor Sidgwick has called the methods of ethics may be able to answer the question as to the end or principle of ethics, certain conditions must first be complied with. In the first place, it is necessary ^at the ends or principles whose applications to conduct are to be examined must not be uncritic- ally accepted from the fluctuating morality of com- Limitation inquiry from ing an log- ical alter- natives, ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. 11 mon- sense nor from the commonplaces of the schools, but must be shown to be "alternatives between which the human mind" is "necessarily forced to choose when it attempts to frame a com- plete synthesis of practical maxims, and to act in a perfectly rational manner." 1 But although this requisite is complied with, it (66) from will still remain possible, in the second place, that ^TLif-con- two or more of the assumed principles may yield Jjj|*J* co< systems of practical rules perfectly self-consistent, possible, and yet inconsistent with one another. 2 It would be very hard indeed to show that both the theory of Egoistic Hedonism, and what is generally called Utilitarianism, do not succeed in doing so : and thus the examination of methods is not of itself suffi- cient to settle the question of the end of conduct. And since to quote Mr Sidgwick 3 it is " a fun- damental postulate of ethics that either these methods must be reconciled and harmonised, or all but one of them rejected," it follows that the criti- cism of methods leads naturally up to an indepen- dent criticism of principles, unless indeed it can be shown that one method only yields a consistent code of practical rules. 1 Methods of Ethics, book i. chap. i. 5, 3d ed., p. 11. 2 " The rule, * Let every one care for me,' is quite as simple, and, in a logical point of view, defines conduct as consistently and reasonably as the rule, * Love your neighbour as yourself.' " Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics (1882), p. 73. 3 Methods of Ethics, I. i. 3, p. 6. 12 ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. (cc) from its Even in this case, however, if it led to the adop- assumption , that the true tion or the end in question, it must be borne in gtfe pe?* min(i tnat th 6 postulate would be implied that the fectiycon- ^rue ethical end must be able to yield a consistent sistent rules. and harmonious system of rules for practical life. "Without altogether denying this postulate, it yet seems to me that it stands in need of qualification. For in different circumstances, and at different stages of individual and social development, the application of the same ethical end may naturally produce different and conflicting courses of conduct. We must not start with any such assumption as that the rationality of the end consists in some sort of mathematical equality which ignores alike the different environment with which one age and an- other surround different generations, and the differ- ent functions which one individual and another have to perform in the social whole. We must leave open the possibility that what is right now may be wrong in another age ; we must remember that everybody may not count for one, and that some people may count for more than one; we must admit that we may have sometimes to do to others what we would not that others should do to us. The only consistency we have a right to demand must leave room for such a variety of differ- ent conditions as to be, by itself, a very insecure guide. From the difficulty of complying with the above ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. 13 * conditions, it seems practically impossible for the criticism of ethical methods to decide the question of the ethical end. Even if the application to con- duct of every important end has been taken account of, we are met with the difficulty that two or more mutually antagonistic though self-consistent prac- tical codes may probably have been developed, while we are not even justified in assuming that inability to yield a system which will fit the com- plex circumstances of life in a perfectly harmonious manner is sufficient ground for rejecting an end shown in some other way to be reasonable. The last department of ethics referred to that (/s) distinct .,-.., from moral which has to do with the origin and nature ot moral psychology sentiments and social customs has a bearing on the question of the end of conduct in some respects more important than the investigation of ethical methods. For, whereas the latter expressly assumes certain ends as primd facie reasonable, the former inquiry, on the contrary, is now frequently under- stood to be able, without presupposing any ethical relations whatever, to trace the way in which, from primitive feelings and customs, morality itself has been evolved. The psychological side of ethical inquiry has always had an important place with English moralists. At times, indeed, the ques- tion of the " moral faculty " has excited so much interest as to divert attention from the nature of morality itself. Moral truth has been supposed to 14 ETHICS AND ITS PKOBLEMS. be something known and indisputable, the only question being how we came to know it. But the psychology of ethics, reinforced by the knowledge sociology gives of the development of morality, rises now to larger issues. It attempts to show the genesis of the moral from the non-moral, to account thus for the origin of ethical ideas, and even to determine what kinds of ends are to be striven after. In this way, a theory of the origin and growth of moral sentiments and institutions is made to render important help to more than one of the theories which will fall to be considered in the sequel. 3. Present The present Essay has to inquire into the way in limited which we may determine what the end of human conduct is, into the basis of ethics, therefore. But I do not propose to offer an exhaustive investiga- tion of all the theories which have been or may be started in solution of the problem. On the con- trary, I will begin by excluding from the inquiry all theories which seek the basis of ethics in some- thing outside the constitution of man as a feeling and reasoning agent : l not because I contend that all 1 The difference between Aristotle and Kant in ethics is some- times expressed (see Trendelenburg, Hist. Beitrage zur Phil., iii. 171 ff.) as if it consisted in the fact that the former in- vestigated human nature in order to find its re'Aos, whereas the latter sought the standard of action in a transcendental ground. There is reason for this distinction in Kant's manner of state- ment. But both may be regarded as investigating human nature. ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. 15 such theories are primd facie unreasonable, but be- cause it is at any rate the more obvious course to to theorie seek to determine the function of an organism by on P the dmi studying its inner constitution, than by having re- JSSnu 1 gard to something which is external to it, and does not act upon and modify it as a necessary part of its environment. It is only when this method has been tried and has failed that we should seek out- side us for some guide as to the part we ought to play in the universe. Tor this reason I shall not take into consideration the views of the basis of ethics which find it in positive law either divine or human, except in so far as they are shown to follow from the nature of man. It is not necessary for me to deny that the source of all moral obliga- tion may be the will of God, or the commands of the sovereign, or the opinion of society, and that the highest moral ideal may be obedience to such a rule. But theories of this kind make ethics merely an application of positive theology, or of legislation, or of social sentiment, and seem only to have an Their difference rather consists in the different position and func- tion assigned to reason in man. It is because Kant is for the moment looking upon reason as something distinct from human nature that he says that " the ground of obligation is to be sought, not in the nature of man or in the circumstances in the world in which he is placed, but cu priori simply in the notions of pure reason" (Werke, iv. 237). His "metaphysical" view of ethics, however, follows from the rational constitution of the human subject and his experience, and does not depend on any source that really " transcends " the reason of man. 16 ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. appropriate place when we have failed to find an independent basis for action. The question which remains to be put may be expressed in these terms : Can we find in human nature (taken either alone or in connection with its environment) any indications of the end of human conduct, or, in other words, of the principle on which human beings " ought " to act ? and if so, in what direction do these indications point, and what is their significance ? The answer to this question will thus necessarily depend on the view we take of the constitution of man and his relation to his environment. And I purpose to bring this dis- cussion within the necessary limits by consider- ing the ethical consequences of one only of the two views into which philosophical opinion is divided. and here to Now the fundamental principle of division in Naturalism, philosophical opinion lies in the place assigned to reason in human nature. 1 According to one theory, man is essentially a sensitive subject, though able to reason about his sensations that is, to associate, compound, and compare them. He is supposed to be built up of sense-presentations associated with feelings of pleasure and pain. Recipient of external impressions which persist in idea and are accom- 1 Opinion is also divided according to the place assigned to reason in the world, this principle of division corresponding almost exactly with the former. ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. 17 panied by pleasure or pain on his part, and thus followed by other ideas and impressions, man's mental constitution is explained without attrib- uting to reason any spontaneous or productive function. 1 The other view differs from this in as distm- attributing spontaneity to reason making it, in ? r u m Ration- one way or another, the source of forms of thought, al ethics> principles, or ideas. The former may be called the Naturalistic, the latter the Eationalistic view of man : from that follows a Naturalistic or Natural ethics, from this a Eationalistic or Eational ethics. Into both these theories, in a theoretical as well as in an ethical aspect, the historical turn of thought which has characterised recent inquiry has intro- duced a profound modification. On the basis of Naturalism Naturalism, we may either look "upon man as an vIduTiiTtic individual distinct from other individuals, as was done by Epicurus and Hobbes and the materialists of the eighteenth century, or we may consider the race as itself an organism, apart from which the orhistoricai. individual is unintelligible, and look upon human nature as having become what it now is through a long process of interaction between organism and environment, in which social as well as psychical and physical facts have influenced the result. This is the view to the elaboration of which Comte and 1 Thus it is the object of Helve'tius's first discours " De 1'es- prit " to prove that physical sensibility and memory are the only productive causes of our ideas. B 18 ETHICS AND ITS PKOBLEMS. Darwin and Spencer have in different ways con- tributed. 1 What makes the historical method of importance philosophically, is not the mere fact that it traces a sequence of events in time, but the fact that, by doing so, it is able to look upon each link in the chain of events as necessarily con- nected with every other, and thus to regard as a system or, rather, as an organism what pre- vious empirical theories had left without any principle of unity. Rationalism A similar movement of thought has introduced viduSiBtic" a like modification into the nationalistic theory. According to older doctrines, the individual rea- son is mysteriously charged with certain a priori principles which are to us laws of knowledge and of action ; whereas the form of Eationalism which is now in the ascendant resembles the theory of natural evolution in this, that as the latter finds the race more real than the individual, and the individual to exist only in the race, so the former or universal- looks upon the individual reason as but a finite manifestation of the universal reason, and attempts to show the principles or constitutive elements of this universal reason or consciousness in their logical or necessary connection leaving open to empirical investigation the way in which they have gradually disclosed themselves in the in- 1 Comte, by connecting ethics with biology ; Darwin and Spen- cer, by the doctrine of evolution. ETHICS AND ITS PROBLEMS. 19 dividual human subject, and in the expression of the collective life of the race. Thus, as Natural Ethics is divided into an individualistic and an historical view, a similar distinction might be made in Eational Ethics, though in this case it would be more difficult to follow out the dis- tinction in detail; and many ethical systems can- not be said to have kept consistently either to one side of it or to the other. In the following discussion I shall investigate the ethical theory which is founded on the basis of Naturalism working out and criticising in some- what greater detail that form of the theory which, from the agreement it lays claim to with the results of modern science, plays so important a part in contemporary philosophical thought. 20 PAET I. THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEOKY, CHAPTEE II. EGOISM. Definition of IT is difficult to give an exact definition or even description of what I have called the " natural " view of man. Perhaps it may be best defined, negatively, as the view which denies to reason any spontaneous or creative function in the human constitution. For this definition, if it still leaves the positive description wanting, will at least make the classification into " natural " and " ra- tional" exhaustive and mutually exclusive. At the same time it is to be noted that, on the theory of Naturalism, reason is not supposed to be ex- cluded from all share in determining questions of conduct or the choice of ends. It would, indeed, EGOISM. 21 be impossible to have even the pretence of an ethical theory without a certain use of reason. But its function, in this case, is limited to the merely formal one of bringing different presenta- tions (or objects) and feelings into connection, and comparing the different states of mind thus formed with one another, not with a reason-given standard. Since the function of reason is thus restricted, and its competency to supply an end for, or prin- ciple of, action is denied, we must seek this end either in the feelings of pleasure and pain which accompany both sensory and motor presentations, perceptions, that is to say, and actions, or in the more complex, or apparently more complex, emo- tions of the mind. And the latter may either be themselves reducible to feelings of pleasure or pain accompanying presentations directly pleasurable or painful, and thence transferred by association to other presentations, or they may be regarded as somehow motives to action which may be or ought to be followed on their own account. The Indi- vidualistic Theory, therefore, is not necessarily hedonistic. It admits of a twofold view of the " natural " man : one which looks upon him as in essence a pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding animal; another which regards him as having a variety of impulses, some of which are not directed to his own pleasure or avoidance of pain. 22 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. i. its theory The former view psychological hedonism, as it is called claims to be an exhaustive analysis of the motives of human conduct, perfectly general indeed, but yet valid for every case of action. It denies the possibility of a man acting from any other principle than desire of pleasure or aversion from pain. The theory is, that it is a psychological law that action is motived by pleasure and pain, and that nothing else has motive-power over it. If, then, one pleasure (or avoidance of pain) is chosen in preference to another, it must be either by chance, an alternative which has no ethical significance no significance, that is, for the guid- ance of voluntary conduct, or because the one course promises, or seems to promise, th6 attain- ment of a greater balance of pleasure than the other, or is actually at the time more pleasant than that other. Thus the view that pleasure is the only motive of human action is really identical, for ethical purposes, with the theory loosely expressed in the law that action follows the greatest pleasure. 1 ambiguous, I say " loosely expressed"; for the law as thus stated really admits of three quite different in- 1 Meaning by " greatest pleasure," greatest balance of pleasure over pain, and thus inclusive of the meaning "least pain." It is the expression in terms of feeling of the statement sometimes preferred, that " action follows the line of least resistance " a statement to which no exception can be taken, nor any import- ance allowed, till it be translated into definite psychological language. EGOISM. 23 terpretations, not always distinguished with the referring to precision which such subjects require. (a) In the first place, the law might mean that (a) actual action always follows the course which, as a matter quences of of fact, will in the long-run bring the greatest actlon> balance of pleasure to the agent. It is evident that there is no ground in psychology for main- taining this view. Yet it is a fair interpreta- tion of the "law" of psychological hedonism, as commonly stated ; and it is at least an admissible supposition that this meaning of the phrase has not been without effect upon the uses to which the law has been put by some of its upholders. The second interpretation of the law namely (5), or (&> its ex- that action is always in the direction which seems sequences) to the agent most likely to bring him the greatest balance of pleasure, whether it actually brings it or not is the sense in which it appears to have been most commonly taken when expressed with any degree of accuracy. It is in this sense that in language which ascribes greater consistency to men's conduct than it usually displays " interest " is asserted by the author of the 'Syt&me de la nature ' to be " the sole motive of human action." l 1 " Ainsi lorsque nous disons que Vinteret est I 'unique mobile des actions humaines, nous voulons indiquer par la que chaque homme travaille a sa maniere a son propre bonheur, qu'il place dans quelqu'objet soit visible, soit cache", soit re"el, soit imagin- aire, et que tout le systeme de sa conduite tend a 1'obtenir." Systeme de la nature (1781), i. 268. 24 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. The same view is adopted by Bentham ; l and both James Mill and John Stuart Mill identify desire with pleasure, or an " idea " of pleasure, in terms which are sufficiently sweeping, if not very care- fully weighed ; 2 while the will is said to follow desire, or only to pass out of its power when coming under the sway of habit. 3 Still another meaning may, however, be given to the " law " of psychological hedonism, according to which the doubtful reference to the manifold pleasures and pains, contemplated as resulting from an action, is or (c) its got rid of, and (c) the agent is asserted always to 1 " On the occasion of every act he exercises, every human being is led to pursue that line of conduct which, according to his view of the case taken by him at the moment, will be in the highest degree contributory to his own greatest happiness." Constitutional Code, book i. 2 ; Works, ix. 5. The continued existence of the species is, Bentham thinks, a conclusive proof of this proposition. 2 Thus, according to James Mill, " the terms ' idea of pleasure ' and * desire ' are but two names ; the thing named, the state of consciousness is one and the same. The word Desire is com- monly used to mark the idea of a pleasurable sensation when the future is associated with it." Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, J. S. Mill's edit., ii. 192 ; cf. Fragment on Mac- kintosh (1835), p. 389 f. To the same effect J. S. Mill says : " Desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are phenomena entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the same phenomenon ; in strictness of lan- guage, two different modes of naming the same psychological fact." Utilitarianism, 7th ed., p. 58. 3 " Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion of its parent only to come under that of habit." Utilitarianism, p. 60. EGOISM. 25 choose that action or forbearance which is actually present most pleasant, or least painful, to him at the time istics. taking account, of course, of imaginative pleasures and pains, as well as of those which are imme- diately connected with the senses. It is in this interpretation of its law that psychological hedonism seems to be most capable of defence, and in this sense it has been more than once stated and defended. 1 The ethics of the form of Naturalism which is 2. Ethical inferences now under examination must be inferred from the from this " law " that human action follows the greatest 1 Thus Jonathan Edwards says : " When I say that the Will is as the greatest apparent good, or (as I have explained it) that volition has always for its object the thing which appears most agreeable, it must be carefully observed, to avoid confusion and needless objection, that I speak of the direct and immediate object of the act of volition, and not some object to which the act of will has only an indirect and remote respect. " On the Freedom of the Will, part i. 2 ; Works, i. 133. The matter is put still more clearly by the late Alfred Barratt : " Action does not always follow knowledge. Of course not : but the doc- trine [Hedonism] does not require that ib should ; for it says, not that we follow what is our greatest possible pleasure, or what we know or ' think ' to be so, but what at the moment of action is most desired." Mind, vol. ii. 173 ; cf. Physical Ethics, p. 52 ff. So Mr Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 47 : " It is more accurate to say that my conduct is determined by the pleasantest judg- ment, than to say that it is determined by my judgment of what is pleasantest." The negative side of the same view was ex- pressed by Locke in his doctrine that action is moved by the most pressing uneasiness (Essay, II. xxi. 29, 31), and distinguished by him from the former view (b), that the " greater visible good " is the motive (II. xxi. 35, 44). 26 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. pleasure, in one or other of the above meanings which that law admits of. The law is the datum or premiss from which we are to advance to an ethical conclusion. The "right" is to be evolved from the pleasurable ; and the pleasurable, consequently, cannot be made to depend upon the right. It is certainly true of the conduct of most men, "that our prospect of pleasure resulting from any course of conduct may largely depend on our conception of it as right or otherwise." x But this presupposes that there is a right independent of one's own pleasure, and therefore does not apply to an ethics based on the simple theory of human nature put forward by psychological hedonism. - (a) m its first It is scarcely necessary to discuss the first alter- meaning, , / \ i-i-j 11 i native (a), as no psychologist would seriously main- tain it. A society composed of men constituted in the way it supposes men to be constituted, would be a collection of rational egoists, omniscient in all that concerned the results of action, and each adopting unerringly at every moment the course of conduct which would increase his own pleasure the most. The conduct of any member of such a society could only be modified when and would always be modified when the modified conduct actually brought pleasurable results to the agent : never so as to make him prefer the public good (6) in its to his own. The second alternative (b) admits of 1 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 3d ed., p. 40. EGOISM. 27 such modification taking place only when it seems second to the individual that this modified action will m produce a greater balance of pleasure or smaller balance of pain than any other course of action. Under this theory an individual might indeed prefer the public good or another man's good to his own, but only through his being deceived as to the actual results of his course of action. Ethics as determining an end for conduct is put out of court ; though the statesman or the educator may modify the actions of others by providing appro- priate motives. If the " two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure," " determine what we shall do," it is hardly necessary for them also " to point out what we ought to do." l The end is already given in the nature of action, though an enlightened understanding will teach men how the greatest 1 Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap, i., Works, i. 1. With this statement may be compared the assertion of Helve'tius : " II semble que, dans 1'univers moral comme dans 1'univers physique, Dieu n'est mis qu'un seul principe dans tous ce qui a e'te'. ... II semble qu'il ait dit pareillement a Thomme : . . . Je te mets sous la garde du plaisir et de la douleur : 1'un et 1'autre veilleront a tes pense'es, a tes actions ; engendrerpnb tes passions, exciteront tes aversions, tes amities, tes tendresses, tes fureurs ; allumeront tes de'sirs, tes craintes, tes espeYances, te de'voileront des ve'rite's ; te plongeront dans des erreurs ; et apres t' avoir fait enfanter mille systemes absurdes et diffe'rens de morale et de legislation, te decouvriront un jour les principes simples, au deVeloppement desquels est attache* 1'ordre et le bonheur du monde moral." De 1'esprit, III. ix, QEuvres (ed. of 1818), i. 293. 28 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. balance of pleasure may be obtained. We can only get at a rule prescribing an end by changing our point of view from the individual to the state. It is best for the state that each individual should aim at the common happiness ; but, when we talk of this as a moral duty for the individual, all we can mean is that the state will punish a breach of it. In the words of Helvetius, 1 " pain and pleasure are the bonds by which we can always unite per- sonal interest to the interest of the nation. . . . The sciences of morals and legislation can be only deductions from this simple principle." According to Bentham's psychology, a man is necessitated by his mental and physical nature to pursue at every moment, not the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but what seems to him his own greatest happiness. And what the legislator has to do is, by judiciously imposed rewards and punishments, especially the latter, to make it for the greatest happiness of each to pursue the greatest happiness of all. 2 As distinguished from this " art of legisla- tion," " private ethics " consists only of prudential rules prescribing the best means to an end pre- determined by nature as the only possible end of human action : it " teaches how each man may 1 De 1'homme, concl. gn., GEuvres, ii. 608. 2 Cf. Systeme de la nature, i. 120: "La politique devrait etre 1'art de rgler les passions des hommes et de les diriger vers le bien de la socie'te'." EGOISM. 29 dispose himself to pursue the course most conducive to his own happiness." l The consequences to the theory of action of the third alternative (c) are ( C ) in its similar: it only states the law with more appear- fining. ance of psychological accuracy. If a man always follows that course of action which will give him at the time the greatest (real and imaginative) satisfaction, it is impossible for us to infer from his nature an ethical law prescribing some other end, without admitting a fundamental contradiction in human nature ; while to say that he ought to seek the end he always does and cannot help seeking, is unnecessary and even unmeaning. Modification of character may of course be still brought about, since the kinds of action in which an individual takes pleasure may be varied almost indefinitely. But the motive made use of in this educative pro- cess must be personal pleasure ; and the end the legislator has in view in his work must be the same, 2 though it is often quietly assumed that for him personal pleasure has become identified with the wider interests of the community. The different significations of which it admits Result of show that the psychological law that action follows the greatest pleasure is by no means so clear as it may at first sight appear. Probably it is the very 1 Bentham, op. cit., chap. xix. (xvii. in the reprint of 1879), 20; Works,i. 148. 2 Cf. Bentham, Works, ix. 5. 30 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. ambiguity of the law that has made it appear to provide a basis for an ethical system. When it is said that greatest pleasure is the moral end of action, this " greatest pleasure " is looked upon as the greatest possible balance of pleasurable over painful states for the probable duration of life : on the egoistic theory, of the life of the individual ; on the utilitarian theory, of the aggregate lives of all men or even of all sentient beings. But when it is said that greatest pleasure is, as a matter of fact, always the motive of action, it is obvious that "greatest pleasure" has changed its signification. For if the same meaning were kept to, not only would the psychological law as thus' stated be openly at variance with facts, but its validity would render the moral precept unnecessary. It is even unmeaning to say that a man " ought " to do that which he always does and cannot help doing. 1 On the other hand, if the double meaning of the phrase had been clearly stated, we should at ethical once have seen the hiatus in the proof of egoistic hedonism the gap between the present (or appa- rent) pleasure for which one does act, and the great- est pleasure of a lifetime for which one ought to act as well as the additional difficulty of passing 1 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, I. iv. 1, 3d ed., p. 41 ; cf. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 9 : "To a being who is simply a result of natural forces, an injunction to conform to their laws is unmeaning." EGOISM. 31 from egoism to utilitarianism. If greatest appa- rent pleasure or greatest present pleasure is by an inexorable law of human nature always sought, how can it be shown that we ought to sacrifice the apparent to the real the present pleasure that is small to the greater future pleasure? If the in- dividual necessarily pursues his own pleasure, how can we show that he ought to subordinate it to the pleasures of the " greatest number " ? It is a matter of fact, however, that the psychol- 3. Transition ogists who maintain that action follows the great- logSaTto est pleasure meaning by that, greatest apparent f e ^| sm or greatest present pleasure have in their ethics Right action will imply made the transition to an enlightened Egoism, or even to Utilitarianism. The nature of the transi- tion thus requires to be more clearly pointed out. If the former interpretation of the law of psycho- logical hedonism could be accepted, and a man's motive for action were always what seemed to him likely to bring him the greatest pleasure on the whole, ethics what Bentham calls private ethics could be reduced (as Bentham finally re- duces it) to certain maxims of prudence. To be fully acquainted with the sources of pleasure and (a) correct . estimate of pain, and to estimate them correctly, would imply conse- possession of the highest (egoistic) morality. If action!" ( men could be made to think rightly as to what their greatest pleasure consisted in, then right action on their part that is to say, the pursuit of 32 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. their greatest pleasure would (according to Ben- tham's psychology) follow as a matter of course. :t Eight conduct, however, is not so purely an affair of the intellect as this would make it. Indeed, Bentham's psychological assumption requires only to be plainly stated for its inconsistency with the facts of human action to become apparent. The " video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor " ex- presses too common an experience to be so easily explained away. The impulses by which action is. governed are not always in accordance with what the intellect decides to be best on a survey of the whole life and its varied chances. In judging the consequences of action, a future good ' is compared with a present, regardless of the mere difference of (6) and cor- time by which they are separated. But the springs Itrength^ which move the will are often at variance with the feeling. decisions of the understanding ; and many men are unable to resist the strength of the impulse to act for the pleasure of the moment, though they fore- see that a greater future satisfaction would follow from present self-denial. It would seem, then, that the facts of experience are sufficient to show that a man's conduct does not always follow the course which he thinks likely to bring him the greatest pleasure on the whole. But the view that a man always acts for what is most pleasant or least painful at the time can- not be dismissed so easily. It is not enough simply EGOISM. 33 to point to the facts of human action in order to show that this hypothesis is inconsistent with them. If we instanced the self -restraint in which so many pass their lives from day to day, it might perhaps be answered that there is a persistent idea of duty, or love of reputation, or fear of social stigma, the repression of which would be more painful than the restraint it puts upon other im- pulses. Even the martyr who deliberately parts with life itself for the sake of an ideal, may be said to choose death as the least painful course open to him at the time. It should be borne in mind, however, that Professor Bain, the most thorough psychologist of Bentham's school, refuses to admit this line of defence for psychological hedonism, and holds that, in actions such as those referred to, men are really carried out of the circle of their self-regarding desires. 1 But my present purpose is not to discuss the merits of any such psychological theory, but rather to investigate its ethical conse- quences. And for this purpose the question re- quires to be put, how a passage is effected from psychological hedonism to an egoistic and even to a utilitarian theory of ethics. If a man always acts for his greatest present Thepostu- , , , . . ., late that pleasure, real and imaginary, it seems a far step to ac tio n can say that he " ought " to act or in any way to J e tiona1 ' expect that he will act at each moment for the 1 Cf. The Emotions and the Will, 3d ed., p. 293 ff. C 34 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. greatest sum of pleasure attainable in the probable duration of his life. But on reflection, this may turn out to follow if we postulate that conduct can be rationalised. What is meant by this ego- istic " ought " may be said to be simply that to the eye of reason the pleasure of any one moment cannot be regarded as more valuable than the equal pleasure of any other moment, if it is equally involves certain ; and that therefore to act as if it were is to these con- . ditions, act unreasonably. Man tails in acting up to rea- son in this sense, because his action is not motived by reason, but directly by pleasure and pain ; and not by a mere estimate of pleasure and pain, but by pleasure and pain themselves. The psycho- logical hedonist must maintain that the estimates of future pleasure and pain only become motives by being not merely recognised (intellectually) but felt (emotionally) that is, by themselves becoming pleasurable or painful. If the Egoist calls any action irrational, it cannot be because the motive which produced it was not the greatest pleasure in consciousness at the time. It can only be on the ground that the greatest pleasure in conscious- ness at the time is likely to lead to a sacrifice of greater pleasure in the future ; and this must be due either to intellectual misapprehension or to the imagined fruition of future pleasure not being strong enough to outweigh the pleasure which comes from a present stimulus, and to the imagined EGOISM. 35 fruition of the more distant being weaker than that of the less distant pleasure. It is owing to a defect of the imagination on a man's part that even with complete information he does not act " up to his lights " irrational action being partly a consequence of insufficient acquaintance with the normal results of conduct, partly due to defective imagination. Were a man's imagination of future pleasure and pain as strong as his experience of present pleasure and pain, and did he correctly appreciate the results of his conduct, then his action would, of psychological necessity, harmo- nise with the precepts of egoistic hedonism. Egoistic hedonism may therefore, in a certain sense, be said to be a " reasonable " end of conduct on the theory of psychological hedonism ; it is the end which will be made his own by that ideally perfect man whose intellect can clearly see the issues of conduct, and whose imagination of the future causes of sensibility is so vivid that the pleasure or pain got from anticipating them is as great as if they were present, or only less lively in proportion as there is a risk of their not being realised. Conversely it would seem that only that man can act " reasonably " in whom imagination of the latter of pleasure (or of pain) is already of equal strength with the actual experience of it. But, if the " pleas- ures of the imagination " are as strong as those of sense or of reality, the latter obviously become 36 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. superfluous ; and it follows that the ideally perfect man is left without any motive to aim at the real thing, since he can obtain as much pleasure by imagining it. The cultured hedonist must, it would seem, be able to " Hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus, Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite By bare imagination of a feast." is inconsist- So far as feeling or motive to action goes, no differ- ent with . . the nature encc must exist for mm between reality and ima- ary gination. And thus, although we may admit that, on this psychological basis, conduct when ration- alised agrees with that prescribed by egoistic hedonism, yet it can only be rationalised by a development of the strength of the imagination, which would make the feeling which it brings with it as strong as that which accompanies a real object, and hence take away the motive for the pursuit of the latter. The discrepancy between representa- tion and presentation which is necessary for the state of desire, 1 is no longer present. Hedonism vindicates its rationality only on conditions which imply the futility of action altogether. It is not merely that the attainment of the hedonistic end in practical conduct implies a strength of imagination of which no one is capable, but the conditions of 1 Cf. Sully, Outlines of Psychology, p. 577. EGOISM. 37 acting both rationally and hedonistically, are condi- tions which would paralyse all activity. The foregoing argument may perhaps be ob- 4. possible jected to on two grounds. On the one hand, it may to^pre^Sng be said that it ignores the vast complexity of hu- ar g*ment: man motive, and treats action as if it were a simple and abstract thing. On the other hand, we may be reminded of the fact that, while all men act for pleasure, the moral quality of their conduct does not depend on this fact, but on the kind of things in which they take pleasure. So far as the first objection is concerned, it seems (a) compiex- to me that the fault belongs to the psychological tive but it theory of human action, the ethical consequences of which are under investigation. It is this theory aonism J which ig- which asserts that, however interwoven the threads nores this. of impulse, aversion, and habit may be, their most complex relations can be reduced to the formula, " greatest pleasure, or least pain, prevails." It is not necessary, indeed, that every action should be the conscious pursuit of a pleasurable object already before the mind in idea. But the theory, if con- sistently carried out, implies that the action which follows in the line of a previously formed habit, does so because the discomfort or pain of breaking through the habit would be sufficient to counter- balance any satisfaction that might result. The ob- jection, therefore, of excessive simplicity or-"ab- stractness," is one which cannot have greater force 38 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. than when urged against the theory of psychologi- cal hedonism. (6) differ- Further and this is the second objection the ofpieasur- above analysis may be considered by some not to awe objects; ^^ taken su ffi cient account O f the difference in the objects in which a human being can take pleas- ure, and of the fact that the moral quality of men differs, not according as they act for pleasure or not, but according to the kind of actions and suf- ferances in which they find pleasure. There can be no doubt of the importance of this distinction for questions of practical morals. The man in whom " selfishness takes the shape of benevolence," as it did in Bentham, is infinitely better than the man in whom it retains the form of selfishness. But the consideration is important just because it goes on the implied assumption that the hedonistic is not the chief aspect of conduct, and that there is a difference between courses of action more fundamen- tal than the pleasurable or painful feeling attend- but this in- ant on them. If the principles on which the objec- Ire^ce to^ ti n i g founded were consistently adhered to and something followed out, they would make not pleasure, but else than J pleasure, something else that, namely, by which pleasures differ from one another in kind the ethical stand- ard. But if, in ultimate analysis, it is the pleasure felt or expected that moves to action, it would seem that there is no way in which the conclusion of the preceding argument can be avoided. If pleasure is EGOISM. 39 the motive, it must be qud pleasure that is to say, either the greatest apparent pleasure, or the great- est present pleasure, is the motive. If difference of quality be admitted, we are introducing a determin- ing factor other than pleasure. Certain kinds of pleasure may be better than others for the race or for the state. But these differences must be reducible which psy- . -, i chological to terms of individual pleasure admitting of purely hedonism quantitative comparisons, before they become mo- admit^f. tives to action. 1 From the point of view of the whole, we may say that one action leads to a greater sum of pleasure than another. But, in judging the action of individuals, all that we can say of it is, that to one man one class of actions gives pleasure, to another another : each man is equally following the course of action which either (a) will bring, or (6) seems to him likely to bring, the greatest pleas- ure, or (c) is actually most pleasant at the time. From the nature of the individual we can evolve no end beyond egoistic hedonism. And even this end can only be made his at each occurrence of action (assuming the first alternative (a) to be incorrect) by enlightening his intellect so that (6) will corre- spond with the actual greatest pleasure, or by also 1 Cf. J. Grote, ' Utilitarian Philosophy,' p. 20, note : " One kind of pleasure may be, systematically, to be preferred to another, but it must be because the pleasures classified under it generally exceed those under the other in intensity, or some other of the elements of value." 40 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. enlivening his imagination of future pleasures and pains so that (c) will correspond with it ; and this, as has been shown, could only be effected under conditions which are inconsistent with the prin- ciples of human action. 41 CHAPTER III. THE TEANSITION TO UTILITAEIANISM. IT still remains possible, of course, to fix an ethical i. Different end in some other way than by studying individual onndfvT^uai human nature. We may, for instance, looking from and state the point of view of the community, fix its greatest happiness, instead of his own, as the individual's end. But the difficulty then arises of persuading the individual or, indeed, making it possible for him to regard this impersonal goal as the end of his conduct. For this purpose, Bentham seemed to look to the exercise of administrative control which, by a system of rewards and punishments, will make the greatest happiness of the individual coincide so far as possible with that of the community. 1 J. S. Mill, on the other hand, with his eyes turned to the 1 Professor Bain distinguishes with greater clearness than his predecessors, first, legal duty, or that the contravention of which is punished by the ministers of the state ; secondly, moral duty, enforced by the unofficial punishment of social disapprobation ; and thirdly, the conduct which society leaves to individual choice, without censuring either its commission or omission. Moral duty is further distinguished by him from the meritorious, or conduct 42 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. subjective springs of action, saw in the gradual growth of sympathetic pleasures and pains the means by which an individual's desires would cease to conflict with those of his neighbours. It is in some such way that the transition is made from Egoism to Utilitarianism. The transi- tion is made : Bentham and his school are an evi- dence of the fact. But it is not therefore logical. It is, indeed, important to notice that we only pass from the one theory to the other by changing our original individualistic point of view. Having al- ready fixed an end for conduct regardless of the difference between the individual at the time of acting and at subsequent times, we proceed to take the much longer step of ignoring the difference be- tween the agent and other individuals. The ques- tion is no longer, What is good or desirable for the person who is acting ? but, What is best on the whole for all those whom his action may affect- that is to say, for the community ? cannot be But while it is comparatively easy to see how connected tins transition is effected as a matter of fact, it is difficult to establish any logical connection between its different stages, or to offer any considerations fitted to convince the individual that it is reason- able for him to seek the happiness of the commu- nity rather than his own. Only that conduct, it which society encourages by approval, without censuring its omission. THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 43 may seem, can be reasonable which directs and per- fects the natural striving of each organism towards its own pleasure. We may, of course, let our point through of view shift from the individual to the social " or- state to L ganism." And in this case, if the " natural " end diyidua1 ' of each human being is his own greatest pleasure, the end of the community, or organised body of pleasure-seekers, will naturally be concluded to be the greatest aggregate pleasure of its members. Thus, if we can hypostatise the community, and treat it as an individual with magnified but human wants and satisfactions, then, for this leviathan, the ethical end will correspond to what is called Utili- tarianism or Universalistic Hedonism. But, when Difference we remember that the community is made up of ^Town units distinct from one another in feeling and action, {^rTasure the difficulty arises of establishing it as the natural of others end, or as a reasonable end, for each of these units to strive after the greatest pleasure of all. Tor it is evident that the pursuit of the greatest aggregate pleasure may often interfere with the attainment by the individual of his own greatest pleasure, j On the other hand, the self-seeking action of the indi- vidual may no doubt lead to a loss of pleasure on the whole ; \ but then it is not his own pleasure that is lost, only other people's. To the outsider as to the community it may seem irrational that a small increase in the pleasure of one unit should be allowed at the expense of a loss of greater pleas- 44 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEOKY. ure on the part of other units. But it seems irra- tional only because the outsider naturally puts him- self in the place of the community ; and neither takes account of the fact that to the individual agent there is a fundamental difference between his own pleasure and any one else's pleasure : for him the former is, and the latter is not, pleasure at all. 1 overlooked This fundamental difference seems to be over- argumg j 00 ^ e( j w j ien the attempt is made to argue logically 1 Mr Gurney's attempt (Mind, vii. 349 ff.) to rationalise the utilitarian " ought " depends upon the assumption that the individual feels a desire (not only for his own, but) for other people's pleasure (p. 352). From the point of view of the psy- chological hedonist, however, this desire is only secondary and derivative, depending upon the fact that it increases the pleasure of the subject. "Your pleasure," the psychological hedonist would say, " is desired by me qud my pleasure." If, on the other hand, it is admitted that the individual has other ends than his own pleasure, there seems no ground in psychological fact for limiting these ends to something aimed at because pleasurable to others. From this point of view the first step in the establish- ment of an ethical theory would be an attempt to find a principle of unity in the various ends actually aimed at by individuals, and recognised by them as "good." This is made by Professor Sidg- wick, who, while allowing that " it is possible to hold that the objective relations of conscious minds which we call cognition of Truth, contemplation of Beauty, Freedom of action, &c. , are good, independently of the pleasures that we derive from them," main- tains that " we can only justify to ourselves the importance that we attach to any of these objects by considering its conduciveness, in one way or another, to the happiness of conscious (or sentient) beings" (Methods of Ethics, iii. xiv. 3, 3d ed., p. 398). But Mr Sidgwick's Utilitarianism depends on a Rational view of human nature which is beyond the scope of the present discus- sion. See below, p. 74. THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 45 from egoistic psychology (or even from egoistic from egoism ethics) to utilitarianism. Indeed, the hiatus in an^m. 1 logical proof is often only concealed by a confusion of standpoints ; and J. S. Mill, while emphasising the distinction between modern Utilitarianism and the older \Epicureanisrnj has even allowed his official " proof " of utilitarianism such proof, that is, as he thinks the principle of Utility to be susceptible of to rest on the ambiguity between individual and social happiness. This ambiguity does not seem to have been con- 2. connec- sistently avoided even by Bentham. For the most egoism and part, indeed, nothing can exceed the clearness with which he recognises the twofold and possibly con- i n flicting interests involved in almost every action. There is the interest of the agent, and the interest of others whom his action may affect. And he also holds that, in the case of divergence of interests, the individual will act for his own. I^The happi- ness of the individuals," he says, 1 "of whom a community is composed, that is, their pleasures and their security, is the end, and the sole end, which the legislator ought to have in view the sole standard in conformity to which each indi- vidual ought, as far as depends upon the legislator, to be made to fashion his conduct. But whether it be this or anything else that is to be done, there 1 Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. iii. 1 ; Works, i. 14. 46 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. is nothing by which a man can ultimately be made to do it, but either pain or pleasure/* that is, of course, his own pain or pleasure. fHere, then, ethical Utilitarianism and psychological Egoism are both plainly involved. A man, it is said, can only pursue general happiness by its being identical with his own happiness. And as it is evident, and admitted, that these two happinesses often diverge in the courses of action naturally leading to them, a man can only be beneficent, rather than selfish, through some artificial arrangement which makes beneficence to be for his interest: 1 in plain lan- guage (since rewards are only of exceptional ap- plicability), through his being punished for not (a) utmtari- being beneficent. 2 But, as Bentham clearly shows, poiitoi a many cases of action cannot be safely touched by duty ' the legislator's art. Such cases u unmeet for punishment" include not only the actions which are beneficial or neutral in their results, but also actions hurtful to the community, though they may elude such vigilance as the state can contrive, or their restraint by punishment inflicted by the 1 As Paley put it, with characteristic plainness of statement, " We can be obliged to nothing, but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by." Moral and Political Philosophy, book ii. chap. ii. 2 Cf. Bain, Emotions, p. 264 : " I consider that the proper meaning or import of these terms [Morality, Duty, Obligation, or Right] refers to the class of actions enforced by the sanction of punishment." THE TKANSITION TO UTILITAKIANISM. 47 state may constitute a greater evil than the offence. 1 Probity may be exacted by the " persons stated and certain" who happen to be political superiors : except in rare instances, positive benefi- cence can not. Utilitarian conduct, therefore, is not a "political duty," because it is not fully enforced by definite punishment. The " art of legislation" is indeed said to teach "how a mul- titude of men, composing a community, may be disposed to pursue that course which upon the whole is the most conducive to the happiness of the whole community, by means of motives to be applied by the legislator." 2 But the means here indicated are such as cannot fully compass the attainment of the end. For the motives applied by the legislator either cannot reach a large part of the extra-regarding conduct of individuals, or could only reach it by entailing greater evils than those they would be used to prevent. But if utilitarian conduct is not a political duty, (&> nor a it may seem evident that it is at least a moral m duty. Now a moral duty is said by Bentham 3 to 1 Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap, xix, (xvii.), 9 ff ; Works, i. 144 ff. 3 Ibid., 20, p. 148. 3 Fragment on Government, chap. v. ; Works, i. 293. Cf. Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. iii. 5, p. 14, where the Moral Sanction is said to proceed from " such chance persons in the community as the person in question may happen in the course of his life to have concerns with." 48 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. be " created by a kind of motive which, from the %7icertainty of the persons to apply it, and of the species and degree in which it will be applied, has hardly yet got the name of punishment : by various mortifications resulting from the ill-will of persons fcmcertain and variable, the community in general ; that is, such individuals of that community as he whose duty is in question shall happen to be con- nected with." In plain language, then, moral duty simply means the ill-will of a man's neighbours which follows his conduct in so far as that conduct affects them disagreeably. Such ill-will on the part of a man's neighbours may result from success or from failure on his part, from a breach of eti- quette, from refusal to sacrifice to the caprice of those neighbours the wider good of the society whom his conduct affects (but to whom it may be unknown), from deception or from telling the truth. In a word, the duty that is, the punishment is entirely uncertain : not only as regards the persons applying it, its nature and its amount, but also as regards the kind of actions to which it applies. They will be actions unpleasant to the people who inflict the punishment, but not necessarily hurtful to the common weal: since the immediate effects of an action are easily recognised, while its wider and more lasting consequences are neither so ap- parent nor appeal so surely to the interest of those who are cognisant of the action and immediately THE TKANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 49 affected by it. Moral duty, therefore, as Bentham defines it, depending on, or rather identical with, the ill-will of one's neighbours, is indefinite and limited in its nature, and can command or sanction no such definite and wide-reaching rule for conduct as that a man should always act for the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people whom his action may affect. Utilitarian conduct, there- fore, is neither a political duty nor a moral duty ; \ nor does Bentham follow Paley in insisting upon (c) nor in- ,.. i . .-IT i i sisted on as it as a religious duty " created by punishment ; by a religious punishment expected at the hands of a person duty ' certain the Supreme Being." And " if he persists in asserting it to be a duty but without meaning it to be understood that it is on any one of these three accounts that he looks upon it as such all he then asserts is his own internal sentiment ; all he means then is that he feels himself pleased or displeased at the thoughts of the point of conduct in question, but without being able to tell why. In this case he should e'en say so ; and not seek to give an undue influence to his own single suffrage, by delivering it in terms that purport to declare the voice either of God, or of the law, or of the people." x This plain piece of advice which Bentham gives to Blackstone is not often neglected by himself. The motive, he once said, of his own exceptional 1 Bentham, Fragment on Government, loc. cit. D 50 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. devotion to the interests of the community was that it pleased him. " I am a selfish man/' he wrote, " as selfish as any man can be. But in me, somehow or other, so it happens, selfishness has taken the shape of benevolence." l But when the matter is thus brought back from the regions of political, (d) nor sum- moral, and religious duty, to the individual ground motived in of " private ethics," we have still to refer to Ben- tham's own discussion of the question, " What mo- tives (independent of such as legislation and reli- gion may chance to furnish) can one man have to consult the happiness of another ? " 2 Bentham at once replies and indeed the answer on his princi- ples is obvious enough that there is no motive which always continues adequate. But yet there are, he says, " no occasions in which a man has not some motives for consulting the happiness of other men." Such are " the purely-social motive of sym- pathy or benevolence," and " the semi-social motives of love of amity and love of reputation." A man is directly moved to promote the happiness of others through the sympathetic feelings which make the happiness of others in some degree pleas- urable to himself; and he is indirectly moved to promote their happiness through his desire of their friendship and good opinion. So far, therefore, it is quite true that " private ethics " or what Ben- 1 Works, xi. 95 ; cf. J. Grote, Utilitarian Philosophy, p. 137. 2 Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. xix. (xvii.), 7 ff. THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 51 tham regards as such " concerns every member that is, the happiness and the actions of every ' member of any community that can be proposed." l It certainly concerns their happiness, but only in so far as this is a means to the happiness of the agent. So that when Bentham says that "there is no case in which a private man ought not to direct his own conduct to the production of his own happiness and of that of his fellow-creatures," he should rather say that a man will 2 only direct his conduct to the happiness of his fellow- creatures in so far as such action leads to his own happiness. Private ethics, therefore, has to do with the happi- which can ness of others only so far as this reacts on the topm- happiness of self ; or, as Bentham ultimately defines dence * it, in terms to which no exception can be taken : " Private ethics teaches how each man may dispose himself to pursue the course most conducive to his own happiness by means of such motives as offer of themselves." 3 Under Bentham's hands " private ethics " is thus 3. Ben- -. , .. . tham's treat- reduced to prudence, at the same time that the me nt ex- author has failed to show why the general happi- haustlve 1 Loc. cit., 8, p. 144. 2 " Ought " is inappropriate here according to Bentham's prin- ciples, since there is no question of punishment inflicted by a po- litical or social or religious superior. 3 Loc. cit., 20, p. 148. 52 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. from his ness is to be aimed at by the individual as a reli- Stew. gious or political or moral duty. Nor is this failure due to any lack of skill in following out the con- sequences which his premisses involved. The argu- ments used against him have thus an equally valid application to all who adopt the same general line of thought. For Bentham appears to have seen as clearly as any of his disciples the difficulty of bring- ing the egoistic basis of his theory of human nature into harmony with the universal reference required by his ethics. And the criticism already offered of the way in which Bentham attempts to bring about this connection may be shown not to be restricted to his special way of putting the case. It is necessary to remember that throughout this chapter we are looking from the individual's point of view, and inquiring how far it is possible to work from it in the direction of utilitarianism. Now it is admitted that, in pursuing his own happiness, he is sometimes led, and may be led on the whole, to neglect the general happiness. A sufficient reason for following the latter or an obligation to do it can therefore only come either from the supreme power or from one's fellow-men, and from the latter either as organised in the State, and ex- pressing themselves by its constituted authorities, or else by the vaguer method of social praise and blame. Bentham's classification of the possible sources or kinds of duty into religious, political, THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 53 and moral [or social], is therefore a natural conse- quence of the individualistic system. The first of these possible sources of duty is in- ( a > The re- deed only mentioned by Bentham, and then passed ^ us by. And yet it might seem that the religious sanc- tion is a more efficient motive - power than the social, while it applies to regions of conduct which legal enactment cannot reach. Without question, the operation of such a motive is capable of bringing egoistic conduct into harmony with utilitarianism, or with any other principle of action to which the sanction may be attached. " Private happiness is relied on by our motive, and the will of God our rule," says Paley ; l and in this case such conduct will be obligatory as the rule may arbitrarily determine ; while, whatever it may be, there will be a strong enough motive to follow it. The whole fabric of a moral philosophy such as Paley's, therefore, rests on two theological propositions that God has or- dained the general happiness as the rule of human conduct, and that He will punish in another life those who disregard that rule. The basis of mor- ality is laid in a divine command enforced by a divine threat. Perhaps it will be generally agreed that Bentham acted wisely in not laying stress on this application of the " religious sanction." Even those least inclined to theological agnosticism would reject any such rough-and-ready solution of the 1 Moral and Political Philosophy, book ii. chap. iii. 54 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. inverts the problem which deals with the relation of morality tween ethics to the divine nature. Paley's method of treatment, io gy> e they would say, inverts the relation in which the- ism stands to morality. The divine will cannot be thus arbitrarily connected with the moral law. It can be conceived to approve and sanction such an object as the happiness of mankind only when God is first of all regarded as a moral being, and the hap- piness of mankind as an obj ect of moral action. If any relation of consequence can be asserted between them, the general happiness is to be regarded as a moral duty first, and only afterwards as a religious duty. (&) Limits of When he comes to the political sanction, Ben- sanction, tham's treatment wants nothing in respect of ful- ness, and even those who do not agree with his esti- mate of the infelicific character of many existing institutions and enactments will admit that even the best-intentioned legislator cannot make utilitarian conduct a political duty. We must bear in mind here, also, the effect which individual desires and opinions have not only on social judgments, but also on statute-law. In arguing on the relation of the individual to the State, we are too ready to forget that the State is represented by a legislator or body of legislators, and that we can never assume that in their cases private interest has already become identified with the larger interests of the com- munity. 1 For were this the case, the accusation 1 This is clearly recognised by Bentham : " The actual end [as THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 55 of class-legislation or private interest would not be heard so often as it is. A modern disciple of Bentham would thus be compelled, just as Bentham himself was, to make social sane- 6 utilitarianism neither a political nor religious but tlon> a " moral " duty, enforced by and founded on the shifting and uncertain punishments or sanctions of society what Professor Bain describes as "the unofficial expressions of disapprobation and the exclusion from social good offices." 1 But as a logical proof of utilitarianism, this means is, if possible, weaker than the preceding : for social opinion, though of somewhat wider applicability than legal enactment, has probably been, for the most part, in even less exact correspondence than it with the general happiness. The social sanction is strict on indifferent points of etiquette, does not consult the general interests of mankind on points of honour, and is lenient towards acts that the utilitarian moralist condemns. 2 distinguished from the right and proper end] of government is," he says, " in every political community, the greatest happiness of those, whether one or many, by whom the powers of government are exercised." Constitutional Code, booki., Introd., 2 ; Works, ix. 5. 1 The Emotions and the Will, p. 264. 2 Cf. Bain, The Emotions and the Will, p. 287. Professor Bain says (Emotions, p. 276 n.), "we ought to have a written code of public morality, or of the duties imposed by society, over and above what parliament imposes, and this should not be a loosely written moral treatise, but a strict enumeration of what 56 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. (d) and of Prof essor Bain, however, advances from the ex- the internal sanction so temal disapprobation to an internal sanction far as a re- T T . . . , , . , suit of the looking upon conscience as one ot the powers which inflicts punishment, and lies at the source of the feeling of obligation. But if conscience is only " an ideal resemblance of public authority, growing up in the same individual mind, and working to the same end," it can, as little as its archetype, point to the maxim of utilitarianism. According to Professor Bain, it is through this sentiment at first a mere imitation of external authority that the individual becomes a law to himself, on recog- nising the utilities that led to the imposition of the law. 1 But on this theory, in so far as conscience continues to point to the conduct impressed upon it by its external pattern, it fails to correspond with the utilitarian maxim. If, on the other hand, it is modified by the comprehensive and unselfish view of the effects of conduct which utilitarianism demands, it must be at the expense of correcting society requires under pain of punishment by excommunication or otherwise, the genuine offences that are not passed over." This would certainly be very desirable, were it not from the nature of the case impracticable. Popular judgment as to a man's conduct, what society imposes, is one of the things most difficult to predict : it is under the influence of most hetero- geneous causes, personal, industrial, religious, political, &c. I do not think, for instance, that any one could safely undertake to describe exactly the kind of actions which will infallibly call forth the censure of British public opinion, or that of the smaller and intersecting groups into which society is divided. 1 Emotions, p. 288. THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 57 its original edicts, and so far discrediting its author- itative claims. The "social sanction" would be of much greater vaiueofthe service if used to show how a solidarity is brought S* * about between the interests and feelings of the individual and those of his neighbours, from which the utilitarian maxim may be arrived at by a gen- eralisation of his principle of conduct as modified by the social impulse. But this would not consti- apart from tute a logical justification of utilitarianism : it would f^tmtari- show how the principle has been arrived at, but amsm * without giving a sufficient reason to the individual for adopting it. And this is really the tendency of much recent discussion of Professor Bain's theory of conscience as a reflex of the external order, of George Grote's analysis of the moral sentiment, and of Mill's doctrine of the progressive identifica- tion of the individual's feelings with those of his neighbours through the gradual increase of sym- pathetic pleasures and pains: for it was to this source that Mill looked for the practical solution of the antinomy between his psychological and ethical theories, though he himself tried to pass from one position to the other by means of the " highway in the air " constructed by his own logic. Mill's attempt to pass by a logical method from 4. MQI-S psychological hedonism to utilitarianism is an in- logical d< ' 58 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. fence of structive commentary on the difficulties which ism: beset the transition. His work may be described as a vindication of the utilitarian morality, first, from the charge of sensualism ; and secondly, from that of selfishness. And it is largely owing to his polemic that utilitarianism is no longer looked upon as either a sensual or a selfish theory. It is not sensual, unless, indeed, the pleasures of most men are of a sensual kind. So far from being selfish, it is almost stoical in the subordination of individual desires it enjoins. But Mill wished to do more than clear the character of utilitarian ethics. He wished to show a logical reason for utilitarians pursuing elevated pleasures rather than base ones, and to demonstrate the connection of his moral imperative with the principles which the school he belonged to laid down for human motives. In both these respects his failure is conspicuous, (a) distinc- In the former endeavour, he went against Ben- tion of kinds ., , ,. ^ T , j -1-1 of pleasure, tham by attempting to draw a distinction in kind amongst pleasures a distinction not reducible to quantitative measurement. A higher degree of quality in the pleasure sought was to outweigh any difference in its amount or quantity. With this modification, utilitarianism is made to require a subordination of the lower or sensuous nature to the higher or intellectual nature. Pleasure, indeed, is still the end ; but the " higher " pleasure takes precedence over the "lower," irrespective of the THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 59 amount of pleasant feeling that results. Pleasure is still the standard, but not the ultimate standard ; for a further appeal has to be made to the criterion that distinguishes one pleasure from another, not as merely greater or less, but as higher or lower. As is well known, Mill did not look either to the action or to the feeling itself for this criterion. To have done so would have implied an acknowledg- ment that pleasure was no longer regarded as the ultimate standard. He found the criterion of determined ., 1 ,1 T by author- superiority simply in the opinion people of ex- i ty , perience have about the relative desirability of various sorts of pleasure. But such a criterion 'only pushes the final question of the standard one step farther back. Those people of experience to whom Mill refers who have tried both kinds of pleasure, and prefer one of them l can they give no reason for, no account of, their preference ? If so, to trust them is to appeal to blind authority, and to relinquish anything like a science of ethics. But, if Mill's authorities can reflect on their feelings, as well as feel, they can only tell us one or other of two things. Either the so-called " higher " pleas- ure is actually, as pleasure, so preferable to that called " lower," that the smallest amount of the one would be more pleasurable than the largest amount 1 I have spoken, for simplicity's sake, as if there were two kinds of pleasure easily distinguishable. But the question is really much more complicated. 60 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. of the other ; or else the higher is called higher, and is to be preferred to the lower even although the latter may be greater as pleasure because of a quality belonging to it over and above its character either can as pleasant feeling. The former verdict would be to difference ^ n tne ^ rst P^ ace paradoxical, and, in the second of quantity, place, would give up Mill's case, by reducing or leads to r ' J non-hedon- quality to a quantitative standard. Besides, it ard ; would be no valid ground of preference for men in general ; since the pleasure of various actions and states differs according to the susceptibility of the subject. According to the latter verdict, the char- acteristic upon which the distinction of quality depends, and not pleasure itself, becomes the ethical standard. (&)ambigui- In respect of his main contention, that utilitarian- proofof 18 i sm * s a theory of beneficence, and not of prudence utilitarian. or O f selfishness, Mill emphasised even more strongly than Bentham had done the distinction between the egoism which seeks its own things, and the utilitarianism according to which everybody counts for one, and nobody for more than one. But when he attempted to connect this doctrine logically with the psychological postulates of his school, he com- mitted a double error. In the first place, he con- fused the purely psychological question of the mo- tives that influence human conduct with the ethical question of the end to which conduct ought to be directed ; and, in the second place, he disregarded THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 61 the difference of end there may be for society as a collective whole, and for each member of the society individually. " There is in reality," he says, 1 " noth- ing desired except happiness ; " and this psycholog- ical theory is too hastily identified with the ethical principle that happiness alone is desirable, or what ought to be desired and pursued. Moreover, " no reason," he says, "can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness." And this admission, which seems as good as saying that no reason at all can be given why the individual should desire the general hap- piness, is only held to be a sufficient reason for it, through assuming that what is good for all as an aggregate is good for each member of the aggregate : "That each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons." 2 It may appear strange to offer the preceding as the imperfect logical basis of an ethical principle which has had of ethical 6 so wide and, on the whole, beneficial an influence JJ as utilitarianism. The explanation is to be found o in the want of full coherence which often exists, and is nowhere commoner than in English ethics, between an author's practical view of life and the foundation of psychology or metaphysics with which 1 Utilitarianism, p. 57. 2 Ibid., p. 53. 62 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. it is connected. It would certainly be wrong to imagine that Bentham's self-denying labours rested on a confusion of standpoints, or that Mill's moral enthusiasm had no other support than a logical quibble. To both of them, and to many others, utilitarianism was an ethical creed influencing their lives, which was scarcely connected with the at- tempt to justify it logically. Such reasons in its favour as they adduced were rather after-thoughts for the defence of their creed than the foundations on which it was built. 5. Actual The formula of utilitarianism cannot be expressed transition to . utilitarian- as the conclusion or a syllogism or or an inductive inference. It seems rather to have been arrived at by the production or the recognition of a sympa- thetic or " altruistic " sentiment, which was made to yield a general principle for the guidance of con- duct. This process involves two steps, which are consecutive and complementary, although the posi- tions they connect are not necessarily related. The first step is to overcome the selfish principle of action in the individual ; the second to generalise it, and obtain a principle for the non-selfish action that results. Mill seems to be the only recent writer who, in making this transition, adheres strictly to the psychological hedonism distinctive of his school. He looks to the influence of educa- tion in increasing the feeling of unity between one man and his neighbours, till individual action be- THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 63 comes merged in altruistic or social action. " The social state," he says, a is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some unusual circumstances, or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body." l This is perfectly true, but does not imply a sublation of selfishness. A man " never conceives himself other- wise than as a member of a body ; " but it does not follow from this that he will subordinate his own interests to the interests of the other members when the two clash. In cases of conflict the individual often tends to sacrifice the good of his neighbours to his own good ; and he may do so although he fully recognises the social consequences of action, just because he still remains at the ethical stand- point which treats private good as superior to public. It is true, as Mill contends, that, " in an improving state of the human mind, the influences are constant- ly on the increase, which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest ; which feeling, if perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included." 2 But this is not sufficient, to connect the two antagonistic 1 Utilitarianism, p. 46. But no statement of the sociality of man could be more explicit or satisfactory than that of Butler, Sermons, i. 2 Utilitarianism, p. 48. 64 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. poles of Mill's system. It starts with assuming the notion of an "improving state/' of the human mind, as determined according to an ethical standard not yet arrived at ; and it gives no valid account of the means by which the improvement is to be brought about. It is prophetic of a time when the motives of human nature will have been so modified that the antagon- ism between self and others will be no longer felt ; but it offers no practical solution of the antinomy suited to present circumstances, (a) recogni- The basis of the ethical sentiment by which the tionofSym- . pathy desires and actions of a man are to be brought into harmony with those of his fellows is investigated in a more thorough manner by Professor Bain and by George Grote. But both of these writers stand on a somewhat different platform from the strict psychological hedonism which Mill never relin- quished. Thus Grote enumerates as " elementary tendencies of the mind," which ethical sentiment presupposes, and out of which it is compounded, self-regarding tendencies, sympathetic tendencies, benevolent affections, malevolent affections, and (though in a smaller degree) love and hatred of those who cause pleasure and pain to others ; l and this without interpreting sympathy, in the way that Mill does, as having for its end the pleasures which come with the gratification of the sympathetic impulse, or the removal of the pain caused by its 1 Fragments on Ethical Subjects (1876), p. 6. THE TRANSITION" TO UTILITARIANISM. 65 restraint. As Professor Bain argues, this position of Mill's " is tenable only on the ground that the omission of a disinterested act that we are inclined to, would give us so much pain that it is on the whole for our comfort that we should make the requisite sacrifice. There is plausibility in this supposition." But " the doctrine breaks down when we try it upon extreme cases. . . . All that people usually suffer from stifling a generous impulse is too slight and transient to be placed against any important sacrifice." 1 In recognising as sympathy as a " purely disinterested " impulse, 2 Mr Bam,' Bain breaks loose at an important point from the psychology of Bentham. He is indeed only kept from a complete break with it by the position he ascribes to sympathy as outside of the ordinary sphere of voluntary action. Above all things, it would seem to be necessary that nothing should conflict with "our character as rational beings, which is to desire everything exactly according to its pleasure-value." 3 But sympathy obviously " clashes with the regular outgoings of the will in favour of our pleasures ; " so that it ought to be placed outside voluntary action, and regarded 1 The Emotions and the Will, 3d ed., p. 295. 2 Ibid., p. Ill ; cf. Mind, viii. 55 : "The important exceptions to the law of Pleasure and Pain are (1) Fixed Ideas, (2) Habits, and (3) Disinterested action for others. " 3 Emotions, p. 438. E 66 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. simply as " a remarkable and crowning instance of the Fixed Idea." 1 without be- It is owing to its exclusion, as a fixed idea, from tJfdetermtae the sphere of voluntary conduct, that sympathetic the ethical a pp r0 p r i a tion of the feelings of others has little or no place assigned it by Professor Bain, when he goes on 2 to describe the way in which the moral opinions of men have actually originated. They have, he holds, a twofold source the one arising from the necessity for public security, the other being of sentimental origin. The former makes society ordain those acts and services required for its own preservation. The latter leads to the confusion of this necessary element of morality with the senti- mental likes and dislikes which may be character- istic of different people. These are " mixed up in one code with the imperative duties that hold society together;" and it is only when "we dis- entangle this complication, and refer each class of duties to their proper origin," that we can " obtain a clear insight into the foundations of morality." 3 Morality, therefore, is that which is imposed by society for its own preservation and security, and which is sanctioned by the punishments of society either in its "public judicial acts," or "by the unofficial expressions of disapprobation and the exclusion from social good offices." 4 Of this ex- 1 Emotions, p. 121. 2 Ibid., p. 271 ff. 3 Ibid., p. 273. 4 Ibid., p. 264. THE TKANSITION TO UTILITAEIANISM. 67 ternal law the moral sense or conscience is merely a subjective mirror or copy. The duty of unselfish- ness is not connected with the disinterested impulse of sympathy, but is traced to the external order of society, which has found it necessary to restrain the self-seeking action of individuals a restraint which has come to be transferred to the consciences of the members of the society. Mr Bain's theory falls back in this way upon external authority, just as Bentham's did ; and, for the same reasons, they are neither of them able to prescribe the utilitarian principle of conduct. But, in his assertion of the disinterested nature of sym- pathy, Mr Bain has introduced though he has not himself utilised a fruitful principle, by means of which a basis of moral sentiment may be found by means of which it is possible to escape from ethical as well as psychological egoism. This element of sympathy is most fully recog- and by nised in the instructive analysis of ethical sentiment by the late George Grote. At the same time, Grote does not, like Adam Smith, for instance, attempt to evolve the material characteristics of approbation and disapprobation from this source. The mere putting of one's self in the place of a spectator or in that of the patient instead of that of the agent, is only a formal change, which will modify our judgments or feelings without accounting for their actual content. But a uniform formal element 68 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. in all ethical sentiment is, according to Grote, a man's " constant habit of viewing and judging of circumstances around him," both from the point of view of the agent and from that of the patient. 1 This twofold position is occupied by every indivi- dual. He is an agent, and in that position his own interests and feelings are separate from, and often at variance with, those of others. But he is also a patient in respect of the actions of others, and in that position his interests and his feelings are com- monly in unison with those of the majority. Hence a man is led constantly to adopt ideally the point of view which is not actually his own at the time, so that " the idea of the judgment which others will form becomes constantly and indissolubly associ- ated with the idea of action in the mind of every agent." In every community, certain actions are visited with the admiration, esteem, and protection of the society ; certain other actions with the oppo- site feelings and results : so that there arises " an association in my mind of a certain line of conduct on the part both of myself and of any other indivi- dual agent, with a certain sentiment resulting from such conduct, and excited by it, in the minds of the general public around us. It is a sentiment of regulated social reciprocity as between the agent and the society amongst which he lives." And this sentiment, when enforced by a sanction, 1 Fragments on Ethical Subjects, p. 8 f. THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 69 constitutes the complete form of ethical senti- ment. As a complete explanation of the moral senti- ments and judgments of men, this theory does not seem to be above criticism. It requires not only an association between every personal action and the feelings sympathetically imagined by the agent with which the action will be regarded by others, but it also implies that this association has become so inseparable that the feeling appears as an individual or personal one, distinguished by the subject from other sentiments which he has on con- sciously imagining himself in the position of others. But it is referred to here as illustrating what we find in Mill, and, in a different way, in Professor Bain, that the first real step towards the utilitarian standard is to make the individual pass somehow or other to a standpoint outside his own nature. In Mill this is done mainly by the assertion of the social nature of man, in Grote by showing how a moral sentiment may be arrived at by the com- bined action of sympathy and association. The further influence required in the transition (&) The idea to utilitarianism is the idea of equality. The best expression of utilitarian doctrine followed soon after the assertion of the equal rights of men which signalised the politics of the end of last century in 'the French and American revolutions. Bentham was permeated by the spirit of this movement, 70 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. however far he might be fron accepting its ab- stractions about natural rights. In his hands, too, utilitarianism was a political rather than an ethical doctrine. " Everybody to count for one and nobody for more than one" follows naturally from the phrase, "the greatest happiness of the greatest yto number." Without this assertion of the necessity sympathy; of an equal distribution, there is no safeguard against sympathy being restricted and partial in its operation. Indeed the feeling of sympathy in itself is naturally strongest towards those with whom one is in most frequent relation, or con- nected by numerous associative ties ; and if left to itself, it might therefore be expected to give rise to the extended selfishness of class or family interest, only relieved by a spasmodic humanitarianism. This tendency is corrected by the dogma of human equality, which had been formulated as a juridical maxim in the Eoman Jus Gentium, but afterwards passed into a political creed, and found vent in the literature of the eighteenth century and in the public events which marked its close. The change which this notion of human equality passed through has been traced by Sir Henry Maine. " Where the Eoman jurisconsult had written ' aequales sunt/ meaning exactly what he said, the modern civilian wrote ' all men are equal ' in the sense of ' all men ought to be equal.' The peculiar Eoman idea that natural law co- THE TKANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 71 existed with civi 1 law and gradually absorbed it, had evidently been lost sight of, or had become unintelligible, and the words that had at most conveyed a theory concerning the origin, composi- tion, and development of human institutions, were beginning to express the sense of a great standing wrong suffered by mankind." l Now Bentham, influence of however far he may have been from trusting to the system of 'natural law,' 2 was certainly not beyond the influence of the idea of human equality which it carried in its train ; and, from his own point of view, he laboured to defend it. In assimi- lating this idea, utilitarianism has preserved one of the best results of the old . " law of nature," without the ambiguity with which it had formerly been used, 3 if in a sense which admits of a some- what narrow and abstract interpretation. 1 Ancient Law, 8th ed., p. 93. 2 Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. ii. 14 n. 3 The ambiguity of the phrase is explained in an interesting way in Sir H. Maine's account of the change from its juridical to a political or ethical meaning. In some writers it seems to have a third and still different signification. We must thus distinguish (1) the juridical meaning, originating in the Roman " law common to all nations," which had arisen through the " constant levelling or removal of irregularities which went on wherever the praetorian system was applied to the cases of foreign litigants," modified subsequently by the Greek conception of iVdrojs. (2) The political meaning, that all men ought to be equal, arose from the preceding. But its notion of " ought " seems often to depend on an idea of the constitution of nature according to which all men are actually born equal not only in rights, soon to be obscured by human convention, but also in power or faculty, 72 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. It is true that this does not give exactly the result which is usually described as utilitarianism. I have spoken of the notion of equality as the regulator of sympathy a canon in accordance with which the sympathetic impulse is to be guided. Sympathy impels us to relieve the pains and in- crease the pleasures of our fellow-men. The prin- ciple of equality dictates that this sympathetic activity is to be directed to the happiness of all men equally. Every one whom our conduct may be made to affect is to count as a unit, and a unit only. The distribution is not to be according to kinship of blood or social ties, though it is so much afterwards unequally developed by education. Hence (3) the natural meaning. The doctrines of evolution and heredity have made this view seem as strange to us now as it would have done to the Komans from whom it was illegitimately derived. Yet at one time it seems to have been assumed, almost without question, that there is but little difference in the natural endowments of different men. This assumption lay at the basis of Hobbes's political theory Leviathan, I. xiii. p. 60, was stated in a more guarded form by Locke On Education, 1 ; Works, ed. of 1824, i. 6, and adopted almost without qualification by Hel- vetius, who, carrying out Locke's metaphor of the soul as, at birth, a " tabula rasa," afterwards written over with the pen of experience, says : " Quintilien, Locke, et moi, disons : L'ine'galite' des esprits est 1'efifet d'une cause connue, et cette cause est la difference de 1'education " the causes of the existing inequality being afterwards stated as twofold : first, the difference of environ- ment, which may be called chance ; and secondly, the difference of strength in the desire for instruction. De 1'homme, II. i., III. i., IV. xxii. ; (Euvres, ii. 71, 91, 280. (Quintilian's statement, however, is even more guarded than Locke's. Cf. Opera, ed. Spalding, i. 47.) THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 73 more in our power to promote the happiness of those closely connected with us, that it may fairly occupy a larger share of our thought and energy than the happiness of other people does. Utili- tarianism carries the application of the principle of equality still farther, by looking upon self as a unit whose happiness is to be regarded as of exactly equal value with that of any one else. "With every individual reduced to the same ethical worth, happiness is declared to be the end of moral action, and equality of distribution the rule for deciding between the claims of competing individuals. It seems to me, therefore, that utilitarianism is 6. The two a theory compounded out of two quite different ele- utilitarian ments. On the one side the basis of the theory has gMy 0t been laid by Bentham and Mill in a naturalistic connected, psychology which looks upon pleasure as the only object of desire. To this there is superadded the idea of equality, which is the distinctively ethical element in the theory. But it is only by confusion that the idea of equality which Bentham expresses by the proposition that the happiness of one man is to count for no more than the happiness of another can be supposed to be derived from the same theory of human nature as that which iden- tifies pleasure and desire. Utilitarianism only becomes a practicable end for individual conduct when psychological hedonism has been given up. It is futile to say that one ought to pursue the 74 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. greatest happiness of the greatest number, unless it is possible for the individual to act for some- thing else than his own pleasure that is, for an end which is for him not pleasure at all. In a word, utilitarianism, while maintaining that the only thing worth desiring is pleasure, must at the same time admit that pleasure is not the only object that can be or is desired : otherwise, it can never advance from the egoistic to the universal- istic form. This view receives confirmation from the way in which utilitarianism is held by the most eminent of living moralists. In the 'Methods of Ethics/ the tradition of Bentham is expressly united with the doctrines of Butler and Clarke. Professor Sidgwick agrees with Bentham, and the long line of moralists from Epicurus downwards, in main- taining the doctrine of ethical hedonism, that pleasure is the only thing ultimately desirable ; but, with Butler, he rejects the psychological hedonism, according to which pleasure is the only object of desire. So far from these two positions being inconsistent, it is only through the second that the first can be held in its universalistic form. The problem is, however, how to unite them. In Professor Sidgwick's theory, they are connected by the application of the ethical maxims of benev- olence and equity, which an exhaustive exami- nation of ethical intuitions has left standing as THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 75 axioms of the practical reason. Though utilitari- anism, therefore, is still adhered to, it is on an expressly Eational ground, not on the basis of Naturalism. In this and the previous chapter, I have looked 7. summary at human nature from the point of view of psycho- conseqwn- logical hedonism, and have endeavoured to show 2hdS2i" what ethical principles that theory leads to, or is hedonism : consistent with. The theory does not deny that there is a great diversity of capacities and interests in man. But it holds that, so far as concerns conduct, they admit of being brought under one general law that every action is subject to the rule of the " two sovereign masters, pleasure and pain." It is evident, therefore, that if ethics is to be connected at all with psychology if what ought to be done is in any degree what can be done the end of conduct must be hedonistic. The psychological fact cannot indeed be without more ado turned into a moral imperative. Yet this much may be admitted, that if this interpre- tation of action leaves room for ethics at all, the end prescribed can be nothing else than pleasure, or the avoidance of pain. The question, therefore, was how to determine (a)noiogi- the pleasure which is to be sought ? And I have tfon^tiT tried to show, in the chapter just concluded, that ^ hta utilitarianism does not admit of being logically 76 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. arrived at from this point of view. It may indeed, under certain circumstances, 1 be the guide of politi- cal or social enactments; but these can only be made to bear upon the conduct of individuals by the sanctions which the State or Society has at its command. The individual can have as his maxim of conduct an end which corresponds with utilitarianism in two events only: when he is so constituted as to find his pleasure in the great- est aggregate pleasure of mankind, or when the political and social sanctions are so complete and searching as to make his individual interest and the collective interest coincide. The former event is unfortunately too rare to be taken into account in establishing a theory ; the latter would imply an interference with individual liberty so impracti- cable that it is not contemplated even in the most comprehensive of socialistic schemes. Hedonism in psychology, therefore, means egoism in ethics. But even this theory, as the previous chapter has shown, has its own difficulties to meet. The antagonism of individual and universal has not yet been got rid of. The difficulty is no longer caused by the conflict between one man and his neighbours : it is the difference between the feeling 1 That is, when (1) the legislature accurately expresses the average feeling of all the members of the State ; or (2) the legis- lators happen to be fully intelligent people in whom " selfishness " has taken the shape of benevolence. THE TRANSITION TO UTILITARIANISM. 77 and action of a moment, and the sum of feelings and actions which makes up a lifetime. It is true that, if we admit that pleasure is the only thing worth pursuing, and that by .." pleasure" a man means " his own pleasure," there is so far no reason for preferring the pleasure of one moment to that of another, except as more certain or of greater amount or degree ; l but this is to start with ascrib- ing a value to pleasure, and not with the simple fact that pleasure is desired. If psychological hedonism is our starting-point and we give to the theory the interpretation that has the greatest verisimilitude it is the greatest present pleasure that rules. And, although the man of reflection only under will no doubt attempt to estimate the future pleas- cS ure at its true value in comparison with the pleasure actually present, this can never have full effect upon his will. It has been shown, indeed, that the realisation of egoistic hedonism is not merely unattainable from the point of view of psychological hedonism, but that it would involve conditions inconsistent with the nature of desire. 1 Although, as is well known, propinquity was held by Ben- tham to be an independent ground of distinction and preference. Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. iv. sect. 2. 78 CHAPTER IV. MORAL SENTIMENT. i. A uni- PSYCHOLOGICAL hedonism possesses the merit of such asps7- ff erm g a simple and uniform theory of mental ac ti n It m ay admit conflicting accounts of the kinds of action and sufferance which actually give men pleasure and pain, a point on which, for example, Hobbes and J. S. Mill differ widely. But it has one general formula for the relation of feeling to action, which has been precise and clear enough to attract many psychologists. The ethical consequences of the theory have, indeed, turned out if the argument of the preceding chapters is valid to be neither so obvious nor so satisfac- tory as its adherents have commonly supposed. But it must nevertheless be admitted that, if psychology shows pleasure to be, as a matter of fact, the constant end of action, it will be useless even if it is not impossible for ethics to prescribe any other end. MOKAL SENTIMENT. 79 The opponents of ethical hedonism have thus not supplied uniformly insisted that the theory which makes pon^ts of pleasure the end and motive of all conscious activity f hical he ~ domsm, is imperfect ; and this psychological question has been the battle-field of many of the controversies, at any rate, of English ethics. Psychological he- donism has not, however, been confronted by the English moralists with an opposed theory of equal simplicity, nor can the controversy be said to have led to a thorough analysis of action. The psychological investigation has, in most cases, been carried no farther than the ethical interests at stake seemed to require ; and the predominance of these interests has perhaps prevented the in- quiry from being carried out with complete free- dom from preconception on either side. A uniform theory under which our various par- ticular desires might be brought may, indeed, be said to have been suggested by Butler. He meets the hedonistic proposition that all desire is for personal pleasure, by the doctrine that no particu- lar desire has pleasure as its end, since all pleas- ure presupposes a previous desire in the satisfac- tion of which it consists. 1 This theory, which may have been derived from Plato, 2 and was afterwards 1 " The very idea of an interested pursuit necessarily presup- poses particular passions or appetites ; since the very idea of interest or happiness consists in this, that an appetite or affection enjoys its object." Sermons, Pref. ; cf. Serm. xi. 2 Phil., 31 ff. ; cf. Gorg., 495 f. ; Rep., ix. 585. 80 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. used by Schopenhauer to prove the negative nature of pleasure and consequent worthlessness of life, is, however, a generalisation which cannot be made to include the whole facts to be taken account of. 1 Many pleasures occur independently of any pre- cedent desire. And what Butler had to show and was really concerned to show was that desire was not exclusively directed to objects thus inde- pendently found to be pleasurable : the contra- dictory, that is to say, and not the contrary, of psychological hedonism. in maintain- For this purpose Butler pointed to the whole Sftyofnon- c ^ ass ^ affections which, although they may also hedonistic en( j ^ p r i va t e interest, have an immediate refer- activity. ence to the good of others; and, in addition to these, he contended for an original principle of benevolence towards others in human nature, as well as of self-love or care for one's own interests and happiness. This latter, he held, so far from being the sole principle of action, implied the exist- ence of a number of particular passions and affec- tions, directed immediately to external objects the satisfaction of these desires giving pleasure, though pleasure was not the end they aimed at. Volun- tary action is thus not brought under any common rubric ; for, at the same time that the calm prin- ciple of self-love is directed to the agent's greatest pleasure, the object of hunger, for example, is said 1 Cf. Sidgwick. Methods of Ethics, I. iv. 2, 3d ed., p. 44. MORAL SENTIMENT. 81 to be not pleasure but food, that of benevolence not personal pleasure but the good of others. The attempt to give unity to the non-hedonistic view of desire has come from a different quarter. Uninfluenced by the exigencies of ethical contro- by Herbart > versy, which formed the entire motive of Butler's investigation, Herbart and his school have worked out a theory of desire, which has many points of comparison with that of Butler. However much they may differ from the English moralist of whose existence they are mostly ignorant they are at one with him in rejecting the maxim of psychological hedonism, nihil appetimus nisi sub specie loni ; and their differences from him are largely due to their having gone further in their analysis of the facts, and endeavoured to bring them under a general principle. Butler's view of the object of desire is distin- guished from the Herbartian chiefly in two respects. In the first place, he identifies that object with the external or real thing, whereas Herbart is careful to point out that it is a presentation or idea. In the second place, while Butler is content to pos- tulate an original tendency of our nature towards certain objects, Herbart attempts to get behind this tendency, and explain the phenomena of striving from the interaction of presentations. Over and above the ordinary hypothesis of natural realism, Butler's theory implies a sort of pre-established F 82 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. harmony between our active tendencies and things outside the mind, in virtue of which some of these things do, and some do not, attract our desires, from the Herbart, on the other hand, attempts nothing less ideas to aeif- than a complete genetic account of mental phen- ion. omena ^ explaining the facts of presentation, desire, and feeling through " the persistence of presenta- tion in consciousness and their rise into clearer consciousness." 1 The phenomena of desire and feeling are both accounted for by this mechanism of impelling and inhibiting forces. 2 It would be beyond the scope of this Essay to examine the above view of the active side of mental phenomena. For present purposes it is enough to draw attention to the fact that the common de- duction of the phenomena of desire and will from the feelings of pleasure and pain is not the only " scientific " theory of human action, and that it is rejected on its merits by writers who have no hankering after what the psychological hedonist would call the mystical element of free-will. It is of interest to note, too, that Professor Bain, in 1 Herbart, Psychologic als Wissenschaft, 104, Werke, vi. 74 ; cf. Waitz, Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft, 40, p. 418 : " It is not difficult to recognise the basis of desire in the presentations brought forward by reproduction, and, at the same time, held back by an inhibition." 2 With Herbart's doctrine may be compared Mr H. Spencer's view of the genesis of feeling and voluntary action, Principles of Psychology, 2d ed., part iv. chaps, viii. and ix. MORAL SENTIMENT. 83 whose works the traditions of psychological hedon- ism find their most careful expression, has modified the doctrine so as to allow of desire of pleasure and avoidance of pain explaining less than had been formerly required of them. Outside the circle of This ten hedonistically -determined motives, he recognises the influence of the presentation or idea as a self-realis- ing element in the individual consciousness, apart from its pleasurable or painful characteristics. 1 Those "fixed ideas,' 7 as Mr Bain calls them, tend both to persist in the mind, and to project themselves into action, independently of pleasure and pain or at least with a force which is out of proportion to the pleasure they bring. As has been already seen, it is by means of this doctrine that he explains " the great fact of our nature denominated sympathy, fellow-feeling, pity, compassion, disinter- estedness." 2 To the same category belongs " much of the ambition and the aspirations of human beings. ... A certain notion say of power, wealth, grandeur has fixed itself in our mind and keeps a persistent hold there." It is asserted, in- deed, that the action of such fixed ideas " perverts the regular operation of the will which would lead us to renounce whatever is hopeless or not worth the cost." And, certainly, their admission among 1 Cf. note to James Mill's Analysis, ii. 383 f. 2 The Senses and the Intellect, 3d ed., p. 344 ; cf. Mental and Moral Science, pp. 90, 91 . 84 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. mental phenomena seems to imply the superposition of a new theory of action upon the old theory of psy- chological hedonism. There is no disguising the im- portance of the modification thus introduced. The name " fixed idea " is misleading if it be taken to imply that persistency and tendency to action are properties belonging to a certain class of ideas only. Mr Bain's doctrine is founded on the hypothesis of the identity of the nervous centres which function in representation and in sensation, and is therefore valid of all representations or ideas. The char- acteristics of persistency, and of tendency to action, are therefore normal characteristics of presentations, though they may belong in an unusual degree to some ideas from the relation these hold to the dominant cluster of ideas in the individual con- sciousness. And if we thus attribute to all ideas without exception the tendency to self-realisation, and recognise as we must the relation of mutual assistance or inhibition which ideas bear to one another in virtue of their being " presented " to the same subject, we have granted the material out of which, in Herbart's skilful " Mechanik des Geistes," the phenomena of feeling and desire are woven. 2. The non- The view of individual human nature, which thto iS of C nolds tnat a11 its desires are not directed to per- action. sonal pleasure, thus claims consideration. With its less restricted theory of action, this doctrine MOEAL SENTIMENT. 85 may seem to offer a larger means of determining the appropriate end of human conduct. In par- ticular, the suggestion naturally occurs that the ethical end will, on this theory, be something else than pleasure. 1 But there is, nevertheless, no con- tradiction in holding as Mr Sidgwick does that although other objects than pleasure are actually desired, there is nothing else which can be held to be ultimately desirable, or the tendency to which can be said to have moral worth. The ethical barrenness of psychological hedonism Difficulty of has been seen to result from its narrow and inflex- vSk^ g im he ible view of human nature. But theories such as ? uls , QS {i implies, those now to be considered have, in an ethical regard, to overcome a difficulty of another kind in the variety of impulses which they admit upon the stage. The " objects " to which these impulses or desires relate have as yet received no further charac- terisation than that they are objects of desire. And the difficulty of finding a principle by which some order of precedence or value amongst them may be determined is just, in other words, the difficulty of obtaining a moral standard. The question does not ordinarily arise in the 1 " If there be any principles or affections in the mind of man distinct from self-love, that the things those principles tend towards, or the objects of those affections are, each of them in themselves eligible to be pursued upon its own account, and to be rested in as an end, is implied in the very idea of such principle or affection." Butler, Sermons, Pref. 86 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. above form, because the moral standard is com- monly taken for granted, and the various impulses, affections, and dispositions are made to derive their ethical rank from their relation to that standard. But this method is obviously inappropriate when the standard is still to be ascertained, its determina- tion being the object of inquiry. And it may seem that the constitution of man contains in itself a means of distinguishing the moral value of its vari- ous elements, or of the actions to which they lead, so as to de- and thus furnishing a moral standard or end for standard* conduct. This purpose seems to have been to some for action. ex fc en ^ though not quite clearly, kept in view by the writers who, in last century, contended against the selfish theory which had been so crudely enun- ciated by Hobbes. They attempted to show that selfishness was not the only, nor even the most prominent, principle of action ; and, from the system of diverse principles which they found implanted in human nature, they endeavoured to work out a theory of conduct. This at- Especially amongst the later English moralists the English Adam Smith, for instance the question of the moralists, en( j Qr s t an( j ar (i came almost to drop out of sight in the midst of the controversy regarding the nature of the " moral sense " or " moral faculty " the way, that is, in which we become aware of the difference between right and wrong. But in Shaftesbury, Butler, and Hutcheson the writers MORAL SENTIMENT. 87 who formulated this doctrine of the moral sense the attempt is made to connect a theory of the criterion of morality with the source of our know- ledge of it. Shaftesbury and Hutcheson both but along looked upon social welfare or the general happiness tartan cri- as the end of moral conduct, and the criterion in t lon> accordance with which moral character is ascribed to actions ; at the same time that their main con- tention was for the immediateness of the " sense " by which we perceive these moral qualities. And they sought to establish the connection of the two doctrines by means of the benevolent feelings which they held to be original and independent of private interest and their immediate approval by the reflex or moral sense of the individual man. Similar ideas appear in Butler, at the same time that he tended to make conscience or the moral sense the standard of morality, as well as the source of our knowledge of it. They, as well as he, however, found it necessary to come back from the social or political to the individual point of view. Even if their conception of " the good " was not evolved from the nature of the individual man, their philosophical standpoint required them to leave broader ground, and show it to be the in- dividual's natural goal. And in doing this, their and with constant tendency is to revert to egoistic argu- ments demonstrating the complete harmony of virtue and interest, or attempting to prove to the 88 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. individual that his own happiness consists in the exercise of the social affections. Thus Shaftesbury tries to show, by an empirical collection of results, that to have the " natural " (or social) affections too weak, or the private affections too strong, is a source of misery, 1 as well as the chief source of vice ; and that, largely owing to the pleasure of virtuous action, it is " to the private interest and good of every one to work to the general good." 2 Hutche- son, again, devotes a large portion of his most mature work to allay the suspicion " that in follow- ing the impulse of our kind affections and the moral faculty we are counteracting our interests, and abandoning what may be of more consequence to our happiness than either this self -approbation or the applauses of others ; " 3 while Butler, re- ferring to virtuous conduct, says, in a well-known passage, that " when we sit down in a cool hour we can neither justify to ourselves this or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it." 4 Opposed as the whole school were to the selfish theory of human action, they never spoke of any sacrifice of private happiness as a thing to be looked for, or in any way taken into account, in conduct which is the result of calm deliberation. It is difficult, there- 1 Inquiry concerning Virtue, II. i. 3. 2 Ibid., II. ii., conclusion. 3 System of Moral Philosophy, i. 99. 4 Sermons, xi. UN] MOKAL SENTIMENT. fore, to avoid the judgment passed upon them by Schleiermacher, that " the English school of Shaftes- bury, with all their talk about virtue, are really given up to pleasure." l At the same time, their writings constantly sug- 3. Ethics gest a theory of morals which is neither obliged to adopt off-hand a utilitarian criterion of virtue, nor forced to fall back upon the egoistic sanctions of personal pleasure and pain. Their psychological theory points to an ethical doctrine in which pleasure is neither the sole end of action, nor its sole motive. They do not, indeed, make quite clear the transition from the psychological to the ethical point of view ; and critics are still fond of confront- ing Butler with the objection he anticipated Why ought I to obey my conscience ? The apparent petitio principii of Butler's answer, Because it is the law of your nature, is due to the way in which the teleological standpoint is introduced. The pur- pose of which (according to Butler) man is the vehicle or realising organism is spoken of as a law externally imposed, and deriving its authority, not from its own nature, but from the nature of its origin. There would seem to be one way only to sur- mount the difficulty arising from the variety of impulses of which the nature of man is made up, and that is by consistently following out the teleo- 1 Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre (1803), p. 54. 90 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. logical point of view. But what, the question is, is the final or comprehensive end to which human nature points amidst this diversity of objects of striving ? The doctrine of the " moral sense " Different attempts to answer the question. Now this moral n^ e of tbe sense may either be regarded as not itself a separate the moral f acu lty, but simply an expression for the harmony of human tendencies ; or it may be looked upon as a separate and superior capacity, which, again, may either be interpreted in terms of sense, or of the understanding the former interpretation leading to its identification with pleasure, the latter to its being conceived as law. (a) The bar- These different methods were attempted by the i^puisfs. English moralists the first, however, to a less shaftes- extent than the others. But it inspired much of bury s theory. Shaftesbury's work, though it cannot be said to have been consistently developed by him. The conflict of impulses in man was too obvious a fact not to be apparent even in Shaftesbury's roseate view of life. He recognised, indeed, not only private or self-affections, promoting the good of the individual, and " natural " or social affections, which led to the public good, but also " unnatural affections," which tended to no good whatever. 1 The reference to consequences is thus made pro- minent at once. The last class of affections is 1 Inquiry, II. i. 3. MORAL SENTIMENT. 91 condemned outright because of its infelicific re- sults; while an attempt is made to prove from experience that the courses of conduct to which the two former lead coincide. Shaftesbury con- tended for a real organic union between the indi- vidual and society ; but, when he came to establish its nature, he made it consist in an asserted har- mony of interests, while the obligation to virtue was allowed to rest on its conduciveness to personal pleasure. He sometimes spoke of virtue as identical with the harmonious development of the affections of the individual man ; * but he expressly defined it as consisting in the individual " having all his inclina- tions and affections . . . agreeing with the good of his kind or of that system in which he is included, and of which he constitutes a part." 2 And the two views can only be connected by proving that the harmonious development of an individual's affections will lead to the good of the species : the proof of this depending on a one-sided summation of consequences. Shaftesbury does, indeed, throw out the idea that both the self -affections and the " natural " or social affections become self-destruc- tive when carried out so as to interfere with one another. But this, again, has only the previous calculus of the results of conduct to support it. He cannot show that the contradiction in the conception of a completely solitary being belongs also to the con- 1 Inquiry, II. i. 3 ; II. ii. 2. 2 Ibid., II. i. 1. 92 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. ception of a judiciously selfish being. The latter being loses the pleasures of virtuous action; but perhaps he may gain greater pleasures in their room. He does not develop his whole nature ; but if that na- ture contains totally infelicific passions, the develop- ment of the whole nature is not to be recommended. Thus Shaftesbury is unable to reach a conception of man's nature as a harmony of impulses just on account of the external point of view which makes him treat it as an aggregate, though he contends that it is an organism. His ingenious and subtle account of the relations between the individual and society does not really go to the root of the matter, because, after all, it remains a calculus of the results of action, not an analysis of its nature. And his view of the affections constituting the individual system leaves them wanting in the unity of organic connection. An effort is made, however, to supply this defect by means of the reflex affections called the " moral sense/' to which he ascribes an oversight over the other affections and their resultant actions. In what way, then, must we regard the nature of this faculty and the important functions assigned to it ? It was left to Shaftesbury's disciple, Francis Hutcheson, to elaborate with thoroughness this conception of the moral sense as a separate faculty. Hutcheson did not make any important addition MORAL SENTIMENT. 93 to the ideas of Shaftesbury and Butler. But he worked them out more systematically ; and in his last work, the ' System of Moral Philosophy/ the protest against the egoism of Hobbes has found expression in a complete theory of human nature, in which the " moral sense " is supreme, and the ends of conduct independent of self - interest. Hutcheson, too, keeps more closely than either of his immediate predecessors to the way of look- ing at human nature which is spoken of in this volume as " naturalistic." He rejects even more decidedly than Shaftesbury much more so than Butler any creative function of reason in deter- mining the constitution and direction of the moral sense. 1 The questions thus arise (a) What is the TWO ques- moral sense when not regarded as a rational deter- ingTt?^ mination of the ends of conduct ? and (&) To what determination of ends or other distinction between right and wrong in action does it lead ? On both these points there is a difference between his early ' Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue ' (1725), and the more mature ' System/ published in 1755, eight years after his death. " What is Reason but that sagacity we have in prosecuting any end ? The ultimate end proposed by the common moralists is the happiness of the agent himself, and this certainly he is determined to pursue from instinct. Now may not another instinct towards the public, or the good of others, be as proper a principle of virtue as the instinct toward private happiness ? " Hutcheson, Inquiry, p. 115. 94 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. () Nature of Hutcheson is in earnest with the rejection of this faculty: not reason; reason as a creative force. I he moral sense is not, he says, a source of new ideas. Its objects are received in the ordinary ways by which, through "sensation and reflection," we come by our know- ledge. 1 But just as we have a sense of beauty in the forms of sensible objects, so there is a moral sense given us from which, in the contemplation of our actions, we derive " still nobler pleasures " than at first de- those of physical sensation. This moral sense is ing of lima- " a determination of our minds to receive amiable or pam, OY disagreeable ideas of actions." 2 So far, there- fore, it seems to be simply a pleasure in the con- templation of certain actions which, we say, have " an immediate goodness." " By a superior sense," says Hutcheson, " which I call a moral one, we perceive pleasure in the contemplation of such actions in others, and are determined to love the agent (and much more do we perceive pleasure in being conscious of having done such actions our- selves) without any view of further natural advan- tage from them." 3 The significance of this posi- tion' is easily seen. It is not only meant to give a criterion of moral action ; it is also a short cut to the conclusion that virtue is for our private in- terest. The disquieting suspicion that morality may involve a sacrifice of individual happiness 1 Cf. System, i. 97 ; Inquiry, p. 124. 2 Inquiry, p. 124. 3 Ibid., p. 106. MORAL SENTIMENT. 95 " must be entirely removed, if we have a moral sense and public affections, whose gratifications are constituted bvnature our most intense and durable pleasures." 1 {JTEe elaborate analysis of conduct and enumeration of the pleasures which various affec- tions and actions bring in their train, which Hutcheson gave in his latest work, were thus unnecessary as long as the position was maintained that the moral sense is emphatically a pleasure or pain, and that the pleasures it gives are the most intense and durable we have. There was only an apparent contradiction in this theory which placed the test of morality in a pleas- ure consequent upon moral action, and yet held that such actions were not performed from inter- ested motives. In the spirit of Butler's psychology, Hutcheson contends 2 that virtue is pleasant only because we have a natural and immediate tendency towards virtuous action ; our true motive is " some determination of our nature to study the good of others ; " and this, although not always immediately pleasant in itself, is yet succeeded by the calm satisfaction of the moral sense. The real weakness of Hutcheson's position is the fatal one that he cannot show that it corresponds with facts; that the pleasures incidental to the moral sense out- 1 Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affec- tions, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (1728), p. xix. 2 Cf. Inquiry, p. 140 ff. 96 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. weigh all others. Indeed, he defends his opinion in their favour only, in a way which reminds one of Mill's method in the ' Utilitarianism/ by making every juror stand aside unless he has pledged him- self to morality. 1 It is open to any one, however, to hold that the pleasures of benevolent action and the " relish " of the moral sense are not of sufficient hedonistic value to make up for the restraints they put upon conduct and the enjoyments they oblige one to forego. Even if this position be not correct, it is merely a mistake in estimating doubtful quan- tities. The man who chooses the smaller pleasure will be the loser by his mistake ; but we cannot say that the selfish man is to blame for not being benevolent, because the pleasures of benevolence and the moral sense are greatest, any more than we could blame the benevolent man for not being selfish, if selfishness should turn out on the whole to leave a greater hedonistic balance at the indi- vidual's credit. afterwards A more objective determination of the nioral , 8 sense is afterwards given by Hutcheson. Without professedly changing ground, he ceases to speak of it as a mere feeling of pleasure, and calls it a judg- ment of approbation or disapprobation. " It is," he he says, 2 " a natural and immediate determination 1 Introduction to Moral Philosophy, translated from the Latin, 2d ed., 1753, p. 43 ; cf. Essay on the Passions and Affections, &c., p. 128. 2 System,!. 58. MORAL SENTIMENT. 97 to approve certain affections and actions consequent upon them ; or a natural sense of immediate excel- lence in them, not referred to any other quality perceivable by our other senses or by reasoning." Nor is this judgment of approbation consequent upon the feeling of pleasure the affection or action produces in us. The action is not "judged good because it gains to the agent the pleasure of self- approbation, but it gains to him this pleasure be- cause it was antecedently good, or had that quality which, by the constitution of this sense, we must approve." l But, in attempting to make clear the but this nature of this judgment, Hutcheson seems to re- In ^dt turn, though not in so many words, to his earlier f^^* 10 position. To seek a basis for the judgment in reason would have been to make the " moral sense " what Kant afterwards made it, simply practical reason. This, however, would have been a "metaphysic of ethics" inconsistent with Hutcheson's whole position. He had always opposed the narrowly intellectual view of morality in Clarke and Wollas- ton, and he had no conception of the function of reason which would admit of an interpretation of the judgment of approbation by an appeal to a rational determination, depending upon an idea conceived as inherent in the human constitution, and to be realised in action. The judgment, there- fore, is referred to a " taste or relish " 2 for certain 1 System, i. 53. 2 Ibid., i. 59. 98 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. affections and actions, and this he takes no pains to distinguish from pleasure. The analogy he seeks to draw between the moral sense and our other powers does not really favour a distinction of it from pleasure. " To each of our powers," he says, " we seem to have a corresponding taste or sense, recommending the proper use of it to the agent, and making him relish or value the like exercise of it by another. This we see as to the powers of voice, of imitation, designing, or machinery, motion, reasoning ; there is a sense discerning or recommending the proper exercise of them." 1 That is to say, besides the sense of hearing, which has to do with sounds, there must needs be another sense which has to do with our way of hearing sounds ; besides the sense of sight, which has to do with form and colour, there must needs be another sense which has to do with our way of perceiving form and colour ; and so with every other activity, especially those which proceed from our " highest powers." A doctrine such as this sets no limits to the manufacture of additional senses. The whole view of human nature upon which it pro- ceeds is one of meaningless complexity, which serves the one good purpose only of showing how -much ethics has suffered from a defective psychology. The mental objects or presentations which are distinguished from one another by the difference 1 System, i. 59. MORAL SENTIMENT. 99 of their characteristic qualities, and which we therefore call colours, or sounds, or movements, are accompanied by varying degrees of pleasurable or painful feeling ; and it is possible to hold that the moral sense is a name for such feelings following in the train of those complexes of presentations to which we give the name of actions, or of those other recurring complexes we call affections. This, practically, was the position with which Hutcheson started in the c Inquiry/ Benevolence pleased us and selfishness pained us; just as the taste of sugar was pleasant, and that of wormwood dis- agreeable. Perhaps Hutcheson departed from this theory, because he saw that if conduct was made a matter of taste, there would be no sufficient reason for condemning selfishness any more than an un- usual taste. He therefore relinquished, or seems to have relinquished, the view of the moral sense as a feeling of pleasure or pain ; and under the influence, no doubt, of Butler, spoke of it as a judgment of approbation or disapprobation. But he fell back on his original theory by making this judgment depend on " a taste or relish," which only lends itself to interpretation as a peculiar feeling of pleasure. The reflex nature of the moral sense is brought ($ The ot>- out more distinctly in the 'System' than in the ' Inquiry/ In his earlier work, Hutcheson had I spoken of it as directly related to actions. But it was more consistent with his maturer thought 100 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. afterwards to regard it as having to do with mental powers tions ; or " affections " in the first instance, and with actions only indirectly or mediately. " The object of this sense," he says, 1 " is not any external motion or action, but the inward affections or dispositions ; " and this is made by him to account for the dis- crepancy which the deliverances of the moral sense show in regard to actions. It " seems ever to approve and condemn uniformly the same imme- diate objects, the same affections and dispositions ; though we reason very differently about the actions which evidence certain dispositions or their con- traries." This distinction is applied with unlimited confidence in its efficacy. By means of it he would explain the most fundamental differences in the moral code of men and nations. Thus people un- acquainted with the industrial improvements which give the character of permanence to property, may " see no harm in depriving men of their artificial acquisitions and stores beyond their present use," that is to say, " no evil may appear in theft." 2 But it is more important in another respect ; for it enables the author to avoid the difficulty of finding any principle according to which the moral sense may be related to the empirical content of action. As long as the moral sense was simply spoken of as a feeling of pleasure, it could be conveniently regarded as the consequent of ex- 1 System, i. 97. 2 System, i. 93. MORAL SENTIMENT. 101 ternal actions. But if it is an internal sense distinct from pleasure, it is easier to relate it to what he calls our internal powers or affections than to action. The moral sense, then, is to be the regulator of all our powers ; and by means of it Hutcheson attempts to reduce human nature to a scale of morality. It is to be noted that, in the classification he but its offers, 1 what are commonly called the virtues of preference candour, veracity, &c., are not accounted virtues at all, but only immediately connected with virtuous affections : these are identified with the " kind " or benevolent affections, directed to the happiness of sentient beings. Within the latter there are two grounds of preference : the deliberate affections are preferred to the passionate ; those which are more extensive in the range of their objects to the less extensive. With regard to the former ground of preference, the " moral sense " of the community has perhaps undergone some modification since Hut- cheson's time, and looks upon enthusiasm with less suspicion than it formerly did. The other ground of preference ascribed to the moral sense refers not so much to the affection itself which is the direct or immediate object of the moral sense as to the way in which the affection is applied, the number mainly de- of the objects to which it is directed. The affec- p< 1 System, i. 68 ff. With this may be compared the elaborate classification of motives, according to their moral quality, in Dr Martineau's ' Types of Ethical Theory,' ii. 176 ff. 102 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEOKY. the nature tion of benevolence is the same in nature whether of the affec- . . tion, but on its object be wide or restricted; though difference objects. .^ ^ig respect profoundly influences the actions to which it leads. The object approved or most ap- proved by the moral sense is therefore, according to Hutcheson, utilitarian conduct, or rather, as he would say, the calm disposition leading thereto. 1 In this way he obtains a principle for determining the morality of actions ; but only through the arbitrary assertion that this principle is immediately ap- proved by the moral sense/ The connection of the moral sense with an object such as universal bene- volence could only be made out by showing a rational, or at any rate an organic union between individual sentiment and social wellbeing ; and Hutcheson, like Shaftesbury, has no conception of attempting this in any other way than the tradi- tional one of exhibiting the personal advantages of benevolent conduct, and the disadvantages that accompany selfishness. (c) Third Both Shaftesbury and Hutcheson were often led moral sense, astray by a tendency to interpret facts as they wished them to be, rather than as they were. Their view of the consequences of action was Butler. coloured by their optimism. Butler, too, in spite of the difference in his general attitude to the value of human life, was not altogether free from 1 System, i. 50. MORAL SENTIMENT. 103 a similar error. He thinks that Shaftesbury " has shown beyond all contradiction that virtue is natur- ally the interest or happiness, and vice the misery of such a creature as man." l But, in view of par- ticular exceptions, or of any one not being con- vinced of "this happy tendency of virtue," he thinks it necessary to emphasise the "natural conscience authority of the principle of reflection." Con- tatireUw," science is, he holds, a part of our inward nature ; but it differs from the other parts of our nature inasmuch as it is not related immediately to an external object, but to the actions dealing with such objects, and to the dispositions leading to those actions. It is a principle of "reflex appro- bation or disapprobation," which is said to have equal respect to both public and private good. This tendency, however, would seem to be ascer- tained empirically. The deliverances of conscience are immediate judgments as to the morality of actions and affections (for Butler speaks of it as referring to both equally) ; and its reference to the ends which those actions or the exercise of these affections may ultimately tend to would, therefore, seem to be indirect. 2 Butler was care- ful, moreover, not to speak of it as an aesthetic 1 Sermons, Pref. 2 Although it is not "at all doubtful in the general, what course of action this faculty or practical discerning power within us, approves. ... It is ... justice, veracity, and regard to the common good." Dissertation on Virtue. 104 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. or sensitive faculty, but as a judgment. It is not a feeling of pleasure, but the revelation of law. and the The approval of conscience is thus made the of'moraiity. criterion of morality. But a difficulty arises as to the way in which we are to regard the author- ity which conscience is said to carry along with it. Butler's utterances here commonly imply a teleological reference to an end implanted in human nature, and to be discovered by observing that nature the realisation of the end being obliga- tory, because it is shown to be the purpose which the author of nature had in view in making man as he is. 1 The authority of conscience thus seems to be derived from the divine purpose which it displays. It carries within itself a claim to obedi- ence ; but the justification of this claim depends on a theological basis. And hence the question of the nature and origin of conscience is at once raised, in order to determine the legitimacy of its claim to be, rather than any other part of our constitution, a divinely-implanted guide. Teieoiogicai But more than one current of thought runs rtewsnot through Butler's ethical treatise. The theological Tfimy d ' reference is sometimes so used as to make the developed, obligation to morality, and even the nature of morality, depend on the will of God : though hardly according to Paley's crude method of seek- ing in the external revelation of the divine com- 1 Sermons, ii. iii. MOKAL SENTIMENT. 105 mand a means of uniting the divergent interests of the individual and of society. In general, Butler's ruling idea is the idea of the system or unity of human nature, for which he was largely indebted to Shaftesbury's revival of the Platonic conception. Conscience is regarded by him as the expression of this unity. But its nature is never more deeply probed. Its deliverances are justified now by its supernatural mission, and now by the more prosaic fact that it leads to our individual interest 1 at any rate, " if we take in the future " while it could not be recommended as a guide if it did not. 2 On one side, therefore, Butler tends to a form of theological utilitarianism, such as was common in his own day, and was afterwards formu- lated by Paley. 3 On the other hand, his ethics more naturally allies itself with a different theory, in which the moral law is conceived as having its source in practical reason, and the naturalistic basis of ethics is definitely abandoned. On the whole, it would appear that the psycho- 4. The ethics logical ethics worked out by Shaftesbury and his timenta 86 school occupies an insecure position between the ^^^ view discussed in the two preceding chapters and that which ascribes to reason a function in the formation of objects of desire. Shaftesbury and his followers tried to strike out a middle course 1 Sermons, iii. v. 2 Ibid., xi. 3 Cf. Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik, i. 192. 106 THE INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORY. between the theory that ends of action may be determined by reason, and that which looks upon all desires as being desires for objects as pleasur- able. They made the attempt to found a system of ethics on human nature, and they held that that nature could not be accounted for by the simple psychological analysis of the Epicurean school as then represented by Hobbes. On the other hand, they did not see their way to adopt the " rational " ethics only known to them in the abstract form it had received at the hands of Clarke and Wollaston. But their own theory of human nature requires a principle of harmony and co-ordination among the various impulses which they were unable to give a satisfactory account explanation of. It may seem, however, that the idea of the attempted development of man with which we are now evomuon f f am ili ar > ma 7 enable us to overcome the diffi- culties which formerly appeared insurmountable showing the unity of human nature, and the ten- dency of its activity. The general course of evolu- tion, to which all life has been subject, is thought to have brought about a harmony between indi- vidual and social feelings, as well as between individual and social interests, and thus to have removed the obstacles in the way of founding morality on the basis of Naturalism. It is, there- fore, of importance to examine with care the ethical bearings of the theory of evolution. 107 PAKT II. THE THEOKY OF EVOLUTION. CHAPTEE Y. THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORALITY. To relinquish the individualistic theory of ethics i- General . characteris- does not necessarily imply a recourse to evolution, tics of the It may still be possible to rest the foundation of evoiut ethics on the state, without that view of the growth of the community and of its connection with the individual which the theory of evolution involves. This, as has already been pointed out, was, in part, what Bentham did ; while an attempt in some respects more elaborate still to deduce morality from society was made by Hobbes. The theory of Bentham, and of his successor Professor Bain, is indeed partly individualistic, partly social. 1 1 The social basis of ethics is emphasised by Professor Bain 108 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. Iii the former reference, ethics becomes a theory of prudence ; in the latter, a part of legislation. With Hobbes, on the other hand, the identification of individual and social interests is supposed to be brought about by the absolute necessity, in order to personal security, of a supreme political power, into the hands of which all men have agreed to transfer their rights to all things. But both Hobbes and Professor Bain might have avoided obvious difficulties had they had the theory of evolution to assist them, and had they thought themselves justified in making use of it. 1 For want of it the former has to explain morality and its binding force by means of the fiction of an " original contract " ; while the latter has to ac- count by the associations of a few years for the harmony of feeling between the individual and the whole, and for the good of the community coming to be so faithfully reflected in the consciences of its in his Practical Essays (1884), p. 155 : " ' How is society to be held together ? ' is the first consideration ; and the sociologist as constitution-builder, administrator, judge is the person to grapple with the problem. It is with him that law, obligation, right, command, obedience, sanction, have their origin and their explanation. Ethics is an important supplement to social or political law. But it is still a department of law. In any other view it is a maze, a mystery, a hopeless embroilment." 1 Without denying that it is possible to apply the theory of evolution to mind, Professor Bain holds that, as a fact, moral sentiment has not become organic and hereditary " that there are no moral instincts properly so called." The Emotions and the Will, 3d ed., p. 56. THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 109 members. The theory of evolution, by its doctrine of the hereditary transmission of acquired modifi- cations, gives a scientific basis for this existing solidarity between man and society. The great consensus of opinion amongst those who are best qualified to judge amongst those who alone are qualified to judge may be regarded as having established the claim of the theory of evolution to give the most satisfactory account of all forms of natural life. And it may seem only advancing the theory a step further, or only de- veloping one of its applications, to make it yield a complete explanation of human nature, mental as well as physical. If ethics, then, is to be founded on a " natural " basis, no theory would seem to be complete which leaves evolution out of account. In general, the theory of evolution is an assertion an assertion of the unity of life, or, in its widest form, of the ofiife; Um unity of existence. Progressive modifications and hereditary transmission of such modifications are, it is contended, sufficient to explain the different forms and species which life now manifests. The assumption is specially discarded that there are fixed differences between kinds of living things making it impossible for them all to have developed from simple germs, originally of like constitution, which have, in the course of time, become more heterogeneous and complex, and so given rise to the wealth of organic life. But this general doc- 110 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. trine, held (wholly or in part) in modern times by Kant, Wolff, and Lamarck, needed to be supple- mented by a definite view of the way in which the progressive modifications took place ; and this re- quired to be established as a really operative cause, before evolution could receive scientific' proof. This more special element of the theory was Darwin's contribution to the subject. Evolu- tion, he showed, and herein consists his theoret- ical advance on Lamarck, has taken place by the " natural selection " of organisms, so modified as to fit them for survival in the struggle for existence. Organisms in which advantageous modifications have been produced tend to survive, and to trans- mit their modified structure to descendants, while organisms in which such modifications have not been produced, are less able to preserve their life and to hand it on to successors. Older types, it is true, remain, but only in circumstances in which their continued existence does not seriously inter- fere with the organisms which, in the struggle for life, have developed a structure better suited to their environment: when more perfect and less perfect forms cannot exist together, only the better adapted survive. in first in-/' The theory of evolution is thus primarily the history of an order of sequent facts and relations. It is an account of the origin or growth of things, which attempts to explain their nature and consti- THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. Ill tution by showing how they have come to be what they are. But, in so doing, it naturally reveals the method and tendency of this order. And it is by but impli means of this its teleological aspect that we see how ca^aspe it may be possible for it not merely to trace the de- ^ velopment of historical facts, such as the feelings conse - quences. and customs of men, but at the same time to make a more real contribution to ethics by pointing out the course of action to which human nature is adapted. It does not, like the old teleology, at- ^J tempt to show that each thing has been formed with the design of subserving some particular purpose. On the contrary, it reverses this way of looking at things. The fitness of an organism to fulfil any definite end comes to be regarded as the result not of a conscious design, independent of the environment, but of the modifications produced on the organism through the necessity laid upon it by its surroundings of adapting itself to them or else disappearing. What the theory does show is, that adaptation to environment is necessary for life, and that organisms unable to adapt themselves pass away. Adaptation to environment will thus be implied in, or be an essential means towards, self- preservation and race -preservation, self -develop- ment and race-development. And should this pre- servation or development be looked upon as the end of conduct, the adaptation to environment it im- plies may help to define and characterise the end. 112 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. Again : when an organism adapts itself to its en- vironment, it does so by some modification being produced in its structure corresponding to the modi- fied function required by the conditions of life. In this way, one organism increases in complexity in a certain direction, while another organism, in differ- ent circumstances, also develops a more compli- cated structure, though one of a different kind. Thus organisms, alike to begin with, become heter- ogeneous in nature through exposure to different surroundings. At the same time, by constant in- teraction with their environments, they become more definite and coherent in structure. Incipient modifications are developed and defined in different ways by different circumstances, and the parts of a living being are brought into closer reciprocal rela- tions, and thus welded into a coherent organic whole. This is what Mr Spencer means when he says that evolution implies a transition from " an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite co- herent heterogeneity " : 1 the whole process being interconnected in such a way that these different aspects of it definiteness, coherence, heterogeneity increase together and imply one another. By this the inference would appear to be suggested that, if conduct is to harmonise with the conditions of evolution, this characteristic feature of it must be recognised in the ethical end. 1 First Principles, 4th ed., p. 380. THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 113 In saying this, I am perhaps anticipating results. Distinction But it is well to show at the outset how the essen- tially historical inquiry carried out by the evolu- ethical aspects. tionists may suggest conclusions which are ethical in their nature. To some, indeed, it will appear superfluous to have spent even a sentence in suggest- ing a primd facie case for the ethical importance of evolution. If there is one subject more than another, it may be thought, which has secured a place for itself in the scientific consciousness of the day, it is the evolution-theory of ethics.<-Without question, the phrase has been received into the scientific vocabulary ; but there is a good deal, even in the official literature on the question, to make one doubt whether it is always used with a distinct conception of its meaning. When reference is made to the " ethics of evolution," no more is sometimes meant though a great deal more should be meant than an historical account of the growth of moral ideas and customs, which may provide (as Mr Stephen expresses it) " a new armoury wherewith to encounter certain plausible objections of the so-called Intuitionists." This, however, would only affect the ethical psychology of an opposed school. The profounder question still remains, What bear- ing has the theory of evolution, or its historical psychology and sociology, on the nature of the ethical end, or on the standard for distinguishing right and wrong in conduct? The answer to this question H 114 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. will be the " reconstruction " and " deeper change " which Mr Stephen holds to be necessary. 1 It is the ambiguity of the subject or rather its twofold range which has made the application of evolution to ethics look so obvious, and made a discussion of the easier question frequently do duty for a solution of the more difficult. The ethical writings of the evolutionists, indeed, often confuse the problems of history and theory in a way which presents the same difficulty to the critic as the works of the cor- responding school in -jurisprudence. In both, the writers seem disinclined fairly to put to themselves the question as to the kind of subjects to which so fruitful a method as that which has fallen into their hands is appropriate : what its conditions are, and whether it has any limits at all. Every one is now familiar with the evils of hypothetical history, and with the iniquity of the proverbial philosophic offence of constructing facts out of one's inner con- sciousness. The historical jurists deserve no little credit for the thoroughness with which this has been enforced by them ; perhaps, too, the same les- son may be learned from the facts of the develop- ment of morality. But it may be questioned whether we are not at the present time more apt to confuse fact and theory in the opposite way : whether the science of law is not sometimes lost sight of in the history of legal institutions, and ethics in danger 1 Science of Ethics, p. vi. THE THEOKY OF EVOLUTION. 115 of being identified with the development of moral sentiments and customs. We may naturally expect the theory of evolution to throw light on such questions as the growth of moral feelings and ideas, and of the customs and institutions in which morality is expressed and embodied. But to show the process morality has passed through in the individual mind and in society still leaves the question as to the end of conduct unanswered. It is necessary, therefore, to keep clearly before us the distinction between the histo- rical and the ethical problem, if we would success- fully attack the subject of the bearing of the theory of evolution on this fundamental question of ethics. To the theory of evolution we are indebted for the opening up of a new field of investigation the his- torical treatment of conduct. But it is one thing to describe the way in which men have acted in the past : to determine the end for their action now is quite a different problem ; and there is no reason why the distinction should be overlooked. The interest which belongs to the history of morality is not solely nor mainly due to its bearing on questions beyond the historical sphere. That its results will not be without relation and that of an important kind to questions of theory may well be expected. But it can only tend to confusion if we treat the development of morality, in the human mind and in society, from a preconceived attitude dogmatic 116 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. or agnostic towards the central problem of ethics. 2. The de- The way in which the theory of evolution is ap- ofmoramy: P^ e( ^ to ethical psychology is easy enough to under- (a) historical s fc an( j j n principle, though complex and obscure in psychology. many of its details. We have only to postulate that mental as well as bodily traits admit of modi- fication, and that modifications once produced can be transmitted to descendants, 1 and it 1 at once fol- lows that sentiments and -ideas leading to actions which promote life will be encouraged and devel- oped by natural selection. Thus parental and filial feelings, once originated, may have been developed through those families and tribes in which they were strongest, presenting a more united, and therefore stronger, front against hostile influences. The feelings of tribal sympathy and patriotism, too, may have had a similar history. Those races in which they were strongest would, other things being equal, obtain the mastery over and extermi- nate other races in which they were relatively weak. The compactness of the community would even be promoted by that fear of the political and of the 1 It would seem that the transmission of mental qualities only takes place in the form of modified physical structure (cf. Gr. H. Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, 1st series, i. 164). But, if we regard it as established that every mental change has a structural modification corresponding to it, the possibility of mental evolu- tion and inheritance presents no new difficulty^ THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORALITY. 117 religious control in which the feeling of obligation is said to have had its root. In general, benevo- lence and sympathy amongst a people give it a soli- darity from which it derives a stronger position, so that in turn the benevolent and sympathetic feel- ings gain free scope to develop and expand. But the working out of this theory is not with- its difficui- out its own difficulties. In the first place, the factor origin of in the theory of evolution which can be most w s fe( clearly traced the principle of natural selection is not itself a source of change or of the production of new results. It is only the means by which advantageous changes are preserved and disadvan- tageous changes passed by. The initiative in these changes comes either from the unequal pressure of the environment or from some tendency to vary in the organism itself. Now, if we suppose certain moral relations and the feelings corresponding to them to exist in a society, and to tend to greater certainty and' fulness of life on the part of those who possess them, such relations and feelings will be favoured by the operation of natural selection, and will gradually be assimilated into the tissue of the social organism. But this does not account for the origin of morality generally nor of any par- ^ ticular moral relation ; it merely shows how, having been somehow originated, it has naturally come to persist. There are thus really two points to be considered in tracing the development of moral 118 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. ideas the question of origin and the question of persistence. The latter is accounted for by natural selection; the former must be brought under the obscure laws of variation, laws so obscure that variations in nature are frequently spoken of as if they took place by chance. These two questions are involved at each stage in the progress of morality. But it is at the initial stage that the and of the question of origin is of greatest importance: when sdousness"- ^ e a ^tempt is made to show how, in the course of time, and by the aid of purely physical and biolo- gical laws, feelings and conduct, from being merely natural and reflex, have acquired a moral character when, in a word, the moral is being evolved out of the non-moral. A difficulty comes to the front here which scarcely arises when we are simply tracing the various phases through which the moral consciousness has passed, and the various forms in which moral conduct and feelings have expressed and embodied themselves. The latter subject is obviously within the scope of the theory of evo- lution, if that theory applies to the processes of the human mind and society as well as to those of external nature. And, although each stage involves a modification to be accounted for not by natural selection, but by the laws of variation, yet the variation is within facts of the same order, and creates no more difficulty than the successive modi- fications of living tissue which have been implied THE DEVELOPMENT OF MOKALITY. 119 in the evolution of organic nature. But the transi- tion from the non-moral to the moral is a transition to a different order of facts or perhaps we should rather say to a different way of looking at facts, and should not be assumed to be a process of the same kind and explicable by the same method of investigation as the passage from one fact to the similar fact which immediately follows it. It may be compared, perhaps, to the transition from the sphere of inorganic matter to that of life. At the same time, it is frequently maintained that we unduly limit the application of the law of evolution if we deny its power to show how morality has developed out of customs and institutions whose origin can be traced to purely natural or non- moral causes. And, for present purposes, it is sufficient to have pointed out that this does not necessarily follow from the admission that evolution applies to mental and social processes as well as to the facts of external nature. It is not my object to criticise any doctrine of the development of mor- ality ; but, starting with the position taken up with regard to it by the theory of evolution, to inquire what conclusions it may lead to as to the end of action. A further difficulty has to be met by the theory thedeveiop- n, ini ,., ,.,.. ment of feel- oi the development or morality, which is in a sense i llgs apart complementary of the initial difficulty encountered in differentiating the moral from the non-moral. 120 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. This further difficulty awaits it at a subsequent stage of development when the extension and re- finement of moral feeling seem to have gone on in circumstances where there is no room for natural selection to work. Thus it has been admitted that the feeling of sympathy, and the habitual exercise of mutual good offices among members of a com- munity, strengthen that society, and make it fit to prevail in the struggle for existence over other similar societies, the members of which are not so much at one amongst themselves in feeling and in act. But as benevolence and sympathy widen, and become less closely connected with a definite association of individuals, such as the family or tribe, and there ceases to be a particular body to the welfare of which these social feelings contri- bute, the operation of the law of natural selection becomes less certain. This law only tends to con- serve and perfect the feelings in question, in virtue of the fact that the associations to whose good they lead are successful in the struggle for life over other associations the members of which are not animated by like feelings. The one association lives and expands, while the others are unable to maintain themselves against the encroachments of their neighbours, and thus fall to pieces. The law of natural selection, therefore, comes into play only when there are competing organisms struggling THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORALITY. 121 against one another for the means of subsistence and development. Not only is it the case, therefore, that the sympathy which aids the weak who are unable to take care of themselves, does not seem to be of the kind that would contribute to success in the struggle for existence; but the more general and catholic our sympathies are, the less will the law of evolution help to preserve and develop them because the less will they tend to promote the welfare of one rival association rather than that of another. Thus the growth of really un- restricted sympathy with men as men cannot have been promoted in this way. The " enthusiasm of humanity" which animated the early Christians, the self-renouncing brotherhood of Buddha, the <}>i\av6 /owTi-ia attributed to men like Xenocrates 1 who had freed themselves from the aristocratic pre- judices of Athens, the " caritas generis humani " of the Stoics, such feelings as these could not have been encouraged, any more than they could have been produced, by the operation of natural selection. For, however much they tend to elevate the human character, and to promote human happiness, they do not advance the welfare of one body of men to the exclusion of some other competitor in the struggle for existence. 2 1 ^Elian, V. H., xiii. 30. 2 If conscience has no other function than that assigned to it by Clifford, Lectures and Essay, ii. 169, "the preservation of 122 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. But, although the law of natural evolution can- not account, by survival of the fittest, for any progress made by universal benevolence, yet it may explain the value ascribed to the feeling of benev- olence, when its object is the family or the com- munity. Besides as has already been pointed out natural selection always implies an initiative got from elsewhere : it does not itself produce modifications ; it only chooses out favourable ones and adds them together when produced. It always implies an independent modification of the organ- ism; its part is to select the modifications best fitted to promote life. Hence the mere fact of benevolence being universalised is not in itself an anomaly on the theory of natural selection, any more than is the fact of its being extended from the family to the tribe. Only, the latter extension is one which it perpetuates, the former is not. No aspect of the theory of evolution seems able to account for an extension of the feeling of universal benevolence among different people or throughout different societies. This feeling has neither tended to promote the welfare of the race animated by it to the exclusion of other competing races for there are no competing races whom it could affect nor can it be shown that it makes the individuals possessing it fitter to wage successful society in the struggle for existence," then it can never reach universal benevolence or prescribe " duties towards all mankind." THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORALITY. 123 war against opposing forces, than other individ- uals. 1 Apart from such special difficulties, however, its result: comparative psychology has shed a new light on the LcMnatu mental structure of the individual. The facts it ^ indl brings forward show that the nature of the individual man cannot be explained without taking into account the relations in which he stands to society by birth, education, and business. He is, from the first, sur- rounded by, and dependent upon, other individuals, and by a set of established usages and institutions which modify his life; and he is connected with these in such a way that it is impossible to consider him as merely acted upon by them and influencing them in turn. He has been produced by, and has become a part of them. His physical and mental structure bears the marks of the same influences as those by which his so-called environment has been 1 A difficulty of another kind is suggested by Professor Bain, who holds that the " pleasure of malevolence " is not only a real element in the human constitution, but greater than would be naturally called forth by the conditions and course of develop- ment. " It is remarked by Mr Spencer." he says ; " that it was necessary for the progress of the race that destructive activity should not be painful, but on the whole pleasurable. In point of fact, however, the pleasure of destruction has gone much beyond what these words express, and much beyond what is advantageous to the collective interest of animals and of human beings alike. The positive delight in suffering has been at all stages too great." The Emotions and the Will, p. 66. So far from adopting this argument, however, I must confess myself still amongst the un- convinced regarding the " pleasure of malevolence." 124 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. formed. He is cell in the " tissue " of which the body social is composed. This was partly recognised, it is true, before the theory of evolution had been elaborated. But the organic nature of the social union is confirmed by that theory, and erected into a scientific view of human life. (&) Develop- Now the various sentiments which bring one man locLy. i^o mental union with others act with greatest facility when men are connected with one another by some definite mutual bond such as that which forms the family, the clan, or the nation. The individual's feeling of sympathy with his neighbours both promotes this social union and depends upon it. But it is characteristic of the theory of evolu- tion to put the external aspect first the social cus- toms and institutions and to evolve from them the corresponding sentiments and ideas. Not word or thought or power, it holds, is to be regarded as the origin of morality : " Im Anfang war die That." The whole composed of these units bound together by reciprocity of feeling and function is termed the " social organism " ; and what has been called moral sociology shows the way in which the outward forms which express and. embody morality have grown up and become part of it. In this connection, the theory of natural evolution traces the process by which, from the rudimentary beginnings of society, the members composing it have gradually become more coherent amongst one another, related in definite ways instead of merely THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORALITY. 125 by chance, and more differentiated in function. Certain rudimentary forms such as the family (in its rudest structure) and the corresponding instincts are presupposed. And from this basis the origin of institutions and customs, political, reli- gious, and industrial, is traced. In developing these various customs and institutions, along with the corresponding sentiments, the course of social evolu- tion has had the effect of gradually bringing out and cultivating those feelings and tendencies in the indi- vidual which promote the welfare of the organism, while other individual tendencies, hostile to social welfare, have been repressed. Not sympathy and benevolence only, but honesty, temperance, justice, and all the ordinary social and personal virtues, may have their natural history traced in this way by showing how they have contributed to the life of the individual, or of the society, or of both. 1 Through the operation of purely natural laws, the wicked are " cut off from the earth," while the "perfect remain in it" and leave their possessions to their children. This is an obvious result of natural selection. For those communities are always fittest to survive in which each member, in feeling and in act, is most at one with the whole. The tendency of evolution seems to be to produce not merely an ideal but an actual iden- tification of individual and social interests, in which each man finds his own good in that of the state. 1 This subject is carefully discussed in Mr Stephen's ' Science of Ethics.' 126 CHAPTEE VI. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. Bearing of BEFORE going on to inquire into the positive con- of evoStton tributions to ethics which the theory of evolution nas to offer, it is necessary to consider the relation theories. ft bears to the preceding individualistic systems of morals. It was by way of investigations in psy- chology and in the theory of society, that it first began to influence ethical thought. And, at first; sight, it appeared to come as a natural ally of one of the opposed schools, dreaded by the side it opposed, 1 welcomed with open arms by that favoured with its friendship. But since the first shock of pained and pleased surprise, there have been rumours of dissension in the allies' camp ; and the distribution of parties has now become a matter of difficulty. The doctrine of evolution, first seized upon for rebutting the arguments of the intuitional moralists, has been found to transform 1 Cf . Miss Cobbe, in ' Darwinism in Morals, and other Essays ' (1872), p. 5. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 127 rather than to destroy their system ; and the utili- tarianism in whose interests the new controversial weapon was employed, seems to have been subjected to a parallel process of transformation. The bearing of evolution on egoism may appear to be even more fundamental. For the inheritance by an individual of the qualities acquired by his ancestors may be thought to establish scientifically the theory of the unity of the race, and, in doing so, to make the selfish system of conduct an anachronism. It is not necessary to examine at any length the i. on theo- application of evolution to the theories which con- in^onmoni struct ethical principles on the basis of moral senti- ment, because these theories have been found either to resolve themselves into a subtle form of egoistic hedonism, or else to rest their ethical system on a teleological conception^ which transcends the " naturalistic " view of man. Evolution has its own explanation to give of the seemingly intuitive char- acter of moral ideas showing how their immediate necessity for the individual of the present day may be reconciled with their empirical origin in the mental history of the race. It attempts thus to supplant both egoism and intuitionism by the same doctrine of the organic union between individuals. The phenomena of conscience and the moral sentiments had been brought forward to show that the origin of morality was independent of the experience of the pleasurable or painful results of 128 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. Origin and history of moral senti- ments and intuitions traced by evolution. action : that certain actions and traits of character were immediately approved and pronounced to be right by the individual conscience, and certain others as inexplicably but infallibly disapproved and pronounced to be wrong. This phenomenon of moral approbation or disapprobation had indeed been thought by some as has been already seen to be only a special feeling of pleasure or pain. Even as such, however, it pointed to a peculiar harmony or sympathy between the feelings of the individual and the fortunes of society. For the pleasure or pain of the individual was seen to be excited by actions and dispositions which might be shown to involve the common interests, but were without relation to his own. Even on the " empirical " interpretation of them, such facts of the individual mind were in need of explanation ; and the theory of evolution has taken in hand to show how the pre - established har- mony grew up. The results of this explanation are, of course, not put forward as explaining the facts away, or depriving them of reality, but as enabling us to see their true place and bearing in the economy of human nature. In tracing the origin and history of the " altruistic " and >" moral " sentiments of the individual, the theory of evolution has this end in view. It offers so it is often said terms of compromise between the " intuitional " and the " empirical " psychology of morals. It will EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 129 admit the immediate and intuitive character in the individual of the sentiments which older empiricism had tried to make out to be composite, growing up in each person out of the materials afforded by his environment, and the experiences to which he was subjected. The theory of evolution contends for an empiricism on a larger scale, which will more closely connect the individual with the race, and both with their environment. The question thus arises, What bearing has this Bearing of . . . . , , , this on their psychological or psycnogomcal theory on the validity : ethical validity of moral intuitions and sentiments ? It certainly does not follow that they are of no moral value, merely because their origin can be traced to simpler elements of experience. They would lose ethical importance only if it were first of all shown that their validity depended on their not being derived from, or compounded out of, other elements. As Professor Sidgwick says, " Those who dispute the authority of moral or other in- tuitions on the ground of their derivation, must be required to show, not merely that they are the effects of certain causes, but that these causes are of a kind that tend to produce invalid belief." l But what the theory of evolution has to de- termine with regard to moral intuitions or sen- sibilities would seem to be not so much their ethical validity or invalidity, as the range and ] Methods of Ethics, III. i. 4, 3d ed., p. 211. I 130 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. manner of their ethical application. It attempts to show that particular moral beliefs or feel- ings have been originated and formed by certain external customs belonging to the conditions of social or family life. These customs have im- pressed themselves upon the mental structure, and reappear in the individual in the shape of organic tendencies to certain actions, or classes of actions, and of aversion to other actions, accompanied by a corresponding mental sentiment or judgment of approbation or disapprobation. Thus the indivi- dual comes instinctively to feel or to judge, " A ought to be done," " B ought not to be done." Now the evolutionist, as I conceive, does not proceed to infer that such judgments are invalid because he has shown how they originated does not conclude (to use Mr Sidgwick's words) that " all propositions of the form ' X is right ' or ' good/ are untrust- worthy ; " but he does ask in what way the history of these judgments affects their application. 1 (a) different (a) He recognises, in the first place, that all such judgments are the natural result of a certain social con( lition, and that there is, therefore, some pro- resulted, bability that the same kind of social state could not continue to exist were those moral judgments 1 Cf. Professor F. Pollock, "Evolution and Ethics "Mind, i. pp. 335 ff. Apart from the bearing of a utilitarian test on inherited instincts, to which Mr Pollock refers, I have tried to show what meaning they will have for the evolutionist who judges them solely from the point of view of his theory. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 131 habitually disregarded in conduct. They have re- sulted from a certain state of society, and have been assumed after insufficient experience, per- haps to be required for the stability of that state, so that every action opposed to these moral judg- ments will probably tend to weaken social bonds. But the evolutionist's conclusions are not restricted to such generalities. He may show that certain moral judgments or sentiments have had their origin from the habits of union between individuals, and of respect for the rights of property, which have obtained in every relatively permanent society, and which may therefore be inferred to be pro- bably necessary for the continued existence of any community ; that certain other sentiments or in- tuitions have descended to present individuals from customs which have not been so universal in the history of societies, although the communities pos- sessing them have shown greater power of vitality than those in which they were absent ; while others, again, may be traced to institutions which, from their occasional and unprogressive character, may be shown to be neither necessary nor beneficial. The evolutionist will therefore contend that and conse different degrees of value for the regulation of conduct belong to different moral intuitions or valuef r conduct ; classes of them. If one class is habitually dis- regarded, he may assert that historical evidence goes to show that society will fall to pieces, and 132 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. the life of man become, in the expressive words of Hobbes, " solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The disregard of another class will probably lead to a more precarious existence, or one less filled with the experiences which make up life ; while opposition to a third .class, so far from being hurt- ful or dangerous, may remove unnecessary restric- tions, and aid the development both of the individual and of society. (6) their (&) There is a second point which will also be character, recognised by the evolutionist. Although these intuitions have been derived, they are now organic, and their disappearance from the human mind as instinctive tendencies towards or against action can only be slow and painful. The process must involve a certain amount of loss : at the same time, it is not a process that can be easily avoided. As soon as the reason of the instinctive tendency is inquired into, it is weakened as instinct. We pass 'from the action itself to the end it is fitted to subserve ; and, if the instinctive action is not the most appropriate, or has hurtful results, we have already reached the stage in which the instinct is checked, and begins to yield to action directed by a principle. Yet it dies out only gradually, and, so to speak, after a struggle. JSTor does it seem possible to assert with confidence, as mitigating this struggle, that the strongest impulses will always be those which are necessary or advantageous to the existence of EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 133 society. For it is a common experience that the moral intuitions which lead to conduct that has ceased to serve a purpose, and the internal sanctions which follow disregard of them, are often even more powerful than those which protect such vir- tues as justice or veracity. From the preceding argument it follows that it Resultant cannot be held that moral intuitions are invalid evoiution- because evolved. The evolutionist will certainly ^ n * m intui ' go very far wrong, as Mr Sidgwick points out, if he maintains that a " general demonstration of the derivedness or developedness of our moral faculty is an adequate ground for distrusting it." Instead of holding that, if we succeed in tracing the origin of an intuition, it is thereby discredited, he will admit that the mere fact of our possessing any moral intuition shows that the habits of action from which it was derived have been permanent enough to leave their traces on the mental struc- ture, and that the conduct to which it leads, like the custom from which it came, will not destroy society, but, on the contrary, will probably tend to its permanence. The general attitude of the evolu- tion-theory to moral intuitions is therefore, after all, very similar to that which Mr Sidgwick has reached as a result of his elaborate examination of the maxims of common-sense. It is an attitude of trust modified by criticism. In both an appeal is made from the axioms themselves : in the one 134 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. case, to their historical genesis and the facts in which they originated ; in the other, to the search- ing test of logical consistency, and their capability of being applied to conduct. But the theory of evolution, if it succeeds in tracing the origin of our moral intuitions, does seem to involve the abandon- ment of the old intuitional method which accepted them as rules of conduct from which no appeal could be taken. 2. Bearing The theory of evolution transforms intuitionism ofevoiuttoif by the way in which it connects the individual on egoism. w ^ ^ race> jj. g g rgt e p ec ^ U p 0n egoism is similar. The nature of the individual man as now exhibited is widely different from that which the older indivi- dualistic theory used to deal with. The latter is typified by the marble statue to which Condillac l compares the percipient subject, as yet unaffected by sense-impressions. The variety of mental life which is actually met with is accounted for by the different kinds of experiences different men pass through ; and the consequent difference in the sources of pleasure and pain accounts for the diverse lines of activity which human beings follow out. But the theory of evolution shows that human nature is infinitely varied, not only through the variety of circumstances, but through the variety of inherited dispositions. One individual is not 1 Traite des sensations, (Euvres (1798), vol. iii. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 135 merely connected with others through considerable similarity of experience built upon an equally characterless basis; but he is organically related to all the members of the race, not only bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, but mind of their mind. He is connected with others by a thousand subtly interwoven threads of emotion which enter into his life, and unite his desires and activities with the functions of the larger organism of which he is a member. The theory of evolution has thus an important Relation of contribution to make to the question of the relation altruism between egoism and altruism. It has remained for Jl^ 6 * 8 it to show historically how the individual is so con- ( a) nature of the individ- nected with the community that the good, or the ual s ciai, pleasure, of the one cannot be considered apart from that of the other. From the non-evolutionist point of view it was always open to show how the indi- vidual depended on society, how his wants could only be supplied by it, and how the security and happiness of every one were bound up with those of his fellows. The individualistic theory was thus able to give all sorts of egoistic reasons why people should indulge in what is now called altruistic conduct. Self was seen to be " a poor centre for a man's actions," and only chosen by the short- sighted person, who thereby missed both the good to himself that followed from his neighbours' well- being, and the peculiar pleasure of sympathy and 136 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. benevolent action. But the theory of evolution has shown how the two things have developed together in the race : first, the actual solidarity be- tween the individual and the whole ; and secondly, the subjective reflection of the same fact, sympathy with the feelings of others. When we ask, there- fore, whether it is our own pleasure (or good) or that of others that we ought to aim at, we are pointed to the gradual obliteration of the distinc- tion between the interest and feelings of the in- dividual and those of the ' whole. Were this com- pletely accomplished, there need be no more ques- tion about the matter. If conduct with an egoistic motive or aim always resulted in altruistic equally with egoistic effects, and if altruistic conduct had always egoistic equally with altruistic consequen- ces, it would even then be little more than vain subtlety to ask whether egoism or altruism was to be the 'real end of conduct. But if, in addi- tion to the identity of interests, there were also an identity of motive or feeling, 1 the question would be no longer in place at all. For there would cease to be either a subjective distinction in motive between egoism and altruism, or an objective distinction in the courses of conduct to but not which they led. And it is just because this identification is manifestly incomplete because 1 It is to a condition of this sort that a phrase such as Clifford's "tribal self " (Lectures and Essays, ii. Ill) would apply. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 137 neither the interests nor the desires of the indi- social. vidual harmonise with any degree of exactness with those of his fellows that we must examine how far the conception of the social organism is a true expression for the connection of individuals. At most, the theory of organic evolution can make Difference out that there is a tendency towards the identifica- in e d ^u a i tion of the interests of the individual with those andsocial organisms of society. It cannot demonstrate a complete iden- tification. The community has indeed been called an organism, and the individual spoken of as a cell in the tissue of which it is composed; but we must avoid pressing this analogy to the point of breaking. Among so many points of similarity between society and an individual organism, there is one essential distinction, the social organism has no feelings and thoughts but those of its in- dividual members the conscious centre is in the unit, not in the whole ; whereas, when we regard the individual organism and its constituent mem- bers, consciousness is seen to exist only in the whole, not in each several unit. The absence of a " social sensorium " l should, therefore, make us hesitate to identify the ends of individual with those of collective action. Every cell in the in- dividual body has a life-history of its own, besides partaking of the life of the organism ; and, did it possess the reason which " looks before and after/' 1 Cf. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 479. 138 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. it might probably adopt an egoistic attitude, and object to the subordination of its private interests to the good of the whole. In the same way, the many individual lives which make up the social organism since each of them possesses a separate consciousness are apt to disregard the life of the larger whole whose members they are. Now what the theory of utilitarianism requires is, that the happiness or pleasurable consciousness of the com- munity or of the race, not that of the individual, be made the end ; and those who make egoism the end of ethics, commonly maintain that the general happiness is the end of politics. 1 The individual is not indeed required to be entirely unselfish or " altruistic " in action. He is not altogether for- bidden to seek his own things, nor enjoined to seek only the things of others ; and evolutionist utilitarianism, indeed, would tell him to seek his own happiness in the happiness of the community. But the obvious remark must be borne in mind, that society, the social organism, cannot experience happiness. However it may resemble the indi- vidual organism in the manner of its growth, the modes of its activity, and even its relation to its component members, yet it cannot feel pleasure or pain as an individual does. The "happiness of the community " does not mean the happiness of the social organism, but is only a concise formula i Cf . Barratt, " Ethics and Politics "Mind, ii. 453 ff. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 139 for the aggregate happinesses of the individuals composing it. When it is said, therefore either as a political in respect or an ethical theory that the happiness of society is the end for conduct, the end prescribed is altru- istic rather than social. Its object is not an organ- ism, but an aggregate of individuals. A certain organisation of society may lead to an increase in this aggregate happiness, and so be necessary for the attainment of the end ; but if the end is hap- piness, the social organism and its wellbeing are no longer the thing cared for, but the greatest aggregate of pleasures on the part of its members. So long, therefore, as the end is pleasure, it must have reference to individuals. The utilitarian may try to persuade the agent to seek the pleasures of others as if they were his own requiring him thus to seek his end out of himself, and the circle of his own pleasures. And, while we continue to hold pleasure to be the end, the evolution-theory^ can go no further than this. It seemed to have made out an organic unity between different individuals, through which it might be possible to effect a reconciliation between the rival ethical principles of egoism and altruism. But the feeling of pleasure is just the point where individualism is strongest, and in regard to which mankind, instead of being an organism in which each part but subserves the pur- poses of the whole, must rather be regarded as a col- 140 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. lection of competing and co-operating units. It is true that the social factor in the individual life is brought into scientific cognisance by the theory of evolution. It shows the way in which his interests and feelings depend upon others. And if, through the influence of a political standpoint, or of some intuition of reason, a universalistic ethics has been already arrived at, it can bring forward the organic union of individual and society as a means of en- forcing the social end upon the individual agent. Theory of In this way the theory of evolution makes a obligation ., . ,, . .. . simplified, contribution to ethics at a critical point where istJce V nT al " the individualist theory failed. For ethics must arrived at. no res t content with pointing out an end for con- duct or standard of morality, without giving a reason to the individual why he should make this end his own that is, developing a doctrine of obli- gation. In many current theories, notably in the common forms of utilitarianism, the two things are not necessarily connected, since the standard is fixed from the point of view of the whole, and obli- gation has reference to the individual. The devel- opment of morality may appear to show how the two standpoints can be connected. If it could be made out that the happiness of the community and of the individual are identical, a standard of moral- ity which made the aggregate happiness the end might be regarded as carrying its own obligation within itself: politics and ethics would (on the EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEOKIES. 141 hedonistic theory) be harmonised. And, in so far as evolution has brought the individual and society into closer reciprocal dependence, it has lessened the practical difficulty of bringing about this con- ciliation, or to speak with the utilitarians of making the standard of morality supply a doctrine of obligation. At present, however, the course of human development is far from having reached the point at which actual harmony between the race and each member of it is established ; and it would therefore still be a subject for inquiry whether the theory of evolution could provide a basis for moral obligation, even were the moral standard or the end for conduct satisfactorily established. But, in deter- mining this latter question, we find that the above psychological and sociological investigations have no longer the same degree of value as before. In the theory of obligation, every fact brought for- ward by evolution to show the harmony of indi- vidual and social welfare makes the way easier for establishing the reasonableness of the pursuit of social ends by the individual. But from these facts of past development we have also to deter- mine an end for present and future action. And this question cannot be solved merely by showing how morality has developed, though that develop- ment may form an important part of the evidence from which our conclusions are to be drawn. The harmony of interests and the harmony of oo Limits to 142 THE THEOKY OF EVOLUTION. complete feelings required for the empirical reconciliation of egoism of egoism and altruism is a condition which needs and aitm- on jy to ^ Q s t a ted to show how far it is from being ism : J realised in present circumstances. The constant struggle involved in the course of evolution throws doubt even on its ultimate attainment. The rule has always been that the better-equipped organism asserts and maintains its supremacy only by van- quishing the organisms which are not so well (a) con- equipped. Conflict and competition have been ence of com" constant f actors in development. The present cir- petition; cumstances of the individual have been deter- mined for him by the war of hostile interests between different communities, and between differ- ent members of the same community; and his mental inheritance has been largely formed by the emotions corresponding to this rivalry. Perhaps the necessity for conflict has diminished with the advance of evolution; but it is still sufficiently great to make competition one of the chief forma- tive influences in industrial and political life. And the causes from which the struggle of interests arises are so constant the multiplication of desires and of desiring individuals keeps so well in advance of the means of satisfying desires that it is doubtful whether the course of evolution is fitted to bring about complete harmony between different individ- uals. It would almost seem that the " moving equilibrium " in human conduct, in which there is EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 143 no clash of diverse interests, cannot be expected to be brought about much before the time when the physical factors of the universe have reached the stage in which evolution ends. Besides, it does not do to speak as if the only 03) different and conflict- alternative to egoism were a comprehensive altru- ing degrees ism. Man is a member of a family, a tribe, a Ol nation, the race. His altruism, therefore, may take the narrow form of family feeling, or it may extend to tribal feeling, or to patriotism, or even rise to devotion to humanity. And these do not merely supplement one another : they are often conflicting principles of conduct. Action for the sake of the family may frequently be most unsocial ; the keen patriot ignores the rights of other peoples ; the " citizen of the world " is too often a stranger to the national spirit. Further, when civilisation grows complex, the same man is a member of many intersecting societies a church, a trade, a party organisation l and has to balance the claims which each of these has upon him. The sublation of egoism would still leave to be determined the different shares which these various social wholes have in a man's sympathies, and their different claims upon his conduct. Any theory of society will show how the good ( y ) the aitm- of the individual is not merely a part of the good estandthe* of the whole, but reacts in various ways upon the ^ of 1 Cf. Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 113. 144 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. organism of which he is a member. But, in the case of any one individual, the results of acts done for his own good (or pleasure), and the results of those done for the good (or pleasure) of the whole, do not correspond with any exactness, and often widely diverge. If, then, the individual is consciously aiming at his own good (or pleasure), it is if we look from the point of view of indi- vidualistic ethics only an incidental and fortui- tous result of the action when it promotes the common good. When we recognise the social factor in the individual, this judgment must be modified. The evolution-theory shows how he has become so constituted that much that pleases him indi- vidually, must of necessity benefit society at large. But there are obvious limits to the harmony. The pleasure or interest of the individual is often the reverse of advantageous to society. It may be the case that in seeking his own private ends, he is yet, to use the words of Adam Smith, " led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention/' 1 But, if so, the end is invisible as well as the hand that points to it. And the good of society can be said to be the natural and uniform consequence of the individ- ual's action, only when he consciously makes it his end. In a word, the true altruism or, as we might call it, using a word appropriated to another 1 Wealth of Nations, book iv. ch. ii. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 145 purpose the true socialism is when the good of others or of society is pursued for its own sake ; and this is to be distinguished from the false or imperfect altruism, in which the same outward result is aimed at, because it is seen to be the most prudent way of promoting one's own good. Thus Mr Spencer's elaborate argument 1 to show that conduct of purely egoistic tendency, equally with conduct of purely altruistic tendency, is in- sufficient and self-destructive, does not reach be- yond the external results of action, and leaves it possible for both end and motive to be still egoistic. If "morality is internal/' 2 the discus- sion proves no ethical proposition at all. The egoism of external prudence may indeed be tran- scended by recognising that the pleasures and pains of others are sources of sympathetic feel- ing in ourselves. But a subjective or emotional egoism remains. And if the fact that we " receive pleasure from the pleasure of another man " 3 is our reason for seeking his pleasure, we shall cease to seek it when a means of greater pleasure offers. In human life as at present constituted, no secure principle of conduct can be based on the agree- ment of individual with social good ; for, if they 1 Data of Ethics, chap. xiii. 2 Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 155 ; cf. Spencer, Data of Ethics, p. 120. 3 Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 226. K 146 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. diverge, as they often do, there is no standard left for determining their competing claims. ) altruistic It will not do to divide all men, as Mr Stephen eakf 8 seems to do, 1 into two classes, typified by the reasonable and therefore sympathetic man who has struck a bargain with society to take " common stock of pains and pleasures," and the systematic- ally selfish man who " must be an idiot." For most men belong to neither of those two classes : their bargain with society has not been fully completed, and can be withdrawn ' from temporarily when circumstances make withdrawal convenient, though this process cannot be carried on indefinitely with- out greatly weakening the sympathetic feelings. The majority of men are neither entirely sympa- thetic nor yet "systematically selfish": they are unsystematically sympathetic and unsystematically selfish. Such men have the sensibilities that give "leverage" to the moralist. 2 But it is futile to tell them to be more sympathetic, or entirely sym- pathetic. For sympathetic feelings cannot be pro- duced at will : they can only come with that slow modification of the character brought about by conduct. Shall we then say that a man should in all cases of conduct prefer the pleasure of the whole or of others to his own pleasure ? If a man were to do so, then perhaps, by consistent self- abnegation, altruism might become pleasant, and 1 Science of Ethics, p. 263. 2 Cf. Ibid., p. 442. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 147 both the man himself and his descendants become more sympathetically constituted ? This perfection of altruistic sympathies is looked forward to by Mr Spencer as characteristic of a subsequent the final stage of evolution. When that period comes, men will compete with one another for the few remaining opportunities of self-sacrifice. 1 At present, Mr Spencer argues, pure altruism is suicidal. The individual whose sympathetic nature is un- developed may, however, go further, and ask what right we have to say that "the moral law" is " conformity to the conditions of social welfare," 2 rather than to those of individual welfare ? Evo- lution, it would seem, does not suffice to prove this proposition, which appears, on the contrary, to be a survival of the social or political way of look- ing at things inherited from the utilitarian theory. But the point to be proved is why I ought to adopt this standpoint when considering what the end of my action is to be. And this point stands in need of proof here as much as in utilitarianism, and seems almost equally destitute of it. Feelings leading to altruistic conduct are un- and may be doubtedly possessed by the average man at his b^reflTc- present stage of development. Yet the being who tlou> is able to reflect on the feelings possessed by him, and compare the characteristics of different emo- tional states, and the activities following from 1 Data of Ethics, p. 253. 2 Science of Ethics, p. 349. 148 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION". them, has already before him the possibility of transcending them. He is able to estimate their value in terms of simpler or of other feelings; and the man who rigorously does so by the test of personal pleasure and pain manifests the spirit of the egoistic hedonist a spirit which the theory of empirical evolution does not seem able to exorcise. ( c ) Tendency At the same time the tendency of the evolution- to supplant theory is not to support but to supplant egoism. egoism Neither the basis of psychological hedonism on Evolution r J not the basis which egoism is usually made to rest, nor the of psycholo- gical hedon- independent arguments which have been urged for its ethical theory, are drawn from the facts of development. The theory of evolution may, in- deed, be made to suggest that non-hedonistic action has arisen out of hedonistic: "That all affections are generated by association with experienced pleasure only that the association is mainly an- cestral in the case of c affections ' proper. The dim remembrance of ancestral pleasures, the force of ancestral habit, produces that propension of which Butler speaks, disproportionate to (distinct) expectation and (personal) experience of pleasure." l But this view will be rejected by the pure egoist, 2 who must maintain that the pain of acting con- trary to ancestral habit would in every case be 1 F. Y. Edgeworth, Old and New Methods of Ethics (1877), p. 11. 2 Cf. A. Barratt, Mind, iii. 280. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 149 greater than the expected pleasure foregone by following it. According to the view suggested, all deliberate volition would still be regarded as hedonistically determined, though other motives than pleasure may affect action through having been inherited from cases of ancestral conduct in which they tended to personal pleasure. Even were it shown, however, that altruistic conduct has been developed out of egoistic, the fact of its devel- opment would not alter its present characteristic. If action now is not always moved by pleasure and pain alone, it becomes a question of merely historical interest to trace its genesis to conduct to which our ancestors were hedonistically im- pelled. The fact remains that the original sim- plicity of motive has been broken into, and some- thing else than personal pleasure admitted to have sway. But it does not seem to have been made out that action in the early stages of human life was completely egoistic, any more than that it is so now. " From first to last," as Mr Spencer puts it, 1 self-sacrifice seems to have been involved in the preservation of each successive generation of individuals. We inherit propensities to action which have been evolved from an initial stage in which there was no conscious distinction between egoism and altruism, though both tendencies were present and were necessary for the continued exist- 1 Data of Ethics, chap. xii. 150 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. ence of the species. The feelings inherited by the egoistic hedonist are assessed by him at their pleas- ure-value. But such feelings would never have been acquired by his ancestors, had they tested each ger- minal emotion in the same way, and so restrained self-sacrifice for offspring and fellow-men. Perhaps they did not clearly see or realise what their pleas- ure consisted in, or accurately distinguish it from family or tribal welfare ; but, through this defi- ciency of imagination, the feelings were able to grow and perpetuate themselves, which have tended to the preservation and consolidation of society, nor of Nor can we gather from evolution any ethical htd'onism. argument leading to egoism as the principle or end for conduct; and it is worthy of remark that the proof attempted by the late Mr Barratt is un- affected by his recognition of the theory of evolu- tion as applied to mind, depending on definitions and axioms which hold (if at all) for the individual man. Pleasure is defined by him as "that state of consciousness which follows upon the unimpeded performance (as such) of its function by one or more of the parts of our organism ; " 1 and the good is forthwith identified with pleasure, by its being shown that it is a " state of consciousness," and that it " results from the due performance of function (as such)." 2 But the " due 3 performance 1 Physical Ethics, p. 12. 2 Ibid., p. 17. 3 In the word " due" an idea of worth is involved. Probably EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 151 of function " is itself a state or states of conscious- ness ; and in it, not in any sequent or concomitant circumstances, the good may consist. The good, we may say, is not pleasure, but the evepyaa of which pleasure is only the consequent or comple- tion. This is not a mere question of words. For " due performance of function " cannot be measured by the resultant or accompanying feeling of pleas- ure : the most perfect functioning, just because it has become habitual, has often the slightest accom- paniment of pleasant feeling. The way in which the argument is put in ' Physical Ethics ' is thus well fitted to bring out the fundamental antithesis between ethical systems according as they place the good in the active element of function, or in the passive element of pleasurable feeling which accompanies functioning. The theory of evolution seems to have led many of the writers who have applied it to ethics to the other side of the anti- thesis than that adhered to by Mr Barratt. They recognise ethical value as belonging to a due per- formance of function," rather than to the pleased states of consciousness which follow ; and in this way their theory leads them beyond hedonistic ethics. 1 Mr Barratt meant by "due performance" one which made the faculty correspond with its medium (cf. Physical Ethics, p. 9) ; but this introduces a new standard of value. 1 The transition involved in passing from " pleasure " to " per- formance of function" or "life" as the end of conduct, may be illustrated by the following passage from Mr Pater's 'Marius anism 152 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 3. Bearing It has been argued that the theory of evolution ofthetheory . . , ., ., ... . . , of evolution 1S > in tendency, hostile to the egoistic principle. Had egoism been consistently recognised and acted upon during the course of human development, the features of social life which most promote co- operation and progress would never have become persistent. But the same objection cannot be urged against universalistic hedonism. It is true that this has not been the end consistently aimed at in the past. Those from whom our social instincts are inherited cannot be credited with having had either the general happiness or social evolution in view. Society and institutions further- ing the common good were not the work of primitive utilitarians plotting for the greatest happiness of the greatest number. They have come down to the Epicurean' (1885, i. 163): "Really, to the phase of reflec- tion through which Marius was then passing, the charge of ( hedonism/ whatever its real weight might be, was not properly applicable at all. Not pleasure, but fulness of life, and ' insight ' as conducting to that fulness energy, choice and variety of experience including noble pain and sorrow even loves such as those in the exquisite old story of Apuleius ; such sincere and strenuous forms of the moral life, as Seneca and Epictetus whatever form of human life, in short, was impassioned and ideal: it was from this that the 'new Cyrenaicism' of Marius took its criterion of values. It was a theory, indeed, which might rightly be regarded as in a great degree coincident with the main principle of the Stoics themselves, and a version of the precept ' Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might ' a doctrine so widely applicable among the nobler spirits of that time ; and as with that its mistaken tendency would lie in the direction of a kind of idolatry of mere life, or natural gift or strength Vidoldtrie des talents." EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 153 us from times when social organisation was forced upon men by the rude logic of facts which exter- minated tribes in which the bond of union was weak; and they have been gradually modified by the pressure of external circumstances and the growing influence of mental conceptions of what is best. But the adoption of general happiness as the end of action would not have had the same effect on social evolution, as the adoption of per- sonal happiness as the end would have had. It would have aided and not have hindered the growth of the feeling of unity among the members of a tribe or state, as well as have led to the recogni- tion of the individual as subordinate to the social organism. It may thus seem quite natural to look to utilitarianism as giving the end for reflective action, and yet to hold along with it what is loosely called the ethics of evolution. But this first attitude of evolution to utilitarian- has led to ism was not fitted to be permanent ; and the catton 1 " start " l Mr Spencer got on being classed with anti-utilitarians must have been repeated in the experience of other moralists as they found them- selves drifting from their ancient moorings. Mr Spencer's difference from the utilitarians is not such as to lead him to reject or modify their 1 " The note in question greatly startled me by implicitly class- ing me with anti-utilitarians. I have never regarded myself as an anti-utilitarian." Mr Spencer's letter to J. S. Mill, printed in Bain's Mental and Moral Science, p. 721. 154 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. principle. He maintains, as strongly as they do, that " the ultimately supreme end " is " happiness special and general." l But he disagrees with them in method, in method, holding that, owing to the incommen- surability of a man's different pleasures and pains, and to the incommensurability of the pleasures and pains of one man with those of others, coupled with the indeterminateness of the means required to reach so indeterminate an end, happiness is not fitted to be the immediate aim of conduct. 2 But another method is open to us. For " since evolu- tion has been, and is still, working towards the highest life, it follows that conforming to those principles by which the highest life is achieved, is furthering that end." 3 It is possible " to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of exist- ence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to pro- duce happiness, and what kinds to produce un- happiness." 4 Greatest pleasure, that is to say, is the end. But it is so impossible to compare dif- ferent kinds of pleasure, different people's pleasure, and different means for obtaining a maximum of it, that it is not a practical end for aiming at. No doubt is expressed that greatest happiness is the ultimate end; although no good reason is given for holding that it is. But it is an indeterminate 1 Data of Ethics, p. 173 ; cf. p. 30. 2 Ibid., pp. 154, 155. 3 Ibid>? p< 171 4 Letter to J. S. Mill, in Data of Ethics, p. 57. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 155 end, and needs to be interpreted by the course of evolution which is held to tend to it. It is not too much to say, therefore, that Mr Spencer is only nominally a utilitarian. His ethical principles are not arrived at by an estimate of the consequences of action, but by deduction from the laws of that " highest life " which is now in process of evolu- tion. This alliance between evolutionism and hed- onism will be examined in the following chapter. At present it is necessary to consider the reasons which have led other evolutionists to look upon the new morality as superseding the utilitarian end. Mr Spencer's " dissent from the doctrine of utility, as commonly understood, concerns," he tells us, 1 " not the object to be reached by men, but the method of reaching it." In other writers, however, the theory of evolution has not only supplanted the method of utilitarianism, but also led to a modification of its principle. The objections they andm have taken to it may perhaps be summed up by pl saying that they consider utilitarianism to look upon conduct from a mechanical, instead of from an organic point of view. It prescribed conduct to a man as if he were a machine with a certain kind and quantity of work to turn out. His nature was looked upon by it as fixed, and his social con- 1 Letter to J. S. Mill, in Bain's Mental and Moral Science, p. 721. 156 THE TIIEOEY OF EVOLUTION. (a) ideal of ditioHS as unvarying ; and the ideal set before him ism objected was therefore unprogressive something that he gressive Pr " was to ^ or to g et > not something that he was to become. " If consistently applied," it has been recently argued, " utilitarianism seems irrevocably committed to a stereotyped and unprogressive ideal." l According to Mr Stephen, it " considers society to be formed of an aggregate of similar human beings. The character of each molecule is regarded as constant." It can, therefore, give a test which is " approximately accurate " only, which does not allow for the variation of character and of social relations. 2 - To the same effect Miss Simcox maintains that it "might pass muster in a theory of social statics, but it breaks down alto- gether if we seek its help to construct a theory of social dynamics/' 3 These writers do not seem to have made it quite clear, however, in what way utilitarianism assumes a stationary condition of human nature, and so formulates conduct in a way unsuited to a progressive state. To say simply that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the end, is not in itself inconsistent with a pro- gressive state of human nature. It is true that, in all the enthusiasm for and belief in progress to be seen in a writer such as J. S. Mill, there is a con- 1 J. T. Punnet, "Ethical Alternatives" Mind, x. 95. 2 Science of Ethics, p. 363. 3 Natural Law ; An Essay in Ethics (1877), p. 101. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 157 stant goal always set to it in the possible maximum of pleasant feeling. It would not have been incon- sistent for him, however, to look upon human nature as capable of developing new susceptibili- ties for pleasure. Progress is made by increasing the amount of pleasure actually got. And so far, the ideal itself is certainly fixed, while progress consists in its gradual realisation. But there is no special virtue in having an ideal which is itself progressive. A progressive ideal simply means an ideal which is incompletely comprehended, and the comprehension of which proceeds gradually with its realisation. At any time the definition of such an ideal can only be tentative: with the actual assimilation of character to it, the intellect comes to grasp its nature with increasing clearness. I do not myself think that we can expect to have more than such a tentative and progressive com- prehension of the moral ideal of humanity. But we must not take objection to a theory because it gives at once a clear and definite view of the final end of conduct : though we must not refrain from inquiring how the end is known. But the bearing of the objection to utilitarianism Force of the becomes apparent when we try to give some definite ^en 1 meaning to the end greatest happiness. If we are 101 content to receive it as simply a very general or interpret greatest rather abstract expression for our ideal, nothing happiness, need be said, except to put the question, which has 158 THE THEOEY OF EVOLUTION. been already asked, How we came by such an ideal ? The difficulty arises when we attempt to apply the by showing ideal to practice. With men of fixed character in the way in . . , which men an unchanging society, our way might be compara- tively clear. But, when both character and social relations vary, and their variation extends to sus- ceptibility to pleasure and pain, and depends on the actions adopted to obtain the end, utilitarianism may well appear to be without a principle by which to determine between different kinds of conduct. To an objection similar to this, but taken from the old point of view, that we have no time before acting to sum up the pleasurable and painful consequences of our actions, Mill replied that there had been " ample time namely, the whole past duration of the human species " l in which to estimate the f eli- cific results of conduct. The variability of faculty and function makes this answer lack convincing power. Yet, perhaps, we are apt at present to dis- regard the real value of this collective experience of the race. True, human nature is not a constant ; yet certain of its qualities are persistent and con- stant enough not to leave us in doubt as to whether, say, murder and theft are beneficial or injurious to happiness. There are at least certain actions, and, still more, certain abstentions, upon which human security the basis of happiness depends. But it would seem that those " secondary laws " 1 Utilitarianism, p. 34. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 159 may be more properly regarded as conditions of life than means to pleasure. The difficulty, however, comes most clearly to andamax the front when we attempt to define the maxi- m mum, and that not for an indiyidual or genera- tion only, but for the race. It/ is not happiness merely, but greatest happiness, that is the utili- tarian end. Is there any way, then, of deter- mining how the maximum of happiness is to be obtained for generations whose characters, though inherited from present individuals, may be modified almost indefinitely ? The very existence and num- bers of these future generations are problematic ; and Mill, as is well known, spent much of his energy in trying to convince the present generation to re- strict the numbers of the next. Even on the funda- mental question as to whether happiness is to be obtained by the restriction of desires or by the satis- faction which leads to their recurrence and increase, no principle can be extracted from utilitarian ethics. The theory of evolution has shown how desires may be uprooted in the character of the race, though they remain to the end in the present individuals ; but in each case utilitarianism would require us to sum up and estimate the relative advantages of re- nunciation and satisfaction, a problem which the modifiability of human character seems to make impracticable. Thus, even if certain rules of living may be ascertained, and justified by the utilitarian 160 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. (6) Objection to utilitari- anism as a theory of conse- quences ; principle, it would seem that the end of greatest happiness for the race of man, or the sentient crea- tion generally, must remain " abstract." There seems no principle through which it may be ap- plied to conduct no hope of an accurate esti- mate of results when the variability of the individual and of social relations is taken into account. Connected with this is the assertion that moral- ity must have an inward, not an external standard. The evolutionists are inclined to condemn utilitari- anism as a theory of consequences, dealing solely with work produced. According to Mill, " utili- tarian moralists have gone beyond almost all others in affirming that the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent/' l And this seems to be just what evolutionism objects to. Even the worth of the agent is, according to utilitarianism, only a tendency to perform the actions called moral : " a good or a bad disposition" is said to be "a bent of character from which useful or from which hurt- ful actions are likely to arise." 2 Against this view Mr Stephen maintains that " the attempt to secure an absolute and immutable moral law in its exter- nal shape must be illusory. The moral law can be stated unconditionally when it is stated in the form ' Be this/ but not when it is stated in the form ' Do 1 Utilitarianism, p. 26. 2 Ibid., p. 27 n. EVOLUTION AND ETHICAL THEORIES. 161 this.' " l This, however, appears to express the matter in a way not free from difficulty. The organic view of conduct will object not only to considering action apart from character, but also to considering char- acter apart from action. We must treat conduct as a whole : and, in order to do so, we must treat it as both arising out of and forming character ; and we must treat character not as mere potentiality, but as it realises itself in conduct. The weakness of the utilitarian theory is its method of treating actions merely in respect of their results : the evo- lutionist must show how results are connected with motives, how character and conduct are different aspects of a whole. The difference of the evolutionist view from utili- (c) and as re- tarianism comes out at another point. The latter to s places the standard and test of conduct in its effects lty ' on the sensibility. The best is that which brings most pleasure. Utilitarians are now, for the most part, ready to admit that, to be in earnest with their theory, they must reject Mill's attempt to distin- guish qualities among pleasures. " If morality is to be defined by happiness, we must, of course, allow all kinds of happiness to count, and to count equally so far as they are actually equal. We must reckon the pleasures of malevolence as well as those of benevolence." 2 Of his own pleasures of the rela- tive amounts of pleasure he gets from various sources 1 Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 385. 2 Ibid., p. 361. L 162 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. of which there is no common measure. each man is the final judge. One man prefers "push-pin" to poetry, another poetry to "push- pin "; and neither has a right to call the other mis- taken. If we are to aim at the greatest maximum pleasure, therefore, we must not strive for what are commonly called " high " pleasures rather than " low " pleasures, except as greater in intensity. If we must have a standard, the judgment of the from the The support got by pessimism from the facts of man 8 life ; U human life is more difficult to estimate at its true value. It is obvious that pleasure and pain are intermingled in almost every experience ; and the proportion in which they are mixed varies greatly in different circumstances and according to the susceptibilities of different persons. If we ask a number of people whether life is on the whole pleasant to them, not only do we receive a variety of answers which it is hard to sum up and average, but the answers we get are apt to reflect the feeling of the moment rather than to represent an impartial estimate of the pleasure and pain of a lifetime. Thus experience seems unable to give us a trust- worthy answer as to the average pleasure-value of life ; but, if its verdict is correct, that to some life is pleasant, though to many painful, this shows that a surplus of pain does not follow from the nature of life, and thus destroys the position of thoroughgoing pessimism, which looks upon this as the worst of all possible worlds. (&) that the (&) It may still be maintained, however and t this is the position which chiefly concerns us here tend to that the course of evolution does not tend to in- pleasure. crease the pleasure in life at the expense of the pain in it, and that, therefore, even although pleasure and evolution may both of them be possible ends of con- duct, they are ends which point in different direc- tions and lead to different courses of action. HEDONISM AND EVOLUTIONISM. 173 It is necessary for the evolutionist who holds (a) incom- that the development of life does not tend to theevoiu- increased pleasure, to meet the argument already j^f argu " adduced l to show their correspondence. Nor does that argument seem to be altogether beyond criti- cism. To compare progress or development with pleasure, we ought to know exactly what is meant by both terms. Yet it is impossible to have a clear notion of progress without an idea of the end to which it tends, and this has not yet been obtained. It is largely on account of the difficulty of ob- taining such an idea that some evolutionists seem to have been driven to measure progress in terms of pleasure, just as, owing to the difficulty of esti- mating and summing up pleasures, some hedonists have been induced to measure them by the progress of evolution. What we have now to see is whether the correspondence assumed between progress and pleasure actually exists. And, to avoid the tauto- logy of saying that progress is increase of life, we must judge of it simply by empirical observation of the nature of human activity and of the course of human affairs. Now the attempted identification of pleasurable and life-promoting activities rests on an incomplete account of the motives and results of action. For, in the first place, even admitting that pleasure and avoidance of pain are the only motives to action, 1 See above, p. 167 f. 174 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. the influence of natural selection has not prevented actions hurtful to life being sometimes accom- panied by pleasant sensations. Its tendency to do so has been much more effective in the lower orders of animal life than in the higher. The latter, especially man, possess the power of repre- senting ideal states in the imagination, and are thus able to avoid actions hurtful to life, although these actions are pleasant at the time. For the hurtful consequences - of the action may be so vividly represented in idea as to outweigh the in- fluence of the present pleasure which could be got from its enjoyment. 1 And further, the analysis of volition involved in the argument seems to be insufficient. For there are other springs of action to be taken account of than pleasure and its opposite. Habit, imita- tion, and interests of a more comprehensive kind than desire of pleasant feeling, are all motives to action. It is true that pleasure is always felt in the successful performance of an action, and it is also true that the inhibition of will is always painful ; but it is none the less incorrect to look either upon the pleasure that follows from the action, or the pain that would be the result of its inhibition as, in ordinary cases, the motive. It is motives of a different kind than pleasure, such as 1 Cf. Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874), ii. 332 f. HEDONISM AND EVOLUTIONISM. 175 imitation 1 and the influence of ideal ends, which most often lead to progress. And the progress that is due to such motives cannot be measured by its effect in increasing pleasure, nor assumed to make pleasure and life correspond. Other activ- ities less advantageous in nature in all respects but this, might, so far as the reasoning goes, lead to equal or to more pleasurable consequences. At the best, therefore, the above argument only proves a general tendency towards the coincidence of pleasurable actions with actions which promote life ; it does not show that the increase of life can be accurately measured by pleasure. The pro- cess of natural selection might kill off all organisms whose desires led them normally to action hurtful' to life. But sufficient evidence has not been brought forward to show that it is fitted to pro- duce an exact proportion between progress and pleasure. Hartmann, however, attempts to strike a more OB) The pes- i % ' i sinrist doc- iundamental blow than this at the presupposition trine that involved in the argument for evolutionist hedon- ism. For he contends that, throughout all life, the 1 " Imitation," according to Kant (Grundlegung zur Met. d. Sitten, Werke, iv. 257), " has no place at all in morals ; " and this is true if the naked law of duty or respect for it is the sole ethical motive. But if morality consists in the attainment of an ideal which is being gradually realised in man, moral value will not be denied to the motive which leads the individual to fashion his own nature after that in which morality has attained more complete realisation. 176 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. ( U th e y naye l e( J psychologists to the theory, SUp- intensity. ported by a vast amount of direct experiment, that 1 Thdorie scientifique, p. 78. HEDONISM AND EVOLUTIONISM. 195 there is no object or action which can be said to be absolutely and in itself either pleasant or painful. 1 The feeling of pleasure or pain accompanying the object is a function of its intensity in relation to the subject. This proposition cannot, indeed, be fully demonstrated regarding each simple sensation: to the emotions into which intricate relations of per- ceptions enter, it does not apply, till their complexity has been reduced. Some sensations and perceptions are certainly felt as painful in any intensity in which they are distinctly present to consciousness. But, although this is a real difficulty, it does not seem insuperable. The instances which Mill cites 2 to throw doubt on the generalisation that quality of feeling depends on intensity are unfortunately chosen for his purpose. For to take his example the taste of rhubarb is to many not painful but pleasant; and, indeed, every case of acquired taste shows that pleasure and pain can be modified through habit and custom, and suggests that, even in the case of those sensations which are painful in any form we have been able to experience them, there is a degree of intensity below which they would, if experienced, be pleasant. Experiment has proved of the majority even of sensible qualities, and analogy leads us to conclude of all, that there is a degree in which each 1 Cf. Wundt, Physiol. Psych., p. 470 ; Fechner, Vorschule der Aesthetik, ii. 243 f. 2 Exam, of Hamilton's Philosophy, 5th ed. 3 p. 559. 196 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. may be pleasant, and a degree in which each may be painful, and, between them, a real or imaginary zero-point of feeling, where there is neither plea- sure nor pain. This must, it is true, be received as a hypothesis only; but it is a hypothesis which is suggested by a wide range of facts, and which is able to include even those facts with which it is seemingly inconsistent, by supposing that could their intensity be indefinitely diminished without their passing out of consciousness, these sensations would reach a point after which they would be felt as pleasant and not as painful. Further, experiment shows that this dividing-point which separates the two poles of feeling is not always placed at the same degree of intensity, that it differs not only for every object, but for each individual subject as well, and that it undergoes modification in the course of the subject's development. 1 What is true of sense-perception is still more evident regarding those experiences in which the activity of the subject is more obviously involved. As any function may, if carried beyond a certain degree of intensity, be painful, so any function con- sistent with life may be a source of pleasure. From the preceding discussion two things may be inferred: first, the dependence of pleasure and pain on the subject-activity, whether the activity be that 1 See Fechner, loc. cit. HEDONISM AND EVOLUTIONISM. 197 of perception or of what is specifically called action ; and secondly, the modification of pleasure and pain, and transition from one to the other, along with the modification of that subject-activity. To the appli- cation of both these conclusions there may be limits; but their general accuracy does not seem doubtful. What the doctrine of evolution adds to this is its (<0 tion of the proof of the indefinite modifiability of human f unc- theory of T , ' i i i < i * n *- evolution : tion. " It is an essential principle or lite, Mr Spencer wrote, 1 before he had arrived at his general theory of evolution, " that a faculty to which circum- stances do not allow full exercise diminishes ; and that a faculty on which circumstances make exces- sive demands increases ; " and to this we must now add, " that, supposing it consistent with maintenance of life, there is no kind of activity which will not become a source of pleasure if continued ; and that therefore pleasure will eventually accompany every mode of action demanded by social conditions." 2 It is, he holds, a " biological truth," that " everywhere faculties adjust themselves to the conditions of exist- ence in such wise that the activities those conditions require become pleasurable." 3 The vast periods of time over which evolution stretches are scarcely needed to show how pleasure may be made to follow from almost any course of action consistent with the continuance of life. The change of habits which 1 Social Statics, p. 79. 2 Data of Ethics, p. 186. 3 Mind, vi. 85. 198 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. often takes place in the history of a nation, and even in the life of an individual, makes this sufficiently obvious. But, if we still think of making attainment of pleasure the end of conduct, the doctrine of evolu- tion must give us pause. It has been already argued that, given certain sources of, and susceptibilities for, pleasure, the course of evolution has not been such as to produce an exact coincidence between them any conduct and the actions which further life. But it would consistent .-, . -. , . . . . i i , with condi- seem that, given habits or acting which are consist- e conditions f life> an ^ which are system- be pieasur- atically carried out, these will not fail to grow plea- a Die j sant as the organism becomes adapted to them. At the best, it is difficult enough to say, even for the individual, whether one imagined object or course of action will exceed another in pleasurable feeling or not. But, when we remember that function and feeling may be modified indefinitely, it is impossible to say what course of conduct will produce the greatest amount of pleasure for the race. Taking in all its effects, we cannot say that one way of seeking pleasure is better that is, will bring more pleasure than another. Bearing in mind the modi- fications which evolution produces, it seems impos- sible to guide the active tendencies of mankind towards the goal of greatest pleasure, except by saying that the greatest pleasure will be got from the greatest amount of successful, or of unrestrained, or of medium activity. HEDONISM AND EVOLUTIONISM. 199 If, then, we have been seeking to define the evolu- maximum tionist end by interpreting it in terms of pleasure, it appears that we have only succeeded in making the round of a circle : pleasure as the end is seen to be only definable as life or activity, although it was adopted as the end in order that by its help we might discover what life or activity meant as the end for conduct. We may, perhaps, still be able to hold to a form of hedonism, if we turn our attention from the race to a small portion of present mankind. In spite of the modifiability of function and its parasite feeling, we may still be able to say that such and such a course of action is likely to bring most pleasure to the individual or even to the family. But we cannot extend such a means of interpreting the ethics of evolution to the race, where the possi- bility of modification is indefinitely great, and the pain incurred in initiating a change counts for little in comparison with its subsequent results. If we continue to look from the evolutionist point of view, the question, What conduct will on the whole bring most pleasure ? can only be answered by saying that it is the conduct which will most promote life an answer which might have been more satis- factory had it not been to give meaning to this end " promotion of life " that it was interpreted in terms of greatest pleasure. The evolution-theory of ethics is thus seen to oscillate from the theory which looks upon the summum bonum as pleasure, to that which 200 THE THEOEY OF EVOLUTION. finds it in activity. It contains elements which make it impossible for it to adhere to the former alternative. The comprehensiveness of its view of life makes it unable to adopt pleasure as the end, since pleasure changes with every modification of function. And it has now to be seen whether the empirical method of interpretation to which it adheres will allow of its notion of life or activity affording a satisfactory end for conduct. 201 CHAPTER VIII. THE EVOLUTIONIST END. IN showing the important bearing which evolution wantofhar- has on the causes of pleasure, the argument of the tweenevoiu- preceding chapter has also made clear that the ends of evolutionism and of hedonism cannot be made to explain one another. The theory which starts with a maximum of pleasure as the ultimate end, but points to the course of evolution as showing how that end is to be realised, is confronted by the fact that the development of life does not always tend to increased pleasure, and that the laws of its development cannot therefore be safely adopted as maxims for the attainment of pleasure. The same objection may be taken to the method of interpret- ing the evolutionist end by means of the pleasurable results of conduct. The two do not correspond with that exactness which would admit of one doing duty for the other as a practical guide. And a further difficulty has been shown to stand in the way of 202 THE THEOEY OF EVOLUTION. this method. IJor, on coming to analyse pleasure, we find that it may, by habituation, arise from any or almost any course of conduct which the con- ditions of existence admit of. The evolutionist, therefore, can have no surer idea of greatest pleas- ure even although this may not be a very sure one than that it will follow in the train of the greatest or most varied activity which harmonises with the laws of life. Necessity of We must therefore forsake the method of eclec- investigat- ing indepen- ticism, and inquire whether the theory of evolution tionisTend". can niake any independent contribution towards determining an end for conduct. We are frequently told that it prescribes as the end " preservation," or " development," or " the health of the society." But to obtain a clear meaning for such notions, we must see what definite content the theory of evolution can give them, without considering, at present, the grounds for transforming them into ethical pre- cepts. Now, it may be thought and the sugges- tion deserves careful examination that we may find in the characteristics of evolution itself l an indication of the end which organisms produced by and subject to evolution are naturally fitted to attain. These characteristics must therefore be 1 Taking evolution in its widest sense, since the theory of evolution does not " imply some intrinsic proclivity in every species towards a higher form." Spencer, First Principles, App. p. 574 ; Principles of Sociology, i. 106. THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 203 passed under review, that their ethical bearings may be seen. 1. The first condition of development, and even i. Adapta- of life, is correspondence between an organism and vironment : its environment. The waste implied in the pro- cesses which constitute the life of an organised body has to be supplied by nutriment got from surrounding objects. It requires food, air, light, and heat in due proportions in order that its various organs may do their work. When these circum- stances change, either it adapts itself to the new conditions or death ensues. Thus "we find that every animal is limited to a certain range of cli- mate ; every plant to certain zones of latitude and elevation," 1 though nothing differs more among different species than the extent of an organism's adaptability to varying conditions. A definite or- ganism and a medium suitable to it are called by Comte the two " fundamental correlative conditions of life " ; according to Mr Spencer they constitute life. " Conformity " is absolutely necessary between " the vital functions of any organism and the con- ditions in which it is placed." In this conformity there are varying degrees, and "the completeness of the life will be proportionate to the completeness of the correspondence." 2 Even when life is not altogether extinguished, it is impeded by imperfect 1 Spencer, Principles of Biology, i. 73. 2 Ibid., i. 82. 204 THE THEOKY OF EVOLUTION. adaptation. Where external circumstances make the attainment of nourishment difficult and pre- carious, life is shortened in extent, and, within its limits, more occupied with simply maintaining its necessary functions less full, varied, and active. The same holds good whether the external circum- stances are natural or social, applies equally to those whose energies are exhausted in the produc- tion of a bare livelihood from a niggard soil and unpropitious climate, and to those who, under changed conditions, feel the hardship of adapting themselves to a new social medium, spoken of as Shall we say, then, that the end of human conduct the ethical , .. . , m1 . , end; 1S adaptation to environment? Inis seems to be the position taken up by some evolutionists. In the language of von Baer, 1 "the end of ends is always that the organic body be adapted to the conditions of the earth, its elements and means of nutriment;" and Mr Spencer holds "that all evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to condition/' 2 The hedonism which Mr Spencer definitely accepts as his ethical principle prevents him, indeed, from fully adopting the theory of human action which von Baer seems to regard as the result of the doctrine of evolution. Yet com- plete adaptation of constitution to condition is held by him to be characteristic of that perfect form of life to which evolution tends, and the laws of which 1 Reden (1876), ii. 332. 2 Social Statics (1850), p. 77. THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 205 are to be our guides in our present imperfect social condition. In working out his theory of ethics, he describes acts as "good or bad according as they are well or ill adjusted to ends/' identifying the good with " the conduct furthering self-preserva- tion," and the bad with "the conduct tending to self-destruction." l The notion of self-preservation thus introduced is na-turally suggested as the end subserved by the activity of an organism being adjusted to surrounding conditions. Self-preserva- defines the tion, therefore, rather than adaptation to environ- seif-preser- ment, will be regarded as the end, with which adap- vatlon * tation will be connected as the essential means. This notion of self-preservation has played a remarkable part in ethical and psychological dis- cussion since the time of the Stoics. It withdraws attention from the relative and transient feeling of pleasure to the permanence of the living being. Thus, with the Stoics, the notion of self-preserva- tion was accompanied by an ethics hostile to in- dulgence in pleasure ; while, on the other hand, in Spinoza and in Hobbes, pleasure was recognised as the natural consequence of self -preserving acts the former defining it as a transition from less to greater perfection, the latter as the sense of what helps the vital functions. The theory of evolution has, of course, not only its distinctive contribution to make to the connection between self-preservation 1 Data of Ethics, p. 25. 206 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. and pleasure a subject already referred to, but also shows how an increasing harmony has been produced between acts which tend to self-preserva- tion and those which tend to social-preservation. With Mr Spencer these two points are united. His doctrine that the " conduct which furthers race- maintenance evolves hand-in-hand with the con- duct which furthers self - maintenance " l is pre- liminary^to the establishment of the proposition that the highest life is one in which egoistic and " altru- istic" acts harmonise with one another and with external conditions : "the life called moral is one in which this moving equilibrium reaches completeness or approaches most nearly to completeness." 2 - As has been already pointed out, 3 it is not the case, in the present state of human life, that egoistic servation. ^^ altruistic tendencies, even when properly under- stood, always lead to the same course of conduct ; and even the theory of evolution does not do away with the necessity for a " compromise " between them. But, even had the theory of evolution' over- come the opposition between the individual and social standpoints, much would still remain to be done for the purpose of constructing a system of ethics, or determining the ethical end. It seems better, therefore, to pass over at present the con- flict of competing interests. According to Pascal, 1 Data of Ethics, p. 16. 2 Ibid., p. 71. 3 See above, chap. vi. p. 137 ff. THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 207 " the entire succession of men, the whole courses, of ages, is to be regarded as one man always living and always learning/ 1 And this is a suggestion which the theory of evolution only states more definitely, though it cannot completely vindicate it. On this supposition, self-preservation is social- preservation, and the possibly divergent interests of the individual and the whole are left out of account. The end for the race then is, according to the theory most explicitly stated by von Baer, a state of " moving equilibrium " : and to this state of affairs we are at least, Mr Spencer holds, indu- bitably tending. In the final stage of human devel- opment, man will be perfectly adapted to the con- ditions of his environment, so that, to each change without, there will be an answering organic change. The ideal which seems to be held up to us is that of a time in which there will be no more irksome fretting in the machinery of life, and circumstances will never be unpropitious, because the organism will never be wanting in correspondence with them. If this adaptation be adopted as the practical (a) AS the end for conduct under present conditions, and not pr ese nt merely as describing a far-off ideal to which we l; ^^ are supposed to be tending, man may continue to progress; manifest a law of progress, but its initiation will be from external conditions. If " adaptation to en- vironment" is consistently made the end, activity will have to be restricted to suiting one's powers 208 THE THEOKY OF EVOLUTION. to an external order of nature, and desire will have to be curbed when it does not bring the means of satisfaction along with it. " Bene latere " will again be an equivalent for " bene vivere," and hap- piness will have to be sought in withdrawal from the distractions of political life, and in the restriction of desire. It is strange to see the theory which is supposed to be based upon and to account for progress, returning in this way to an ideal similar to that in which the post-Aristotelian schools took refuge amid the decline of political and intellectual life in Greece. The end which Stoic and Epicurean alike sought in complete emancipation from the conditions of the external world, 1 is now, in more scientific phrase, made to consist in complete har- mony with these conditions. But, in their practical results, the two theories would seem scarcely to differ. It is not astonishing, therefore, if this gos- pel of renunciation finds little favour among prac- tical men in our day. It is seen that, if a man has not wants, he will make no efforts, and that, if he make no efforts, his condition can never be bettered. Thus social reformers have often found that the classes they have tried to elevate did not feel the evil of their lot as their benefactors saw it, and they have had to create wants before attempt- ing to satisfy them. 2 And the practical tendency 1 Zeller, Phil. d. Griechen, 3d ed., III. i. 454, 470. 2 Lassalle's tirade against the " verdammte Bediirfnisslosigkeit " of the German workman is a case in point. THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 209 finds its counterpart in speculative opinion, so that, whereas Epicurus placed happiness in freedom from wants, modern hedonism usually considers a man the happier the more wants he has and is able to supply. 1 This practical tendency brings out the truth that does not it is not only by the subordination of self to cir- sen t the cumstances, and the restriction of desire to present evolution. means of satisfaction, that the required harmony between outer and inner relations can be brought about. The other alternative is open : circum- stances may be subordinated to self. For this lat- ter alternative the theory of evolution seems really to leave room as much as for the former. It is ex- cluded only when a one-sided emphasis is laid on the necessity of adaptation to environment. For evolution implies a gradually increasing heterogen- eity of structure as the prelude to perfect agree- ment with circumstances : " the limit of heterogen- eity towards which every aggregate progresses is the formation of as many specialisations and com- binations of parts as there are specialised and com- bined forces to be met." 2 The end of evolution is a correspondence between inner and outer which is not produced by the easy method of both being very simple, but which is consistent with, and indeed requires, the complexity and heterogeneity pro- 1 Lange, Gesch. d. Materialismus, 2d ed., ii. 458. 2 Spencer, First Principles, p. 490. 210 THE THEOKY OF EVOLUTION. duced in both by constant interaction. 1 The greater this complexity, the more filled with sensation, emotion, and thought life is, the greater is what Mr Spencer calls its " breadth." But, if " adaptation " is still regarded as expressing the end, then, the more perfect this adaptation is, the less room seems left for progress, and the end of human conduct is placed in a state of moving equilibrium in which action takes place without a jar and without dis- turbing the play of external conditions. 2 (6) AS Mr Spencer, accordingly, goes on to say 2 that " for the better preservation of life the primitive simple presentative feelings must be controlled by the later-evolved compound and representative feel- ings," he is really passing to a different standard without giving up the former. The sympathy with injured Zulus or Afghans which would be approved by Mr Spencer 3 may be a more indirect, represen- tative, or re-representative feeling, than the senti- ments which led to British invasion, and, as such, may be more to be commended. But it would be rash to say that sympathy with the " British in- terests " supposed to be at stake interests of com- merce, and of the balance of jpolitical power, as well as those arising from the subtle effect of national prestige is less complex than the feeling of sympathy with a people dispossessed of its ter- ritory. The latter feeling may be more indirect or representative, as implying an imaginative appro- 1 Although Mr Spencer holds that representativeness varies as definiteness, and measures complexity, including that complexity implied by increasing heterogeneity. Principles of Psychology, ii. 516 f. 2 Data of Ethics, p. 113. 3 Cf . Principles of Sociology, ii. 725. 234 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. neither of which can serve as an ethical standard. priation of the circumstances of another community ; but, so far as structure is concerned, it is composed of far fewer and simpler component elements than the feeling for British interests. Nor, on the other hand, can we allow ourselves to take refuge in the conclusion that, if the more complex emotion cannot be held to be better morally, then that which is later in evolution may at least be regarded as of higher authority than the earlier evolved feeling. According to Mr Spencer, the man who obtains by fraud the money to support his family is to be condemned, because, although we admit the claim his family have upon him, " we regard as of superior authority the feelings which respond to men's proprietary claims feelings which are re-representative in a higher degree and refer to more remote diffused consequences." x But were this the ground of distinction, we ought also to regard the feelings^ prompting a man to distribute his fortune in any foolish enterprise " as of superior authority " to those which prompt him to support his family, if only the former are " re-representative in a higher degree," and their consequences more " remote " and " diffused." Many of the greatest evils which infect social life and warp the moral feelings of men, are evils which are only possible as the result of a highly advanced civilisation and a refined and delicate organisation of the mind. 1 Data of Ethics, p. 123. THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 235 The factitious sentiments raised by a subtle casu- istry with the effect of confusing the ordinary dis- tinctions of right and wrong are, in almost all cases, more indirect and re-representative than the feelings in harmony with the moral consciousness of the community which they set aside in the individual conscience. So obvious, indeed, are objections of this kind objections, that is to say, taken from the impossibility of so applying the criterion as to construct a workable system of morals that Mr Spencer virtually relinquishes his own theory, talking of it as true only " on the average," 1 and even allowing that it is in some cases suicidal. 2 As it cannot be held that the more complex in evolution is of greater authority than the less complex, nor that the later in evolution has such authority over the earlier, we must admit that the so-called " fundamental characteristics " of evolu- tion, which find a place in its definition or "for- mula," are unable to determine its value in an ethical regard. The richness of life, physical, in- tellectual, and social, has indeed been produced only as the result of a long course of development, and by the assimilation of many various elements into a complex organisation ; but its value cannot be measured either by the test of mechanical com- plexity, or by the length of time it has taken to evolve. We must therefore seek some other 1 Data of Ethics, pp. 107, 129. 2 Ibid., p. 110. 236 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. method of giving a meaning to evolution in the region of moral values ; and we find Mr Spencer himself really falling back in his discussion on the more general answer to our question, that the end of evolution is life : " evolution becomes the highest possible when the conduct simultaneously achieves the greatest totality of life in self, offspring, and fellow-men." 1 Since it appears, then, that the char- acteristic of complexity or variety is as unsatis- factory a criterion of morality, as the notion of " adaptation to environment " was found to be, we must ask for some further interpretation of the notion of " development " or " increase of life " when regarded as the end of conduct. 3. Further vel . have as yet found it has always proceeded on the assumption that life is desirable, and that it has life as the a y a l ue which makes its pursuit and promotion a reasonable moral end. How this fundamental ethical assumption 2 is to be justified, I do not at present inquire. But the question must now be faced What is meant by " life " when we say 1 Data of Ethics, p. 25; cf. Lange, Ges. d. Mat., ii. 247. Lange's statement is noteworthy : " Die menschliche Vernunft kennt kein anderes Ideal, als die moglichste Erhaltung und Ver- vollkommnung des Lebens, welches einmal begonnen hat, verbun- den mit der Einschrankung von Geburt und Tod." 2 The " endeavour to further evolution, especially that of the human race," is put forward as a " new duty" by Mr F. Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development (1883), p. 337. THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 237 that its " increase " or " development " is the moral end, and speak of its " greatest totality " in a way that implies that it admits of quantitative measurement ? The biological definition of life is Biological definition of itself matter of dispute. But, even were such a de- finition as that proposed by Mr Spencer agreed to, C1 it would be insufficient to provide a standard for human conduct. The very generality which may make it fit to stand as a definition, or at least abstract description, of life, renders it at the same time incapable of serving as a criterion by which the various modes of the manifestation of life may be judged. One point, however, generally empha- sised by the theory of evolution, may be admitted. The life which human conduct " ought " to increase is not merely that of one individual man, but the whole life of the community " self, offspring, and fellow-men " with which the individual life is bound up. Evolution has shown how the growth of the individual has been so dependent upon that of the whole body of society that it is impossible to separate their interests. At the same time, no complete identity has been brought about, and it remains one of the greatest difficulties of any em- pirical theory to harmonise their competing claims. For argument's sake, however, and to admit of the quality of the end being investigated apart from considerations as to the method of distribution, the question may be discussed as if natural selection 238 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. had produced complete solidarity between the life of the individual and that of the race. "What criterion have we, then, of the development of human nature or life ? The answer at once sug- gests itself that the higher evolution of life can be accurately measured by the amount of pleasure got by living beings. But this view has been examined in the preceding chapter, and found to be unsup- ported by sufficient evidence ; so that we are driven to seek for some non-hedonistic criterion that will give meaning to the phrase " development " or "increase of life," when prescribed as. the ethical end. Health as Nor is the matter made any clearer by saying that either used the " health" of society is the end we ought to pro- rnote. 1 Tnis nas been P ut forward as an interpre- tation of the hedonistic principle, which brings that principle into accord with the theory of evolution. As such, however, it seems open to fatal objections. Given as an explanation of " pleasure," it falls back upon the notion of "life"; for health can only be 1 Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 121 ; Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 366. Earlier than either of these writers, Dr Hutchison Stir- ling suggested Health as a practical principle to be set against the anarchy of individualism. But with him, it is not an empirical generalisation of the tendency of evolution. It is as " the out- ward sign of freedom, the realisation of the universal will," that " health may be set at once as sign and as goal of the harmonious operation of the whole system as sign and as goal of a realisation of life." Secret of Hegel, ii. 554. THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 239 defined as that which conduces to continued and energetic life. Further than this, there is a special difficulty in adopting health as the proximate end where pleasure is the ultimate end. Even if we could assert that health always leads to pleasure, it is not evident that it is better known, or more easily made the end, than pleasure. For of present pleasure we have a standard in our own conscious- ness from which there is no appeal. And, although the value of a series of pleasures is much harder to estimate, there is also no slight difficulty in saying what will promote the efficiency or health of an organism. Besides, the question arises whether health really corresponds with pleasure; and this is, in another form, the question which has been already answered in the negative, whether life can be measured by pleasure. On the other hand, if " health " is to be taken or fails back not as an explanation of or means to pleasure, but as notion of a substitute for the notion of " life," then we hardly llfe - get beyond our original terms. " Health " must be interpreted simply as that which leads to strong and continued life : so that the only information to be got from the new term is that the life we are to promote must be vigorous and long ; and this was already implied in saying that it is the increase or development of life that is the end. It will not do to identify the notion with the mere balance of physiological functions which, in common language, 240 THE THEOKY OF EVOLUTION. appropriates to itself the term " health." We must include the health of the soul as well as the health of the body, and the health of society as well as the health of the soul. The balance of mental and social, as well as of physiological, functions, is im- plied in the complex life of whose evolution we form a part. To say that we are to promote this balance of various functions, is to say nothing more than that we are to promote the life into which physical and mental and social factors enter. The attempt to arrive at an end for conduct, by consid- eration of the characteristics of evolution, has been made without success. It has been found, too, that " development " or " increase of life " does not admit of translation into the language of hedonism : and the question thus arises, how we are to define this end, which we are unable to interpret in terms of pleasure. ways of What meaning can be given to the notion " in- crease of life " as the end of conduct, without inter- P r eting life in terms of pleasure ? Can we, the question may be put, reach a " natural " good as dis- tinct from " sensible good " or pleasure ? We must discard at the outset any such " rational " view of nature as gave colour to the Stoic doctrine by iden- tifying nature with the universal reason. And we must equally avoid the doctrine that reason regulative of conduct is manifested in the constitution of man either in a distinct faculty, such as " conscience," or THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 241 in the due regulation of the various impulses. Tren- delenburg's teleological conception of human na- ture, for instance, implies a rational element which could not be got from the causal sequence traced by evolution. 1 For he determines the essence of man by reference to the inner end of his constitution, and postulates an organic unity of impulses which, in the form of conscience, protests against self- seeking action on the . part of any single impulse. But no other hierarchy of motives can be admitted here than that produced by the natural law of evo- lution; and this law can only show how one im- pulse, or class of impulses, has become more author- itative, by showing how it has become stronger or more persistent : the other methods of evolving this authority on the basis of naturalism, do so by means of the pleasurable or painful consequences of motives and actions. There are two ways in which, on most or all either sub- ethical theories, the attempt may be made to dis- i^^S*. tinguish "good" from "bad" conduct. We may either look to a subjective motive or impulse as giving the means of distinction, or we may test conduct by its conformity with an objective stand- ard. If we like to make use of the terms self-pre- servation and self-development, then these may refer either to the subjective impulse which urges man to preserve or develop his life, or to some objective 1 Naturrecht auf dem Grunde der Ethik, 2d ed., 1868. Q 242 THE THEOKY OF EVOLUTION. standard for estimating actions according as they actually tend to prolong life or enrich it. Both these possibilities are open to the theory of evolu- tion. Although the subjective impulse is, of course, a property of the individual, it may be the result of the whole course of social development, and thus take in others as well as self in the range of its application. It is therefore necessary to examine both methods of determination with some care, especially as we are in no little danger of reaching an illusory appearance of conclusiveness by allow- ing the subjective standard to rest on the objective, and the objective, in turn, on the subjective. To begin with the subjective side. It may be ard : most thought that we can point to some impulse, tendency, Impulses* motive, or class of motives in the individual mind by folio wing which the evolution of life will be promoted, and that we are thus able to solve the question of practical ethics, though our conception of what the evolution of life connotes may still be in want of exact definition. As already pointed out, such an impulse (unless it depends on an objective standard) must carry its own authority with it by its strength or persistency. The case would, of course, be per- fectly simple, if we could assert that the carrying out of all impulses in one's nature was to be ap- proved as tending to the development of life. Could this assertion be made, there might be no difficulty in ethics, or rather, there might be no ethics at all, THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 243 because there would be no difficulty in conduct. It is obvious, however, that the development of one natural tendency often conflicts with that of another in the same individual, as well as with the tendencies of other individuals. The course of evolution has no doubt tended to modify, though it has not rooted out, the impulses which are most prejudicial to in- dividual and social welfare. But the increase of wants as well as satisfactions which it has brought about in human nature, makes it doubtful whether it has on the whole tended to diminish the conflict of motives. Again, when it is said that a man should " be implies dis- himself," or that this is his " strongest tendency," l tween per- there is an implicit reference to a distinction between a permanent and a transient, or a better and a worse self self, and it seems to be imagined that this distinction can be reduced to difference in degrees of strength. But evolution has not enabled us to obviate Butler's objection to taking the "strongest tendency" meaning by this the tendency which is at any time strongest as representing "nature." For it is an undeniable fact that the tendency which for a time is the strongest it may even be that which is strongest throughout an individual life frequently leads to a diminution of vital power on the part of the agent, as well as to interference with the free exercise of the vital powers of others. Some advan- 1 Cf. E. Simcox, Natural Law, p. 97. 244 THE THEOEY OF EVOLUTION. tage is gained, perhaps, by substituting for " strong- est " the nearly equivalent phrase " most persistent " tendency. All those impulses which have in the past served to promote life have been chosen out and stored up as a sort of permanent basis for the human fabric ; whereas other impulses, not so ad- vantageous in their effects, have a less permanent influence, though they are not less real. The more regular or persistent class of impulses may, there- fore, (the idea is) be taken as representing the course of the evolution by which they have been produced. but includes To a large extent this distinction of two classes iinpiiiseTin ^ impulses is justified. There seems no doubt that the former, j.] ie soc j a ^ an( j wna t are usually termed moral, feelings have a tendency to return into consciousness after any temporary depression or exclusion, which is not shared by some of the feelings with which they most commonly conflict. Other impulses, not usually classed as moral, no doubt share this char- acteristic of persistency or recurrence. " The wish for another man's property," says Darwin, "is as persistent a desire as any that can be named/' The selfish feelings have obviously this persistent char- acter. But an evolutionist may perhaps maintain that it is one of the defects of ordinary moral opinion that it depreciates the necessity and value for life of the selfish feelings, just because they are so strong as to stand in need of no encouragement. And it is THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 245 not necessary that the evolutionist morality should agree at all points with ordinary moral opinion or moral intuition. It recognises, or ought to recognise the agency of immoral as well as moral forces, ad- mitting that it is by the action of both of these that man as he is at present has been produced, although the principle of the survival of the fittest has tended, though by no means uniformly, towards the elimina- tion of the immoral factor. We may admit, therefore, that there is a pressure on the will of the average individual towards certain kinds of conduct rather than others, or, put more precisely, that while all acts are performed in consequence of pressure on the will, the pressure towards certain kinds of acts is a permanent force which, although overcome for the time, always tends to reassert itself, while the tendency towards other acts inconsistent with these is more intermittent and variable, and does not re- assert itself in the same way. But this subjective experience is so limited in accuracy and extent as to be an unfit test of morality. In the first place, selfish conduct is as necessary for the preservation and development of man as " altruistic " conduct, and must therefore have given rise to an equally great and persistent pressure on the will : so that the subjective criterion of persist- ency leaves untouched what is often regarded as the most difficult question of morals, the balance of social and individual claims. In the second place, this 246 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. define nature of morality. is restricted subjective tendency is only a recurrence of antece- hawts of dent advantageous characteristics, and does not lead ' tmg ' us beyond the status quo, so that, if any progress is to be made in the future, it will be only possible through the pressure of new external conditions : no function is left for any ethical ideal which points beyond and cannot past and present habits of action. In the third place, subjective tendency only enables us to say generally that some acts or tendencies are more persistent than others, without giving any further description of what sort of acts these are. Were these tend- encies or impulses a perfect guide to conduct, this defect would be of little practical consequence. It would prevent our having a definite ethical theory only in circumstances in which no ethical theory would be likely to be asked for. But the line be- tween the more and less persistent motives is a narrow and shifting one. The impulses which are the residua of advantageous ancestral actions are counteracted by other impulses, residua of actions which would not be counted as moral, though we inherit tendencies to them because they formed a real part of our ancestral activity. We therefore stand in need of some characteristic by which to distinguish the one class of tendencies from the other. And as the only subjective characteristic is that of strength or persistency, and this has been found insufficient, an objective standard is shown to be necessary. THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 247 The impossibility of the subjective test doing Thus sub- duty alone without support from some objective Standard criterion, is practically acknowledged by the writer ^ n e d w t " who has discussed this part of the subject with depend on greater penetration than any other investigator on the same lines. "The average man," it is said, " feels the pressure upon his own individual will of all the unknown natural sequence of motive which caused his ancestors to do on the whole more often the right thing than the wrong " 1 or, as we must read it without objective assumption, " to do on the whole more often one class of acts than another." The right must be defined simply as that to which this " special feeling in the sub- ject is directed," and it therefore becomes necessary " to discover what descriptions of acts inspire this feeling." 2 Thus, with greater facility than would be permitted to a critic, we are made to pass from the subjective to the objective method of determination. The question, What is right? is thus relinquished (6) objective for the question, What is good ? Good is said to s be of three kinds natural, sensible, and moral. But as by sensible good is meant pleasure, 3 and pleasure is not the end, and as by moral good is meant "the pursuit of natural good under dif- ficulties," 4 it follows that natural good is the 1 Simcox, Natural Law, p. 86. 2 Ibid., p. 87. 3 Ibid., p. 90. 4 Ibid., p. 99. 248 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. end we seek. We have thus to determine, as exactly as may be, this objective standard called natural good. It is interpreted in two ways, which, however, may be " not necessarily inconsistent " : (a) "the perfection of the type as it is," and (/3) " the absolute abundance and variety of vital power." l (a) confer- This phrase, "the perfection of the type as type. it is," is somewhat misleading. When "the per- fection of the type " is said to be the end, we naturally regard the type as something that needs to be brought to perfection, and ex Jiypothesi is not perfect at present, or " as it is." But if " the per- fection of the type as it is " is the standard, this implies, unless the standard itself is faulty, that the type is already perfect, and, therefore, that the perfection spoken of is the characteristic of a thing which conforms to the type, and not something to which the type has to conform. This interpreta- tion is confirmed by the fact that imperfection is defined as " only departure from the class type." 2 Plainly, then, the objective standard meant is con- formity to the type. What, then, is the type ? Concerning things made by art the answer is easy. The type, as Mr Stephen puts it, represents the The type maximum of efficiency," 3 or, as we may say, is defined as . what that which most fully realises the purpose for 1 Simcox, Natural Law, p. 104. 2 Ibid., p. 87. 3 Science of Ethics, p. 76. X"' i THE EVOLUTIONIST END. ^49 >^L which the thing was formed. The best bow is best serves that which shoots truest and farthest with a lt] relatively small expenditure of strength by the archer ; that which best realises the purpose of a bow is the typical bow. A similar explanation of types may be given regarding animals modified by artificial selection. The typical pointer or hunter can be defined from this teleological point of view ; and, as long as people lived in the belief that all things were made for man, it was natural to fix the type of each class by reference to the human purpose it could best subserve. So also, as long as people think that, whether all things were made for man or not, all things may be made use of by him, there will be a tendency towards the same anthropomorphic interpretation of types. If, then, the typical products of art, and, to a large extent, the typical products of nature, are those which best serve human purposes, or best correspond with human ideals, how shall we define the typical man himself the type which it is our perfection to conform to ? " Every reasoning agent," it may perhaps be allowed, 1 " represents a certain type ; " but the type can no longer be defined merely as " maximum of effici- ency," for it is the end or purpose of this efficiency which now requires determination. In defining the typical man, we must have no idea of final cause 1 Science of Ethics, p. 74. 250 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. or purpose which is not rooted in the nature of his organism. How, then, shall we now determine the type in conformity to which perfection consists ? 1 or as the The first answer to this seems to be, that the type is what is normal, " what we have learned to regard as the normal development of objects belonging to " the class. 2 But the normal may have either of two meanings it may, in the first place, mean the usual or customary. This, how- ever, would make the typical man mean the ordi- nary or average man ; and the ideal of conformity to the type would be reduced to doing the cus- tomary thing, and not trying to be better than one's neighbours. But it is evident that this sta- tionary morality does not represent properly what is fundamental in the theory of evolution : " what- ever other duties men may acknowledge, they do not look upon it as a duty to preserve the species in statu quo. 1 ' 3 If natural science teaches one thing more clearly than another, it is that the type, like the individual, is not permanent, but the sub- ject of gradual modifications. If the type is what is normal, we must mean by " normal " something 1 Even were we to succeed in getting a satisfactory view of the type, we should still have to leave room for the individuality of each person, which is such that his function must differ in a manner corresponding to his peculiar nature and surroundings (cf. Lotze, Grundziige der praktischen Phil., p. 13 f.) 2 Simcox, Natural Law, p, 88. 3 Ibid., p. 100. THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 251 else than customary. But the only other meaning O r as what of the word seems to imply a reference to a rule ^t vitality either a rule imposed from without, or an inner or l aids de ' velopment, constitution or order. If the former alternative is that is, adopted, then we may use another definition of Mr Stephen's, and say that " the typical organism is ... that organism which is best fitted for all the conditions of life, or, in other words, which has the strongest vitality ; " 1 and thus have to fall back either on the notion of " adapta- tion to environment," or on that of " strongest vitality " the notion we are seeking to interpret. If the other meaning, which the reference to a rule may convey, be adopted, then we are met by the fact that the inner order or constitution which is to be our guide, can (from our present empirical point of view) mean nothing different from the line of development. And as we have already seen that it is unsatisfactory to interpret this as equivalent to adaptation to environment, or to increase of definiteness, coherence, and heterogeneity, this prin- ciple of conformity to the type is reduced to the general principle which we have been attempting to define more exactly increase of life. Thus the first "determination of natural good os)Abun- . dance and as " perfection of the type is seen to reduce variety of itself to the second, " absolute abundance and V1 variety of vital power." For the additional state- 1 Science of Ethics, p. 120. 252 THE THEOKY OF EVOLUTION. ment, which, makes the highest excellence consist in "conformity to the type as it is going to be, but as, except in a few chosen specimens, it is not yet discernible to be," l is unsatisfactory. For to those " few chosen specimens " the end would seem to be simply to remain as they are a con- clusion which is hardly consistent for a writer who regards morality as a continual progress to- wards a higher life, a process of " climbing." 2 And, for the generality of men, there must be some standard for determining what is " going to be," and for certifying that the " few chosen speci- mens " have realised this state in its perfect form. Thus " conformity to the type as it is going to be," equally with " perfection of [conformity to] the type as it is," seems to be but another way of saying " abundance and variety of vital power," or, more fully stated, " the possession of abundant faculties, active and passive, fully developed, and in regular and equal exercise." 3 The question thus comes to be how we are to determine this " abundance of faculties." We cannot do so by reference to such characteristics as increase in the number and complexity of these faculties ; for a criterion of this kind, as we have seen, is of no 1 Simcox, Natural Law, p. 104. 2 Ibid., p. 103. 3 Ibid., p. 89 ; cf . J. T. Punnet, Mind, x. 91 : " What the progress -principle makes its aim and end is not complexity, but the highest and choicest fruits of complexity the harmonious unfolding of all the latent capacities of man." THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 253 assistance in deciding the most fundamental ethical questions. To say that these faculties must be " regular and equal " in their exercise, is to give a merely formal canon. For how the equality and regularity are to be brought about, which faculties are to be supreme and which subordin- ate what meaning equality can have in view of the admitted diversity in a man's nature, are questions left altogether undetermined. And to describe the ideal or perfect universe as one in which there is no conflict or collision, 1 is to give a description which is negative as well as merely formal. We are thus obliged to fall back on which fails a subjective criterion, and say that the abundant subjective 6 life which it is the end of conduct to promote standard - is a man's strongest tendencies, or the greatest number of these. Natural good is determined by " preferring out of all the rudimentary possibilities existing in nature, the combination that harmon- ises the greatest number of the strongest tenden- cies." 2 We set out, be it remembered, to obtain a characterisation of those acts to which the most persistent tendencies of human nature lead us ; and the conclusion we have arrived at is, that they are the acts which harmonise the greatest number of the strongest tendencies. The objective stand- Iu 0f real tendencies" Natural Law, p. 98. But what tendencies are not real ? 2 Natural Law, p. 98. 254 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. Strongest tendencies the result of past activities, ard is thus reduced to the subjective standard, which it was brought in to explain and support. Now these strongest tendencies, in the harmoni- ous play of which natural good or perfection is said to consist, are themselves the result of the courses of conduct which have been most vigorous and suc- cessful in ancestral organisms, and they may there- fore, perhaps, be taken as a survival and index of the antecedent state of human nature. The realis- ation or, rather, continuation of human nature as it has been and is, seems thus to be the ideal which empirical evolution is able to set before conduct, with this formal modification, that, while the various impulses are, so far as possible, to have free play given them, they should be developed in a harmonious manner. It seems doubtful how far this tendency towards harmony is properly suggested by, or consistent with, evolution, which has implied a ceaseless struggle of opposing forces. At any rate, evolution does not seem competent to give any principle of relative subordination between the various impulses, such as might add reality to the formal principle of harmony. But what it is essential to lay stress on here is, that the only end which empirical evolution seems able to estab- lish is conformity to human nature as it is the tendencies in it which are strongest and most persistent. We thus see that the attempt to explain on THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 255 empirical grounds what is meant by positing " life," or "increase and variety of life," as the end of action, is practically reduced to making the most persistent impulses of human nature the guide of conduct. But these impulses, it has been shown, are only the survival or remnant of past stages in the course of development, not anticipations of future stages : so that evolution is in this way and thus i i P -IIP i T give no ideal incapable or giving an ideal or progress as the end for p rogr ess. for conduct, and the last word it seems able to give us as a guide for action is that we should tread in the places where the footprints of ancestral conduct have left the deepest impress. The ideal of such a system is summed up in the new Beatitude, "Blessed is he that continueth where he is." It is probably just because the empirical aspect of evolution seems so little able to yield an end for human conduct corresponding to the actual course of evolution which has been progress that no thorough attempt has been made to develop a system of morals from the principle just reached. It is true that systems have been worked out by moralists who have taken human nature as their standard, and that Trendelenburg, at any rate, expressly includes historical development in his conception of man. But both Trendelenburg and a moralist like Butler (who has as yet no conception of the gradual modifications of human character and tendencies produced by evolution) have a view 256 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. of human nature essentially distinct from that which has been called the " naturalistic " view. 1 For both assume a definite rational organisation of impulses similar to that taught in Plato's analogy between the individual man and a political consti- tution, so that the whole nature, or human nature as a whole, cannot be identified with the impulses which strength at any time makes most persistent, but depends upon the rational allotment of function and measure to each. summary. In summing up the argument of the preceding chapters, it is necessary to refer again to the dis- cussion carried on in chapter vi. on the relation between egoism and altruism as affected by the Difficulty of theory of evolution. This discussion was not in- indivixiuTf serted in order to throw an additional obstacle in and social fa Q wa y obtaining an ethical end from the em- ends. J pirical theory of evolution. It is an integral part of an attempt to estimate the ethical value of the evolution -theory. The antinomy between the in- dividual and social standpoints cannot be solved by a theory of morality which does not recognise that the individual, in his rational nature, is not i Cf. Trendelenburg, Naturrecht, p. 45 : " Von der philoso- phischen Seite kann es kein anderes Princip der Ethik geben als das menschliche Wesen an sich, d. h., das menschliche Wesen in der Tiefe seiner Idee und im Reichthum seiner historischen Entwickelung. Beides gehort zusammen. Denn das nur His- torische wiirde blind und das nur Ideale leer." THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 257 opposed to other individuals, but in reality one with them. The theory of evolution certainly seems to go a long way towards establishing the unity of the individual with the race, and in substituting an organic connection between them, in place of the almost contingent reciprocal relations spoken of in earlier empirical theories. But when we come to inquire into this unity of organic connection, at- tempting still to keep to the purely empirical point of view, we find that the old difficulties return, that it must be recognised that the connection is em- pirically incomplete, and that it gives way at the very places where a firm basis for the theory of morals is required. It was in this way that, quite apart from this opposition between the in- dividual and the whole, the empirical character of the theory prevented our getting from it any clear and consistent notion of the ethical end it leads to. It appeared at first that the ethics of evolution, Hedonistic when interpreted empirically, might be easily re- tfonof evoi- conciled with the older theory of hedonism, by identifying life with pleasure holding that the highest or most evolved life is that which contains most pleasure, and that increase of pleasure is therefore the end of conduct. In this way the end of evolutionism would be reduced to the end of utilitarianism. Some utilitarians, on the other hand, sought to get rid of the difficulties of their calculus, B 258 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. by the assumption that the greatest pleasure would be found by following the direction of evolution. But, around both points of view, and the correspondence they assumed to exist between pleasure and evolu- tion, special difficulties were seen to gather. Any hedonistic theory might be met by the assertion that life is essentially a painful experience, and pleasure unattainable ; and although the grounds on which this assertion was made seemed to be distinctly erroneous, and hedonism did not appear to be an impossible theory of conduct, yet a similar objection told with greater force against the com- bination of evolutionism and hedonism. For it holds the double position that the end is to pro- mote life, and that life is to be promoted by adding to pleasure ; or else, that the end is pleasure, but that pleasure is to be got by following evolution. It postulates, therefore, that the progress of life tends, and tends even in a proportionate degree, to the increase of pleasure. Yet we could obtain no proof that this progress does, as a matter of fact, increase pleasure in any regular way. On the con- trary, the facts of experience seemed to show that life and pleasure do not advance proportionately, nor even always concomitantly. But a still more important and fundamental objection to the hedon- istic form of evolutionism was deduced from the nature of pleasure itself; for it can be modified indefinitely, and always follows in the wake of THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 259 function. Thus the sole intelligible account we can give of what conduct will bring the greatest pleasure is, that it is the conduct which calls forth the greatest amount of successful energising, that which employs the greatest number and the strong- est of the human faculties. Hence, instead of being able to measure life by pleasure, we were driven to interpret pleasure in terms of life. And perhaps at first sight it seemed that the NO indepen- dent ethical theory of evolution could lead us beyond the pleas- ideal afford- ure- basis of older Naturalism. But, when the theory of matter was examined more closely, without depart- evolution - ing from the empirical point of view, it was found that the notions put forward were unsatisfactory, - that they did not represent the progressive nature of the course of evolution, and that their apparent force fell away before logical analysis. It became evident, in the first place, that no appropriate end of human conduct could be derived from the nature of evolution in general. It is true that adaptation to environment is necessary for life ; but to put for- ward such adaptation as the end for action, is to set up a practical goal which corresponds but ill with the facts from which it professes to be taken,, mak- ing the theory which is supposed to account for progress establish no end by pursuit of which pro- gress becomes possible for human action. Further than this, it neglects a factor in evolution as neces- sary to it as is adaptation to environment the ele- 260 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. ment, namely, of variation. A theory which took the latter as well as the former of these factors into account seemed, in the next place, to be given by those general characteristics which are said to mark all progress increase of definiteness, coherence, and heterogeneity. But from these, again, it was found impossible to elicit a coherent and consistent rule for determining right and wrong in conduct, or a definite end for action: they were too abstract and mechanical to suit the living organism of hu- man conduct ; and we were thus driven back on the more general statement that " life " or the " increase of life " is the end after which we should strive. In inquiring into the meaning which could be given to this end, without interpreting it as pleasure, it was found, after tracing it through various forms of expression, that it reduced itself to making a man's strongest and most persistent impulses both stand- ard and end. And this proved to be not only an uncertain and shifting guide for conduct, but an imperfect representation of what was to be expect- ed from a progressive, because evolutionist, ethics. For these persistent impulses could only be re- garded as the survival of past activities, and conse- quently, contained no ideal beyond that of continu- ing in the old paths, and re-treading an already well-beaten course. Just as from the external end of adaptation to environment, so from this internal THE EVOLUTIONIST END. 261 or subjective principle, no ideal for progress, ^or any definite end of action, could be obtained. It would appear, therefore, that the theory of evolution however great its achievements in the realm of natural science is almost resultless in ethics. It only remains now to inquire whether this want of competency to determine practical ends may not be due to the superficiality of the ordinary empirical interpretation of evolution, which has hitherto been adhered to. 262 CHAPTER IX. ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. THE peculiarity of the conclusion we have reached is, that the theory which is used to explain the nature of progress, seems unable to give any canon or end for conduct which points out the way for progressive advance. The view of human nature became unsatisfactory just at the critical point when we attempted to get at a knowledge of its end or final cause, which would give unity and purpose to action. To say that the end is increase of life or function appeared a merely formal notion unless we defined life as pleasure, while pleasure itself was found to be unintelligible except as perform- ance of function. This uncertainty seems to indi- cate a certain superficiality in the ordinary empiri- cal way of looking at evolution. 1 1 The empirical interpretation of evolution is that adopted by the majority of evolutionists, but is not essential to the truth of the theory. A protest against it is entered by Mr Wallace, though in the somewhat crude form of postulating supernatural inter- ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 2G3 The principles involved in the theory of evolution i. principles are, in brief, as follows. In the first place, it shows th* theory of that there is a tendency, brought about by natural evolution - selection, for organisms to harmonise with or be- come adapted to their environment a tendency, that is to say, towards unity of organism and envi- ronment, and, in so far as external conditions are uniform, towards a general unity of life. In the second place, the theory implies variation in organisms, produced either by the unequal in- cidence of external forces, or by the spontane- ous action of the organism, or by both causes combined. The mere increase in the number of living organisms leads to a modification of the conditions of life by which new variations are encouraged. And this tendency to variation in organisms not merely the diversity of external environment is perpetually complicating the con- ditions which the former tendency, that towards unity, helps to bring into harmony. It thus hap- pens that there is, in the third place, a continual process of readjustment and oscillation between the tendency towards unity and that towards va- riety, which, through opposition and conciliation, produces continuity in nature. Each newly formed ference for the production of certain classes of phenomena (cf. Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, p. 359), at the same time that his conception of nature does not seem to differ otherwise from that of Hiickel. 264 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. unity between organism and environment is broken by a new variation of the organism or of the envi- ronment, which further complicates the problem to be solved by the unifying process, and gives scope for a more intricate and more comprehensive re- adjustment. Unity, Variety, and Continuity are thus the three principles implied in the theory of evolution. 1 2. unsucces- It is from these principles that the attempt has tioiTofthese been made to show the ethical bearing of evolution. toS?! The first of them > Unit y> is represented in the theory that would make adaptation to environment the end of conduct ; and the second is represented ethically in the doctrine suggested by Mr Spencer, that the degree of morality depends on the de- gree of complexity in act and motive. But both of these views are obviously one-sided, even from the point of view of empirical evolution. Taken together, the principles on which they depend make up that law of continuous and progressive advance which may be regarded as expressing the essential characteristic of the theory. And from this more general and accurate expression of it, we might have expected to have been able to elicit the contri- bution which evolution has to make to the deter- mination of the ethical end. But after examin- 1 The reference in the above to Kant, Werke, iii. 438 ff. , is obvi- ous ; but it is nevertheless a true account of the principles in- volved in the theory of evolution. ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 265 ing the various forms which it may take, we have been unable to obtain from it a principle of action. In inquiring into the reason which has made the theory of evolution seemingly so barren in its ethical consequences, the first point which requires attention is that the characteristics of Unity, Vari- ety, and Continuity are treated by it not as princi- ples involved in development, but as theories in- ferred from, or superinduced upon, the facts of development. We are led by facts to suppose certain hypothetical laws namely, that organisms tend to harmony with their environment, but that there are certain causes promoting variation, and, consequently, that the history of all life is that of a continuous process towards more comprehensive uniformities, passing always into more intricate variations. Additional facts are compared with these hypothetical causes, and, by their ability to explain such facts, the hypotheses are raised to the position of laws of nature, and are confidently ap- plied to account for new phenomena of the same kind. But when we pass beyond facts lying imme- diately on the plane of those from which our laws have been gathered, it is to follow an insufficient analogy if we interpret them by theories only shown to belong to the former order. And this becomes still more obvious when the change is not merely to a different order of facts, but to a different way of looking at facts, as is the case in the transition 266 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. from the point of view of knowledge to that of action. notasde- But there is another way in which the principles Tprinc?!.^ of Unity, Variety, and Continuity may be regarded, ^perien^e; Instead of being simply generalisations gathered from experience and depending upon it, they may be founded on a principle which is itself the basis of the possibility of experience. Of course, no one would think of denying that it is to the accumulated mass of experienced facts that these laws owe their prominence in modern scientific opinion, and their acceptance by the judgment of the best scientists. But the process by which a man has been led to lay hold of such principles is one thing ; their logical position in relation to experience quite another. Our definite recognition of the laws may very well be the result of experience, at the same time that the principle of Continuity is presupposed in our having experience at all. As long as we kept to the ground from which we started, and did not attempt to get beyond the categories of causality and reci- procity, our progress might seem to be easy enough. Although their logical relations may be misconceived, the laws are, of course, actually there, in experience : their application to the successive phenomena of nature remains the same, and may be duly appre- hended. The extension of facts into laws is ex- plained by the scientific imagination, and we do not stay to inquire into the conditions on which the ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 267 scientific imagination works and has applicability to experience. But, when we try to pass from effi- cient cause to the notion of purpose or of morality, we find ourselves driven back on the fundamental constitution of knowledge, and see that it is only through the unifying and relating action of a self- conscious subject that knowledge is possible or things exist for us at all. And this is the reason why we are able to say that the Unity or Continuity of nature is a principle or law of experience. 1 Were that principle not involved in knowledge, there would be no world of nature for us at all. The empirical interpretation of evolution, which has been hitherto adopted, has made the negative side of this truth sufficiently evident : it has shown that we cannot, on empirical ground, reach the end or purpose of human nature. The question thus arises, whether what may be called the " metaphysical " or "transcendental" interpretation of evolution can show the reason of this defect and suggest a remedy. The insufficiency of the empirical way of look- (&) no logical ing at things is seen most clearly when we at- tempt to make the transition just referred to, and ^^0^ determine an end for conduct. It seems often to tinal cause - 1 Cf. Stirling, Secret of Hegel, ii. 615 : " One grand system, unity of type, all this must be postulated from the very constitu- tion of human reason ; but from the very constitution of experi- ence as well, it can never be realised in experience. " 268 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. be thought that, in pointing out the tendency of affairs, we are, at the same time, prescribing the end towards which human endeavour ought to be directed. Now, it is very difficult to say how far an empirical method enables us to anticipate tendencies of this kind at all. Even from the historical point of view the conditioning circumstances are so com- plicated that it is by no means easy to predict the result of their combination. It is argued, however, by Schaffle, 1 that we are at least able to see as far as the next stage in the series of historical progress, and this is thought to lead to the conclusion that we should make this next stage of development our end : further than it we cannot see, and therefore need not provide. If, then, we have no ultimate end for conduct, at least we need never be without a proximate end and one which is always changing with the course of events. Instead, therefore, of saying that we should take no thought for the morrow, the contention would seem to be that we should live for the morrow but take no thought for the day after. But here the altered point of view is scarcely concealed. From the discussion of effi- cient causes we proceed all at once to decide upon ends or final causes. We have shown (let it be granted) that, taking account of the present position and mode of action of the forces we are able to examine, they will modify the present state of affairs 1 Bau und Leben des socialen Korpers, ii. 68. ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 269 in a certain known manner. To-day we are in state A ; to-morrow we shall be in, or well on the way towards, state Ab ; therefore, runs the conclusion, implied or expressed, we ought to make Ab our end. But this is more than a fallacy due to the confusion of the two meanings of " end." The conclusion to which it leads is inconsistent with, or at least shows the one-sidedness of, the premisses from which it was drawn. For, if Ab is really the next term in the series of historical progress, our making it our end can neither help nor hinder its realisation. If, on the other hand, there is really a meaning in our making the world-end our own, then we cannot bring that end, the realisation of which is conceived as still in the future, under the category of efficient causality, and say with confidence that it is the next stage in the course of events. The idea does not work itself out in the same way 3. Difference as an efficient cause works in the processes of nature. "We might indeed speak perhaps with some intel- ^ o d tele * ligible meaning of the tendency of evolution be- coming conscious in man, and then working towards its own realisation as a fixed idea. So far as the simpler representations are concerned, this mode of action has been clearly illustrated in Mr Bain's writings ; and the characteristic is not limited to the less complex kinds of mental objects. The idea is, in its own nature, a force tending both to exist in consciousness and to realise itself through the 270 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. motor energies. 1 Consciousness of an end is a motive to action. Thus the notion of final cause includes that of efficient cause ; but the two are not convert- ible. The idea of an end, being conceived by reason, cannot be described simply as a tendency become conscious. It has passed into the region in which various conceptions are, or may be, competing against one another, and the resultant is decided on upon grounds which may be called subjective since they proceed from conscious determination. However the laws of this conscious determination may be ex- pressed, they are not to be identified with the natural sequence of events as it may be conceived to exist independently of the individual consciousness. What seems the tendency of things may be altered or modified upon some ground of preference by the conscious subject. In passing therefore to the work- ing out of a rational or mental idea such as is im- plied in the conception of an end we can no longer fully represent our notions by means of the deter- mined temporal succession called causality. These no- Thus the empirical standpoint leaves the case nectedby incomplete. A man might quite reasonably' ask empiricism, ^y ^ Q s } lou i ( j a( j pt as maxims of conduct the laws seen to operate in nature. The end, in this way, is not made to follow from the natural function of man. It is simply a mode in which the events of the world 1 Cf. Fouille'e, Critique des systemes de morale contemporains, p. 13 ff. ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 271 occur ; and we must, therefore, give a reason why it should be adopted as his end by the individual agent. To him there may be no sufficient grounds of induce- ment to become " a self-conscious agent in the evolu- tion of the universe." From the purely evolutionist point of view, no definite attempt has been made to solve the difficulty. It seems really to go no deeper than Dr Johnson's reply to Boswell, when the latter plagued him to give a reason for action : " ' Sir,' said he, in an animated tone, ' it is driving on the system of life/" 1 When any further an- swer is attempted now to the question, it appears to be on hedonistic grounds. But it is not certain that the next stage of even with development will bring more pleasure along with anceTf 8 " it than the present. Enough has already been hedonism - said of the difficulties and uncertainties which surround any attempt to interpret evolution as tending constantly to increased pleasure. It may be thought, however, that, if neither optimism nor pessimism is the conclusion to which we are led, the modified doctrine of what is called Meliorism may be accepted. And this theory which holds that the world is improving, that the balance of good over evil, or that of pleasure over pain, is on the increase might seem to form a convenient support to the present doctrine. Tor it may ap- pear to follow from it that, if the next stage in 1 Boswell's Life of Johnson, chap. liv. 272 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. the world-process that towards which evolution is tending is known, then we should make it our end to accelerate this stage, as it will be one which brings with it a better state of affairs than the present. But not even the most enthusiastic " meliorist " has tried to show anything more than that his doctrine holds true in general, and that, although progress has many receding waves, the tide of human happiness is rising. But we cannot tell how great these receding waves may be ; nor may we say that our action can have no power to check them. It follows, therefore, that, in judging of any special and temporary movement of events (and it is not pretended that our antici- patory knowledge of the future can extend far), we cannot assume that the second stage will be better than the first, or that voluntary modifica- tion of it if that be possible might not improve both the immediate result and its later conse- quences. It becomes necessary, therefore, to com- pare the value of the two by the directly pleasurable effects they may be expected to have, so that we are driven back to test the course of evolution by reference to some other principle. The further we go in examining an empirical theory, the clearer does it become that it can make no nearer approach to the discovery of an ethical end, than to point out what courses of action are likely to be the pleasantest, or what tendencies to action the strong- ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 273 est: while this can only be done within certain limits. The doctrine of evolution itself, when added to empirical morality, only widens our view of the old landscape does not enable us to pass from "is" to "ought," or from efficient to final cause, any more than the telescope can point beyond the sphere of spatial quantity. We are endeavouring to get at the idea or end New point of human nature in an impossible way when we tro attempt to reach it on purely empirical lines, and teleol sy think that, if we work long enough on them, we are sure to come to it. In the same way it was formerly thought by physiologists that, if we thor- oughly examined the brain with microscope and scalpel, we should come upon the seat of the soul at last, while psychologists were fain to believe that, in addition to all our presentations of ob- jects, we had also a presentation of the subject or thinking being. The mistake of both was in imagining that the soul was a thing amongst other things, or a presentation amongst other presenta- tions, instead of the subject and condition of there being either things or thoughts at all. Of a similar character is the attempt to get at an end or final cause without leaving the point of view of efficient causality. Were it successful, it would reduce final cause to mechanism. To look upon man or upon nature as manifesting an end implies an idea or notion of the object as a whole, over and above s 274 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. the mutual determination of its various parts, and thus necessitates the contemplation of it " as though an understanding contained the ground of the unity of the multiplicity of its empirical laws/' 1 It is the attempt to get at an external purpose for objects of experience that has made teleology be looked upon askance by men of science. A con- ception of this kind went far to vitiate physics in the middle ages, till it was, with justice, strictly excluded from the scientific interpretation of nature by the leaders of modern philosophy. 2 But tele- ology does not stand or fall with this external form of it, which takes its illustrations from the products of the factory, not from the manifestations of life, 3 and which is really only mechanism misunderstood, necessary in The conception of an end is forced upon us in me, 81 ' considering life, because then it is necessary to take account of the being as organised, and therefore as a whole. In the investigation of nature, on the other hand, things may be apprehended without relation to the conception of the whole ; and tele- ology, therefore, seems to be unnecessary. The notion of purpose, it is often said, is essential to biology, but out of place in physical science. But when we look on the world as a whole, the 1 Kant, Werke, v. 187 (Kr. d. Urt., Einl. iv.) 2 Descartes, Princ. pliil., iii. 3, i. 28 ; Bacon. De augm., iii. 5, Novum organum, ii. 2. 3 Cf. Kant, Werke, v. 387 (Kr. d. Urt., 65). ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 275 notion of end or purpose is introduced, and the functions of its various parts conceived from a new point of view. And the end of an organism can only be partially understood, when that organism is conceived as a whole apart from its environment. It is only a partial manifestation or example of the more perfect reality in which things are to be regarded as not merely conditioned and condition- ing, but as revelations of purpose. But, although the notion of purpose cannot be dispensed with in considering organic nature, the teleological notions we form of living things are imperfect and "ab- stract." Thus the organism is often, more or less explicitly, judged by its utility for some human purpose. In these cases the end is clearly 'an external and dependent one. And, when the adaptation of its parts is spoken of in relation to its type or perfect form, a conception is involved over and above what can be inferred from the nature of the organism in itself. The notion of the end depends upon a rational ideal, which passes beyond the causal interrelation of parts to the conception of the organism as a whole, whose function is necessarily related to its environment. Our knowledge of the ends of the lower animals and lif is really much more imperfect than our knowledge of the human end. For the only life we really know is self-conscious life, and that we are unable to attribute to them. We know their life only 276 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. by conjecture, our knowledge of it being but an abstraction from our own consciousness. The ethical, as Trendelenburg puts it, 1 is the higher stage of the process, a lower stage of which is the organic. The purpose, which is conceived as blind or unconscious in nature, becomes conscious and voluntary in man. But our notion of the former is simply an abstraction from the free and con- scious purpose which characterises our own activity. The conception of life is only known to us as is only an element or moment in our own self- consciousness. And life which is not self-con- scious can only be judged in relation to the self- consciousness which contains in itself the explana- tion both of life and of nature. The germ of truth in the old mechanical teleology may perhaps be seen in this way. For it had right on its side in so far as it referred everything to the self -con- sciousness manifested in man ; it was mistaken only in so far as it made things relative to his needs and desires. The teleological anthropomor- phism which judges all things according to their correspondence with human purposes, must be tran- scended, equally with the speculative anthropo- morphism which frames the unseen world in the likeness of the phenomena of our present experi- ence. But to attempt to escape from what is some- times called anthropomorphism the reference of 1 Historische Beitriige zur Philosophic, iii. 165. ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 277 the nature and purpose of things to self -conscious- ness, as expressive of the ultimate reality is to attempt to escape from thought itself, and makes one's thinking from the beginning void and con- tradictory. Now this reference to self has been omitted in 4. Reference . . T , ,. ^ Tr , toself-con- our consideration of empirical evolution. We nave SC i usness taken the purely objective ground of science, and % we have admitted what science has told us of how all sorts of things came to be, how man appeared on the earth, gradually adapted himself to his sur- roundings and modified them how sentiments ex- panded, customs grew, and one institution developed out of another. But science shows us all this only as an external process of events in space and time a process in which the preceding determines each succeeding state, and all parts are united together. It does not show us the process from the inside. And, in the end, it can do no more than point to- wards, without reaching, the comprehensive idea of a whole, by reference to which idea all the members of the whole are determined, in such a way that it is insufficient to look upon one as causing another, and with the others making up the aggregate ; since each member only exists for the sake of the whole, and the idea of the whole precedes the parts which constitute it. 1 The teleological conception thus necessarily leads us beyond the ordinary categories 1 Cf. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, iii. 228. 278 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. of science, by which all things are conceived as con- nected causally in space and time. But the scien- tific theories that we have been discussing do not recognise this altered point of view ; and, without giving any justification for the change of stand- point, lay down the moral law that we ought to aim at the realisation of something which can only be described as a mental conception or idea. Here a double change in point of view is involved. We are no longer considering a process going on outside us, in which the reference to self may be fairly ignored, but we put ourselves in relation to this external order : and we do so, not merely as cogni- tive, but as active as the potential source of actions which we say " ought " to be performed by us. (a) made The assumption involved in the former change is attempt^ 6 tna ^ m &de by comparative or evolutionist psycho- > w ^ en tt attempts to play the part of a theory peif-con- of knowledge. The development of impressions sciousness. and ideas is made to pass upwards to more compli- cated stages, till it reaches the point at which the individual, conceived as determined by external forces and reacting upon them, becomes conscious of itself as a subject of knowledge and source of action. This transition from the category of caus- ality to self - consciousness is, in some systems that of Mr Spencer, for example either concealed or held to with no firm grasp. Throughout his objective treatment of psychology, it would seem ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 279 that Mr Spencer is evolving mind or self-conscious- ness out of the process in which simple relations of matter and motion form the lowest stage, and reflex action is that which approaches most nearly to hav- ing mental characteristics. And, from this objective point of view, he speaks of his philosophy as an interpretation of "the detailed phenomena of life, mind, and society, in terms of matter, motion, and force." l But when he discusses the subjective side, he admits that it is entirely unique and sui generis? and adopts what is known as the "two aspects" theory the theory that mind cannot be accounted for as derived from matter, any more than matter can be accounted for as derived from mind, but that they are both phases of one ultimate and unknown reality. 3 This admission involves a practical acknow- ledgment that it is impossible to arrive at conscious- ness or at subjectivity by a process of natural devel- opment. We must, it affirms, postulate two aspects or phases of existence, or two lines of development, connected probably in their ultimate reality, but, as known to us, distinct from one another, and without mutual influence. The doctrine that a reference to self-conscious- Reference i . . . i -i i to self-con- neSS is implied in experience, may perhaps be made SC i usness, clearer by considering a criticism to which it has 1 First Principles, 194, p. 556. 2 Principles of Psychology, 56, i. 140. 3 Ibid., 272, 273, i. 624 ff. 280 OX THE BASIS OF ETHICS. recently been subjected by an able psychological writer. Professor W. James writes as follows : " The doctrine of the post-Kan tians, that all knowledge is also self-knowledge, seems to flow from this confusion [be- tween the psychologist's standpoint and the standpoint of the feeling upon which he is supposed to be making his re- port]. Empirically, of course, an awareness of self accom- panies most of our thinking. But that it should be needed to make that thinking ' objective ' is quite another matter. 4 Green-after-red-and- other- than-it ' is an absolutely complete object of thought, ideally considered, and needs no added element. The fallacy seems to arise from some such reflec- tion as this, that since the feeling is what it feels itself to be, so it must feel itself to be what it is namely, related to each of its objects. That the last is covers much more ground than the first, the philosopher here does not notice. The first is signifies only the feeling's inward quality ; the last is covers all possible facts about the feeling, relational facts, which can only be known from outside points of view, like that of the philosopher himself." l Now it seems to me that the real confusion here is between the point of view of experience, and the point of view of reflection on experience, and that it is not the " post-Kantians " who confuse the two points of view. The "post-Kantians" by whom Professor James means T. H. Green and the writers commonly associated with him habitu- thoughnot ally occupy the latter standpoint. They do not of expert?* holcl that " all knowledge is also self-knowledge," in ence ' the sense that " an awareness of self accompanies most [or all] of our thinking." When we have this 1 Mind, ix. 21. x^ ff " ff UNI\ ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 281 ^^ empirical " awareness of self," our object is the more or less distinct contents of perception, &c., which make up the empirical ego. But this know- ledge of the empirical ego, equally with knowledge of external nature, implies logically the action of logically self -consciousness. When we reflect upon experi- e " ence, one constant element is seen to be implied in it the reference to a subject of knowledge and feeling. Certainly " post-Kantians " do not imagine as Professor James seems himself to imagine and to think they do that a feeling feels itself, or an object knows itself. " Green-after-red-and-other- than-it " is for them, as for him, if not " an abso- lutely complete object of thought," yet relatively complete. It may be apprehended alone as a part of experience. But reflection on experience shows that it, like any other object of thought, depends upon a knowing subject. The " post-Kantians " do not assert that knowing an object involves for the individual knower actual consciousness of what his knowledge implies, any more than they would say that the "plain man" is already a metaphysician. But they hold that reflection on experience shows that self-reference, or reference to a subject, is a logical condition of there being experience at all. So far from confusing the two standpoints, they require carefully to emphasise their difference, lest the actual content of a state of consciousness in the individual man be held to be equivalent to the 282 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. grounds or conditions of that state of conscious- ness. The reason why there is even an apparent plausi- bility in the attempt to get at a natural develop- ment of self-consciousness, is that the reference to self is, from the outset, implicitly, but logically, assurfted in tracing the sequence of events which forms the subject-matter of the theory of evolution, while the course of development does nothing more than render its implication explicit. Self-conscious- ness is not something that exists apart from the world of known and knowable objects, any more than it is itself a special department of this world of objects distinguishable from, and determined by, its surroundings. It is, on the contrary, the supreme condition of the world of objects having any exist- ence whatever. It is only through objects being brought into relation with the identical and per- manent subject of knowledge, that there is unity in nature, or, in other words, that there is a known world of nature or experience at all. The evolution of mind or self-consciousness out of experience is, therefore, not merely to be rejected as a problem too intricate for psychological analysis. It is a mistake to think that it is a possible problem at all ; for it attempts to make experience account for and originate the principles on w r hich its own possibility depends. (&> made But it is the second change in point of view ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 283 which needs special emphasis here the change clear in the from the point of view of science to that of moral- ity. Taken in its bare form, this is perhaps little reflexaction. more than a confusion of thought. The fact of things being of a certain constitution, and of their progress tending in a certain direction, cannot of itself supply a law for the exercise of our activity. But the view is associated with a theory of the nature of human action which seeks to bring it into the strict line of natural development. Just as empirical psychology attempted to treat self -con- sciousness as a stage in the evolution of experience or knowledge, so the empirical theory of morality, aided by the doctrine of evolution, tries to show how the action which is called moral has been de- veloped out of purely physical or reflex action. But this theory of the development of moral action is really open to the same objection as that which was urged against the theory which evolves self-con- sciousness from the unconscious. The objection to the latter was, that experience, itself constituted by consciousness, is made to produce the condition of its own possibility ; and a similar confusion is in- volved in attempting to develop moral action out of merely physical or reflex action. The only case of true psychical or conscious action is that in which there is a conscious determination of end and means ; and action of this kind implies the same relation to self -consciousness as that by which knowledge is 284 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. constituted. The relation is, however, manifested in a different way : it is not an apprehension of the manifold of impression into the unity of conscious- ness, but the externalisation of self-consciousness in realising a conceived end or idea. Now, in so far as physical and psychical facts are phenomena of experience and they have no other existence, at least none that can have any intelligible meaning given to it they presuppose self-consciousness ; for it is only in relation to it that experience is pos- sible. That is to say, their existence logically im- plies a reference to a subject whose active external- ising manifestation is the determination of means and end which constitutes moral (as distinguished from merely natural) action. So far, therefore, from our being able to trace the development of moral action from the simpler phenomena of natural action, we find that these, in their most rudimen- tary form, by virtue of their being phenomena of experience, imply and receive their reality from the self-consciousness which is the ^differentiating quality both of knowledge and of moral action. 5. The unity From this it follows that, although, empirically, sciousups": ^ e change from the point of view of science to that of morality is a transition to a different order of facts, yet the passage may be possible transcenden- (a) as mak- tally through self-consciousness. For in self-con- the transi- 6 sciousness we reach the element of identity between tion from k now i ec [g e an( j action. It is, therefore, of import- ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 285 ance to understand the nature of this self-conscious knowledge activity in relation to knowledge and to action. If tc the fundamental characteristic of knowledge is the bringing into relation to consciousness, then all conscious action has this characteristic ; for it de- termines self towards some particular line of activ- ity that is to say, towards an object or end which is thereby related to consciousness. Action there- fore, we may say, is knowledge. And in the same way, on the other hand, since the relating to con- sciousness which constitutes knowledge can only be regarded as originated by the subject, it follows, conversely, that knowledge is action. 1 " We act," says Spinoza, " only in so far as we know or under- stand/' Action is but one aspect or manifestation of that which, in another aspect or manifestation, is knowledge. But the aspect of self-consciousness we call knowledge and that we call action are dif- ferent from one another. In the former the relat- ing to consciousness in the definite forms of thought and perception is the prominent thing. In the lat- ter it is the realising energy of the self-conscious 1 From "action "in this its ultimate meaning as equivalent to origination by the subject, it is necessary to distinguish "action " as a phenomenon in the external world. The latter is one of the modes in which the relation of objects is known to us, the former a characteristic of knowing. The active nature of knowledge is worked out in an interesting way in Professor S. S. Laurie's ' Metaphysica nova et vetusta,' by " Scotus Novanticus " (1884). 286 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. subject. The ordinary distinction between know- ledge and action is therefore correct, if not pushed to the extent of making an absolute separation between them : in the former we idealise the real, in the latter we realise the ideal. But they are at one in this, that both involve self-conscious activity. (&) as deter- The self-consciousness which in one relation is SiTractCTof knowledge, in another action, is thus the fundamen- the ethical ^ act O f h uman nature i and on it, therefore, the end, ethical end must be based, if that end can be dis- closed by the nature of man, and is to express what is most fundamental in his nature. Now, as know- ledge finds its completion when all things are con- nected with one another and the subject in a defi- nite system of relations, the end of completed self- conscious activity cannot be different. In their final perfection, as in their fundamental 'nature, the two are at one. As Kant puts it, 1 the specu- lative and the practical reason are reconciled in the notion of end. However virtue may differ from knowledge in the processes of ordinary experience, the distinction only belongs to their finite realisa- tion. An intuitive understanding, or understand- ing which, in knowing, creates the objects of know- ledge, is the highest conception of reason. Yet the very notion of a finite self implies that neither such knowledge nor such activity belongs to it. In knowledge and action, as properties of the ultimate 1 Werke, iii. 538 ; cf. Adamson, Philosophy of Kant, p. 138. ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS, 287 self-consciousness, human beings only participate. It is only by means of the laborious methods of observation and inference that they approach the intuition of all things as a unity in which perfect knowledge consists ; and, in the same way, it is only by the gradual volitional adaptation of means to end that they are able, in some measure, to con- tribute to the realisation of self-consciousness in the world. An end can only be made our own when con- as seif-reaii- ceived as necessary for realising or completing our idea of self. Conscious volition only follows a conceived want, or recognition that the self as imagined the ideal self is not realised in the actual self. The action is towards a fuller working out of the idea of self ; and the end may therefore, in all cases of conscious action, be said to be self- realisation, though the nature of this end differs according to each man's conception of self. This may be expressed, as Green expresses it, by saying that " self -satisfaction is the form of every object willed; but . . . it is on the specific difference of the objects willed under the general form of self-satisfaction that the quality of the will must depend." l It appears to me, however, that this statement requires to be guarded by an explanation. The self-satisfaction sought must not be looked ^ upon as a feeling, for if it is, it can only be 1 Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 161. 288 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. ! interpreted psychologically as pleasure but as simply conscious self-realisation. And this self- realisation is the objective consciousness of an attained end, which is accompanied by, but is not \ the same as, the feeling of pleasure. Self-realisa- tion is the end, not the pleasurable feeling which follows it ; self-satisfaction, not the " pleasure of self-satisfaction." In this way, the common ex- perience " that the objects with which we seek to satisfy ourselves do not turn out capable of satisfying us," 1 might be expressed by saying that the method adopted for the realisation of self is often found in its result to lead to incomplete, or even to illusory, self-realisation. The question thus arises, What is the true self that is to be realised, and what is meant by the realisation of it? The will that wills itself is as bare a notion in ethics, as the thought that thinks itself is in metaphysics. The "good will," which Kant rightly held to be the only ultimate good, never altogether escaped this formality in Kant's own treatment of it. His idea of humanity as a realm of ends was limited by his formal conception of the function of reason, though it suggests the way by which the mere tautology of will may be transcended. It is of the essence of a finite will that its end is different from the realisation of the end. But the rationality of the will implies that it 1 Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 165. ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 289 must aim at nothing less than the harmonious arti- culation of its whole activity in the unity of self- consciousness. It has been argued above that both knowledge butastrans- and morality are expressions of self-conscious activity: in it these different manifestations find an element of fundamental identity. But it may be maintained, further, that this "unity of self- consciousness" is not merely the unity of the different states of an individual, but that it is an element which transcends the difference by which concrete individuals are distinguished from one another. If this view can be carried out, it seems to lead us to attribute to other men something more than a " similar consciousness " x to our own, and to make us look on all self-conscious beings as sharing in, or manifesting, in various imperfect ways, one identical self -consciousness. From this point of view, self-realisation would be established as no mere individual end. The first law of morality would be not the " natural " impulse for each to take care of himself in the struggle for life, but, on the contrary, the sublation of that distinction between the particular ego and other individuals which would admit of the one using the others as mere means to his own advancement. His true end is the same as theirs: the realisation of the self-consciousness in which both partake its realis- 1 Sidgwick, "Green's Ethics," Mind, ix. 180. T 290 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. ation, that is to say, not in one individual only, but wherever it is manifested. 1 This is the rationale of what the empirical theory of evolution tries to establish by pointing to the growing harmony in feeling and interest between the individual and society. What evolution really shows is the gradual manifestation in actual volition of the identity of nature in all men. 2 I do not say that this funda- mental identity of nature does away with all conflict between self-realisation in one's self and in others ; but it does much, if it establishes the principle that the realisation of one's own nature involves the realisation of that of others. As Schaffle says, " the moral law is the direction of the will to the genuinely human as humanity ; " and " this is a transcendental element embedded in the hearts of all men though in its basis only, for it is developed and ripened in the course of history." 3 And the more fully self-consciousness is realised, the clearer does it become that its complete realisation implies that "kingdom of ends" spoken of by Kant, in which all self-conscious beings are at once subjects and sovereign. 1 This is implied in Hegel's well-known imperative, " Be a per- son and respect others as persons." Phil. d. Rechts, p. 73. 2 Thus Hoffding maintains that " the highest ethical idea " is "the idea of the human race as a realm of personalities." Grund- lage der humanen Ethik (aus dem danischen), p. 74. 3 Bau und Leben des socialen Korpers, i. 173. ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. 291 Further, self-realisation in both its aspects as ( C > as show. ,..,,-, . , . .-, . ing that the individual and as social is necessarily progressive, realisation It is only at the highest stage of its development *^* d that nature becomes the organ of intelligence and progressive. morality. 1 And, just as knowledge expresses itself through the forms of space and time, and, therefore, by gradual colligations of facts, so the conscious determination of activity is manifested in the world in an order of consecutive acts, and is therefore subject, in its manifestation, to the laws ^of temporal succession. It is the part of a system of metaphysics at any rate, it does not belong to the present inquiry to show how reason manifests itself in space and time, and how, through the rationality of this manifestation, everything in space is and acts only in relation to its environ- ment, and through it, to the rest of the world, and how each event in time is the result of preced- ing events, and determines those which follow it. What it thus shows the necessity of is the process of evolution ; and it is because this process is deter- mined by reason that the world is the object of knowledge and the sphere of moral action. Evolu- tion is thus not the foundation of morality, but the manifestation of the principle on which it depends. Morality cannot be explained by means of its own development, without reference to the self-consci- 1 Cf. H. Siebeck, Philosophische Monatshefte, xx. 340. 292 ON THE BASIS OF ETHICS. ousness which makes that development possible. However valuable may be the information we get from experience as to the gradual evolution of conduct, its nature and end can only be explained by a principle that transcends experience. THE END. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS. THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE~OF 25 CENTS '5 f / I 1 W _J_ 8flec'&H L: / u s UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY