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Morals and the Evolution of Man

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Title: Morals and the Evolution of Man

Author: Max Simon Nordau

Translator: Marie Adèle Lewenz


        
Release date: November 12, 2011 [eBook #37998]

Language: English

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  MORALS AND THE EVOLUTION
  OF MAN



  MORALS AND THE
  EVOLUTION OF MAN

  BY
  MAX NORDAU

  A Translation of
  "BIOLOGIE DER ETHIK"

  By
  MARIE A. LEWENZ, M.A.
  Fellow of University College, London

  CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
  London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
  1922



  TO MY DEAR WIFE ANNA (née DONS),

  the sunshine of my life in happy days, my brave
  comrade in the storms of the world-catastrophe, with
  love and gratitude I dedicate this book which helped
  both her and me to endure the dark years when we
  were homeless wanderers.

  MADRID, _September 26th, 1916_



CONTENTS

  CHAPTER                                               PAGE
  1. THE PHENOMENON OF MORALITY                            1
  2. THE IMMANENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF MORALITY             46
  3. THE BIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORALITY                    84
  4. MORALITY AND LAW                                    115
  5. INDIVIDUAL MORALITY AND COLLECTIVE IMMORALITY       144
  6. FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY                          185
  7. MORALITY AND PROGRESS                               215
  8. THE SANCTIONS OF MORALITY                           247




MORALS AND THE

EVOLUTION OF MAN




CHAPTER I

THE PHENOMENON OF MORALITY


A very well-known experiment in animal psychology was once made by
Möbius. An aquarium was divided into two compartments by means of a pane
of glass; in one of these a pike was put and in the other a tench.
Hardly had the former caught sight of his prey, when he rushed to the
attack without noticing the transparent partition. He crashed with
extreme violence again the obstacle and was hurled back stunned, with a
badly battered nose. No sooner had he recovered from the blow than he
again made an onslaught upon his neighbour--with the same result. He
repeated his efforts a few times more, but succeeded only in badly
hurting his head and mouth. At last a dim idea dawned upon his dull mind
that some unknown and invisible power was protecting the tench, and that
any attempt to devour it would be in vain; consequently from that moment
he ceased from all further endeavours to molest his prey. Thereupon the
pane of glass was removed from the tank, and pike and tench swam around
together; the former took no notice whatever of his defenceless
neighbour, who had become sacred to him. In the first instance the pike
had not perceived the glass partition against which he had dashed his
head; now he did not see that it had been taken away. All he knew was
this: he must not attack this tench, otherwise he would fare badly. The
pane of glass, though no longer actually there, surrounded the tench as
with a coat of mail which effectually warded off the murderous attacks
of the pike.

The fact so often observed, that man in many cases does that which he
passionately desires to leave undone, and refrains from doing that which
all his instincts urge him to do--this phenomenon of Morality is a
generalization upon a huge scale of the above experiment on animals with
the pane of glass in a tank.

Jean Jacques Rousseau thought out a theoretical human being who was by
nature good. Such a human being does not exist and has never existed.
From sheer annoyance at the provoking obliquity of vision which led the
enthusiast of Geneva to develop such a theory, one is sorely tempted to
go to the opposite extreme and declare that man is by nature
fundamentally bad; but such an assertion is just as naïve as Rousseau's
contention. Good and bad are values which we can only learn to
appreciate when we have felt the effect of the phenomenon of Morality.
The concepts of good and evil are of much later origin than mankind, and
can therefore no more constitute a fundamental characteristic of man's
original nature than, for instance, the cut and colour of his clothes;
though it is open to wiseacres to maintain that man's nature to some
extent actually finds expression in the cut and colour of his
clothes--that is, in his choice of them. Anyone contemplating primitive
man, man as he emerges from the hands of Nature, stripped of all the
additions which he has acquired in the course of his historical
development, is bound to admit that man is neither good nor bad; he is a
living being acting according to the instincts implanted in his nature;
just like the pike. But in most contingencies he does not obey these
instincts, and if he reflects upon himself and his actions, he is
astounded at realizing this, and asks: "Why do I refrain from revelling
in the gratification of my desires?"

Innumerable times every day of his life he would like to break many or
all of the Ten Commandments; but he abstains from so doing, and, what is
more, mostly without effort, without having painfully to suppress his
desire. What prevents him from yielding to his impulses? An invisible
power which lays its commands upon him: "Thou shalt not!" "Thou shalt!"
Often his aims and inclinations come into violent collision with this
order, or this prohibition, and are hurled back by the painful impact.
Man hears the threatening, imperious voice, but cannot see whence it
comes. Accustomed to reason by analogy, he concludes that it is, like
thunder, a voice of Nature. When the pike has sufficiently injured his
nose against the pane of glass, he assumes as an actual fact that an
insuperable barrier separates him from the tench, and, moreover, that it
is both useless and painful to come into contact with this. He does not
try to discover the nature of the obstacle, and gives up any further
attempt upon his mysteriously protected prey. Man, with a more highly
developed intelligence than the pike, does not accept the phenomenon of
Morality with dull resignation. Since he has become conscious of a
mysterious barrier erected between his volitions and his actions, he has
not ceased to reflect upon this barrier, to investigate it with a timid
yet irresistible desire for knowledge, and to try and discover its
nature.

It redounds to man's credit that he has devoted so much time and energy
to investigating the character and essence of Morality. But the result
of these investigations does not redound to his credit. With the
exception of theology, there is no subject upon which so much has been
written as upon ethics. Yet whosoever plunges into this boundless sea of
literature will emerge with feelings bordering upon horror and despair.
Here a free rein is given to all man's errors, to his habit of drawing
false conclusions, to his faulty modes of thought. Incapacity to
interpret facts, association of ideas, elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp and
uncurbed by any criticism, intemperate mysticism, arrogant dogmatism,
shallow self-sufficiency--all these vie with one another in the
presentment of theories which either are patently foolish, arbitrary or
ill-founded, or else prove to be so when impartially examined.

It is hard for the few reasonable thinkers who have taken part in this
great investigation to make their voices heard amid the uproar raised by
the solemn, unctuous, dictatorial or pedantic tomfools. And even the
former are not entirely satisfactory, because they do not distinguish
clearly enough between the form and the substance, the externals and the
essence of Morality, and because they do not discriminate with
sufficient care between questions as to its nature, origin and aim, and
its powers or sanctions--questions which must on no account be
confounded.

What is Morality? Obviously it is necessary to attempt a clear answer to
this question before any useful purpose can be served by inquiring into
the group of problems to which it gives rise: its aim, its laws, its
origin, its method, its assumptions. The Stoics answer this question as
follows: "Morality is living according to Nature." Furthermore, it is
quite in accordance with the doctrine of the Stoics that Cicero says:
"Virtue, however, is nothing but Nature developed to the highest
possible degree of perfection" ("_ad summum perducta_"). Moral therefore
means natural; Morality and Nature are equivalent; they are one. Really
a simpler or more childlike explanation is hardly possible. The most
superficial glance at human life and at our own soul teaches us that
Morality is contrary to Nature, that it must struggle against Nature to
assert itself, that it means a victory over Nature, in so far as we
understand by Nature in this special sense the most primitive reaction
of man to simple and more complicated stimuli, the first tendency of
impulse, the immediate, instinctive urge to act. Further, the definition
of the Stoics ignores the aggregation of concepts which the synthetic
conception, Morality, involves; as if this were self-evident and
required no definition. The Stoics tacitly assume that Morality and
Good are synonymous. Cicero makes this assumption clearer by using the
word Virtue (_virtus_) instead of Morality. But in all languages this
word implies approbation and praise. It is an appreciation of worth
(_Werturteil_), to use the expression so appropriately coined by Lotze.

But the very fact that we recognize Morality as being valuable is by no
means a matter of course and it demands an explanation.

Certain actions could only be judged to be good if they were
distinguished from others which did not suggest the same judgment, which
were felt to be not good, to be bad or indifferent. We come to the
question, What is Good, what is Bad? The Stoics reply, "That which is
good is natural." It is easy to call facts which please us natural, and
such as displease us unnatural. In reality both series of facts are
equally natural; because everything that happens is natural; because by
definition Nature is the synthesis of all phenomena; because nothing
exists outside of Nature, and within Nature everything is a part of her
and therefore is natural and can be nothing but natural. If we
nevertheless wish to distinguish between natural and unnatural
phenomena, if we call Good, Morality, and Virtue natural, and compare
them favourably with the unnatural, this only proves that we use the
words natural and unnatural as synonyms for good and bad, and that we
have a ready-made standard by which we measure the naturalness or
unnaturalness (that is, the goodness or badness) of actions, and that
there exists within ourselves the law by which we judge them to be good
or bad. But how do we come by this law? How, of what material, and why
do we fashion this standard? Why do we approve of one thing as good and
condemn another as bad? What qualities do the former and the latter
possess, or what qualities do we ascribe to them? That is what we want
to know when we inquire as to the significance of Morality, and the
definition of the Stoics throws no light whatever upon the matter.

According to Aristotle Morality is "the activity of Practical Reason,
which is accompanied by pleasurable emotion." It is not worth while to
dwell upon this definition. It is absolutely valueless. Practical Reason
is not a definite concept; Aristotle does not say anywhere what he
understands by "practical" when he applies this attribute to Reason; and
to call every activity of Practical Reason accompanied by pleasurable
emotion Morality is mere eccentricity.

To take only one example: if I have a house built, and accept the
architect's plans because they please me greatly, my practical reason is
most certainly active; the gratification induced by my reasonable choice
of the plans is doubtless a pleasurable emotion; but assuredly no one
will characterize as moral this activity of my practical reason which is
accompanied by pleasurable emotion. It may be that Aristotle was
contemplating not a single action, but conduct in life as a whole. In
that case he has expressed in an unfortunate, and much too loose a
manner the thought that Morality is Reason plus pleasurable emotion. We
shall frequently meet with and have to examine this idea, which omits to
explain why pleasurable emotions attend certain activities of
"Practical Reason," whatever that may be, and fail to be aroused by
others.

Judaism, as embodied in its law-givers and prophets, teaches that
Morality consists in living and acting in accordance with the divine
Will. Maimonides, who, however, was regarded by many of his
contemporaries as a heretic, does not consider Judaism a creed at all,
but a code of Morality. He maintains that anyone who repudiates the
tenets of the Jewish faith, even the most essential one, namely, the
belief in a single god, must not be excluded from the Jewish community
as long as he conforms to its moral laws. This thinker, usually so
accurate and nice in his reasoning, overlooks the fact that in this case
he is contradicting himself in a manner wellnigh comic. According to
him, too, Morality consists in the endeavour to live and act in
accordance with the divine Will. How is such an endeavour possible for a
man who does not believe in God and for whom consequently no divine Will
exists? Therefore either Morality must be something different from an
approximation to the standard set up by the divine Will, or else he who
denies God cannot be moral. But I will leave the author of the "Guide of
those who have gone astray" to his self-contradiction, and only retain
the Jewish definition of Morality as based upon the Will of God.

Without any restriction Christianity has taken over this definition from
the mother-religion. In his zeal to claim that God alone is the source
of all Morality, St. Augustine allows himself to be carried away to such
an extent that he libels mankind most hatefully. Just as for Rousseau
man is by nature good, for the Bishop of Hippo he is by nature
fundamentally bad. Left to his own devices he would always wallow in the
mire of sin and vice, and would never even feel the wish to abandon his
wickedness. It is God's mercy alone which rescues him from his depravity
and sets his feet upon the path of righteousness, leading him to virtue,
salvation and eternal bliss. Thomas Aquinas is no less definite on this
point. The scriptures of Judaism and Christianity contain the eternal
law which God has ordained for mankind. He points out the paths that man
should follow. All Morality springs from Him alone.

To this very day true believers adhere to this doctrine. Morality did
not originate on earth; the knowledge of it is a gift of grace from
heaven to mankind. It is derived from God; it is that which God has
willed; or else it does not need any special act of volition on the part
of God, but is the essence of God himself. That is the teaching of
Paley, the classical moral philosopher. Virtue consists in doing good to
mankind in obedience to the Will of God, and in order to attain eternal
salvation. Here stress is laid upon the fact that Morality is active
love for one's neighbour, and this is a concession on the part of the
conciliatory Englishman to the utilitarian ethics of his countrymen; but
for him the necessary and sufficient reason for this love of one's
neighbour is the Will of God and the desire for eternal salvation. The
German devotee, Baader, blustering like a capuchin, preaches this
twaddle: "Any Morality which is not rooted in divine law is the
intellectual impiety of our time raised to its highest power; it is the
perfection of atheism; for the idea of the absolute autonomy of man
atheistically denies the Father as law-giver; the theistic denial of the
necessity for divine aid in fulfilling the law does away with the Son or
Mediator, and finally the materialistic-pantheistic apotheosis of Matter
does away with the Holy Ghost with its sanctifying power." The Frenchman
Jouffroy, though more careful and reticent in his manner, unmistakably
expresses his conviction that "ethics, as well as the philosophy of law,
inevitably and necessarily lead to theology."

But this necessity only exists for minds whose desire for knowledge and
truth is easily satisfied by words without a meaning that can be
visualized, by fabulous statements accepted without proof, by fictions
of the imagination, and by shallow juggling with the association of
ideas. Even those who do not approve all Auguste Comte's arguments will
agree with him when he classifies the successive steps in the mental
development of mankind as the theological, transcendental, and
scientific modes of thought. When man's understanding is in its infancy
he is content with a supernatural explanation of all phenomena which
strike him as mysterious, disquiet him or rouse his curiosity. Only I
have never been able to understand why Comte discriminates between the
theological and the transcendental modes of thought, and assigns to the
latter a higher place than the former. Both are on a footing of absolute
equality; both raise arbitrary fictions of the imagination to the
position of sources of knowledge; both substitute anthropomorphic
trivialities for the observation of phenomena and research into the
conditions under which they occur and their relationship to one another.
The only difference between them lies in the fact that transcendentalism
expresses itself in choicer language than does theology, that it
presents formulæ that are more complicated and pretentious, less
transparent and honest--formulæ which the unpractised mind does not
immediately recognize as mythological dogmas in a pseudo-scientific
disguise.

The relationship of theological to transcendental thought is much the
same as that of superstition to religion. Both of them are one and the
same. Religion is shamefaced superstition, whereas superstition has not
yet learned to feel shame. Religion is superstition in a dress-coat, and
therefore fit for polite circles; superstition is religion in a cotton
smock and therefore cannot be admitted to society. Superstition is the
religion of the poor and unassuming, religion is the superstition of
fine folk who plume themselves on their formal and verbal scholarship.

Ever since man has risen above the level of the beasts, ever since the
first faint glimmerings of thought began in the thick-walled, narrow and
dark skull of a hunter of the Neanderthal or Cro Magnon, he has ascribed
everything unintelligible in life and in the world around him to divine
actions and divine sources. How did the world come into existence? A god
or gods created it. How does Nature work? In accordance with the will of
a god or gods, in obedience to divine commands, as a result of divine
activities. What is life? A divine gift of grace. What is
consciousness? An irradiation of the divinity. What is infinity, what
eternity? Attributes of the god. God is the name that from the beginning
of time to the present day men have given to their ignorance. They find
it easier to bear disguised by this pseudonym; they are even proud of
it. With cunning self-deception they have endowed the word with the
dignity pertaining to a title of the most awe-inspiring majesty, and
they no longer feel ashamed of a poverty of mind which can boast of such
a magnificent name. Morality also is one of those phenomena which are
not intelligible as a matter of course. The questions how, whence, why,
and to what end Morality exists, and what it is, cannot be solved at a
glance; its life-history is not apparent to every observer, as is that
of the domestic cat. But why cudgel one's brains? Cheap explanations are
ready to hand. This way mythology, you maid-of-all-work! Morality has
been ordained by God. A moral life is one in accordance with God's
commandments. He who will not content himself with this answer is an
infidel and does not deserve to have any notice taken of him.

Let us leave the paltry statements of theologians and note how men who
investigate questions more thoroughly have dealt with Morality.
Descartes defines Morality as the sustained endeavour to do that which
one has recognized to be right. It is difficult to discern in this
definition the father of scientific scepticism. What are the
distinguishing marks of Right? Is the decision as to what is right and
what is wrong to be left to the subjective judgment of the individual?
In that case Descartes must concede that the action of a burglar is
moral, if he has recognized that it is right for him to perpetrate his
crime between two and three o'clock in the morning, that being the most
favourable time for it, and then strives to the best of his ability to
effect an entrance into the building he has selected, at the moment
which he has recognized as the right one. Or shall all mankind, or at
least the majority, and not the individual, decide what is right? In
that case the definition would certainly approximate to the one which I
hold to be true; but for one thing it would suffer from vagueness; and,
moreover, its originator would lay himself open to the reproach of not
having shown why the individual is worthy of praise when he acts in
accordance with the convictions of the majority, though these be opposed
to his own, and in so doing allows his action to be determined by a
judgment due to a psychic mechanism other than his.

Spinoza's "Ethics" leaves the reader in great discomfort, the result of
vacillating and contradictory explanations. Obviously Descartes' great
disciple had no clear conception of the essence of Morality and held
either consecutively, or may be even simultaneously, divers views on the
subject, amongst which those of all schools of thought are either quite
clearly expressed or at least implied. "By Good," he says, "I mean that
which we know for certain to be useful to us."[1]

  [1] I quote the wording of Berthold Auerbach's translation:
      "B. de Spinoza's collected works. Translated from the Latin
      by Berthold Auerbach." Stuttgart, J. G. Cotta, 1871. Second
      edition, Vol. II.

And again: "To act absolutely virtuously is merely to act, live,
preserve one's being (these three mean the same thing) in accordance
with the dictates of Reason, because one seeks one's own interest."

According to that Morality is synonymous with egoism, and its aim is
man's individual profit or interest. Even the most pronounced
Utilitarians among ethical theorists have not ventured to go to such
lengths. True, they have contended that the aim of moral action is
happiness, but at least they define it as the happiness of the whole
community and not that of the individual, except in so far as he is a
member of the community and has his fair share of its well-being.
Spinoza foresees the objection that the pursuit of one's own happiness
cannot possibly deserve the universal esteem in which virtue is held,
and he tries to adduce reasons whereby the egoism which he characterizes
as moral may be justified and palliated:

"Everyone exists according to the supreme law of Nature, and
consequently everyone does, according to the supreme law of Nature, that
which results from the necessities of his own nature; and therefore
every man forms his judgment as to what is good and bad according to the
supreme law of Nature, pursues his own interest according to his lights,
seeks revenge, strives to preserve what he loves and to destroy what he
hates." That is possibly the most audacious and at the same time the
most ill-founded statement that has ever been written on the subject of
Morality. Morality means behaviour calculated to further one's own
interest. Morality is therefore utility. But man cannot act otherwise
than morally, since he always acts as he is compelled to do by his own
nature. There is no sense in discriminating between good and bad, moral
and immoral, since one always acts in accordance with the behests of
Nature. Man automatically executes the dictates of Nature which is alone
responsible for his deeds.

For the Stoics, too, Morality is action in accordance with the law of
Nature, but Spinoza goes further than the Stoics, in that he does away
with any universally applicable standard of moral conduct, and sets up
instead of Nature pure and simple, which is the same for all, each man's
individual nature as the authority which shall lay down rules of
behaviour for him. So Morality is something individual and subjective.
Man acts according to the requirements of his interest; his own nature
shows him what his interest requires; no other person has any right or
any qualification to form a judgment upon the worth of his conduct, to
call it good or bad, for he cannot know what course of action the man's
personal nature, peculiar to himself and to no other, may prescribe to
him. This is the doctrine of anarchy and amorality put in a nutshell, a
more wordy paraphrase of the _Fais ce que vouldras_ (please yourself),
the terse inscription that Rabelais put over the entrance to his Abbey
of Thélème, as the only law governing that abode of alluring wantonness.
Spinoza certainly does half-heartedly concede to Reason the rôle which
Aristotle positively assigns to it ("To act in an absolutely virtuous
manner is merely to act according to the guidance of Reason," etc.), but
it is impossible to see how Reason can exercise guidance and control if
"everyone does according to the supreme law of Nature that which
results from the necessities of his nature." This can surely only mean
that everyone may yield to the unbridled desires of his natural
instincts, which is the very reverse of self-control by Reason. If
Nature is to rule despotically, there is obviously no place for a
constitutional limitation of her sole power by the effective counsel and
protests of Reason.

But Spinoza renounces in a much more definite way his views recognizing
the right of every individual "to form his judgment as to what is good
and bad according to the supreme law of Nature," for he calmly adds:
"Society can be founded, if it reserves to itself the right possessed by
the individual to take revenge, and to pronounce a verdict on what is
good and what is bad; thereby it acquires the power to prescribe rules
of conduct for the community, to make laws, and to enforce them, not by
means of Reason, which cannot restrict passions, but by threats....
Hence in a state of Nature, sin cannot even be imagined."

This concession to Society most emphatically contradicts his first
definition of Morality. It does away with the right claimed for the
individual "to do according to the supreme law of Nature that which
results from the necessities of his own nature," and by the same
"supreme law of Nature" to "judge what is good and what is bad." It
subjects conduct to the restraint, not of Nature, but of Society. It
bears witness to the admission that "Reason cannot restrict passions,"
although Spinoza has just required the virtuous man to "act according to
the guidance of Reason." Spinoza admits that Morality is not the
consequence of a law inherent in the individual, but of an extraneous
law forced upon him by society; that it is not an individual but a
social phenomenon. In this he agrees with the conclusions of modern
sociological thought, but his merit is much diminished by the fact that
he skims lightly over the one great difficulty which sociological ethics
is struggling to overcome. He says, society "reserves to itself the
right ... to pronounce a verdict on what is good and what is bad, and
thereby acquires the power to prescribe rules of conduct to the
community," etc.

It has the power right enough; police, judge, prison and gallows bear
witness to that; but has it the right? That is not clear without further
investigation. It requires to be proved. The amoralist can emphatically
deny this, basing his conclusion on Spinoza's own definition. He can
legitimately declare that he need submit to no dictates of society, that
he owes obedience only to his own nature and his own inner needs, and
the moral philosopher can only prove to him that he is wrong by
scornfully indicating the penal code and its stalwart minions.

Spinoza, we see, has already given a whole series of mutually
destructive and contradictory definitions of Morality: it is the law of
life and conduct which society lays down for the individual, though we
do not learn from him on what principles it is based; it is the pursuit
of one's own interest as indicated by Reason; it is obedience to
necessity--that is to say, to the demands of one's own nature. All this
does not suffice him. He discovers a new aspect of Morality.
"Recognition of Good and Evil is nothing but a pleasurable or a
disagreeable emotion in so far as we are conscious of it." And again,
"Pleasure is not actually bad (as the ascetics probably contend), but
good; pain, on the contrary, is actually bad."

In this case the ideas pleasure and pain are treated as equivalents of
good and bad, as were useful and harmful in the former case. According
to the axiom that things that are equal to the same thing must be equal
to one another, pleasurable is synonymous not only with good, but also
with beneficial, and in like manner painful with bad and harmful. Brandy
undoubtedly produces a sensation of pleasure in the drinker; is brandy,
then, good in a moral sense? Above all, is it beneficial? Many such
questions could be put to Spinoza, but this one is enough.

Thus we discover Spinoza to be at one and the same time a Utilitarian
and a Hedonist, the champion of Impulse and again of Reason, an
anarchistic individualist and a herald of the right of society to rule
the individual. Angry and disappointed, we turn from him, for instead of
finding in him the definite standard we sought we have met with the
shifting hues of the chameleon and the uncanny changes of form of
Proteus.

The views of the English thinkers are clearer and more convincing
although they, too, do not carry their investigations far enough. Hobbes
uses Justice and Injustice as synonyms for Morality and Immorality, and
he definitely recognizes what Spinoza only dimly guessed, namely, that
these ideas could only arise in man when living as a member of society
and not in a being dwelling alone. According to him, therefore, Morality
is a social and not an individual phenomenon; just as the moral
philosophers of the theological school look upon it as the Will of God,
so he considers it to be the Will of Society. But he was under the
obligation (non-existent for the theologian) to trace to its source this
social Will, to show how it is manifested, to explain why the individual
not only submits to it, but values this submission far more highly than
mere utility. Man learns the Will of God by revelation, and it is
forbidden to inquire into its basis. To the Will of Society Hobbes
cannot possibly ascribe the same incontestable sanctity. It should not
have escaped his notice that this Will is neither uniform nor of assured
stability, and that it often wavers and is sometimes self-contradictory.
Therefore, if he wants to call the Will of Society Justice, as the
theologians call the Will of God Morality, and if he wants to look upon
Justice and Morality as equivalents, then it is his duty to explain how
Society can make claims which conflict with the principles on which the
universal rules it has drawn up are based, and which, consequently, not
being just or moral, are unjust and immoral, but which, nevertheless,
must be acknowledged by the individual as being both just and moral,
simply because they are social claims.

In Kant's moral philosophy we find the extremest form of mystic
dogmatism; its success would be inexplicable did one not know how prone
mankind is to be intimidated by brusque statements. Kant's dictatorial
pronouncements have become common-places. "Act only on that maxim
whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a
universal law." That is very impressive. But what is "the maxim" on
which you act? This maxim is the moral law. Now we yearn to know what
this moral law is, whence it comes, and on what it is based.

But our yearnings remains unsatisfied. The moral law is a secret. It is
an incomprehensible power which rules our consciousness. Ask no
questions. Be silent, submit and obey. Even the theologian discussing
moral philosophy will listen to reason. He gives us the information,
sibylline though it be, that the moral law emanates from the Will of
God, and is shown to us in the revelations of religion. Kant does not
even give such meagre information. The moral law exists. That must
suffice. "The starry heavens above thee, the moral law within thee." You
retort that that is a metaphor which you may call poetical, if you like,
but it is no explanation. You will get the following reply: this
metaphor, rightly understood, indicates that the moral law is eternal,
that it is part and parcel of uncreated Nature like the stars, that it
is a phenomenon of the same order as all the elements that go to make up
the universe. "The moral law does not flow from antecedent ideas of Good
and Evil; on the contrary, the moral law decides what is good and what
is evil." It is not derived from human experience. The less so since
"it cannot be proved by experience that it has at any place or any time
become real." In other words, no one can testify that the "Categorical
Imperative" has ever been realized, that the moral law has "at any place
or any time" ceased to be a Kantian theory productive of sacred thrills,
that it has ever emerged from the unapproachable cell wherein it dwells
in the temple of human consciousness, to take a place and play an active
part among mortals.

The lessee of all Kant's wisdom, Hermann Cohen, with the clumsiness of
an over-zealous assistant, has expressed his master's thought in a
perfectly ludicrous form: "The moral law is to be conceived as a reality
of such kind that it must exist, that its being must be" (note the
elegance and euphony of the phrase "being must be"!) "even if no
creature existed for whom it would be valid." True, the moral law is a
maxim on which you should "act," a standard of human conduct, but it
would still exist if there were no human beings and no action. It would
come to exactly the same thing if Hermann Cohen said: the railway is to
be conceived as a reality of such kind that it must exist if there were
no human beings and consequently no travellers; even if there were no
earth on the surface of which rails and sleepers could be laid. This is
such palpable nonsense that it would be a work of supererogation to
prove its absurdity. By this grotesque exaggeration Hermann Cohen has
clearly brought to light the hollowness and weakness of Kant's Moral
philosophy which culminates in the "Categorical Imperative." In spite
of its arbitrary dogmatism, the formula of the "Categorical Imperative"
has taken a hold on the imagination of the superficially educated, and
has never ceased to be repeated with the fervour evinced by a devout man
at prayer, by several generations of those who have made it their
business to cultivate mental and moral science.

In one of his early novels, "The Island of Dr. Moreau," H. G. Wells has
described how an audacious scientist, by performing an operation on the
brains of the most savage beasts of prey, such as panthers, wolves,
etc., transformed them into creatures with the powers of thought and
speech. He succeeds in suppressing, or at least in lulling for the time
being, their bloodthirsty instincts, but he is always afraid that these
may be roused again, and forbids the animals on which he experiments to
touch blood or fresh meat. He takes good care to give no reason for this
prohibition. He merely issues it sternly and threateningly. It is "the
Law," an unknown, inexplicable, but terrible power to which one must
submit, because opposition would expose one to unimaginable, but
terrible evils. If temptation assails the beasts they flee it,
whispering fearfully and warningly to one another: "The Law! the Law!"
Wells is a trained philosopher, and often has his tongue in his cheek. I
shrewdly suspect that when he writes of the mysterious "Law" which fills
Dr. Moreau's semi-humanized beasts of prey with superstitious terror, he
is poking fun at Kant's "Categorical Imperative."

The great logical mistake in Kant's moral philosophy is that he
conceives Morality as a social or collective phenomenon, and yet
defines it as an individual one. According to Kant, the Categorical
Imperative exists within us. It is as immutable as the starry heavens
above us. It gives us the criterion by which to discriminate between
good and evil. Its realm is our consciousness wherein it lives and
rules; it is not introduced from outside, it springs from no power or
conditions outside our person. All the same, the only law which this
ultra subjective Categorical Imperative imposes on us is the most
centrifugal that can possibly be imagined: "Act only on that maxim
whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a
universal law." Hence our action is designed to produce an effect on the
world around us. It is "to become a universal law" can, of course, only
mean, it is to become a universal law of human society, for Kant cannot
possibly have aspired to make the Categorical Imperative impose laws
upon the stars in their courses. Our moral law, in so far as it applies
to our actions, deals with society. When we formulate it in our minds,
we associate it from its first inception with the notion of the society
to which it is to be applied. It would have been logical to say: "Your
standard of conduct is to be what society recognizes as its universal
law." But Kant puts the cart before the horse and says on the contrary:
"The maxims on which thy action is based are by thy will to become the
universal law of society."

Other philosophers have avoided this mistake. Hegel declares: "It is not
until man becomes a member of a moral community that the ideas of Duty
and Virtue attain a definite meaning and become direct representatives
of a universal spirit in subjectivity, which knows that it is actuated
in its aim by the universal and realizes that its dignity and its
particular aims are founded upon it." If we translate this horribly hazy
language of Hegel's into plain speech we find it means: "The ideas of
Duty and Virtue only acquire a meaning when they are applied to the acts
of commission and omission of the individual member of a community."
(When Hegel speaks of "moral community" his use of the word "moral" is
inadmissible, for he takes it for granted that the meaning of the word
"moral" has been determined and is clearly understood, whereas he ought
first to have defined its meaning.) The concepts of Duty and Virtue
denote that the individual in taking action thinks of the community,
that regard for its interests determines him, that his actions do not
attain dignity and worth until his aim becomes the interests of the
community, that these interests must coincide with those of the
individual if his actions in his own interests are to merit the
appellations of dutiful and virtuous. In short: to act morally is to act
so as to ensure the well-being of the community. The real Categorical
Imperative is a social conscience.

Feuerbach expresses this thought clearly and distinctly when he says:
"There can be no question of Morality in the strict sense of the word
except where the subject of discussion is the relationship of man to
man, of one person to another, of me to thee."

Recent contemporary French writers are in no way doubtful of the
meaning implied by the concept of Morality. "Morality," says Littré,
"is the whole collection of rules which determine our conduct towards
others. Moral Good is the ideal, which at any period of a civilization
forms opinions and customs with respect to this conduct; moral evil is
that which offends this ideal." This definition is very incomplete and
weak, as will be seen in the course of our remarks, but on one point it
is quite clear: it treats Morality as a social phenomenon, it
paraphrases it as the adjustment of individual action to the standard
set up by the community. The question of the origin and the aim of this
standard is left open.

L. Lévy-Brühl formulates Littré's idea more clearly. "We call by the
name of Morality the collection of such conceptions, opinions, feelings
and customs respecting the mutual rights and duties of men in their life
as members of a community, as are recognized and generally observed at a
given time in a given civilization."

Thus, according to some, Morality is subjection to an absolute law of
divine, or at any rate of unexplained and inexplicable origin, which
religion or a mysterious inner voice reveals to man; according to
others, it is the recognition that the claims of the community, or at
any rate of the majority of one's fellow men, are of binding force upon
the actions of the individual. These different answers to an inquiry as
to the origin of Morality both contain the tacit admission that it is a
law which peremptorily dictates to man what he shall do and what he
shall not do. But by means of what psychic mechanism does this law
enforce obedience in the consciousness of man? It is remarkable that all
moral philosophers, no matter to what age, nation or school they belong,
dimly feel or clearly recognize that in civilized man at any rate,
natural instincts and judgment are always at war; that the latter
opposes the former; that in the victory of judgment over impulse lies
the very essence of Morality; that consequently the essence of Morality
implies the control and repression of instinct by Reason--in a word,
that it is inhibition.

We have seen that Aristotle, in definite though unconscious opposition
to the Stoics, who consider Morality synonymous with Nature, defines it
as the activity of Reason.

Henry More was the first to express this quite clearly: "Virtue is an
intellectual force of the soul which enables it to control ... animal
instincts and sensual passions."

And Dr. Jodl sums up the character of Christian morality in the
statement: "Moral philosophy under the influence of Christian ideas
makes Morality always appear in the guise of a prohibition; at any rate
it is apt to conceive Morality as acting in an essentially restrictive
and prohibitive manner upon the natural impulses and instincts of man."

This is not quite correct. This Christian code of morals does not always
manifest itself as a prohibition. Its main precept is: "Love thy
neighbour as thyself." That is not a prohibition but a positive command.
Nevertheless, the point of departure of this command is an inhibition.
For the first instinctive movement of man is selfishness and, as its
consequence, indifference to one's neighbour; the first imperious
impulse is to sacrifice the latter's interests to one's own. But if
regard for one's neighbour, nay, love for him permeates our feelings,
thoughts and actions, that denotes a victory of Christian ideas over the
impulse of instinct, a suppression of that impulse--that is, an
inhibition which, not content with mere prevention, prolongs its
efficacy in the same direction until it changes the impulse of
selfishness and inconsiderateness into its very antithesis, that of
unselfishness and charity.

It constitutes an important advance in knowledge to recognize that
Morality, and not, as Jodl makes out, only Christian Morality, is
manifested as an inhibition, as the victory achieved by Reason over
Instinct which is contemptuously described as animal, simply because its
worth is judged by a standard already supplied by current views on
Morals. It is inadmissible to judge by this standard when one attempts
an impartial investigation into the ultimate foundations and the essence
of Morality. We have no plainly obvious right--no right which does not
require a proof--simply to scorn instinct as animal; to run it down from
the start and with a respectful bow to give Reason precedence over it;
to applaud with satisfaction the suppression of rascally Instinct by
highly respectable Reason. Instinct is no more animal than any other
manifestation of life in man; and he indulges in pleasant self-deception
if he imagines that he is other than an animal, that is, a living
organism in which all processes take place according to the same laws as
in all other living beings, from the simplest one-celled creature to
the most highly developed and complicated.

In itself Instinct has the same claim to dignity as Reason; according to
some people an even greater one, because the former is more primitive,
unpremeditated, self-assured and firmly established than the latter, and
if Reason claims to be the superior, it must substantiate that claim.

As a matter of fact, that claim has never been universally acknowledged.

Periods during which Reason rules at least in name and is treated with
the obsequious reverence which the model citizen has, or feigns to have,
for his sovereign, are followed by others in which Instinct revolts;
rebels dethrone Reason and set up Instinct in its place, or, as they
call it, passion and nature. The parties which in turn wield power in
these periodic revolutions may be briefly termed classical and romantic.
The classicists are the legitimist supporters of Reason; the
romanticists are revolutionaries, and their leaders are men like Cleon
or Jack Cade, Cromwell, Washington or Robespierre; that is to say, rude
demagogues or subtle dialecticians in favour of Instinct. Among the
legitimists in Reason as in politics, are to be found those who maintain
the divine right, who base the right of Reason to rule over Instinct
upon the Will of God, and others again, the constitutionalists, who base
their support on the Will of the people, on universal suffrage, who
force upon Instinct the law promulgated by society. I need not carry the
metaphor to extremes. Every reader can work it out in all its details.
I only wanted to show quite clearly that almost all moral philosophers
conceived Morality as a struggle between Reason and Instinct, as the
defeat of lawlessness by law. But their views diverge widely when they
try to explain the source of this law and its claim to obedience.

The theologians find no difficulty in this explanation. Just as the
essence of Morality according to their ideas is the nearest possible
approximation to divine perfection, so the moral law is one enacted by
God Himself, and it is a sin punishable with hell fire to fail to
observe it or to rebel against it. Others look upon Man as his own
law-giver, and trace his moral conduct, his willingness to combat his
own instincts, to an inner voice which teaches him what is right. They
call this inner voice by different names. They call it Nature, Reason or
Conscience, and look upon it as something innate, as a normal
constituent of man's psychic nature. That is the meaning of Fichte's
apodictic statement: "That which does not meet with the approval of
one's own conscience is necessarily sin. Therefore he who acts on anyone
else's authority acts in a conscienceless manner."

With this emphatic utterance Fichte dismisses both the devout believers,
for whom Morality is the revealed Will of God, and the Rationalists who
look upon it as the dictate of society. He considers that if man claims
to act morally, he can do so only on his own authority, i.e. on that of
his conscience. He is not aware that in so doing he frivolously abandons
all rights to pronounce an objective moral judgment on any human action.
He thereby relinquishes the power to ask any further question except:
"Did he act in accordance with his own conscience? If so, then he has
acted in a subjectively conscientious way, even if it appears to me to
be immoral or even criminal and monstrous. If he has acted contrary to
the promptings of his own conscience, then he is assuredly a sinner,
even if his action be in my eyes splendid and exemplary." Thus Fichte,
with his subjective basis of Morality, is led to a conclusion which is a
ludicrous reversal of generally accepted ideas. According to him, a man
would be acting conscientiously if, despising what all others hold good,
right and sacred, he wallows in the satisfaction of his selfish
instincts, as long as his conscience approves or even bids him do so; on
the other hand, he is a sinner if, in opposition to his inner voice, but
according to moral law, that is in obedience to extraneous authority, he
practices all the virtues.

All these subjective moral philosophers tacitly assume with Rousseau
that man is by nature good. They take no account of the empirically
established fact that there are men whose Fichtean conscience, or whose
Kantian categorical imperative, urges them to a course of action which
according to the general opinion is bad, wicked and revolting. This
criticism applies to Beneke, according to whom Morality is "a
development of human nature which exists as such within us, and which we
need only continue or promote"; it applies equally to Reid and Dugald
Stewart, who describe it as an inclination, which has become a habit or
a principle, to act according to the dictates of conscience. But
conscience must be explained. It is by no means self-evident that each
individual conscience will have the same standard of good and evil. The
moral philosopher must not shirk the duty of showing how the conscience
acquires its concepts of moral values, with what weapons it provides
Reason to combat Instinct, which demands satisfaction without paying any
attention to the warnings of conscience.

The great majority of moral philosophers do not endorse the view of Kant
and Fichte, that conscience is a piece of human nature, a sense inborn
in man, an inner voice that is independent of, and unmoved by, external
influences; on the contrary, they are convinced that conscience
originates outside the individual, that, in his consciousness, it is the
advocate retained by society, commissioned to plead the cause of the
community before the reason of the individual even, nay, especially,
when the interests of the community run counter to those of the
individual.

Bacon calls the presence in our consciousness of a defender of the
interests of society our innate social affection, and treats it
unreservedly as the source of Morality. Long before his time the
Stoics had noted the existence of this social affection and called it
[Greek: oikeiôsis]; Hugo Grotius, with the intellectual perspicuity
peculiar to himself, says that "Right and Morality flow from the same
source, and this source is a strong social instinct natural to man, it
is solicitude for the community, a solicitude guided by Reason." The
English philosophers are practically unanimous in ascribing both
conscience and Morality in general to a social source. The welfare of
the community, says Richard Cumberland, is the highest moral law;
Hutcheson remarks that, in the struggle between egoism and universal
benevolence, the decisive factor in favour of the latter is the
accompanying feeling, the reflective emotion of approval.

In modern parlance we call "universal benevolence," altruism, and the
"reflective emotion of approval" is a paraphrase of conscience which
contains an indication of its mode of action. For the idea that our
action will meet with the approval of the community and the pleasurable
emotion of satisfaction are in fact the reasons why we mostly submit to
the dictates of conscience voicing the commands of the community. Only
Hutcheson is too venturesome and goes too far, when he maintains
unreservedly that the reflective emotion of approval in the struggle
between egoism and universal benevolence is the decisive factor which
turns the scales in favour of the latter. This is by no means always the
case. When it does occur we call the action moral, but we characterize
it as immoral when, in spite of the "reflective emotion of approval"
"universal benevolence" is worsted by egoism.

It is unnecessary to quote the opinions of other moral philosophers.
It is enough to observe that most of them describe the moral law as a
social agreement and make conscience its accredited representative.
L. Lévy-Brühl repeats a doctrine current since the days of Pythagoras
when he says: "The sense of duty and that of responsibility, horror of
crime, love of what is good and reverence for justice--all these, which
a conscience sensitive to Morality thinks it derives from itself and
from itself alone, have nevertheless a social origin"; and Feuerbach
expresses the same view in an entertainingly melodramatic fashion when
he calls the voice of conscience "An echo of the cry of revenge uttered
by the injured party." This cry of revenge would never wake an echo in
us if we did not possess a sounding board which cries of distress and
lamentation cause to vibrate. Schopenhauer, digging deeper than his
predecessor, clearly recognizes this sounding board, and describes its
characteristics when he says that the foundation of ethics is pity,
which in its passive form warns us: "_Neminem laede!_ Do harm to no
one!" And in its active form gives the order: "_Imo omnes quantum potes
juva!_ Assist everyone with all your might!"

The assumption, that sympathy with his neighbour must be present in
man's consciousness before he is capable of moral action, is one that
need not be made by subjective moral philosophers, who hold with Kant
and his school that the moral law is an inborn categorical imperative,
which proclaims its commands without reference to any extraneous object,
or to the world, or mankind.

In the same way the theologians have no need of it, for they consider
that what is morally good is the Will of God.

But he who holds with the moral philosophers of sociological tendencies
that Morality is regard for one's fellow men, and the recognition that
the claims of the real or supposed interest of the community are
superior to those of the comfort of the individual, must admit that
sympathy is a necessary preliminary to moral action; i.e. that the
individual must have the ability to picture the sufferings of others so
vividly that he feels their sorrows as his own, and with all his might
and all his will strives to prevent, alleviate and heal them. The lack
of this ability, psychic anæsthesia, is a symptom of disease. It renders
the person affected incapable of moral action. It is a characteristic of
the born criminal, and is the essential symptom of that state of mind
which alienists term moral insanity. Even in this condition, if reason
and the power of judgment are not affected, great offences against
current moral law can be avoided. But this results from the fear of the
painful and ruinous results which a collision with public opinion
entails, even if the offender is not actually haled into court. It is
not due to any inner necessity, nor to the prompting of one's own
feelings.

Only the Rationalists have any cause or reason to inquire into the aims
of Morality, whether they look upon the moral law as dictated by society
or are of the opinion that it is the sum total of the rules by which
Reason, of its own initiative, successfully combats the urging of
Instinct. If the moral law is a creation of society, and is obeyed by
the individual out of sympathy with his fellow-men or consideration for
society, the logical conclusion is that society has set up the moral law
to satisfy some real or imagined need. Its aim in this case can only be
the real or supposed welfare of the community. This is the most widely
accepted view.

"Morality and universal welfare," says Macchiavelli, "are conceptions
which coincide." In his calm assurance this apodictic writer, who
doubtlessly slept well and had an excellent digestion, is never troubled
by a doubt as to whether there is such a thing as an absolutely reliable
measure of universal welfare, and therefore whether Morality, which is
termed its equivalent, can provide us with a perfectly unimpeachable
standard. He whose ethical conscience is more tender and timid will
inevitably anxiously ask himself: Who decides what universal welfare
demands and what is conducive to it? Is it to be the masses? Is the mob,
incapable of thought, ignorant, swayed by momentary and shifting
impulses, to make moral laws for the select few who are its natural
guides? What tragedies would necessarily result from this definition!
How often a strong personality, trained to come to independent
conclusions, refuses to obey the voice of the mob! Is the sheep who
trots bleating along with the herd to be taken as the type of a moral
being? Must we necessarily condemn as immoral those who swim against the
stream, enlightened tyrants who force upon their people hateful
innovations calculated to ensure their welfare,--such men as Peter the
Great, the Emperor Joseph II, the reformer who comes into violent
conflict with the majority who are creatures of habit? "The aim of
Morality is the welfare of society; this is indeed the essence of
Morality." A sufficiently safe and most soothing formula this seems; but
really the security it gives is most deceptive, and it leaves unsolved
the most important problems relating to the phenomenon of Morality.

A numerous group of moral philosophers seeks the aim of moral conduct
in the individual himself, not outside him. In spite of Schopenhauer's
sympathy, they doubt that consideration for the well-being of the
community would act forcibly enough upon the individual to induce him to
wage unceasing war on his impulses and struggle to overcome them. Rather
they hold that the individual must find in his inner consciousness not
only the spur to moral action, but also the reward for the same, and
they characterize this driving force as pleasurable emotions in every
sense of the words. According to them man acts morally because, and in
so far as, he anticipates pleasurable results from so doing. Epicurus
considers the aim of Morality always to be Pleasure. He makes only the
one reservation, that a reasonable man will renounce an immediate
pleasure for the sake of a greater one in the future, and that he may
delight in the anticipation of pleasurable emotions which defeat and
dull present pains. Thus the martyr may be a true Epicurean, even if by
his actions he exposes himself to most cruel torture and the most
painful death, for he is convinced that the everlasting joys of paradise
will more than indemnify him for his temporary sufferings.

I have already shown that Aristotle considers Morality the activity of
practical Reason, which is accompanied by pleasurable emotions. He makes
these pleasurable emotions an essential part of Morality, and Spinoza
shares this view, for he says: "Knowledge of good and evil is nothing
but a pleasurable or a disagreeable emotion in so far as we are
conscious of it."

No less roundly, one might almost say brutally, Leibnitz declares: "We
term good that which gives us pleasure; evil that which gives us pain,"
while Feuerbach expresses himself rather more carefully and indefinitely
thus: "The instinct for happiness is the most potent of all instincts.
Where existence always occurs together with volition, volition and the
will to be happy are inseparable; they are, indeed, essentially one. 'I
will,' means 'I have the will not to suffer, not to be hindered and
destroyed, but, on the contrary, to be assisted and preserved; that is,
I have the will to be happy.'" This is a wordy paraphrase of Spinoza's:
"All existence is self-assertion, and Morality is only the highest and
purest form of this fundamental instinct in a reasonable being."

Among those moral philosophers who see in pleasurable emotions the aim
of Morality, its reward and its incentive, we must distinguish two
groups: those who understand by pleasurable emotions such as appeal to
the senses--the Hedonists; and those who spiritualize the meaning of the
word and expect of Morality not an immediate bodily gratification, a
pleasure, or an insipid satisfaction of the sense, but lasting
happiness--the Eudæmonists. At the first glance the Eudæmonists seem to
have a higher and more worthy conception of the subjective reaction of
moral conduct than have the Hedonists; for the satisfaction the former
expect and promise does not apply to the lower spheres of our organic
life, but to the loftiest functions of our mind, from which alone a
feeling of happiness can emanate.

But if we look into the matter more closely we find that to draw a sharp
distinction between the Hedonists and Eudæmonists is more than a little
arbitrary. For Pleasure and Happiness differ hardly at all in
essentials, but chiefly in degree; and this would at once be obvious if
one only took the trouble to define the two ideas, which, however, is
mostly not done. And with good reason, for it is impossible to explain
Pleasure. You can use synonyms for it; you can look wise and say:
Pleasure is that which is agreeable, or that which one desires, that in
which one delights, or a certain quality of feeling which accompanies
such organic processes as strengthen or vitalize the system; but all
that this amounts to is to say in a roundabout way, Pleasure is
Pleasure. It is a fundamental fact of our inner consciousness, just as
inexplicable as life, or as its antithesis, Pain. But if we assume that
Pleasure is something given by subjective experience, then the idea of
Happiness can be defined. Happiness is a flooding of the consciousness
with sunshine; it is enjoyment of the moment, a sense of living in the
present accentuated by pleasurable emotion. If this feeling is
organically differentiated, that is, if it springs from a certain
section of the mind or mechanism of the body and can be located there,
it is ecstasy. It is only felt as Happiness when it is, so to speak,
melted, dissolved, distributed throughout the organism,
coenesthetically diffused.

If we agree to this definition we can take Eudæmonism into consideration
as an aim of moral action, but Hedonism we shall have to discard from
the start. If Morality is to be inhibition, a victory of Reason over
Instinct, then it cannot possibly arouse Pleasure, since the first and
most immediate source of Pleasure is the surrender to instinct, the
satisfaction of the organic appetites; but if one resists them,
suppresses them, then one experiences a privation which at best
occasions discomfort and may easily cause pain. By its very nature and
the mechanism by which it works, Morality can therefore give rise to no
pleasure, but only to discomfort. All the same, it can afford a feeling
of happiness.

It may be objected that I am guilty of a contradiction when I assume the
possibility of Happiness without Pleasure, as I have just described
Happiness as a particular kind of Pleasure; but in reality there is no
contradiction. For Pleasure springs from a special organic apparatus,
whereas Happiness is not a condition of any particular apparatus in our
body, but a general feeling that cannot be located; if it is roused by
moral actions it originates in the self-satisfaction of Reason, in its
pride in the victory over Instinct, in the rapture occasioned by one's
own strength of will; therefore, it can well exist without any
differentiated pleasurable emotion located in any particular organic
apparatus.

Many moral philosophers have for various reasons rejected plausible
Eudæmonism as well as Hedonism, and these reasons can all be traced back
to the recognition, or at least an inkling, of the fact that moral
action in the nature of things must exclude pleasurable emotions; at any
rate immediate ones, and such as are perceived by the senses. Perhaps
Fichte does this in the most naïve fashion, for he rejects every form of
Eudæmonism as the aim of moral action, but admits as its purpose only
bliss, that is to say, the self-satisfaction of Reason resulting from
action in accordance with its own laws. However, he struggles in vain to
deny that this "bliss" is of the nature of a pleasurable emotion, or to
interpret it as differing from Eudæmonism. He is only giving the latter
another name to make it conform in an orthodox manner with his doctrine
of the Supreme Ego. "_Baptizo te carpam!_" I baptize thee, carp! In this
way the pious man complies with the law enjoining abstinence from meat,
and with an easy conscience smacks his lips over a roast pheasant which
he has dubbed fish.

Plato is among those who most emphatically deny that Pleasure is either
the motive force, the accompaniment, the consequence, or the aim of
Morality. But a reasonable thinker can derive no profit from his
arguments in support of this point of view, for they are rambling,
fantastic, mystical and visionary. Plato thinks it a necessary
consequence of the very nature of Good that it should be absolutely
self-sufficient. For Pleasure is a perpetual growth, a ceaseless longing
for more; it can therefore not be self-sufficient, and on this account
can not be the foundation of Morality.

However, it is by no means obvious why Morality should not be in a
perpetual state of growth (just as Pleasure is, according to Plato), or
why it should not constantly desire an increase of its own activities.
On the contrary, this craving is just what one would most wish Morality
to have. True, it would not then attain self-satisfaction. But what is
the good of this self-satisfaction? It is a pleasurable emotion, and
according to Plato Morality is supposed to have nothing in common with
Pleasure. It is not to be contentment and serene satisfaction, but
rather tireless endeavour. However, Plato, of course, cannot admit this,
because for him Good and the deity are identical, and being perfect can
therefore advance no farther in perfection; and the striving after Good
is merely an effort of memory on man's part to call to mind more clearly
the deity whom he saw in his spiritual life before birth, and of whom he
retains a dim and confused memory in his earthly life. It is plainly
idle to waste reasonable criticism upon such visionary arguments.

The Stoics, too, try to sever the connexion between moral conduct and
Pleasure, and to conceive the former as a simple activity of human
nature, one, moreover, from which they expect no particular
satisfaction. They overlook the fact that every activity of the impulses
and instincts of man's own nature affords him satisfaction, and that
Pleasure is nothing but this very satisfaction of natural instincts. If,
then, Morality were, as the Stoics contend, only "Life in harmony with
Nature herself," then, like every other satisfaction of natural desires,
it should be an ever-flowing source of pleasurable emotions, and this
characteristic would be inseparable from it, though the Stoics may
vainly try to deny it.

Christianity has an easier job than Stoicism. With harsh severity,
disregarding any plea for indulgence in view of the weakness of the
flesh, it absolutely excludes the factor of pleasure from the fulfilment
of moral duties. But this severity is only apparent. The good and just
man can expect no reward for his moral conduct here on earth, but he
will find a much more ample one in the life to come. To the devout
believer who gives unlimited credit to it, the promise of the joys of
paradise has the full value of a cash disbursement. It is somewhat
childish juggling with words to deny pleasurable emotion to be the aim
of moral conduct if at the same time a most vivid foretaste of the
eternal bliss which awaits him after death be given to the virtuous man;
as if the anticipation of heavenly bliss were not a pleasurable emotion
of the highest degree!

Kant finds it due to his point of view to spurn every weak inclination
to Eudæmonism. A Categorical Imperative cannot issue commands with an
eye to profit or comfort. That is as clear as daylight. "All Morality of
action must be founded on the necessity which arises from duty and
respect for the law, and not from love or inclination for the desired
result of the action." Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, and John Stuart Mill
have recorded such irrefutable criticisms of the Kantian doctrine of the
absolute disinterestedness of moral action, that it is unnecessary to
add to their arguments.

Only some moral philosophers, and particularly Mill, are guilty of
logical inaccuracy when they reject Eudæmonism but retain Utility as the
aim of morality. Why do the Utilitarians not realize that they are
merely Eudæmonists under another name, and that he who disregards his
own immediate interests in order to further the well-being of the
community experiences a pleasurable emotion of high order in the
satisfaction he derives from the sacrifices whereby he has contributed
to the good of the community?

The useless exertions of a section of moral philosophers to eliminate
not only Hedonism but also Eudæmonism from moral action are a veritable
labour of Sisyphus. Hardly have these two with difficulty been expelled
by the door than they return by the window or the chimney. It is a mere
conjuring trick to remove them from this world to the next, as do the
theologians, or to substitute universal well-being for the feeling of
happiness. All the same, the desire to purge moral action of the least
admixture of hope of profit or pleasure is comprehensible. Common
experience, which is equally forced upon the profound thinker and upon
the plain man in the street least inclined to cudgel his brain, teaches
us that Morality consists, with very few exceptions, in acting against
our own immediate interest, in denying ourselves some coveted pleasure,
in renouncing some attainable profit, in undertaking some disagreeable
exertion because Reason bids us do so. From this practical experience
the man in the street gets the impression that duty is a bitter
necessity and that decency is attended by many and varied
inconveniences. The theorist, the philosopher, derives a principle from
his empirical facts; he observes that the moral man often acts against
his own immediate interests, and expresses this in the pretentious
axiom: "Morality from the very beginning excludes all thought of
profit."

And yet the philosophers are guilty of the same superficiality as the
man in the street. They do not go far enough into the matter to perceive
that the morality of pleasure, of interest, and of duty, Hedonism,
Utilitarianism and the Categorical Imperative, all lead in very slightly
different ways to the same goal--Eudæmonism. The fulfilment of duty
affords spiritual satisfaction, a pre-eminently pleasurable emotion
which increases in direct proportion to the effort which its fulfilment
demands. Interest also implies pleasure, for every interest ultimately
comes to this, that it is an attempt to secure a pleasure. This aim lies
at the bottom of all interests; it is the fundamental interest from
which all seemingly different interests are derived; it is the universal
goal to which all human effort tends, whether it be a question of making
money to satisfy ambition, of winning love and friendship, of material,
spiritual, personal or social values. Interest is self-assertion and the
intensifying of the zest for life. But these are always accompanied by
pleasurable emotions; thus interest is forthwith identified with
pleasurable emotion, even though one has to work hard, even though at
the moment it entails drudgery and discomfort. Hedonism makes no secret
of its nature and its tendency. It openly admits what the Categorical
Imperative denies and what Utilitarianism veils with vague phrases: that
the aim and object of moral action is Pleasure and nothing else.

In our short survey of the immense field of literature dealing with
moral philosophy we have learnt that, although the most various and
divergent views are expressed as to the essence and source of Morality,
nevertheless there is but one opinion, be it clearly or vaguely stated,
be it the result of knowledge or surmise, as to the mechanism by means
of which moral concepts determine action, and as to the conscious or
unconscious aim of moral action: Moral concepts do their work by means
of inhibition, and the aim of moral action is a feeling of happiness.




CHAPTER II

THE IMMANENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF MORALITY


It is natural for man's thoughts to be concentrated on himself until he
has learnt to rise from the deep and narrow well of his egoism to a
higher and wider view of life and, free from the taint of self-love, to
form an idea of his place in the world and his relationship to it. Not
till the development of his intellect is far advanced does any doubt
assail him as to the truth of his conviction that all his personal
affairs, the least as well as the most weighty, are of the greatest
importance to the universe, that every ache or pain he feels must wake
an echo in the heavens, that the Earth shudders in anticipation when he
is about to stumble and sprain his ankle, and that the stars in their
courses mysteriously, though intelligibly to the discerning, foretell
the hour of his birth and of his death. An Indian legend pours cruel
scorn upon this childlike megalomania: A fox had fallen into a stream
and was drowning. "The world is coming to an end!" gasped the animal in
its agony. A peasant standing on the brink replied coldly, "Oh, no, I
see only a little fox drowning."

Many moral philosophers, those of the Kantian school without exception,
labour under the delusion of this same, egocentric view. In their eyes
the phenomenon of Morality is a cosmic one. Morality is the law of
human conduct, therefore it is the law of world processes, of the
universe. Indeed, it is the law of the universe before it becomes that
of human conduct. It would exist even if there were no men, no humanity,
no human conduct at all. The solemn innocents who weightily give
utterance to this doctrine are unaware how ridiculous they are. They do
not hesitate to subject Sirius to the yoke of the Ten Commandments. They
are convinced that the Milky Way practises virtue and shuns, or ought to
shun, vice, just as we inconsiderable human beings do. The precept,
"Thou shalt not steal," applies with binding force to gravity, and the
warning, "Thou shalt not kill," to electricity, though the latter
ruthlessly disregards it, as the results of being struck by lightning
and accidents with high voltage installations frequently prove. If they
do not threaten Nature with police and prison it is only because in
their eyes Morality is independent of all sanctions, is superior to
rewards and punishments, depends upon itself alone, constitutes its own
aim, is by its very nature a compelling force, and therefore has no need
of adventitious compulsion.

Such profound nonsense cannot lay claim to serious treatment. It is a
counterpart to the belief that events in the history of mankind, like
war and pestilence, are foretold by heavenly signs such as fiery comets.
The stars revolve, the clockwork of the universe continues undisturbed,
as though the earth were still uninhabited, as it was when it was a
glowing fluid globe or, earlier still, a nebular mass; and this
although man's self-esteem be hurt by such a lack of consideration. If
we care to call the (so far as we know) unalterable laws, according to
which the forces of Nature act and the mechanism of the world works, the
Morality of the Universe, that may pass. Only we must in that case
clearly realize that we are speaking metaphorically, that we are making
use of a poetic simile, that we are anthropomorphically attributing
human traits to the universe. Morality is a phenomenon restricted to
mankind, or, to be strictly accurate, a phenomenon which occurs only
among living beings; for the beginnings of Morality may be traced in
creatures of a lower order than man, and it develops simultaneously with
the consciousness and the mentality of living beings. Morality is a
function of life, dependent upon it, begotten and developed by it, to
meet life's needs and serve its interests. The existence of Morality
apart from life is as unthinkable as that of hunger, ambition, or
gratitude.

Morality is a collection of laws and prohibitions which Reason opposes
to organic instincts, by means of which the former forces the latter
into actions from which they would like to refrain, or prevents them
from carrying out that which they yearn to do. The existence of
Morality, therefore, presupposes in the first place that of an
intelligence sufficiently developed to form a clear idea of something
that is still in the future, namely, an image of the consequences
resulting from an action.

Guided by this inner contemplation of the image of the consequences of
an action, Reason decides to carry out or prevent the action. This
gives us the lowest plane upon which Morality can occur as the cause of
action and of abstention from action. It implies, above all things,
foresight, and can therefore only exist in a consciousness which is
sufficiently developed to grasp the idea of the future and form a
picture of it. This consciousness must be capable of extracting the
elements of a conception from memory according to the laws of the
association of ideas, and be able to group them logically in a new
order. In other words, as long as the mind cannot visualize the past and
from it build up a picture of the future, Morality can find no place in
it.

This statement requires no limitation, but it demands a short
explanation. It is quite true that Morality is foresight, but it is only
among the elect that the latter is developed to such a pitch that it is
possible to form images of the consequences of action and abstention
sufficiently clear and definite to exercise a restraining or encouraging
influence.

The average man can act morally without first working out a clear
picture of the future. It is enough that he has been trained to the
habit of respecting current precepts, and of accepting the views
obtaining in his circle as to what is good or bad, what is admissible or
inadmissible. This morality, of course, is merely a matter of drill or
training; it is unthinking automatism; it is inferior, and not to be
compared with the living, creative morality of higher natures, which, as
a sovereign law-giver, comes to an independent decision in every case
and, like the guardian angel of childlike faith, guides man on his path
through life, indicates the right course at the cross-roads, and warns
him of pitfalls and stumbling-blocks. But for everyday use mechanical
morality may suffice. In the uneventful existence of the average man,
which passes in a stereotyped way, this mechanical morality is an
acceptable guide and counsellor, but it remains an outside influence
foreign to his inner consciousness; he is glad to deceive and outwit it,
as a slave does his master's bailiff if he can do so without running the
risk of a thrashing; but if his destiny unexpectedly rises above its
accustomed dead level, then this dogmatic morality, which he has never
really assimilated, leaves him in the lurch, and mournfully, in piteous
tones, he utters the well-known cry, "It is easy to do one's duty; it is
difficult to know where one's duty lies."

Reason, then, which is capable of foreseeing the results of actions,
teaches a man what he must do and from what he must abstain, where he
may follow his instinct and where he must resist it, according as it
considers the presumptive results of yielding to impulse good or bad.
But whence does Reason obtain the standard it applies to the actions of
men and their results? How does it acquire the fundamental concepts Good
and Bad, and what is their significance? Generally speaking, the answer
will be as follows: Moral values are appraised by a standard supplied by
a general consensus of opinion; Reason acknowledges as good that which
meets with the approval of the community, that which the latter desires
and therefore praises; the community, for its part, echoes the
pronouncements of influential personages, i.e. of the most respected,
most powerful, and most aristocratic; Reason condemns as bad that which
the community disapproves, and which it therefore censures and rejects.
This definition does not solve the problem of good and bad, it only
shifts it.

Later we shall have to show upon what grounds the community
discriminates between acceptable and reprehensible facts, calling the
former good and the latter bad. For the present it is enough to observe
that Reason derives the laws, which it constantly impresses on man, from
the opinion of the community.

It can happen that Reason rejects the opinion of the community and forms
a conclusion opposed to it. This revolt of individual morality against
conventional morality is the great tragedy of man. It can only occur in
the soul of a hero, for mediocre and insipid people always bow to the
opinion of the majority. There is clearly imminent danger of making a
mistake. Not seldom, however, the individual is right in his opposition
to the community, and then the latter is fired by his example to examine
its traditional dogmas and to correct or reject them. This is not the
only, but it is the most common means by which Morality is developed and
changed. Its progress demands martyrs. Strong personalities must be
sacrificed to force a revision of moral values. Socrates has to swallow
the draft of hemlock so that unfettered thought may acquire the right to
doubt the legend of the gods. Jesus has to incur the dangerous anger of
the Pharisees so that the adulteress may be treated with indulgence and
human sympathy instead of being punished according to rigorous law. But
the opposition of a self-willed, subjective Morality to the accepted
moral law is always exceptional; the general rule is submission to the
moral law. This is indeed a necessary preliminary to revolt against the
moral law of the community, for it is only by means of a vigorous social
education that man develops such a nicely balanced and keen sense of
Good and Bad, that he cannot prevail upon himself to carry out generally
approved actions which his own intelligence does not recognize as moral.
He whose moral sense has not been intensified by strict discipline will
never be assailed by doubt, as long as he follows in the footsteps of
the multitude.

Hence, as a rule, Reason exercises its control of the actions of man in
conformity with the laws prescribed by the community. Before Morality
develops into the practice of Good and the rejection of Bad it takes the
form of consideration for the world at large, since it is the latter
which has created the concepts of Good and Bad as well as the standard
by which they are judged, and in order to avoid conflict with the
community, and to maintain uninterrupted agreement with it, the
individual exerts himself to persist in doing good and to refrain from
doing evil.

The establishment of these facts gives deep offence to the mystics among
moral philosophers. "What a debasement and belittling of Morality! What!
It is supposed to be nothing more than a sort of obsequiousness towards
the multitude? Its laws are observed for the sake of pleasing others? It
is a comedy played to win applause and a call before the curtain? That
is a libel and a calumny. The truly moral man looks neither to the right
nor to the left. He does not condescend to ask, 'What will the world say
to this?' There is but one judge in whose eyes he wishes to be
justified: his conscience."

Quite right. But what is conscience found to be if we penetrate the fog
of mystic words with which it has come to be surrounded? Conscience is
the permanent representative of the community in the consciousness of
the individual, just as public opinion may be termed the conscience of
every member of society made manifest. Metaphorically, it wields the
powers pertaining to society; it praises and blames, it condemns and
exalts, it punishes and rewards, as society could do; and it actually
pronounces judgment in the name of society, even though it does not
preface such judgment with this formula which is tacitly implied and
must always be mentally added. Conscience is the invisible link which
unites the individual with a social group, just as speech, custom,
tradition, and political institutions are the visible links. But the
social origin and representative nature of conscience set limits to its
power. Conscience is a respected authority with wide powers only in the
consciousness of those individuals who have a highly developed social
sense. I purposely do not say those in whom the instinct to follow the
crowd preponderates, because this mode of expression might imply blame
and condemnation which I do not intend to convey.

For social instinct comes natural to an individual born, educated and
working in a community, who shares its feelings, views and interests,
nay, even its prejudices and mistakes; and if he lacks it, it is a sign
of a morbid deviation from the normal. Only the decadent man is
uncannily lonely in spirit, alien, indifferent or definitely hostile to
his human surroundings; he is, according to the violence and
polarization of his instincts, the passionate anarchist or the born
criminal; the public opinion of his circle is unintelligible to him and
makes no impression on him; it has no significance for him; he attaches
no importance to its approbation, and its anger leaves him cold; he
would take no notice of it, were it not that he knows its power to
destroy him, and fears its police, its prisons, and its scaffolds. Such
a man, organically predisposed to crime, most urgently needs a
conscience. It would arrest him on the downward path to which his evil
instincts lead. It would warn him to resist the wicked impulses of his
selfishness. But he, of all people, has no conscience. He can have none.
He is anti-social, he is at war with society, diplomatic relations
between him and it have been broken off, and it has no representative in
his consciousness. A lively and active feeling of joint responsibility
with the community is a necessary predisposition on the part of the
individual before conscience can have any power. Where the former is
lacking the latter is mute and paralysed.

The essence of Morality, as we have found, is the subjection of
instinct and direct organic impulses to the discipline of Reason. The
latter exercises a censorship in pursuance of a law which it derives not
from within, but from without, from the ordinances of the community
which instructs Reason as to what it should permit, what it should
forbid, and what it should demand. Conscience ensures respect for its
commands, and may be called the executive power or police of Reason,
acting as the authorized representative of Morality. It is the garrison
which the community maintains in the individual's consciousness, which
it arms and supplies with authority and instructions; the power of
conscience lies in the strength of the community at its back, and is
without influence only upon those who refuse admission to the troops of
the community and yield to none but actual physical force. All this
proves irrefutably that Morality is a phenomenon arising from the social
life of man, and its power is a function of society.

If under the conditions in which humanity lives nowadays one could
imagine a man totally detached from his species, leading a solitary
life, Morality would be absolutely meaningless to him. The idea is one
he could never conceive. It would have no significance. Good and bad
would always retain their original meaning as labels for sensual
qualities, for pleasant or unpleasant sensations of taste, smell, etc.;
they would never be spiritualized or apply to the quality of actions. He
would be unable to attach any meaning to the words duty and right. The
terms virtue, vice, conscience, repentance would convey nothing to him.
Morality can only originate when the individual lives united with
fellow beings in a social community. It is a consequence of this union.
It is the one condition on which alone this union can be permanent.

The solitary individual must, however, not be confused with the lonely
one. Robinson Crusoe, shipwrecked on a desert island and forced to stay
there without companionship, is not primitive man. He is a son of
civilization who has fallen upon evil days. In his enforced solitariness
he maintains the habits of thought of his original surroundings. He
preserves the concepts of Morality even though he has no occasion to
obey its dictates. He can, if not actually yet potentially, be a paragon
of virtue or a sink of iniquity; he can have a very delicate or a very
dull conscience. He continues to be a man of social instincts cut off
from society, and goes on thinking and feeling in a social manner. By
primitive man I mean man as he was before society originated. For,
contrary to the sociological school which denies the individual and
boldly refuses to allow him any existence, declaring society to be older
and earlier than the individual, I think I have conclusively shown
("_Der Sinn der Geschichte_" [The Meaning of History]) that man is not
by nature a gregarious animal, that he lived alone, being self-sufficing
as long as the climatic conditions, under which he first made his
appearance on earth, enabled him to exist by his own unaided efforts and
capabilities, and that he banded himself together with others in gangs,
troops and hordes--the earliest forms of subsequent society--when, after
the first ice age following his appearance, the struggle for existence
grew ever harder, ever more laborious, transcending the powers of the
individual so that he could only overcome Nature, now grown hostile to
him, by uniting with others of his kind.

This primitive man of the golden geological period before the Ice Age
knew no Morality, and as far as human intelligence can tell he would
never have known of it had there been a continuance of the paradisaic
conditions obtaining at the time of his birth, and had the climate not
deteriorated. The occurrence of murderous frosts, the necessity of
seeking protection from them in natural caves or artificially
constructed shelters, and of kindling and maintaining fires, the
diminution or disappearance of vegetable food, and the need to replace
it by the booty of the chase or fishing--all these forced him to unite
his efforts with those of other men who shared his wretched lot on
earth. But in order to maintain this community with others he had to
learn a new science, one he had hitherto not known because he had had no
need of it: consideration for his fellows. He might no longer think of
himself alone, consider his own inclinations in all eventualities, give
way to all his moods or yield to every whim; he had unceasingly to bear
his neighbour in mind and take care not to annoy him, not to make an
enemy of him, not to become hateful to him. Forbearance towards his
neighbour was the necessary condition of their life in common, just as
their life in common was the necessary condition of self-preservation.
The penalty for selfish indulgence was stern persecution, punishment,
perhaps death; in any case, expulsion from the community. Man,
therefore, stood before the choice of self-control or destruction, and
this dilemma taught him Morality.

Such, we must imagine, were the beginnings of Morality. It was not
prearranged or purposely sought; it grew naturally from the
companionship of men and developed simultaneously with society. If the
struggle for existence made life in communities a necessity, the first
coercive law of the community was to enjoin upon its members a mode of
conduct which alone rendered the existence of the community possible,
and the fundamental rule of this conduct was mutual consideration.
Without this two egoisms cannot exist side by side and develop. They
either destroy or shun one another. This phenomenon may also be observed
among the higher animals. Elephants, living in herds, expel quarrelsome
individuals and force them to wander alone far from the rest. The
natives of Ceylon and India fear these "bachelor elephants" as being
specially savage and malicious. They think that they grow like this
because of their loneliness. That is probably a false conclusion. It is
much more likely that these animals have been driven from their herd
because they were savage and malicious, because their characters were
opposed to discipline. Here we come upon the first faint foreshadowing
of the phenomenon of Morality in an animal community.

Now that we have introduced the idea of the growth and development of
Morality, it becomes obvious that it must have begun with mere
indications, and that from rude, dim, undeveloped beginnings it
gradually grows more perfect, more refined, more nicely differentiated.
At first man avoids only the most brutal injuries to his neighbour, such
as hurting him, doing him bodily harm, threatening to kill him, openly
robbing him. In proportion as he becomes more spiritually sensitive, as
he learns to feel the insult and humiliation of injuries other than
those inflicted with a fist or club, he is led to refrain from giving
his fellow-men similar offence, which though it deals no gaping wounds,
yet hurts his spiritual sensibilities. A series of values is developed,
growing ever longer, ever more complicated, with more and more
gradations, until, going far beyond the simple, artless commandments,
"Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbour's wife nor his goods," it reaches the pitch of agonized
self-reproach, because of the slightest and most secret impulses to
dislike, injustice, covetousness, dissimulation, etc.

Morality must be regarded as a support and a weapon in the struggle for
existence in so far as, given present climatic conditions on earth and
the civilization arising therefrom, man can only exist in societies, and
society cannot exist without Morality. The chain of thought runs as
follows: without morality no society, without society no individual
existence; consequently, Morality is the essential condition for the
existence of the individual as well as for that of the community.
However, we must always bear in mind the reservation, "given the
present climatic conditions on earth." Had the earth continued to be the
paradise it must have been at the birth of our species (since otherwise
the latter could simply not have originated), the necessity would never
have arisen for the individual to band himself together with others of
his kind, no society would ever have developed, and there would have
been no Morality. Serious as the subject is, one cannot but smile at the
thought of the comic figure the learned, professorial Neo-Kantians would
cut with their dogma of the absolute and cosmic nature of Morality, if
they propounded it among men whose wants Nature's bounty was able to
satisfy as easily as the frog is satisfied in his puddle or the crow on
his tree top. They would find no trace of absolute Morality among
mankind, and would be reduced to seeking it among the stars.

The very nature of Morality, in that it is an aid to man in the struggle
for existence, makes it easy to understand the origin and nature of the
concepts Good and Bad. There are propensities and actions which
facilitate life in a community which, indeed, alone make it possible:
love of one's neighbour, helpfulness, liberality, consideration for the
feelings of others, and amiability. There are others which make such a
life difficult or absolutely impossible: uncompromising selfishness,
violence, cruelty, rapacity, instinctive hostility to one's neighbour.
Men recognized that the former were beneficial to them, the latter
harmful. The former aroused their liking, the latter their disapproval,
dislike and animosity. The quality of feeling which accompanied the
perceptions of actions of the former kind was akin to that with which
they responded to beneficial, profitable, useful and welcome sense
impressions. The quality of feeling, which actions of the second
category gave rise to, was akin to that due to harmful and repellent
sense impressions. Following the law of analogy, they placed on an equal
footing actions which were felt to be pleasing and pleasant sensations
of taste and smell; similarly with disagreeable actions and unpleasant
sense impressions; and finally they called the former good and the
latter bad, using terms originally applicable only to the realm of the
senses.

Not everything that is pleasant to the senses is beneficial. There are
poisons which are pleasing to taste, but none the less noxious for that,
such as (to give only one example) alcoholic drinks and impressions of a
certain order, like voluptuousness, which man greedily pursues, even
though they ruin his health. But these are exceptions. As a rule, not
only man, but all living creatures, derive pleasant sensations from
beneficial things; and it is probable that that category of sensations,
which we are conscious of as being pleasant, is nothing but the state of
coenesthesis, when the organism functions particularly energetically
under the influence of the absorption of food or of a special stimulus
of the senses, when it feels its life processes carried on particularly
vigorously, freely and harmoniously; just as we feel that state of
coenesthesis to be unpleasant, which occurs when the organism
functions badly, slackly, and in a manner calculated to endanger the
continuance of life. With the reservation that has been indicated we
can say in general that Good is equivalent to beneficial and pleasant,
Bad to harmful and unpleasant. This is true of the transferred and
spiritualized as well as of the immediate and material meaning of these
expressions of value. The significance of the words Good and Bad, the
point of departure, development and change of conception they indicate,
suffice to justify the Utilitarians and the Hedonists or Eudæmonists
among the moral philosophers, and to confute the contentions of their
critics, who deny all connexion between Morality and a practical
purpose, profit or pleasure, and declare these to be unworthy
humiliations of its majesty.

They wriggle, with the agility of a contortionist on the music-hall
stage, to get over the obvious and palpable aim of moral conduct. They
display all the cunning of dishonest sophistry in their arguments to
prove that the element of subjective satisfaction which moral action
yields is non-existent, and that, therefore, the Hedonists and
Eudæmonists are wrong. They stir up an opaque cloud of words, phrases
and formulæ to hide the fact, which nevertheless emerges clearly, that
he who acts morally expects to derive pleasurable emotions from his
action, or at least tries thereby to avoid probable painful emotions,
and that moral conduct, just as it is designed to give the individual
subjective satisfaction which is a kind of pleasure, is also meant to be
a benefit, or at any rate a supposed benefit, to the community.

Morality must never try for a reward and never expect one. It must be
absolutely disinterested. It has no business to pursue any aim outside
itself. Thus say the mystics of moral philosophy, juggling with words;
and they think they are doing especial honour to Morality and raising it
to a particularly proud eminence. But Morality has no need of this
artificial and false grandeur to maintain its lofty place among the
phenomena of life, and it is derogatory neither to its authority nor to
its influence to be recognized as a beneficial force conducive to
happiness.

The opponents of Utilitarianism and Eudæmonism in Ethics, if they speak
in good faith, may be excused on the grounds that their analysis of the
phenomenon of Morality is shallow. For them Morality is something
absolute, which exists by itself as an eternal and unalterable law of
the Universe, but which is revealed in the individual and therefore must
be conceived individually as a quality which has become human, as a
human value. If anyone persists in looking upon Morality as an
absolutely individual matter, without any connexion with anything
outside the individual, if anyone obstinately shuts his eyes to the fact
that Morality has not been developed by the individual out of his own
immediate needs and in consideration of himself alone, but that it is,
on the contrary, a creation of society and has no sense or significance
except as a social phenomenon, then indeed he can with some show of
justification deny Utilitarianism and Hedonism. For truly, looked at
from the point of view of the individual, moral conduct appears neither
pleasant nor immediately beneficial. On the contrary, it is, as a rule,
directly opposed to his own apparent interest, and it is achieved with
difficulty by sacrifice and renunciation, which are never pleasant and
often very painful.

Once in a drawing-room, during a game of definitions, I heard a
light-hearted young lady define Duty in the following terms: "Duty is
that which we do unwillingly." A stern professor contradicted her at
once with the solemnity he thought due to his position, and assured her
reprovingly: "It is my duty to give lectures, and I do this duty gladly.
If you were right, madam, expressions such as 'zealous in one's duty'
and 'willing performance of duty' would have no meaning and could never
have been coined." That seems convincing, but yet it is wrong.
Expressions such as "zealous in one's duty" and "willing performance of
duty" were not coined until society had developed its system of Morality
and had educated its members to strive for its approval by conducting
themselves in accordance with this system, to look on its approval as a
flattering distinction and to fear its disapproval as a disgrace. Such
phrases are Pharisaical, calculated to exercise a suggestive influence
profitable to society. They are the sugar to sweeten the pill; but the
young lady was honest and the professor conventional; the pill is
bitter. Thinkers recognized and admitted this thousands of years ago.
Antiphon, the sophist, says: "The law, the outcome of an agreement,
coerces nature, the result of growth, and goes against the interest of
the individual." The same idea is expressed by the tragic poet in the
lines: "The gods have placed sweat before virtue." This was said in the
very same words by Lao Tse, the disciple of Meng Tse, the pupil of
Confucius and the reformer of his doctrine.

The law, not only the law of the state which Antiphon has principally in
view, but also the moral law, "goes against the interest of the
individual"; not in reality, but apparently, at the first superficial
glance. Moral conduct is the reverse of natural conduct; it takes place
in opposition to instinct by deflecting the original impulse; it is a
subjugation of inclination, a victory over the real nature of the man.
Virtue has to exert its utmost strength in bitter struggles, fought out
within the individual, before it can reveal itself actively in deeds.
That is a natural consequence of the manner in which Morality
originated.

The point is that it was not created directly for the individual, but
for the community, and for the former only in so far as he is a part of
the community, and from its stability and well-being derives a benefit
which he may, or may not, be conscious of; which he may, or may not, be
able to appreciate; which he accepts as something natural and
self-understood without further thought; for which he does not consider
any return service to be due; but which is nevertheless of real
magnitude, profiting the individual, facilitating his existence, or even
alone making it possible; and for which, as for every other gift, he
must make sacrifices. For within society there can be no gifts. It
possesses nothing but what it has acquired from its members, and the
latter must pay full value for everything it provides, unasked or
otherwise.

As the Moral law originated to meet the needs of the community, and was
gradually formulated in definite precepts, it is comprehensible that the
community never paused to inquire what subjective effect its law would
have on the feelings of the individual. If you impose a law upon someone
you hardly ever consider how great will be the emotions of pleasure or
displeasure which its enforcement will entail. The order is, "Obey,
whether you like it or not; that which deeper insight and more
far-seeing wisdom prescribe is for your good." Thus the individual is
forced to work laboriously for his own good, which in his purblindness
he does not even recognize. It would be comprehensible if the
individual, who does not see farther than his own nose and does not look
beyond the present moment, formed the opinion that Morality is not
perceptibly beneficial to him and gives him no pleasure, and that,
therefore, the Utilitarians and the Hedonists talk nonsense. But the
moral philosopher, who observes the individual in relationship to the
community and surveys human actions, the way they are connected, and the
way they interact upon one another, has no right to pursue the same line
of thought as the individual, and deny that Morality aims at utility and
pleasure, even though the individual, when he acts morally, does not
perceive any personal advantage, nor feel any pleasure except the
self-satisfaction which he has been trained to feel, since in the eyes
of others he is so good and honest. That Morality aims at utility, and
is at the same time a source of pleasure and happiness, may seem dark
and doubtful while we consider the individual, but it becomes clear as
day and indisputable when we regard the community.

Among creatures of a lower order than man, indeed among all animals that
live together in flocks or herds, we find the first beginnings of that
mode of conduct which in man we call moral, and which is not intended to
be of direct benefit to the individual, or to add to his momentary
pleasure, but which subordinates or sacrifices these personal
satisfactions to the good of the community.

Chamois, when they are grazing, set one of their number on guard upon a
rocky eminence with a distant view, and this individual is responsible
for the safety of the herd. While the others feed in peace and comfort,
this guardian chamois forgoes the food which is doubtless just as
attractive to it as to the others, and tirelessly keeps a sharp look out
over its whole field of vision, warning its companions at the first
approach of danger by uttering a shrill cry.

When the great herds of buffaloes still inhabited the North American
prairies, they had at the head and on the flanks of the herd the
strongest bulls, while the centre was occupied by the cows with their
calves and the young animals. Before civilization came to trouble them,
the grizzly bear was the only enemy that threatened them, and with him
they were able to deal; one of them would meet the attacking bear in
single combat, but did not always emerge from it unhurt. Often enough at
the end of the fight both the bull and the bear would be terribly
injured or even dead; yet by sacrificing his life the bull saved the
rest of the herd.

The thrilling adventure of the Abyssinian baboon is well known; first
told by Alfred Brehm in his "_Tierleben_" (animal life), it was
afterwards quoted by Darwin and many other writers. On a hunting
expedition Brehm surprised a party of monkeys in a clearing. They fled
at once and had found shelter in the wood before the dogs could reach
them. Only one young one had got separated from the rest and was left
behind alone. It had scrambled up on to a solitary rock standing in the
plain, round which the dogs were barking furiously, and in its terror
the creature uttered piercing cries for help. A little male monkey,
hearing it, detached himself from the group, turned back from the safety
of the forest, made quietly for the rock and fetched away the trembling
young baboon from among the pack, silent now and shrinking in amazement;
and then stroking and caressing the little creature he carried it safely
in his arms to its family in the wood, unmolested by the stupefied dogs
and spared by the hunter, lost in admiration of this self-sacrificing
courage.

In these three instances we see how the joint responsibility among
gregarious animals develops in them an ever increasing sense of duty,
which teaches the chamois to forgo its food during the hours it is on
guard, rouses in the buffalo a savage lust for battle, and makes the
baboon perform a premeditated deed of epic heroism. When men act as
these animals did, we ascribe this to Morality. This is nothing but
joint responsibility in action, the joint responsibility which the
species is forced by the conditions of life to adopt, if it is to
survive.

Among the moral philosophers the mystics are prevented, by the haze
which obscures all their thought, from seeing that Morality originates
from this joint responsibility. Or rather, if they do see it, they think
this origin too low. They demand a more exalted genealogy for the
phenomenon of Morality. According to them the Moral law comes straight
from God. The concepts Good and Evil are revealed. Commands and
prohibitions are imposed upon the soul by that omnipotence which
spiritualizes the universe and of which the soul is an immortal part.

If these phrases were anything but moonshine and tinkling cymbals they
certainly would make any other explanation of this astonishing fact
superfluous; the fact, namely, that man does what is repugnant to him,
and refrains from doing what would give him pleasure, that he is content
with himself when he has voluntarily curbed his impulses and made
sacrifices, and that he feels the pricks of conscience if he chances to
experience the pleasure of appeasement because he has satisfied his
desires. "Man obeys divine commands." That suffices and obviates the
necessity of seeking for explanations of this phenomenon, which shall
satisfy Reason.

It is a mere mirage, the reflection of an earthly state of affairs in
the heavens, to assume that the universe is governed by an authority
devoid of responsibility, which imposes on its subjects, that is to say
men, laws and instructions, discipline and order.

It is a form of anthropomorphism, the most widespread and stubborn of
errors in thought among those men who try to understand the
unintelligible, and are content with the most unfounded explanation
which their naïve imagination freely invents for them. This same
anthropomorphism, not even at a loss to solve the problem of the origin
and essence of the universe, replies unhesitatingly that God by an act
of volition created it out of nothing to prove to Himself His own
omnipotence and omniscience; in like manner it has no scruple in
ascribing the phenomenon of Morality to a creative act of God's, and
makes Ethics, which properly speaking form the chief part of psychology,
anthropology and sociology, a subdivision of theology, that is, of
anthropomorphic mythology.

Critical Reason, which realizes that deceptive fictions are not true
thought, but dreams--not the result of ripe intellectual effort, but of
the childish play of the imagination, seeks the roots of Morality not in
the air or in the ether, but in the solid earth; not in some
indemonstrable, transcendental sphere, but in an obvious need of human
nature. The biological necessities of the species, which can only
survive by dint of living in communities, sufficiently explain the
origin of the feeling of joint responsibility, of consideration for
one's neighbour, of the concepts Good and Evil and of conscience; and we
have no use for the dogmas of revealed Morality derived from some
fabulous, supernatural source, or for the Kantian categorical
imperative.

Morality, understood as a form of joint responsibility, determines the
inner and outer relations of the individual to the community; that is to
say, to as much of it as he comes in immediate contact with, to wit, his
neighbour. Morality provides him with the notions of Duty and Right, of
the consideration he owes his neighbour and of that which he may demand
from his neighbour. It is customary to look upon Rights and Duties as
opposites. This is mere indolence of thought. Right and Duty are
supplementary, forming together one concept. They are in reality one and
the same thing regarded from different points of view. My Duty is the
subjective form of my neighbour's Right; my Right the subjective form of
other people's Duty. That which is Duty, when I have to do it out of
consideration for others, becomes my Right, when others have to do it
out of consideration for me.

Respect for the personality of others, which is the feeling from which
the concept of Right and Duty emanates, seems to be a late and noble
product of Morality and a particularly praiseworthy victory of prescient
intelligence over selfishness. This factor of our consciousness which
determines our will and which gradually becomes an instinct, is really
only a special application of the law of least resistance which governs
all organic life. We have no selfless, ideal respect for the personality
of another; but, made wise by experience and observation, we assume that
that other has the power to resist and to retaliate if a wrong is done
to him or he is injured; hence we avoid, to the best of our ability,
actions to which he is likely to object, so as not to come into conflict
with him, because to overcome his opposition would require effort and
expose us to danger. Respect for the personality of another and for his
rights may be expressed by a mechanical formula which runs as follows:
this respect varies directly as the real or supposed might of the other
person, and inversely as our own real or supposed might.

The society of which he is a member, and which makes his existence
possible, prescribes to the individual the laws governing his moral
conduct. That which a community at any given time approves and demands,
rejects or forbids, constitutes the precept whereby its members regulate
their conduct, and offers ample security for their conscience.

The concepts Good and Bad originate simultaneously with society; they
are the form in which its actual conditions of existence are conveyed to
the consciousness of its members. The only immutable thing about them is
the fact of their continued existence. Without the coercive discipline
of a rule conducive to the common weal and governing the mutual
relations between its members, no society could be imagined to exist,
unless its members were all similar in nature, reacted in an identical
fashion to all impressions and possessed the same feelings and
sensations, the same inclinations and the same impulses of volition. In
that case no difference could ever arise between one individual and
another, or between an individual and the community, which would have to
be smoothed over by the moral law emanating from the community and
controlling the individual, or be suppressed by the community's order.
Every individual could be left to the guidance of his own instincts, for
he would know himself always to be in agreement with the community; no
consideration for others need hamper or modify his actions; he could
behave just as if he were alone in the world. But as individuals differ
from one another, feel, think and want different things, collisions in
which they hurt, cripple or even kill one another are the inevitable
consequence of their opposing movements; and the interference of the
moral law is absolutely necessary to polarize these movements and guide
them into parallel courses, so that they do not run counter to one
another.

But Good and Bad derive not only their existence but their measure and
their significance from the views of the community. They are therefore
not absolute but variable; they are not an immutable standard amid the
ever-changing conditions of humanity, a rule by which the value of the
actions and aims of mortals are indisputably determined, but are subject
to the laws of evolution in society and therefore in a constant state of
flux. At different times and in different places they present the most
varied aspects. What is virtue here and now may have been vice formerly
and at another spot, and _vice versa_. In the royal family of ancient
Egypt marriage between brothers and sisters was the prescribed custom.
We call this incest and it fills us with horror. To the sons of Egypt it
seemed meritorious and constituted a claim to special veneration. The
Babylonians and Canaanites burnt their first-born in Moloch's fiery
furnace, and this sacrifice was accounted a highly praiseworthy act of
piety and of the fear of God. The Spartans taught their sons, their
future warriors, the art of stealing without being caught; and he who
did this most cleverly achieved the most flattering recognition. The
Cherusci butchered the Roman prisoners taken from the legions of Varus
as a sacrifice to their tribal gods, and a noble-minded and brave man
like Arminius considered this absolutely honourable and knightly. The
Aztecs, who had undeniably attained an advanced degree of civilization,
at high festivals used with obsidian knives to cut open the breasts of
human sacrifices on the altars of their gods, and tear the heart out of
their living bodies. That was an action finding favour in the sight of
the gods, and the people watched it with awe and those mystic emotions
which religious rites are intended to arouse.

Moral law in Europe, during the Middle Ages and almost up to modern
times, permitted, and even ordained, the punishment by horrible torture
and death of those whose religious convictions differed from the
teaching of the established church; and with its consent supposed
witches were sent to the stake. In feudal times the most terrible and
revolting of crimes was felony--that is, a breach of faith on the part
of the vassal against his overlord--and no torture was too cruel as a
punishment. Nobles, who had so delicate a sense of honour that for a wry
look or the accidental touch of an elbow they would draw their swords,
enunciated the principle: "the king's blood does not defile," and vied
with each other in forcing their daughters upon the king as concubines.
Until Wilberforce roused the English conscience at the end of the
eighteenth century, and Schölcher did the same in France in the middle
of the nineteenth, slavery was considered a state of affairs which a
moral community could tolerate. The North American descendants of those
Puritans whom no persecution and no martyrdom could prevent from leading
a life consonant with the dictates of their conscience, did not scruple
to exercise proprietary rights over human beings who, in the case of
octoroons and even of quadroons, did not even differ from them in
colour, supposing that difference of colour could be considered an
excuse. The code, which began with the "Declaration of Rights,"
contained heavy penalties for those who helped a slave to escape. Men,
whose uprightness no one could doubt, did not hesitate to set
bloodhounds on the track of an escaped nigger, and four years of a
bloody civil war were needed before refractory slave-owners were forced
to acknowledge the immorality of forced labour.

These examples have been taken from the customs of civilized nations.
Amongst races that have not attained the high degree of development to
which the white man has risen, we meet with much more revolting
deviations from the moral law obtaining among white men. Tribes are
known in which the commandment, "Honour thy father and thy mother," is
interpreted so, that the children kill and eat their parents as soon as
the latter have attained a considerable age. The North American Indians,
who had a well developed sense of honour, were capable of chivalrous
feelings and kept their word with absolute loyalty, used to torture
helpless prisoners and scalp their defeated enemies, even the women.
Among the Dyaks, who are under Dutch rule and are familiar with the laws
and customs of Christian Europe, a marriageable youth must first cut off
a human being's head before he is allowed to wed. He need not overcome
his victim in honourable combat; he may creep upon him surreptitiously,
and even fall upon him in his sleep and murder him in cowardly fashion
without danger to himself.

All these are instances which we unhesitatingly condemn. To our idea
they are crimes and misdeeds which among us would make their
perpetrators liable either to contempt and expulsion from decent society
or to the extremest penalties of the law; yet at their time and in their
place they were considered meritorious and virtuous, and were approved
by public opinion and the conscience of their authors. But we can go
farther and subject our own moral law to a similar independent
consideration. We shall find that to us also deeds appear permissible,
virtuous and even splendid, which do not differ essentially from the
thefts of the Spartans or the head-hunting of the Dyaks. A company
promoter who sells on the Stock Exchange shares that he must know to be
worthless, can with Spartan cunning rob thousands of trustful victims of
the fruits of their labour and economy, and reduce them to beggary; and
not only does he go unpunished, but if by his knavery he becomes a
millionaire and uses his wealth cleverly, he can attain the highest
political and social honours and distinctions. We may admit that
financial roguery of this sort can now no longer be classed among
strictly moral actions, that public opinion is on the verge of placing
it in the category of vice and crime, and that legislators are beginning
to make attempts to inflict severe and humiliating penalties on its
perpetrators.

But another series of deeds is still generally considered so undoubtedly
virtuous and laudable, that it evokes the highest homage from the best
intellects of the age, poets, musicians, scientists, teachers, sculptors
and painters, and the leaders of the people--the deeds of war. The most
horrible butchery of men, the theft of property and liberty,
ill-treatment, destruction are not only permissible but obligatory and
laudable, if they occur in war, and if their authors can point to the
fact that they are acting in the service of their country at the order
of a legitimate authority. Neither the soldiers nor their leaders are
bound to inquire whether the authority, whether their mother country is
waging war for a purpose that moral law can approve. "Right or wrong, my
country." In the eyes of her sons the country is always in the right,
even if it be objectively in the wrong, and by its orders every soldier
murders, robs, burns and ravages, plays the executioner to harmless,
unarmed, innocent strangers, compels prisoners to forced labour, steals
letters that fall into his hands and prevents families who are cruelly
separated from communicating with one another; and his conscience does
not reproach him in the least, nor is he conscious of being a criminal
deserving of all the penalties of the law. Every single one of these
actions, if perpetrated by an individual on his own account and for his
own purposes, would result in the death penalty, and it would be richly
deserved, too. But in war, carried out collectively at the bidding of a
government, they become deeds of heroism, filling the doer with pride,
moving the community to tears of enthusiasm, and they are held up to
youth as shining examples to be imitated. It is more than likely that
future times will judge the esteem in which these deeds are held not
otherwise than we do the value placed by other forms of society on human
sacrifices, the slaughter of parents and head-hunting.

It is hard to determine the exact part which conscience plays in the
changes undergone by the concepts Good and Evil. As conscience is the
voice of the community in the consciousness of the individual, it
approves on principle what seems right and praiseworthy to the
community. Just as little as conscience prevented a Babylonian mother
from sacrificing her child to Moloch, does it in these days stop the
average citizen from doing a soldier's work of killing and destroying in
time of war. If an individual knows himself to be in complete agreement
with the general opinion, then he lives at peace with his conscience. No
impulse to change the customs, to set up a new Morality, to condemn
long-established usages, is to be expected from such an one.

The mechanism whereby changes are wrought in views on Good and Evil is
quite different. Everywhere and at all times there are exceptional
persons whose abilities render them specially fit to feel and think
independently. To their idea the community has no determining but only
an advisory voice. They reserve to themselves the right of decision in
every case. In their consciousness there persists a clear recognition of
the fact that the essence of Morality lies in consideration for others,
and when the current acceptation of the moral law among the majority
allows them, nay, commands them to disregard this consideration, they
experience a feeling of discomfort which dull, unthinking imitation of
the general example does not soothe. They meditate upon the deviation
from the fundamental rule of considering one's neighbour, they test its
justification, and they condemn it, if its difference with the general
moral law cannot be adjusted. If the essence of Morality is
consideration for one's neighbour, its purpose is the well-being of the
community; its essence must be adapted to this purpose, that is to say,
consideration for one's neighbour must be subordinated to the general
welfare. The thief, the robber and the murderer have no claim upon
consideration, and even a man with the most delicate sense of Morality
will agree that coercion of the criminal is desirable. Tolstoy's
warning: "Do not oppose the evildoer," is not Morality, but an
exaggerated parody of it, which renders it nugatory. Thus the most moral
person will not raise any objection to a war waged in defence of hearth
and home when their safety is threatened by a ruthless attack.

But, if a mode of action which, though it be generally practised and
approved, injures the individual and causes him to suffer, cannot be
justified on the grounds of an obvious benefit to the community, then a
small, sometimes an almost infinitesimal minority of independent
thinkers will rise against the custom; they are not afraid of coming
into violent conflict with generally accepted views; they defend the
fundamental principle of Morality, namely, consideration for the
individual, against the exception, namely, oppression of the individual
for the ostensible good of the community; they brand as immoral what is
generally accounted moral; they announce that the current acceptation of
the goodness or badness of a certain order of actions must cease.

The intervention of such reformers always gives offence, and arouses
anger which at times rises to murderous fury. But this wrathful
indignation is just what makes a break in the automatic fashion in which
the majority of average men act according to traditional custom; the
attention of more and more minds is arrested, critically they examine
the accepted moral law, they are penetrated first by the suspicion and
finally by the clear conviction that it is contrary to the essence of
Morality, and they swell the ranks of the innovators who inveigh against
the tradition. The struggle lasts long and is carried on pitilessly. The
preachers of the new Morality seem corrupt and criminal to the
supporters of the old. They are persecuted and slandered and not seldom
have to suffer martyrdom, but they always emerge victorious if their
doctrine is in agreement with the logic of the fundamental principles of
Moral law. That is the history of the abolition of human sacrifices, of
the vendetta, of slavery, of legal torture, of religious coercion.

Whoever looks about him with open eyes will note that civilized men are
at the moment adopting new ideas with regard to the operation of state
omnipotence, to war, to the right of the economically strong to exploit
others, to the rights of women, to sexual morality, to the penal system.
The advocates of a new Morality must still put up with the most
humiliating abuse. He who wishes to defend the individual from coercion
by the state is an anarchist and deserves to be hanged or broken on the
wheel. He who maintains that war is immoral belongs to the rabble of
vagabonds who own no nationality, for whom no contempt is too deep and
no punishment too severe. He who refuses a duel is a dishonoured coward,
and thereby cuts himself off from decent society. He who recognizes
woman's right to motherhood is a dastardly purveyor of opportunities for
prostitution. He who attacks the present relation between Capital and
Labour as a hypocritical continuation of slavery is an ignorant agitator
or an enemy of society. He who would like to see the idea of punishment
excluded from the law, as being retrograde and unscientific, and who
wishes only the point of view of the defence of society to be recognized
as valid, talks sentimental nonsense, disarms justice and places the
community at large at the mercy of criminals.

But the issue of the struggle is not in doubt. The present systems,
which present exceptions to the moral law of consideration for one's
neighbour, must go. Although they are considered moral to-day, are, in
fact, Morality itself, to-morrow they will be felt to be immoral and be
abhorred by all men of moral feelings. Thus the concepts Good and Bad
gradually change their meaning; views on what is moral and what immoral
are constantly in a state of flux; and the only permanent thing is
recognition of the fact that man's actions must be withdrawn from the
control of subjective choice and whim, and must be subject to a law set
up by the community; the justification of this law lies in its being
necessary to the existence of society. Every revision of Moral values
originates in some vexation, and ends by refining and deepening moral
sentiment. In this chapter only the scheme of development of moral views
and of their changes has been indicated. The question of moral progress
will be dealt with fully later on.

To sum up the arguments of this section, Morality is not transcendental
but immanent; it is a social phenomenon and restricted to the sphere of
living beings. Its beginnings may be traced in animal societies, it is
developed among mankind. The preliminary condition necessary for this
development is the ability to visualize future happenings, since moral
conduct is determined by estimating its effects and results, that is, by
conceiving something in the future. Morality has a positive, concrete
aim. It makes the existence of society possible, and this, given the
circumstances obtaining on our planet, is the necessary condition for
the preservation of each individual, and it originated from the instinct
of self-preservation in the species. Its essence lies in consideration
for one's neighbour, because without this the communal life of
individuals, that is, a society, would be impossible.

If individuals had been able to live alone, Morality could never have
come into existence. The concepts Good and Bad characterize those
actions which society feels to be beneficial or harmful to itself. As
moral conduct implies consideration for one's neighbour, it is often, if
not always, in conflict with selfishness, that is, with the immediate
and instinctive impulses, and is, in the first place, accompanied by
disagreeable sensations. The pleasurable emotion of satisfaction arises
later through habit and reflection; it accompanies the thought of the
merit and praiseworthiness of the victory over self. Conscience is the
voice of the community in the individual's consciousness. The idea of
Duty is the subjective conception of the Rights of our neighbour; the
idea of Rights is the subjective conception of our neighbour's Duty to
us. Morality is not absolute, but relative, and is subject to continual
changes. To maintain that Morality is cosmic, eternal, immutable, that
it aims neither at profit nor pleasure, but constitutes its own aim, is
pure anthropomorphic superstition.




CHAPTER III

THE BIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORALITY


Morality is a restraint which the community imposes on each of its
members. It demands from the individual the sacrifice of his transitory
and momentary comfort in favour of his general welfare which is
dependent on that of the community. It prohibits the pleasure of
gratifying his desires in order that by this unpleasant renunciation his
lasting well-being may be ensured. Subjectively experienced and viewed,
therefore, Morality always implies the limitation of free will, the
curbing of desire, opposition to inclinations and appetites, and the
diminution or suppression of free, or let us rather say of unbridled,
action. Before Morality can profit the community, it disturbs and
incommodes the individual, it rouses in him disagreeable sensations
which may reach such a pitch as to be intense pain. It is only after
deep reflection, of which not everyone is capable, that the individual
realizes that Morality is an essential condition of the life of society,
and that the preservation of society is an essential condition of his
own life; before he investigates, before he even meditates on Morality,
the individual feels it directly to be unpleasant, laborious,
stern--nay, hostile.

The control which Morality exercises over the actions, and indeed in
many cases over the most secret thoughts of the individual, appears at
the first glance to be somewhat paradoxical. It is by no means obvious
why the individual should always take sides against himself and,
adopting a defensive and disapproving attitude, hold his instinctive
tendencies in check. Moral conduct would be intelligible if the
community were always ready with means of coercion and could constrain
the individual by brute force to place its interest before his own
pleasure. But the individual does not wait for police intervention on
the part of the community. He frowns upon himself with the awful
severity of the law. He threatens himself with a cudgel. He divides
himself into two beings, one of which wants to follow its instincts,
while the other curbs them vigorously; one is a rearing, often a
refractory, horse, the other a rider with bridle, whip and spur.

This reduplication of the ego, one-half of which establishes control
over the other, one-half of which tries to remain true to itself, while
the other divests itself of its identity and denies itself--this is the
inner process, the outward manifestation of which is moral conduct. This
demands investigation and explanation. We must show how the organism
could develop from within itself the power to paralyse, or completely
repress, its own elemental activities, and how Morality was able to
become an integral part in the general scheme of life processes.

The mechanism whereby the mind, appraising, foreseeing and judging,
checks the first movement of impulse, is inhibition or repression.
Without inhibition moral conduct would not be possible. The mind would
have no method of indicating the path and prescribing rules to the
organism's instinct. It would have no means of making its insight
prevail over the desires of the senses. It would have no weapon with
which to force its being to actions opposed to its organic inclinations.
Without inhibition the individual would never give precedence to the
demands of the community and lay himself open to disagreeable emotions
in order to please the community. Inhibition was the necessary organic
preliminary to the phenomenon of Morality. It had to be pre-existent in
the individual, so that Morality could make itself at home in his
intellectual life, so that it could acquire creative, ruling and
practical power among the elect, and become an unconscious and easy
habit among the average. Morality took possession of a pre-existent
organic aptitude and made it serve its own purposes. But organic
aptitudes are not alike in all individuals. In some cases they are more
or less perfect; in others they may be lacking altogether. Indeed only
individuals with highly developed powers of inhibition are capable of
that heroic Morality which liberates them from the weakness of the flesh
and makes them independent of the demands of the body; those in whom
this power of inhibition is scantily developed evade the influence of
Morality entirely, and it has no authority over them.

That which is called character is at bottom the name we give to the
power of inhibition. Where it is weak we speak of lack of character,
whereas by strength of character we mean that the power of inhibition is
great. The will makes use of inhibition. With its help the will guides
the living machine in a certain direction and urges it to perform given
tasks. At the first glance it may not seem obvious that positive actions
can come of repression, which is something negative. But if we analyse
psychologically the actions demanded and promoted by the will, and trace
them back to their organic origins, we shall find that, as a rule, the
first elements consist in the prevention of impulsive movements, and
that the impetus to positive effort is given by the will, which converts
these movements into contrary ones. A few instances may make this
psychic process clearer. Winkelried, at Sempach, cleaves a path through
the cuirassiers while they bury their lances in his breast; he becomes
capable of this great deed of self-sacrifice in that, by a mighty effort
of will power, he suppresses the strongest of all instincts, that of
self-preservation, and forces all his energies, which are naturally
directed towards flight from danger, to challenge danger and yield
completely to it. The lover who overcomes his passion and renounces its
object, because his idol is the bride of his best friend, begins with
the determined inhibition of the impulse which urges him towards the
woman, and attains renunciation by the suppression of his desire; this
renunciation finds expression in positive actions, in the rupture of
relations which bring him happiness, the avoidance of meetings which
would prevent the wound in his heart from healing, and so on. The brave
rescuer who plunges into the waves to save a drowning man, or enters a
burning house to save a fellow creature threatened by the flames, must
first overcome his natural shrinking fear of the water and the fire; and
not till after the suppression of strong impulses to avoid the uncanny
adventure, does he succeed in making his muscles obey the impulse to
save life.

Inhibition, therefore, is the organic foundation on which Morality
builds, not only that Morality which consists in abstention from certain
actions, but that which is manifested in active virtue. But inhibition
is a faculty which the organism has developed for its own ends, the
better and more easily to preserve its own life, and to render its power
of achievement greater. Morality makes use of this faculty, which it
finds ready to hand, for the ends of the community, and very often
against the immediate interests of the individual for whose advantage it
is nevertheless intended. Now the individual would not put up with this
inexpedient use, one is tempted to say this clever misuse, of one of its
organic capacities, if this yielding up of the mechanism of inhibition
to Morality were not beneficial to life and therefore came within the
sphere of the biological purpose of inhibition. By being grafted on a
pre-existent organic faculty Morality becomes such itself; it forms a
link in the chain of biological processes within the individual
organism; it ceases to be purely a product of society forced upon the
individual to his molestation and in spite of his annoyance; it acquires
the character of a differentiation of inhibition in order to help the
individual, or even to make it at all possible for him to adapt himself
to life in a society.

That under the present conditions obtaining on our planet the human
individual can only live in society demands no proof. And as he can only
live in society if he submits to its rules of good and bad, Morality,
which urges him to this submission, aids and even preserves his life. We
shall now show that inhibition, of which Morality is a differentiation
making it easier for the individual to adapt himself to the conditions
of social life, is of the greatest value to the individual from the
biological point of view.

The lowest forms of life it is possible for us to observe show nothing
which can be interpreted as inhibition. All external influences to which
they are not indifferent invariably produce the same effects. They
respond to every stimulus with a reflex action which reveals nothing
that we should be justified in describing as an activity of the will.
The reaction follows with strictly automatic regularity upon the
stimulus, and nothing intervenes between the two which would permit the
conclusion that in the simple organism there is any faculty that could
delay, modify or change the reaction to the external stimulus.

Just as iron filings always respond to the attraction of a magnet in the
same way, just as certain combinations of mercury at the impact of a
blow flare up with an explosion, just as ice when warmed melts and
becomes water, and water when cooled to a definite point freezes into
ice, so do the simplest living things seek out certain rays in the
spectrum, certain temperatures, certain chemical conditions and avoid
others. Not only unicellular organisms do this, but also comparatively
highly developed animals, such as the daphniæ, for if light is sent
through a prism into a vessel containing water, these little creatures
collect at the violet end of the spectrum; such as the wood-lice, which
hate the light and creep into dark crevices; such as gnats, which are
attracted by the sun and dance in their hundreds in its rays. Moreover,
we meet with a similar phenomenon in man. We, too, in winter and spring
seek the sun and in summer the shade; in the cold season the warm stove
attracts us; bad smells put us to flight, sweet scents of flowers allure
us. The simplest automatic reflex actions are at the root of these
attractions and repulsions, exactly the same as with the daphniæ,
wood-lice and gnats. Only we are able to control and suppress these
reflex actions which the lower animals apparently cannot.

Anthropomorphic modes of thought easily mislead us into thinking that
the processes we observe in lower animals are due to an exercise of will
power. We draw near to the fire in winter because it is pleasant, but we
can quit it if duty calls us into the cold streets. One is apt to
imagine that the simple organisms also experience pleasant and
unpleasant feelings, that they try and avoid the latter, that the
daphnia seeks the violet rays because it likes them, that the wood-louse
flees the light because it dislikes it; in fact, that these creatures
possess a consciousness which becomes aware of and distinguishes between
pleasing and displeasing impressions, and that they possess a will which
responds to these impressions with suitable reactions. Very
distinguished scientists have been unable to resist the temptation to
assume in the lower animals, even in unicellular organisms, the
existence of processes with which we are familiar in the human
consciousness. William Roux introduces us to a "psychology of protista,"
and W. Kleinsorge goes so far as to maintain the existence of "cellular
ethics," and to devote himself to research into its laws. The work of
both these biologists is as fascinating as the most beautiful
fairy-tale, but it is probably the creation of a lively and fertile
imagination, just as the fairy story is.

More prosaic and less imaginative scientists do not see evidences of
psychology in the signs of life in the protista, or ethics in the
movements of a cell, but merely the effects of universal chemical and
physical laws which also control lifeless inorganic matter. To these
laws they trace the tropisms of simple organisms which tempt the
imagination, prone as it is to anthropomorphism, into errors; such
tropisms, that is to say, as their tendency to seek moderate warmth,
certain rays of light and weak alkaline solutions, or to avoid acids,
heat and ultra-violet rays. The little organisms probably do not obey
these impulses for reasons of pleasure or pain any more than the iron
filings obey the attraction of a magnet for such reasons. They do not
fly to it because it gives them pleasure; the little metal leaves of an
electroscope do not move apart because contact with each other
displeases them. All forms of tropism, chemicotropic, thermotropic,
phototropic manifestations, active and passive tropisms clearly show
that minute organisms involuntarily and unresistingly respond to the
influence of natural forces, just as if they were inanimate particles.

Microscopic investigations reveal many phenomena which one is tempted to
consider signs of life, but which cannot be such, as they occur in
connexion with inanimate matter. The Brownian movements are rhythmical
molecular changes of position, not due to any mechanical impulse
emanating from the surroundings, nor to a current in the fluid in which
the object of investigation is immersed, but arising from the object
itself, mostly very finely divided, tiny balls of mercury. A very small
drop of chloroform introduced into a fluid of different density behaves
exactly like a unicellular organism. It sends out pseudopods, wriggles
and draws them in again. The pseudopods seem to feel and examine
particles of matter with which they come in contact, and then either to
withdraw quickly from them or to surround and incorporate them in the
drop. This is deceptively similar to the behaviour of a living cell
absorbing food, though there can be no question of this in the case of
the drop of chloroform. In the latter it is merely a question of the
effects of surface tension, that is, of the normal behaviour of matter
in accordance with the laws governing the forces of nature, the
investigation of which lies in the domain of chemistry and physics.

Impartial thought comes to a conclusion about these phenomena different
from that derived from anthropomorphic delusions. It does not try to
smuggle dim, dark life into the collections of mercury molecules
apparently obeying some inner impulse, or into the seeking or feeling
about of a pseudopod of chloroform. On the contrary, it understands life
as the play of natural forces under the conditions supplied by a living
organism, as the automatic working of a machine-like apparatus to which
natural forces supply the motive power. Similar manifestations in
inanimate matter and in elementary organisms seem to justify the
conclusion that the distinction between living and non-living matter is
arbitrary, that there are only forces, or perhaps one single force, that
is to say, one movement, in the universe, whose activity is manifested
in the most manifold forms, of which life is one. Modern Monism has come
to this conclusion, but it is not alone in so doing. Long before Monism
there was a philosophy which conceived all cosmic energies to form a
unity; and really it is only an obstinate quarrel about words, for the
Hylozoists regard the universe as something living and ascribe life to
all matter and all atoms of which matter is made up, while the
Materialists regard life as a play of forces in matter. Fundamentally
the Hylozoists and Materialists hold the same views, only that the
former call force life and the latter call life force; just as the only
point of difference between them and the Pantheists is that these have
given the majestic title of God to the universal life they assume--as
Spinoza has it, "_Omnia quamvis diversis gradibus animata sunt_."

The question, what is life? is the greatest that the human understanding
can ask of itself. For thousands of years man has cudgelled his brain
over this, and is as far from finding an answer to-day as he was on the
first day. The definition most often repeated runs thus: Life is the
ability possessed by certain bodies to react to stimuli, to absorb
nourishment and to reproduce themselves. That is a statement of observed
facts, but it is no explanation. It informs us that we are familiar with
bodies which behave in a way distinguishing them from other bodies; but
why they conduct themselves differently from others, what the particular
thing is which is present in certain combinations of matter and absent
in others--that is an impenetrable secret.

Science has tried by the most varied methods to solve the problem. It
seemed a triumph of research that Woehler produced urea, that chemists
later on manufactured carbohydrates, that Fischer is on the high road to
the production of synthetic albumen. What is gained by these
discoveries? We bring about the same combinations as the living cell
does. That is, no doubt, an interesting achievement, but its value as an
addition to our knowledge on this point is infinitesimal. For we
accomplish the production of sugar, urea and amine in a manner very
different to that of the living cell, and he who copies the things
turned out in a workshop has contributed nothing to our knowledge of the
workman who plies his trade in the workshop. The dividing line between
life and lifelessness was supposed to have been obliterated when
elementary manifestations of life were proved to exist in inanimate
matter; the Brownian movements in the smallest particles; the growth of
crystals immersed in a solution of the same chemical composition as
themselves; crystallization itself which represents a kind of very
simple organization of matter, and at any rate proves the sway of a
regulating and directive force; the tendency of certain elements to
combine, which has been called their affinity. But this name is only a
poetical metaphor which no one will take literally. The growth of
crystals in their mother liquor is merely mechanical precipitation on
their surface, an external addition of layers of the same material; but
not growth by the incorporation of such matter, that is, through the
absorption of nourishment.

These and similar results of observation do not suffice absolutely to
justify the assumption, seductive though it be, that life is a
fundamental attribute of matter, that it is present everywhere though
graduated in intensity, that therefore apparently inanimate matter
differs not qualitatively, but only quantitatively from living beings,
that life stretches in an unbroken line from the block of metal or rock,
in which it is completely obscured, to man, the most highly developed
organism we know of; and that at a certain point in its range it reveals
itself in a form which permits no distinction between organic and
inorganic matter.

The origin of life is as completely unknown to us as its essence. For
thousands of years the assumption was lightheartedly made that under
certain, somewhat vague circumstances, life originated of its own
accord. Pasteur showed that a _generatio spontanea_ cannot be proved to
exist, that every living thing comes from another living thing, a parent
organism, and that the old philosophers were right in propounding
"_omne vivum ex ovo_" as a law, although they only guessed it and had
not proved it experimentally. A very few critics, who are hard to
convince, still dare to assert in a small voice that Pasteur's work and
all the facts established by microbiology do not prove conclusively that
life does not nevertheless originate from inorganic matter under
conditions which we cannot nowadays reproduce in our laboratories. No
answer can be made to this objection. An experiment is only conclusive
for the conditions in which it is made, and not for others. All that we
can positively assert is that on earth the genesis of life without a
demonstrable parent organism has never been observed. To go farther, and
to assert that a _generatio spontanea_ is absolutely impossible under
any conditions, on earth or elsewhere, is arbitrary, just as it is to
assert the contrary.

Those who are supporters of the theory that life can be developed from
non-living matter for a long time thought they had conclusively proved
their case; they argued as follows: At the present time life exists on
our planet; according to the Kant-Laplace hypothesis our planet was
formed from a cosmic nebula and passed through a state of fluid
incandescence; in this state life is impossible; therefore life must
have originated spontaneously one day after the Earth had cooled down;
consequently either the Kant-Laplace hypothesis is wrong or the
assertion that life can only be generated by life is erroneous; the two
assumptions are incompatible. This conclusion no longer presents any
insuperable difficulties. It has been observed that spores which have
been kept for months at the temperature of frozen hydrogen, that is,
very nearly at absolute zero, have retained their germinative power and
have developed when they were brought back to a favourable temperature.
Therefore they would not be killed by the cold of interstellar space on
their way from one heavenly body to another, and could become the seeds
of life on another hitherto inanimate star. That large numbers of tiny
particles of matter exist in interstellar space and are precipitated on
the heavenly bodies is proved by the cosmic dust that arctic explorers
have collected from the surface of snow and ice. Therefore the Earth may
well have been in an incandescent state, and may yet have received from
interstellar space the germs of life which developed and multiplied when
the Earth's crust had cooled sufficiently to provide the conditions
favourable to their existence; and these germs may have been the
ancestors of all the life that exists on earth to-day after a period of
evolution lasting hundreds of millions of years.

This would account for the origin of life upon the Earth, but not of
life in general. The germs, which travel as carriers of life from an
older heavenly body to a younger one, must have sprung from parents, and
however far back we trace their genealogical tree we are always finally
faced by this dilemma: either life did, after all, originate at one time
from something lifeless, and what has happened once must be able to
happen again, now and always; or life never originated at all, but has
always existed; it is eternal like matter, in forms whose variety we
cannot even dimly grasp, its threads, having neither beginning nor end,
wind through eternity. Of these two assumptions the latter is
incomparably more in harmony with our present-day views on the universe.
We believe the matter of which the universe is built up to be
everlasting. It costs no great effort to believe life to be eternal too.
True, the idea of eternity is inconceivable to us; it is a dim
conception which has given rise to a word, a tone picture which portrays
something indefinite, but within the bounds of the inconceivable there
is room for both semi-obscurities, the everlastingness of matter and the
everlastingness of life.

But the most enigmatical point in the riddle of life is not life itself,
which is a form of being, and is neither more nor less comprehensible
than the existence of an inanimate object, of a stone, of water, of the
air; it is consciousness. Descartes proves his own existence to himself
by the fact that he thinks. Life must be accompanied by consciousness in
order to convince the living being that it exists. The formula: "_cogito
ergo sum_" has been admired for hundreds of years. It certainly is
specious. But how many questions it leaves unanswered! Has it the right
to deny life to an entity that does not conceive itself? Must it not be
completed by the proof that life without thought, that is, without
consciousness, does not exist, that consciousness is the necessary
complement of life? And, above all, ought not Descartes to have given us
an explanation of what thought and consciousness are?

I will attempt to answer the questions left unanswered by Descartes. But
I must premise one thing. Every definition of consciousness implies a
postulate: life. Though at a pinch we can picture life without
consciousness, consciousness without life is absolutely inconceivable. I
do not undertake to explain what life is, any more than I attempted it
above. We must take it as something given. Consciousness, then, is the
subjective realization of something objective, the inward realization of
something outside. If in a living being a picture of its surroundings is
developed, then it absorbs something which is not a necessary part of
itself. Of course, this inner image must not be understood to imply an
absorption of matter. It is a process in the matter of which the living
being is built up. But, all the same, the image of the outer world in
the inner being does signify a penetration of the latter by the former.
This image, which follows the changes of the outer world and repeats
them in the inner being, is consciousness. It may be shadowy and
blurred, or clear and distinct; it may in rapid succession be formed and
pass away, and it can be preserved as a memory; it may reflect a greater
or a lesser portion of the outer world; consciousness is accordingly
duller or sharper; its contents are scant or plentiful, it retains the
images of a shorter or longer series of conditions in the surrounding
world. Between nutrition, which is recognized as an essential phenomenon
of life, and consciousness a surprising parallelism subsists. Both
consist in an absorption of the outer world by the organism; nutrition
is the assimilation of matter, consciousness that of stimuli. In the
process of nutrition the organism digests small quantities of the
outside world; in consciousness it digests the world as a whole.

This parallelism is no mere play of the intellect. If it is followed out
it leads to significant ideas if not to actual knowledge. What
penetrates from the outer world into the inner being of the organism is
vibration, movement, force. Is the matter which is absorbed as
nourishment ultimately anything different? Here we come up against the
ultimate problems of physics, the various hypotheses regarding the
nature of force and matter, the theories that in addition to matter
there is an ether, or that the ether is a different, more subtle, form
of matter, or that neither matter nor ether exist, but atoms out of
which everything is built up, which themselves consist of electrons
which are centres of force, motions without material consistency. All
these theories, of which the last cannot be grasped by the human
understanding, we can leave severely alone. This is not the place to
investigate them. But the attitude of the living organism towards the
outer world from which it absorbs nourishment and impressions,
converting them into power to drive the life machine and transmuting
them into consciousness, lends peculiar support to the supposition that
force and matter are not only inseparable but identical, that in them we
must seek a principle, or perhaps regard them themselves as a principle,
which must be of the same nature as consciousness, for otherwise it
could not be transmuted into the latter.

The senses are the means by which the outer world penetrates as an image
into the inner being. Before the senses are differentiated the living
organism possesses a general sensitiveness; that is to say, that under
the influence of the outer world its cell protoplasm undergoes a process
of regrouping, resulting in chemical and dynamic changes. The chemical
results of stimulus are anabolism and katabolism, a building up and
breaking down of the cell content; the dynamic results are movements
which in the lowest forms of life are purely mechanical, but in the
higher forms adapt the organism to the external influence in so far as
they place it either so as to be affected by the latter as long and as
powerfully as possible, or else so as to evade it. The living organism
can experience no stimulus and respond to it without absorbing and
transmuting it, converting it into a chemical process or a movement.
This inner process is a subjective realization of something objective, a
penetration by the outer world, therefore an elementary consciousness.
In proportion as the general sensitiveness becomes differentiated into
specific ones, as the image of the outer world filters through the
different coloured glass panes of the various senses into the inner
being of the organism, this image becomes multicoloured and varied.

It lies in the nature of this mechanism that the subjective image is not
identical with the objective original, but is modified and even
distorted by the panes through which it penetrates to the inner being of
the organism. What the subject perceives is never anything but a symbol
of the object, never the object itself; but this symbol suffices to
enable the consciousness to form an idea of the object, just as letters
enable the reader to take in words and thoughts. We must conceive the
development of consciousness to go hand in hand with that of the senses.
The more windows the organism can open to the outer world the more
easily and the more clearly does its image penetrate. The number of
objects which the subject can take in is the measure of the perfection
of its consciousness. The protista, lacking specific sense organs and
possessing only the general sensitiveness of protoplasm, can form only
to a very limited extent and with very little variety an inner
realization of the stimuli of the outer world. Its consciousness is
necessarily very restricted and exceedingly dim. Consciousness is
enlarged and grows clearer as the organism develops and its general
sensitiveness is differentiated into specific senses, until we reach the
level of man whose consciousness embraces far more of the outer world
than does that of any other living creature; because, lacking new
senses, he has succeeded in amplifying and enlarging those he possesses,
and has by artificial means made himself capable of perceiving stimuli
to which he is not directly susceptible and which therefore would have
remained unknown to him; to a certain extent he has translated them into
a form which his senses can perceive.

I do not overlook any of the difficulties which my attempt to explain
consciousness leaves untouched. On all sides the most urgent and
disquieting questions arise. Above all, the fundamental question, the
most enigmatic of all: how is an external stimulus, that is a movement,
a vibration, converted into a sensation, a perception? Further: must we
in the consciousness distinguish between the frame and its contents,
the conceptual mechanism and the concept? Or do the two coincide? Is
there no consciousness without a conceptual content? And is it the
movement entering into the organism, the inner realization of the outer
world which, transmuting itself in an incomprehensible manner into a
concept, creates consciousness, becomes consciousness? Is the
consciousness of the man standing upon the highest plane of
intellectuality the greatest consciousness possible? Does there exist
anywhere in the universe a more abundant, perhaps an infinitely more
abundant consciousness than that of human beings on the Earth, and will
the latter ever rise to this height? It is obvious that a development is
in progress. There was a time when the most comprehensive, the clearest
consciousness on earth was that of the trilobite or the cephalopod.
Evolution has gone as far as man. Does it stop at that or will it
continue?

According to Herbert Spencer evolution is progress from the simple to
the complicated. Let us accept this definition. Have we the right to set
up a scale of values and place the complicated above the simple? Is the
latter not the more perfect because it has more power of resistance,
greater durability, and can hold its own triumphantly against all
destructive influences? Is not evolution, then, a retrogression from the
perfect, because simple, to the more complicated, and therefore more
fragile, more easily upset and less capable of resistance to harm? Is it
not sheer egocentrism if we appraise the value of living beings
according to their greater or less resemblance to ourselves, and judge
them to be less or more worthy in proportion to their disparity with us?
Are the fish which, living in the sea wherein we cannot exist, can
inhabit the greater part of the globe, are wild duck which fly, swim and
walk, not more perfect than we, who have had to conquer the air and the
water by artificial means? Is not the mouse's hearing sharper than ours?
The eagle's sight keener? The dog's scent incomparably more delicate?
Has not the carrier pigeon an infinitely better sense of locality than
we have? Are not many beasts physically stronger, more nimble and agile
than man? His only claim to superiority rests on the greater perfection
of his consciousness. Why do not all living creatures participate
equally in the evolution to which this superiority is due? Why does it
not take place in every organism and lead the unicellular living being
in an unbroken ascent to the level of Goethe or Napoleon, or to a still
more lofty one, if such an one exist anywhere in the universe?

If one could believe in a Ruling Power and the plan of the universe as
its work, would it not be terribly cruel and revoltingly unjust that
this power, instead of treating all living beings alike, should make a
kind of selection of grace and lead some up to a higher level while it
condemned others to lasting lowliness, and that it should ordain that on
the road from the unicellular organism to man, countless connecting
links should be left hopelessly behind and not be permitted to continue
their ascent? Or must we admit the humiliating conclusion that a greater
amount of consciousness does not necessarily imply higher rank and
greater dignity, and that a protista, with its almost unimaginably pale
and narrow consciousness, can have just as great a feeling of well-being
as man with his immeasurably superior intellectual life; that therefore
the protista suffers no wrong if it never gets beyond its present stage
of evolution; and finally that the amount of the outer world which man
can absorb in his consciousness is as far removed from the entirety of
the universe as the contents of the protista's consciousness are from
that of the human mind? No answer can be found to these questions.
Whatever purports to be an answer, be it introduced as theology or as
philosophy, is visionary or nonsensical. We must resign ourselves to
moving in a very small circle moderately illuminated by Reason, while
all around, if we seek to penetrate beyond it, we perceive gruesome
darkness.

Evolution, that is a progress from the comparatively simple to the more
complicated, is a striking fact--I say comparatively simple advisedly,
for even in the unicellular organism the processes are far removed from
the absolutely simple. We do not know from what part of the organism the
impulse to evolution comes. Here we meet with the same mystery which
shrouds growth, its duration, its measure and its bounds. As the
conception is lacking, a word has been found, viz., entelechy, which
Driesch introduced into biology, the co-operation of all parts of the
organism for the purpose not only of preserving it but also of making it
more efficient in the matter of self-preservation and more perfect. A
critical investigation of entelechy would involve the broaching of the
whole question of life. It does not come within the scope of this work.
I shall therefore content myself with a very few remarks. Entelechy
works as if it were reasonable and acted with a set purpose. If you
think it out exhaustively it forces you to the assumption that life is
an intellectual principle, even in the protoplasm of the cell, long
before there is any perceptible trace of consciousness; that this
intellectual principle makes use of matter, builds it up, organizes it,
moulds it into material and tools for construction, and sets up a
mechanism in which and by which it develops itself. As far as we can see
the purpose of life is life itself. Entelechy directs all the work of
the organism in such a way that it becomes more and more capable of
self-preservation, that its efficiency becomes greater, that it can
absorb more of the outer world and can react more vigorously upon the
outer world. In other words, life strives continuously to make its
embodiments more permanent, securer, richer and more manifold.

However, if we do not know how the impulse to evolution originates, we
can at least form an idea of the mechanism of evolution. Fundamentally
life consists in the absorption of cosmic movements or vibrations, and
their transformation into another form of movement. The living cell is a
machine which makes use of cosmic energy for physio-chemical work.
Metabolism, warmth, electric manifestations, movement, and as their
concomitant a graduated consciousness, are the result of this work which
is carried out by cosmic energy in the cell power machine.

To start with, this machine works in the very simplest fashion. It uses
up its motive power as fast as it acquires it. Energy flows in and
immediately flows out again in another form. The organism is like a pipe
or a vessel without a bottom, so that its contents cannot be stored. The
lower organisms which obey tropisms are such bottomless vessels. They
are continually and inevitably subjected to the same attractions and
repulsions and have no means to withstand them. But at a certain stage
of evolution--how? why? Driesch replies: Entelechy!--a new part is
developed in the machine, something like the cam on a cogwheel which
forces it to come to rest. Or, to keep to the earlier simile, the
bottomless vessel acquires a bottom with a tap that can be opened and
closed. With this arrangement the organism is able to store the energy
it has received and then to make use of it according to its needs, to do
much more or much less work with it, to achieve much greater or much
smaller effects, than it would be capable of doing with the amount of
energy it receives from outside in a given unit of time. It is obvious
how much more efficient the organism becomes if it can store up energy
and can adapt to its needs the amount used up. This new part of the
machine is Inhibition.

It appears early, and takes part in the general development of the
organism; it is indeed the strongest factor in this development. Before
Inhibition intervenes the organism has only one response to stimulus:
reflex action. This is of the character of an electric discharge. It may
be stronger or weaker, but is uniform in kind. It varies quantitatively
but not qualitatively. In the lower organisms it is a contraction of the
cell protoplasm, a movement. In the higher organisms, in which the life
processes are carried out on the principle of the division of labour and
which have developed various organs for this purpose, each organ
performs the action of its specific function; the muscle contracts, the
nerve sends out a nervous impulse, the gland forms a secretion, and so
on. All reflex actions have this in common, that they serve no other
purpose than that of relaxing tension in the organism. They do not imply
any co-ordinated effort to promote the comfort and the welfare of the
living being. They cannot fulfil any complicated task. They exhaust the
organism which, after a series of reflex actions, becomes insensitive to
stimuli and must rest for a time before it can react again.

Beginning from that stage of evolution where inhibition intervenes,
reflex action loses the character of an automatic response to impulse
and becomes disciplined. Inhibition tries to suppress reflex action. Its
success is more or less complete according to the sensitiveness and life
energy of the tissue receiving the stimulus and the degree to which the
mechanism of inhibition is developed. The organism retains its tension,
remains charged with energy, and is able to carry out work for definite
purposes. In place of anarchistic reflex action which occurs regardless
of the needs of the organism, we find economy of energy, co-ordination
of effort, movement directed to a profitable end. It is only inhibition
which can raise the organism from its state of passivity, its helpless
dependence upon tropism, to a being in which a will is beginning to
dawn and which by its will becomes self-determinative. Inhibition is a
function of the will; it is the will's tool. Even Plato dimly perceived
this, and he expresses it in the metaphorical language peculiar to
himself, when, in the "Republic," he compares a human being to a
creature made up of three animals: a hundred-headed sea-serpent which
must at one and the same time be fed and tamed, a blind lion, and a man
who tames the serpent by means of the lion. These three animals are
desire ([Greek: epithumia]), courage ([Greek: thumos]), and mind
([Greek: nous]). We say in biological language, reflex action,
inhibition, and will or volitional reason.

All the concepts that are referred to here: purpose, co-ordination,
inhibition and will, are every one of them dependent upon one
fundamental concept, consciousness. Without it they are unthinkable.
Schopenhauer's unconscious will is a word without meaning. I have
postulated consciousness as the inseparable concomitant of life. It is
probably the essence of life. In its lowest stage it is too dim, its
contents too meagre and blurred, properly to distinguish the organism in
which it dwells from the world around. In a higher state of development,
when it gradually grows clearer and begins to be filled with more
sharply defined ideas, it learns to keep its organism and the
surrounding world apart, and tries to make the attitude of the former to
the latter one of self-defence, self-preservation and self-development.
From this stage of development onward, concepts begin to connect and
group themselves in such a way that consciousness contains not only an
image of the immediate present, but also memories of the past and a
forecast of the future. The ability to prolong the present into the
future, to understand the actual as a cause of the effects that follow
and to foresee these effects, that is the starting point of logic and
reason. It is the necessary antecedent of the will, which would have no
meaning if it were not the effort to realize a conception of actions and
their consequences, previously worked out by consciousness. Will is a
function of consciousness which, in pursuance of the well-known
biological law, creates an instrument for its purposes, and this
instrument is inhibition. The higher an organism stands on the ladder of
evolution the more energetically and surely does inhibition work, the
nicer and the more masterly does its intervention in the original reflex
actions grow.

Thanks to the piling up of reserves of energy, which is a result of
inhibition, the organism can carry out its work of differentiation, can
develop organs and organic systems, and obtain the power to perform more
complicated functions; these render it ever more independent of the
outer world and enable it to affect the outer world to an increasing
extent. Inhibition plays an important part in differentiation. Its
apparatus becomes organized. The nerve centres from which the inhibition
proceeds form a ladder of which each rung is subordinate to the next.
The peripheral nerves are controlled by the nerve centres in the spinal
cord, these again by the centres in the medulla oblongata, and then in
succession by the cerebellum and the cerebrum, and finally by the
corticle. On the principle of least resistance, on which all life is
based, the highest centres of inhibition unburden themselves by granting
the lower ones a certain measure of independence. The reaction to the
most ordinary and frequent stimuli is controlled and organized in its
character and strength by the apparatus of inhibition, so that it ensues
automatically, and no active inhibition, that is, no conscious effort of
the will, is required. The simplest of these automatic reflex movements
take place below the level of consciousness.

Those organized complexes of movement, however, which we call instincts,
are carefully watched by the consciousness and subjected to severe check
if they appear to run counter to the supposed interest of the organism.
The hereditary complexes of movement constituting instinct are highly
organized and oppose inhibition, only yielding to it when it is stronger
than they are. This can be observed in animals which are capable of
taming and training. All the artificial actions and omissions that man
teaches them are triumphs of inhibition over automatism. Among human
beings it is only the elect who can vigorously suppress their instincts
by inhibition directed by Reason. The being that has attained the summit
of organic evolution on earth is man, in whom only the lower, vegetative
life processes are liable to the influence of tropism and primary reflex
actions, while all the higher and highest functions are the work of
Reason, which arms the will with inhibition and suppresses all impulses
and actions that hinder its purposes. It is characteristic of these
functions that they are first worked out as concepts by the
consciousness before they are realized as movements.

It was essential for Morality to find this whole organic structure ready
to its hand before it could become a factor in human life. This
structure had been developed and perfected by the organism for its own
purposes, for the defence and enrichment of its life, to ward off
painful and obtain pleasurable feelings. Morality took possession of it
and used it for its own ends, which do not at the first glance coincide
with the aims which the individual immediately perceives and imagines,
and may indeed be diametrically opposed to these, preventing pleasurable
emotions, causing him pain and even endangering his life.

But Morality, which is a creation of society, was only able to dominate
the individual and gain control of the organic apparatus of his vital
economy, because its purpose is directed towards the same goal as the
tendencies of the individual organism, prolonging them beyond the
individual's scope, aiming at his preservation, and thus coinciding with
his instinct for self-preservation.

Morality limits the individual's vainglory and subordinates him to the
community; it is the condition on which the community allows the
individual to participate in the mightier and more varied means of
protection and the enrichment of existence which it has to offer. But
apart from this somewhat remote advantage of Morality, there is another
immediate one for the individual: it consists in the continual exercise
and consequent strengthening of inhibition; therefore, as we have learnt
to see in inhibition the main factor in the development and
differentiation of all living creatures, it offers a means of raising
the individual to biological perfection. The faculty of inhibition,
being in a continual state of strong tension, makes automatic reflexes
subject to the will, makes blind impulses obedient to the somewhat less
blind reason, and helps man along the path of evolution from the status
of a creature of instinct to that of a thinking personality of strong
character, capable of judgment and foresight, a personality which does
not seek to attain the pleasurable emotions necessary to every living
creature by pandering to his senses and satisfying the appetites of the
flesh, but achieves them by gratification of a higher order, by the
triumph of the intellect over vegetative life, by strengthening the will
in relation to the stimuli of the outer world and the organs, by taking
pleasure in the fact that the will is content with its sway. These are
harsh but subtle pleasures which, when they continue to preponderate in
the consciousness, bring about that state of subjective happiness which
is in the highest degree beneficial to life.

Morality is an arrangement which has arisen from the needs of society;
that is to say, it is not innate, but is an artificial institution of
the race. However, it grafts itself upon the natural organs and
attributes of man, and thus, from being a sociological phenomenon, it
becomes a biological one. The idea that Morality is something absolute,
a cosmic force, and that it would still exist and be valid if there were
no human beings, and even if the earth had no existence, I have refuted
with scorn. We must hold fast to the fact that Morality is a law of
human conduct, that it is in force only among mankind, and that apart
from mankind it is unthinkable. As, however, it becomes a differentiated
function of the apparatus of inhibition, it participates in the general
processes of life and leads us to that point where, indeed, we face the
unnerving outlook upon the absolute and the question of eternity.

My arguments have led me to many phenomena that can be established and
interpreted as facts of experience, but the explanation of which lies
beyond the power of the human mind. We have examined the riddle of life,
and we have distinguished therein a number of inexplicable things: the
lack of a beginning, sensitiveness to stimuli, consciousness, the
transformation of vibrations into sensations and concepts, the will, and
inhibition. We are forced to the conclusion that the only discernible
aim of life's activities is the preservation of life, or, more shortly,
that life is its own aim and object. Morality, too, either openly or by
implication, sets itself the one clearly demonstrable task of ensuring
to the individual the preservation and security of his existence in a
higher sphere than that of individual vegetative life processes. Thereby
it fits into the scheme of existence, its mysteries and aims, and
becomes an integral part of the cycle of life which emerges from
eternity and returns to it.




CHAPTER IV

MORALITY AND LAW


The coercion which the community exercises upon its members, by means of
which it forces them to adapt their actions and abstention from action
to the standard it has set up, has two forms: Custom and Law. Are the
two really different? What is their relation, one to the other? These
are questions worth investigating.

Ever since the earliest times, grave men have meditated on the relation
between Custom and Law. They were forced by evidence and practical
experience to note a difference between the two institutions, but at the
same time they had the definite impression that they trace their origin
to the same source. Socrates distinguishes between the written laws of
his country and the unwritten ones which express the will of the gods.
The former constitute positive Law which the citizen must observe and to
which he must submit; the latter, however, are higher, for they emanate
from the gods themselves. The immutability of the unwritten laws is a
proof that they are superior to the written ones. Written laws vary from
state to state. They are the work of individual law-givers who were
sometimes wise men and sometimes unreasonable tyrants. But all contain
certain precepts which are everywhere alike, which everywhere impose
the same rules upon man. It is almost as if one and the same law-giver
had co-operated in the making of all the laws that obtain in the
different towns and countries, and are so unlike one another in many
points. This common law-giver, whose will is manifest in all laws,
however far removed they be from one another, is the Deity. That is
essentially Socrates' train of thought as given by Xenophon in his
_Memorabilia_. The Attic sage speaks the language of his time, which, by
the way, is still that of many present-day people. The Deity, whose will
permeates all written laws and to whom they may be traced, is the
principle of Morality. Hugo Grotius, in a manner more appropriate to
modern thought, expresses it thus: "Law and Morality spring from the
same source, namely, the strong social instinct natural to man. They
bear witness to reasonable solicitude for the welfare of the community."
This placing on an equality of Law and Custom, of _jus_ and _mos_, is
very remarkable in such a strictly professional thinker, such a positive
jurist as Grotius. Kant discriminates between the doctrine of Virtue and
the doctrine of Law; he keeps them apart, but he emphasizes their
connexion, and the two together make up his doctrine of Ethics.

As a matter of fact, no fundamental difference between Law and Custom
exists; only Law is enforced differently to Custom. It would be going
too far to say: Law has sanctions and Custom has none. The latter has
sanctions too, but they are of a different kind to those of the Law. He
who transgresses Custom will suffer the contempt of his fellow men, and
this may become so penetratingly severe that the most hardened and
shameless rascal must feel it. In an old, loose form of society where
individualism is highly developed, and each one goes his own way, paying
little regard to the others, there an unscrupulous, conscienceless rogue
may sin against Socrates' unwritten law without being penalized. In a
young, closely-knit community, however, in which the feeling of intimate
connexion between the members is lively and vivid, he would be
proscribed, as soon as he was found out, and it would be impossible for
him to remain, say, for example, in a small town of the United States.
Public opinion would make it so hot for him that he would be glad to
escape with a whole skin. But this punishment is exceptional for
transgressions of Custom, whereas it is the rule for those of the Law.

The sanction of the Law is stricter than that of Custom, just as the Law
itself is stricter than is Custom. The Law concerns itself with concrete
cases in which consideration for one's fellow men must be practised,
duties to him fulfilled, and his claims respected. These cases are
defined by Law as clearly as possible, whereas Custom confines itself to
generalities and determines the whole attitude of the individual to his
neighbour. Custom embraces the outer and inner life of man and
supervises his opinions, which are the parents of his deeds, and also
his deeds themselves; Law is only concerned with actions, and refrains
from penetrating to the intimacy of thoughts, unless the latter alter
the essential character of the action, as premeditation in an act of
revenge and temporary or permanent irresponsibility alter the judgment
of offences and crimes. Law is a miserly extract of custom, a meagre
selection from its variety, a concentration and embodiment of its
surging vagueness. It may be compared with crystals, which in their
geometrically accurate forms are crystallized clearly and definitely out
of a liquid, the mother liquor; or with the heavenly bodies which
agglomerate out of surging primal nebulæ. Custom is the primitive thing,
Law is derived from it. It appeals to its descent from Custom, and
founds, at any rate tacitly, its claim to respect on these grounds. A
law which ran counter to Custom, which was confessedly in opposition to
Custom, could never be maintained or prevail, though it bristled with
the menace of the most dreadful punishments.

The relationship of mother to child between Custom and Law may be
obscure to the majority; it is clear to the analytical mind. Recognition
of the essential unity of both phenomena explains an assumption which
was widespread among the best intellects from the Middle Ages until well
into the eighteenth century, but which has now been abandoned as
erroneous by more positive, though indeed narrower, legal minds. This
assumption is that there is a natural Law antecedent to historical Law,
which exists and acts beside and above the latter, and which forms the
basis and the measure of every positive law, of every concrete legal
judgment. It is comprehensible that the nineteenth century swept away
the idea of natural Law and freely made fun of it. To a sternly
disciplined legal mind it must indeed seem grotesque if a judge, in
order to arrive at a verdict in some concrete dispute, cites the rights
to which man is born instead of a certain text of the law, or even,
following Schiller's advice, reaches up to the stars and brings down
thence the eternal Law. Even this procedure is not so farcical as it
seems to stupid article-mongers and hair-splitting paragraphists, for
the procedure of equity of the English judges, who are not prone to
clowning, is at bottom nothing but this reaching up to the stars and
this judging by the rights to which man is born. The feud between
natural Law and historical Law was really a quarrel about a word. Jean
Jacques Rousseau, his contemporaries and disciples, simply made a
mistake in their choice of an expression. They were guilty of an
inaccuracy when they spoke of natural Law. They should have said: "the
innate claim of man that his person should be respected," or, "natural
consideration for one's fellow man," or, most shortly and simply,
"Morality." To the latter legal lights would have raised none of the
objections with which they victoriously opposed natural Law.

The beginnings of Morality coincide with the beginnings of society, as
the latter could not have existed for a single day without the former.
Since men, forced by the struggle for existence, emerged from their
original, natural solitude and united in a community, they have had to
watch over their impulses, suppress their desires, do things they
disliked, and in all their actions and abstentions from action consider
their neighbours' feelings, as they demanded that their feelings, too,
should be considered. That was Morality which limited the vainglory and
arbitrary conduct of unfettered man. It included all rules that
determine the attitude of man to man. There was no distinction between
Custom and Law. Men were ruled by custom which was traditional in their
community and observed by all; and their Custom had the force of Law.

Formulated laws, and more especially written laws, appear comparatively
late. True, Asia has old examples of such; the Manava Dharma Shastra,
the book of laws of the Indian Manu, the Chinese Chings, the law of
Hammu Rabi, and that other law, akin to this, though not derived from
it, but probably drawn from a similar older source, the law of the
Pentateuch. The laws of Draco, Solon and Lycurgus and the Roman Twelve
table law are appreciably younger; much later still the _leges
barbarorum_ were written down, some of them, like the prescriptive Law
of the Germans set down in the "_Sachsenspiegel_," not till the end of
the Middle Ages. It is peculiar to most of the old Asiatic laws that
they contain both rules of conduct and legal regulations, and that they
do not differentiate between these two kinds of precepts.

Let us take one example: the Ten Commandments. Beside such positive
orders as "Thou shalt not steal"; "Thou shalt not kill"; "Honour thy
father and thy mother"; we find such as give rules for the character and
course of spiritual happenings, regarding which others cannot observe
whether they are obeyed or not, like the commandments respecting man's
relationship to God, or admonishing man not to covet his neighbour's
wife or goods. Those are subjective impulses, spiritual moods which are
revealed only to the eye of conscience as long as they do not betray
themselves in action, and which by their very nature cannot be the
subject of Law which deals only with outward manifestations of thought
and will, and is concerned only with things done.

In constitutional Law, too, no less than in criminal and civil Law, the
eighteenth century tends to preface certain laws with universal moral
principles, and to establish by formal law that the former are derived
from the latter. The Declaration of Independence of the United States in
July, 1774, says: We consider the following truths self-evident: that
all men are born equal; that the Creator has bestowed upon them
inalienable rights, amongst which are the right to life, to freedom, to
the pursuit of happiness, etc. So before these rights are guaranteed by
the Law, they are announced to belong by birth and nature to man, to be
independent of any particular and express bestowal by the law-giver, and
beyond all dispute or even argument. Of the thirteen States which formed
the original Union, ten accompanied their constitution by a Bill of
Rights which repeated the essential contents of the Declaration of
Independence of July, 1774; seven of them placed them as an introduction
before their fundamental law, and three of them incorporated them in the
latter. Two others, New York and Georgia, distributed them among various
articles of their constitution. Rhode Island alone refrained from a
general declaration. The States which joined the Union later, with few
exceptions followed the example of their predecessors and built up their
constitution on the foundation of an explicit statement of the natural
rights of man. The French Revolution followed the course which the
United States had indicated, and began its constitution of 1791 with the
"Declaration of the rights of men and citizens," which is not a law in
the technical sense of the word, but is superior to all positive Law,
constitutes the latter's standard and touchstone, and straightway makes
all laws invalid which are not animated by its spirit or which
contradict it.

In the beginning, therefore, there was Morality, and the first laws,
which formulated its precepts either in oral tradition or in writing,
recommended without distinction what was good and desirable, and what
was necessary and expedient. The differentiation of the Morality, which
the commonwealth felt to be its code of right and wrong, into Custom and
Law took place in late times. It was most definite in Rome, where for
the first time a clear distinction was made between men's relation to
their gods and their relation to one another; the former was left to the
individual's conscience, the latter subjected to the power of the State;
the elements of feeling and of dim perception were banished from the Law
which confined its attention to deeds which it regulated in a
high-handed manner. Law chose from out the all-embracing sphere of
Morality one narrow area, that of mankind's immediate, material
interests, and took this as its sole theme. The object of all Morality
is to enable men to live together in a community peacefully and
prosperously; within the bounds of this more general purpose, the task
of the Law is to suppress by force the grosser hindrances to this
harmony among individuals, and by material means of coercion
emphatically oblige everyone to respect the interests of his neighbour.
What every responsible man of sound mind demands first and foremost is a
proper respect for the possessions that are his by birth and
acquisition, that is for his life, for his bodily welfare, for all the
goods he owns that minister to his needs, his comfort and his pleasure.
He who lays violent hands on these possessions, or threatens to endanger
them, is recognized to be an enemy; man arms himself against such an
one, fights against him, tries, if he have a strong character, to
destroy him, or flees from him if he is too weak to triumph over him;
man only yields to such an one if he simply cannot help himself, but he
does so with hatred and revenge in his heart, and in a state of mind
which, if it becomes fairly widespread, sets every man's hand against
his fellow-men and leads to the ruin and even to the dissolution of the
community. Hence the task of Law is effectively to protect the
individual from the infringement of his rights by others. It places the
organized forces of the community at the service of the individual whose
interests are threatened, for the criminal law penalizes more or less
severely attempts against life and health, unlawful seizure of property
whether by force or cunning, malicious molestation and offence; the laws
of commerce keep watch over the faithful fulfilment of contracts dealing
with the fair exchange of goods or the execution of work, and in case of
need enforce it.

A select few, everywhere only a small minority, has a different scale of
values to that of the masses. For them "life is not the supreme thing."
There are things they value more highly. The masses have no
understanding for these people's needs and fine feelings. Their
self-respect and their dignity are dear to them as wealth, their honour
more sacred than life itself. Unhesitatingly they sacrifice their
property to freedom, and more unbearable than anxiety for their material
interests is life in surroundings in which brutality, vulgar sentiments,
harsh egotism, malice, hypocrisy and treachery preponderate. The Law
does not consider this minority. It is the creation and the servant of
the great majority. It clings to earth and is incapable of lofty
flights. It is of no service to the elect in the preservation of their
noblest spiritual possessions or the defence of their ideals against
clumsy maltreatment. It declares itself to be incompetent to deal with
any but material affairs.

Therein lies at one and the same time the strength and the weakness of
the Law. Its strength lies in the fact that it definitely limits its
sphere of action and strives to achieve positive results by positive
means, results intelligible even to a mean understanding. Its weakness
lies in the fact that it ignores man's highest and noblest interests.
And these interests are there, they too deserve consideration and
protection, they have a right to demand that the guarantee of the
community should embrace them as well. The well-being of the community,
which is the object of Morality and of Law too, demands that such
conditions should be created and maintained, as should enable the elect
also to enjoy life or at least find existence bearable. But Law does
not suffice for that. No law enjoins upon the careless throng of
pachyderms to spare the tenderest and noblest sensibilities of lofty
natures; no judge punishes thoughtless or purposely malicious injury to
them. To remedy this evil we must rise from the lowly plain of Law, the
natural dwelling-place of the masses, to the heights of Morality, the
habitual abode of superior minds. At the theological stage of
civilization refuge is sought with the gods in whose hands the
protection of essential, spiritual possessions is placed. They are
expected to punish the wicked whose evil deeds are beyond the reach of
any penal code, they are expected to soothe and comfort when life is
hard or even unendurable. That is the compromise that the elect made
with life in the hard times of European barbarism. They escaped from the
world and thus avoided contac

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