A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution
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Title: A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution
Author: Cora May Williams
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A REVIEW OF THE SYSTEMS OF ETHICS FOUNDED ON THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION ***
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[Illustration]
A REVIEW OF THE SYSTEMS OF ETHICS FOUNDED ON THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION
BY
C. M. WILLIAMS
New York
MACMILLAN & CO.
AND LONDON
1893
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1892,
BY MACMILLAN & CO.
TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.
PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH, BOSTON, U.S.A.
* * * * *
TO MY FIRST TEACHER OF MORALS
MY MOTHER
THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED
PREFACE
Of the Ethics founded on the theory of Evolution, I have considered only
the independent theories which have been elaborated to systems. I have
omitted consideration of many works which bear on Evolutional Ethics as
practical or exhortative treatises, or compilations of facts, but which
involve no distinctly worked-out theory of morals. On the other hand, I
have ventured to include Professor von Gizycki's "Moralphilosophie"
among the theoretical systems founded upon the theory of Evolution,
since, although the popular form of the work renders the prominence of
the latter theory impracticable, the warp of Evolution is clearly
perceptible throughout it. In analyzing Hoeffding's work, I have made use
not of the Danish but the German edition of his "Ethics," which was
translated with his cooeperation.
It is generally customary for an author to acknowledge, in the preface
of his book, his especial indebtedness to those who have most influenced
the growth of his thought in the line of research treated in the book.
But I find this duty a difficult one to perform. Many of the authors
whose work has aided me are cited in the text. But it is impossible,
with regard to many points, to say to whom one is indebted, or most
indebted, since much that one reads is so assimilated into one's
organized thought, and changed in the process of assimilation, that its
source and original form are no longer remembered. Besides this, much is
always owed to personal influence and argument, and also to indefinite
and minute forces whose workings it is impossible to trace. The growth
of thought is, like any other growth, by imperceptible degrees and
infinitesimal increments, and we breathe in ideas from our mental
atmosphere as we breathe in perfumes or infections from our physical
atmosphere. It is, of course, unnecessary to mention Mr. Spencer's name
in this connection, since it goes without saying, that every one who
writes on Ethics in their relation to the Theory of Evolution must owe
much to him, even where he differs from him. But there is perhaps one
name which it is fitting that I should mention here, since the influence
of its bearer on my work, although one for which I have reason to feel
peculiarly indebted, is not of a nature to determine its mention in
connection with any particular theory. I refer to my first teacher of
Philosophy, Professor M. Stuart Phelps, now deceased, whose life and
labor all those who had the privilege of sharing his instruction and
benefiting by his kindness must ever hold in grateful remembrance.
CONTENTS
PART I
PAGES
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 1-2
DARWIN 2-12
WALLACE 12-23
HAECKEL 23-28
SPENCER 28-76
FISKE 77-82
ROLPH 82-107
BARRATT 107-120
STEPHEN 120-143
CARNERI 143-175
HOeFFDING 175-200
GIZYCKI 200-224
ALEXANDER 225-263
(REE) 264-268
PART II
INTRODUCTION
Refutation of _a priori_ objections to Evolutional Ethics, and a
statement of reasons for supposing that an application of the
theory of Evolution to Ethics must be of use 269-276
CHAPTER I
THE CONCEPTS OF EVOLUTION
Extension of the meaning of Darwinian concepts since
Darwin--Lewes on the Struggle for Existence as internal--The
mystery of "Variation" according to Darwin not a metaphysical
mystery, but one of the incompleteness of scientific
knowledge--Rolph's criticism of the Darwinian conception of the
Struggle for Existence criticised--General classification of the
theories of Evolution--Fechner's theory of the Tendency to
Stability--Petzoldt on Fechner--Petzoldt's concepts of Tendency
and Competition--Zoellner and Du Prel--Examination of the concept
of Absolute Stability, and of a full stability of the universe,
in the light of the question as to the finite or infinite
character of the material universe--Periodicity in
Organisms--Criticism of the concepts of Cause and
Effect--Criticism of Spencer's definition of Life--The concepts
of Heredity and Adaptation--The point of dispute with regard to
Variation--Darwin, Haeckel, and Eimer with regard to the
inheritance of individual acquirements--Criticisms of
Weismann--Habit in the life of the individual--Advantage of the
method pursued by Avenarius in the "Kritik der reinen
Erfahrung"--Lamarck on the relation of Use and Function--Darwin
on Habit and Instinct--Function and Tendency to
Function--Relation of organism and environment--Theory of a
special vital force--The relation of exercise to strength of
Tendency--The concepts of Cause and Effect as applied to
organism and environment--Relation of primary tendency to
later-evolved function--Form and Function--The mixture of types
in sexual propagation--Summary of conclusions 277-306
CHAPTER II
INTELLIGENCE AND "END"
The question as to the extent to which Reason is diffused in the
universe--Darwin and Haeckel on Reason and Instinct--Du Prel on
Reason as a fundamental property of all matter--Carneri on the
automatism of animals--The dependence of theories on this
question on the starting-point assumed in the
argument--Difficulties of assigning a limit-line to
Reason--Schneider's criteria--Insectivorous plants--Knight,
Darwin, etc., on the movements of plants--Race-habits--So-called
reflex-action in man--From non-analogy no inference
possible--Arbitrary nature of the assumptions involved in the
two starting-points of query--Reason = Cause or Effect?--Further
criticism of the concepts of Cause and Effect--The bias of the
specialist--Attempted definition of the province of
reason--Definition of "End"--Unreliability of inference as to
the nature of ends in other individuals; in other
species--Possible inferences from the analogy of the nervous
system--Certain possible limiting assumptions as to the province
of knowledge in animal species--The Law of the Variation of
Pain and Pleasure in function--The ultimate
dilemma--Examinations of Teleological conceptions with respect
to the Tendency to Stability--Criticism of Wallace on the Origin
of Life, or of Consciousness--Summary of conclusions 307-340
CHAPTER III
THE WILL
Difficulties of definition--The Will and
Consciousness--"Involuntary" action--Will in passivity--The
concept of Choice--"Ends" and the Will--The Future and Will--The
External and Will--Criticism of Barratt's axioms and
propositions--Discussion of the relation of Thought and Feeling
to Will--The argument of the Physiologist--The argument of the
Evolutionist--The argument from social statistics--The argument
from Psychiatry, Criminology, etc.--The argument from the
psychological principles on which Evolutional Ethics is
founded--Definition of Natural Law and Necessity--The positive
factors of Evolution--The positive and active character of the
organism as the result of evolution--The equivalence of
Conditions and Results--The positive character of the organism
as a part of Nature--The sense of Freedom as the sense of
Activity--The theory of the Will as determined by Motives--As
determined by Feeling--As determined by the desirability of the
end or object--The argument of Concomitance and that of Sequence
as used by both Materialist and Spiritualist--The endeavor to
prove (1) the causal character of physiological process; (2) the
causal character of Consciousness--Inconsistencies of these
attempts 341-359
CHAPTER IV
THE MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THOUGHT, FEELING, AND WILL IN EVOLUTION
Hume on Reason and Passion--The constant connection of Thought
with Feeling, and with Feeling as pleasure or pain--The question
as to whether Thought or Feeling is primary--Application of
answer to previous considerations on the diffusion of
Consciousness in Nature--The relation of the concepts of the
Pleasurable and Painful to the concept of "End"--Will as a
constant accompaniment of Consciousness--Absurdities to which
the division of Consciousness into distinct faculties leads--Law
of the growth of functional tendency and of pleasure in
function--The New as a disturber of equilibrium--The pleasure
involved in the overcoming of obstacles--The equilibrium of
function as Health--Connection of the pleasure of food-taking
with Health--Criticism of Rolph's principle of the Insatiability
of Life--Further criticism of Rolph on the Darwinian theory of
Growth--The cooerdinate progress of physiological adaptation with
the advancement of knowledge, and with the variation of Feeling
and Will--The pleasure of the strongest motive as relative, not
absolute--The character of the End in view--The pleasure of
anticipation and the pleasure of the event--Criticism of
Sidgwick on Hedonism--Criticism of Rolph's theory of Want as
universal motive--Suicide--Rest--The diminution of pain with
lapse of time as adaptation--Pleasure in pain as pleasure in
function--The relation of Health to Happiness--The theory of the
absolute Freedom of Feeling--The concepts of Cause and Effect as
applied to the evolution of Thought, Feeling, and
Will--Application of conclusions to the Teleological Argument 360-382
CHAPTER V
EGOISM AND ALTRUISM IN EVOLUTION
Prototypes in other animal species of what we term Egoism and
Altruism in man; care for the young on the part of the
parent-animal; mutual aid between the sexes; animal
societies--Experiments of Lubbock showing the irregularity and
caprice of action altruistic in form, among the ants--Benno
Scheitz on maternal care among lower species--Answers to the
argument of automatism--Dependence of a theory of moral
Evolution on the definition of Egoism and Altruism--The
significance of the terms progressive--The possibility of
differences in the form of the evolution of Altruism, in
different species--The possibility of the combination of
different forms in the evolution of a single species--Discussion
of the question of the first beginning of action prompted by
altruistic motive--The argument of the illogical nature of a
supposed development of Altruism from Egoism--The question as to
whether Health, the Preservation of Species, or Pleasure, is the
actual final end of action--The question of Heredity in relation
to that of the moral evolution--Stephen's views--Arguments from
Ribot, Dugdale's "Jukes," etc. 383-422
CHAPTER VI
CONSCIENCE
The gradual character of the evolution of Altruism--Paul
Friedmann on the genesis of benevolence--The observable growth
of Altruism from Egoism in the individual--Human society as
necessitated by increase of the species--Criticism of Darwin's
form of statement on this point--The mixed character of the
motives which lead to advancement--The necessity of evolution,
primal organisms once having come into existence--General
features of the moral evolution in the human race--Personal and
Social Virtues--Racial evolution as subordinate to the evolution
of the species--Criticism of Stephen--The theory of the
connection of Intelligence and Morality--Testimony of Maudsley,
Lombroso, Dugdale--The advantages of conformity to social
standards--Definition of "advantage"--Arguments from the general
direction of social advancement--The direction of evolution in
the race as a whole and in the individual not always the
same--Conclusion: the connection of Intelligence with Morality
not invariable--Definition of Morality--Identification of
Morality with Justice--Special rules of morality--Morality as
inward--The virtue of Truthfulness--Necessity of individual
sacrifice--Dependence of Justice on certain general features of
particular circumstances---Definition of Conscience--The mixed
character of remorse--The theory of Conscience as a special
sense--Criticism of Utilitarianism--Criticism of some forms of
reaction against Utilitarianism--The terms "higher" and "lower"
as applied to pleasures and "ends"--The idea of a "return to
Nature"--The objection to Evolutional Ethics on the ground of
degradation--Struggle as an element of virtue--The evolution of
social rewards and punishments--Criticism of the objection to
state-punishment on the ground of Determinism--Morality and the
question of the Transcendental--Conscience in other species--The
contempt for "mere habit"--The concepts of Cause and Effect as
applied to the moral evolution 423-465
CHAPTER VII
THE MORAL PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN SPECIES AS SHOWN BY HISTORY
The assimilative character of human progress--The character of
our savage ancestors--Greek civilization--The Greek treatment of
children--Of old men--Human sacrifices among the
Greeks--Slaughter of prisoners--Slavery--The Greek attitude
towards the fundamental virtues of trustworthiness--Athenian
Democracy--Roman civilization--Treatment of children--Human
sacrifices--Gladiatorial shows--Slavery--Moral character of the
Middle Ages--Human sacrifice in England before the Roman
conquest--Slave laws--State punishment in England: burning,
hanging, and boiling, quartering and disembowelling--Women under
the criminal law--Blood-money--The classification of
crimes--Caste-favor in English criminal
law--Mutilation--Flaying--Ordeals--Punishment by starvation--The
press--The rack--"Skevington's Daughter"--Benefit of Clergy--The
position of the English churl--The worship of rank--Hanging for
petty theft--The pillory--Brutality of public feeling--Condition
of the prisons--Jail-breaking, bribery, etc.--More concerning
women under the law--Favor to rank--The logical consistency of
human character in its various directions of action--General
comparison of the past with the present--The evidence of
literature--Modern philanthropy--Decrease of national
prejudices--Growth of the democratic spirit--Lack of imagination
a reason for the failure to realize the evils of the past--The
Golden Age of Man 466-499
CHAPTER VIII
THE RESULTS OF ETHICAL INQUIRY ON AN EVOLUTIONAL BASIS
Criticism of Alexander's theory of the right as always absolute
right and as the expression, on all planes of development, of an
equal equilibrium--The Moral Evolution as one involving the
whole of humanity and the whole earth--Gradual relaxation of the
Struggle for Existence--The final limitation of the increase in
density of population--The increase of vitality--The habituation
to progress--The gradual cooerdination of individual with social
welfare through (1) Spread and increase of sympathy with the
individual on the part of society as a whole; (2) Growth of
individual predilections in the direction of harmony with social
requirements--Decrease of punishment through (1) Increase in
general sympathy; (2) Increase of amenability of the individual
to influence--Increase of pleasure in pleasure--The possible
egoistic element in sympathy with pain--Criticism of Rolph on
Want as necessary to induce action--The moral evolution and
emotion--Criticism of Spencer on Altruism--Criticism of Wundt on
Evolutional Ethics--The theory that Evolution adds nothing to
Ethics--Criticism of Stephen on the impossibility of predicting
the course of Evolution--The Moral Evolution as willed--The
motives furnished by Evolutional Ethics--The theological
doctrine of a "change of heart"--The doctrine of the
Atonement--Divine forgiveness--Theology and social evils--The
prominence of the idea of self-salvation in Christian
doctrine--Human sacrifice among the Jews--Biblical authority for
the killing of witches and heretics--The infliction of death for
ceremonial offences among the Jews--The visiting of the sins of
the fathers upon the children--Slave-holding, adultery, murder,
etc., by God's chosen, bloodshed and cruelty of all sorts by
God's express command--Animal sacrifice among the Jews--The
original idea of Jehovah and of Heaven--The autocracy of the
Jewish priesthood confirmed by Christ--Forced exegesis--The
asceticism of Christianity--Slavery and the New
Testament--Predestination, Hell, and the Justification of the
Elect--The defence of Christianity as being a comforting
belief 500-528
CHAPTER IX
THE IDEAL AND THE WAY OF ITS ATTAINMENT
Criticism of Stephen's assertion that the ideal cannot be
determined--The necessity of the choice between evils, under
present social conditions--The argument for individual
gratification of "natural desire"--Dangers of
Utilitarianism--Moral right of the minority and the ethical
demand for compensation to the minority--The contest between
Individualist and Socialist--Criticism of Spencer on personal
vice--Individualistic errors--Socialistic pessimism--The idea of
a "return to Nature"--The Socialistic glorification of the
laborer--The agitation against machinery--The agitation against
luxury--The abolition of luxury and the population question--The
proposed change of social "environment"--Socialism at the
present date--Arbitrary character of many Socialistic
ideas--Criticisms of Bellamy--The idea of a
Revolution--Conclusions--The education of the child--The right
of the child to state protection--The advantages of parental
control--The education of women--The question of
prostitution--Monogamy or polygamy?--Temporary
contracts--Divorce--The argument that the freedom of women must
involve the forfeiture of chivalric feeling in men--The respect
for age--Desirable changes in criminal law--Criticism of Bellamy
on Crime--The question of Capital Punishment--Arguments
for--Arguments against--Conclusions--The conflict between
justice and mercy--The supreme arbiter--The courage of Moral
Sincerity--Heroic characters--The final destruction of the human
species--The loss of belief in personal immortality--The human
and earthly ideal 529-581
A REVIEW OF EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS
PART I
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
In the preface to the latest edition of his "Natuerliche
Schoepfungsgeschichte," Haeckel, writing of recent developments of
thought on the subject of evolution, and the change of attitude
observable in our later literature, says: "The vast mass of literature,
yearly increasing in astonishing measure, on the theory of evolution in
its various branches, best illustrates the remarkable change which
public opinion has undergone. Twenty years ago, the greater part of this
literature was in opposition to Darwin; to-day such opposition is not to
be feared from well-informed students of science. On the other hand,
almost the whole literature of biology now gives testimony in Darwin's
favor, for almost all zooelogical, and botanical, anatomic, and
ontogenetic works are founded upon the principles of the development of
species, and derive from Darwin their best and most fruitful ideas."
No science is a better exponent of this radical and important change
than that which has to do with the principles of morals; for by no
science was the theory of evolution assailed, in the beginning, with
more vehemence and indefatigability. Not only did the zealous adherents
of Christian dogma fear to find, in the destruction of all distinct
barriers between the different forms of animal life, a ground for the
denial of God's especial favor to man, and the worshippers of emotional
morals become indignant at the unveiling of the divine Mystic (as if
only ignorance were reverence, and only the Unknown worthy of homage),
but even the less conservative schools of philosophy often showed
themselves unfavorable or hesitant towards the new ideas, dreading their
implications. All this is changed. If England's most popular living
philosopher was among the first to declare himself for Darwin, and to
revise his whole system in accordance with the theory of evolution, so
that this theory early began to find adherents among students of
philosophy in all lands where English is spoken, it was not long before
the newer schools of France and Germany began to follow in their wake.
Now every year, and almost every month, brings with it a fresh supply of
books, pamphlets, and magazine articles on "The Evolution of Morality,"
"L'Evolution de la Morale," "Die Evolution der Sittlichkeit,"
"Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus," etc. So many are the waters which now
pour themselves into this common stream that the current threatens soon
to become too deep and swift for any but the most expert swimmers.
In a short review of Evolutional Ethics, it will be impossible to
consider all the literature that has added to our knowledge on this
subject; we must confine ourselves to the few books that are most
prominent. The first laborer in this line, not only indirectly through
general theory, but also directly through particular theory, is, as
usual, Charles Darwin; and though Darwin was himself no psychologist,
and moreover advances his ideas on the origin and development of morals
only in the tentative manner that necessarily attaches to a first
attempt when made by so conscientious a thinker, he doubtless suggested
to all other writers in this field a very large part of that which was
best in their work. A Review of Evolutional Ethics must, therefore, in
order to start with the proper origin of the science, begin with
CHARLES DARWIN
In the essay on "Instinct" appended to G. J. Romanes' "Mental Evolution
in Animals,"[1] Darwin says: "The social instinct is indispensable to
some animals, useful to still more, and apparently only pleasant to some
few animals." The social tendency being thus classed as an instinct, it
belongs to our work to examine what are Darwin's theories as to the
origin and nature of instinct.
In the chapter on "Instinct," in "The Origin of Species," Darwin
premises: "I have nothing to do with the origin of the mental powers,
any more than I have with that of life itself."[2] Again: "Frederick
Cuvier and several of the older metaphysicians have compared instinct
with habit. This comparison gives, I think, an accurate notion of the
frame of mind under which an instinctive action is performed, but not
necessarily of its origin.... If we suppose any habitual action to
become inherited--and it can be shown that this does sometimes
happen--then the resemblance between what originally was a habit and an
instinct becomes so close as not to be distinguished.... But it would be
a serious error to suppose that the greater number of instincts have
been acquired by habit in one generation, and then transmitted by
inheritance to succeeding generations. It can be clearly shown that the
most wonderful instincts with which we are acquainted, namely, those of
the hive-bee and of many ants, could not possibly have been acquired by
habit."[3] Of one of the habits of these last-named insects Darwin,
however, writes: "I have not rarely felt that small and trifling
instincts were a greater difficulty on our theory than those which have
so justly excited the wonder of mankind; for an instinct, if really of
no considerable importance in the struggle for life, could not be
modified or formed through natural selection. Perhaps as striking an
instance as can be given is that of the workers of the hive-bee arranged
in files and ventilating, by a peculiar movement of their wings, the
well-closed hive: this ventilation has been artificially imitated, and
as it is carried on even during winter, there can be no doubt that it is
to bring in free air and displace the carbonic acid gas; therefore _it
is in truth indispensable, and we may imagine the stages_--a few bees
first going to the orifice to fan themselves--_by which the instinct
might have been arrived at_."[4] Again: "Glancing at instincts,
marvellous as some are, they offer no greater difficulty than do
corporeal structures on the theory of the natural selection of
successive slight, but profitable modifications. We can thus understand
why nature moves by graduated steps in endowing different animals of
the same class with their several instincts."[5] And again: "As I
believe, the most wonderful of all known instincts, that of the
hive-bee, can be explained by natural selection having taken advantage
of numerous successive, slight modifications of simpler instincts,
natural selection having, by slow degrees, more and more perfectly led
the bees to sweep equal spheres at a given distance from each other in a
double layer, and to build up and excavate the wax along the planes of
intersection; the bees, of course, no more knowing that they swept their
spheres at one particular distance from each other, than they know what
are the several angles of the hexagonal prisms and of the basal rhombic
plates; the motive power of the process of natural selection having been
the construction of cells of due strength and of the proper size and
shape for the larvae, this being effected with the greatest possible
economy of labor and wax; that individual swarm which thus made the best
cells with least labor, and least waste of honey in the secretion of
wax, having succeeded best, and having transmitted their newly acquired
economical instincts to new swarms, which in their turn will have had
the best chance of succeeding in the struggle for existence."[6] And
further, of instinct in general: "It will be universally admitted that
instincts are as important as corporeal structures for the welfare of
each species, under its present conditions of life. Under changed
conditions of life, it is at least possible that slight modifications of
instinct might be profitable to a species; and if it can be shown that
instincts do vary ever so little, then I can see no difficulty in
natural selection preserving and continually accumulating variations of
instinct to any extent that was profitable. It is thus, as I believe,
that all the most complex and wonderful instincts have originated. As
modifications of corporeal structure arise from, and are increased by,
use or habit, and are diminished or lost by disuse, so I do not doubt it
has been with instincts"; though Darwin adds: "But I believe that the
effects of habit are in many cases of subordinate importance to the
effects of the natural selection of what may be called spontaneous
variations of instincts; that is, of variations produced by the same
unknown causes which produce slight deviations of bodily structure."
However, "No complex instinct can possibly be produced through natural
selection, except by the slow and gradual accumulation of numerous
slight, yet profitable, variations."[7] And of habit as connected with
heredity, Darwin writes: "Changed habits produce an inherited effect, as
in the period of the flowering of plants when transported from one
climate to another. With animals the increased use or disuse of parts
has had a more marked influence.... No breeder doubts how strong is the
tendency to inheritance; that like produces like is his fundamental
belief; doubts have been thrown on this principle only by theoretical
writers.... If strange and rare deviations of structure are really
inherited, less strange and commoner deviations may be freely admitted
to be inheritable. Perhaps the correct way of viewing the whole subject
would be to look at the inheritance of every character whatever as the
rule, and non-inheritance as the anomaly.... If it could be shown that
our domestic varieties manifested a strong tendency to reversion--that
is, to lose their acquired characters whilst kept under the same
conditions, and whilst kept in a considerable body, so that free
intercrossing might check, by blending together, any slight deviations
in their structure, in such case I grant that we could deduce nothing
from domestic varieties in regard to species. But there is not a shadow
of evidence in favor of this view; to assert that we could not breed our
cart and race horses, long and short horned cattle, and poultry of
various breeds, and esculent vegetables, for an unlimited number of
generations, would be opposed to all experience."[8] Darwin recognizes,
in instinct, the possibility for the play of a certain amount of
imitation, as also of intelligence and experience,[9] though denying to
these the range attributed to them by Wallace. And summing up his theory
in the essay given by Romanes, he writes: "It may not be logical, but to
my imagination it is far more satisfactory, to look at the young cuckoo
ejecting his foster brothers, ants making slaves, the larvae of the
ichneumidae feeding within the live bodies of their prey, cats playing
with mice, otters and cormorants with living fish, not as instincts
specially given by the Creator, but as very small parts of one general
law leading to the advancement of all organic bodies--Multiply, Vary,
let the strongest Live and the weakest Die."
It will thus be seen that Darwin, while confessing a disability to
account for the origin of _Instinct_,--beginning with some form of
instinct as already existent, just as he begins with life as already
existent,--does advance some perfectly definite views as to the probable
origins of _instincts_,--namely, preservation, in the struggle for
existence, of numerous slight but profitable variations. The assertion
of the inadequacy of habit to account for the origin of more complex
instincts, as in the case of the hive-bees, when compared with the
subsequent explanation, in the same connection, of the rise of these
very instincts partly by habit acquired from experience and imitation,
partly by accidental modifications of simpler instincts, both taken
advantage of by natural selection,--would seem to limit the term
"habit," as here used, to modes of action acquired during the life of
the individual; this interpretation of the word being confirmed by the
additional phrase "in one generation." But here, as everywhere in
Darwin's work, an unknown quantity appears--namely, the cause of
variation; _i.e._ of the differences, or tendency to differ, of
offspring, from the parental type.
In "The Descent of Man," published twelve years later than "The Origin
of Species," and "The Variation of Plants and Animals under
Domestication," which appeared yet three years later, Darwin's views on
instinct and habit are still further elaborated, and a definition of the
relation of these to reason, pleasure, pain, and the moral sense,
attempted. In Vol. I. of the former work, Darwin devotes two chapters to
these subjects. Instinct he calls, pages 116-122, "inherited habit"; and
on page 168 he says: "But as love, sympathy, and self-command became
strengthened by habit, and as the power of reasoning becomes clearer, so
that man can value justly the judgments of his fellows, he will feel
himself impelled, apart from any transitory pleasure or pain, to certain
lines of conduct." Here, I take it, the word "habit" cannot be
interpreted as referring to one generation of men, but to the race as a
whole, a general continuity being thus ascribed to the inheritance of
mental characteristics, and the important concept of progress as
adaptation acquired. In contrasting reason with instinct, Darwin thinks
that instinct and intelligence do not, as Cuvier maintained, stand in
inverse ratio to each other, but that a high degree of intelligence is
compatible with complex instincts--as in the case of the beaver; "yet it
is not improbable that there is a certain amount of interference
between the development of free intelligence and of instinct,--which
latter implies some inherited modification of the brain. Little is known
about the functions of the brain, but we can perceive that, as the
intellectual powers become highly developed, the various parts of the
brain must be connected by very intricate channels of the freest
intercommunication; and as a consequence, each separate part would
perhaps tend to be less well fitted to answer to particular
sensations or associations in a definite and inherited--that is,
instinctive--manner. There seems even to exist some relation between a
low degree of intelligence and a strong tendency to the formation of
fixed, though not inherited habits; for, as a sagacious physician
remarked to me, persons who are slightly imbecile tend to act in
everything by routine or habit; and they are rendered much happier if
this is encouraged."[10] Darwin thinks instinctive action and action
from habit may not be connected with either pleasure or pain, though he
would seem to contradict this view in the latter part of the passage
just quoted, and again where he says: "Although a habit may be blindly
and implicitly followed, independently of any pleasure or pain felt at
the moment, yet if it be forcibly and abruptly checked, a vague sense of
dissatisfaction is generally experienced."[11]
In writing of the social instinct, Darwin begins with it as already
existent, and seems, moreover, to maintain concerning it a theory of
purpose elsewhere denied in his works and, indeed, antagonistic to the
whole principle of the struggle for existence. He says: "It has often
been assumed that animals were in the first place rendered social, and
that they feel, as a consequence, uncomfortable when separated from each
other, and comfortable whilst together; but it is a more probable view
that these sensations were first developed, _in order that_ those
animals which would profit by living in society, _should be induced to
live together_, in the same manner as the sense of hunger and the
pleasure of eating were, no doubt, first acquired, in order to induce
animals to eat."[12] If it were not for the expressions "should be
induced" and "to induce," the words "in order that," taken in connection
with what follows, might be interpreted as referring to mere sequence of
time, as, on page 199, where Darwin refers to the "social faculties"
simply as antecedent to society, they evidently do. For he says: "In
order that primeval man, or the ape-like progenitors of man, should
become social, they must have acquired the same instinctive feelings
which induce other animals to live in a body." The sentences referred to
which follow the first quotation are as follows: "The feeling of
pleasure from society is probably an extension of the parental or filial
affections, since the social instinct seems to be developed by the young
remaining for a long time with their parents; and this extension may be
attributed in part to habit, but chiefly to natural selection. With
those animals which were benefited by living in close association, the
individuals which took the greatest pleasure in society would best
escape various dangers, whilst those that cared least for their
comrades, and lived solitary, would perish in greater numbers. With
respect to the origin of the parental and filial affections, which
apparently lie at the base of the social instincts, we know not the
steps by which they have been gained; but we may infer that it has been
to a large extent through natural selection." The passage may possibly
be consistently explained by the idea of the Survival of the Fittest,
but it is at least very unclear in its wording. At the beginning of
Chapter IV. of the same book, Darwin also gives a synopsis of the
development of the moral sense from the social instincts, through the
pleasure of association and service, remorse being a result of the power
of representation, regard for the approbation and disapprobation of
fellows arising from sympathy with them until resulting habit plays a
very important part in guiding the conduct of the individual. Another
passage, however, again introduces an antagonism between habit,
instinct, and reason, and natural selection: "It is impossible to decide
in many cases whether certain social instincts have been acquired
through natural selection, or are the indirect result of other instincts
and faculties, such as sympathy, reason, experience, and a tendency to
imitation; or again, whether they are simply the result of
long-continued habit." Darwin distinguishes between "the all-important
emotion of sympathy," and that of love. "A mother may passionately love
her sleeping and passive infant, but she can hardly at such times be
said to feel sympathy for it"; but he includes both love and sympathy
under the head of "sympathetic emotions"; and on page 163 he says: "With
mankind, selfishness, experience, and imitation probably add, as Mr.
Bain has shown, to the power of sympathy; for we are led by the hope of
receiving good in return to perform acts of sympathetic kindness to
others; and sympathy is much strengthened by habit." Again, on page 166,
"instinctive love and sympathy" would seem to be contrasted with love
and sympathy as habit, the increase of such feelings in the race through
habit, elsewhere more or less distinctly asserted, being here ignored:
"Although man, as he now exists, has few special instincts, having lost
any which his early progenitors may have possessed, this is no reason
why he should not have retained, from an extremely remote period, some
degree of instinctive love and sympathy for his fellows. We are, indeed,
all conscious that we do possess such sympathetic feelings; but our
consciousness does not tell us whether they are instinctive, having
originated long ago in the same manner as with the lower animals, or
whether they have been acquired by each of us during our early years."
But again, on page 220, sympathy is referred to as an element of the
social instincts:[13] "It should, however, be borne in mind that the
enforcement of public opinion depends on our appreciation of the
approbation and disapprobation of others; and this appreciation is
founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be doubted was originally
developed through natural selection as one of the most important
elements of the social instincts"; though, on pages 167, 168, the social
instinct is again contrasted with sympathy, since according to Darwin
the desire for the approbation of others and the consequent yielding to
their wishes is the result of sympathy: "Thus the social instincts,
which must have been acquired by man in a very rude state, and probably
even by his early ape-like progenitors, still give the impulse to some
of his best actions; but his actions are in a higher degree determined
by the expressed wishes and judgments of his fellow-men." Again the
social and the maternal instincts and sympathy are identified and
classed as under the dominion of the moral sense, pages 168-170: "It is
evident, in the first place, that with mankind the instinctive impulses
have different degrees of strength; a savage, will risk his own life to
save that of a member of the same community, but will be wholly
indifferent about a stranger; a young and timid mother urged by the
maternal instinct will, without a moment's hesitation, run the greatest
danger for her own infant, but not for a mere fellow-creature.
Nevertheless, many a civilized man, or even boy, who never before risked
his life for another, but full of courage and sympathy, has disregarded
the instinct of self-preservation, and plunged at once into a torrent to
save a drowning man, though a stranger.... Such actions as the above
appear to be the simple result of the greater strength of the social or
maternal instincts than that of any other instinct or motive; for they
are performed too instantaneously for reflection, or for pleasure or
pain to be felt at the time; though, if prevented by any cause, distress
or even misery might be felt.... I am aware that some persons maintain
that actions performed impulsively, as in the above cases, do not come
under the dominion of the moral sense, and cannot be called moral.... On
the contrary, we all feel that an act cannot be considered as perfect or
as performed in the most noble manner, unless it be done impulsively,
without deliberation or effort, in the same manner as by a man in whom
the requisite qualities are innate." Darwin defines the office of the
moral sense as "telling us what to do,"[14] that of conscience,--which
includes remorse, repentance, regret or shame, fear of the gods and of
the disapprobation of men,--as reproving us if we disobey it;[15]
conscience seems elsewhere to be defined as concerned with resolve to
better future action; and in still another passage, the moral sense and
conscience are identified. But again, in another paragraph, Darwin seems
to ascribe remorse or regret, not to the baulking of an instinct, but to
a _judgment_ of having been baulked: "A man cannot prevent past
impressions often repassing through his mind; he will thus be driven to
make a comparison between the impressions of past hunger, vengeance
satisfied, or danger shunned at other men's cost, with the almost
ever-present instinct of sympathy, and with his early knowledge of what
others consider as praiseworthy or blamable. This knowledge cannot be
banished from his mind, and from instinctive sympathy is esteemed of
great moment. He will then feel as if he had been baulked in following a
present instinct or habit, and this with all animals causes
dissatisfaction, or even misery."[16] But, in spite of all
indefiniteness in the use of terms and uncertainty as to the
interrelations of "the social instincts," sympathy, reason, pleasure,
and the moral sense, it is, after all, comparatively easy to gather,
after a little deeper study, the general and more important features of
Darwin's theory as to the origin of morality. We may state these as
follows: The social instinct led men or their ape-like progenitors to
society,[17] this instinct growing out of the parental or filial
affections through habit and natural selection. Virtue is, at first,
only tribal.[18] The social qualities of sympathy, fidelity, and courage
implied in mutual aid and defence, were no doubt acquired by man through
the same means. "When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same
country, came into competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the
one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic, and
faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to
aid and defend each other, this tribe would succeed better and conquer
the other.... Selfish and contentious people will not cohere, and
without coherence nothing can be effected. A tribe rich in the above
qualities would spread and be victorious over other tribes; but in the
course of time it would, judging from all past history, be in its turn
overcome by some other tribe still more highly endowed. Thus the social
and moral qualities would tend slowly to advance and be diffused
throughout the world." Though in a warlike state, where courage is
especially necessary to tribal existence, the bravest men would perish
in larger numbers than other men, and the survival of the unfittest
would seem thus to be secured, the influence of their bravery on others
might excite the latter to imitation and do far more good than the
begetting of offspring who would inherit their bravery. So, also, pity,
though inciting modern society to the preservation of the weak, yet is
useful in that it cultivates sympathy; and so, too, wealth, affording
leisure for intellectual pursuits and a wider choice in marriage, tends,
in the end, to the preservation of the fittest morally, by direct or
indirect means.[19] Altruistic action, followed from selfish motives,
may become habit; habits of benevolence certainly strengthen the feeling
of sympathy; and "habits followed during many generations probably tend
to be inherited." Furthermore, melancholy tends often to suicide, as
violence, and quarrelsomeness to a bloody end, intemperance to the
destruction of individual life, and profligacy to disease and sterility;
so that some elimination of the worst dispositions takes place. These
are some of the probable steps of advancement, though the process is
too complex to be clearly followed out. The approbation of
others--the strengthening of sympathies by habit--example and
imitation--reason--experience and even self-interest--instruction during
youth, and religious feelings--are the causes which lead to the
advancement of morality.[20] In the paragraph just quoted, Darwin says:
"With civilized nations, as far as an advanced standard of morality and
an increased number of fairly good men are concerned, natural selection
apparently effects but little, though the fundamental social instincts
were originally thus gained"; but he later writes: "Judging from all
that we know of man and the lower animals, there has always been
sufficient variability in their intellectual and moral faculties for a
steady advance through natural selection"; and he further says: "No
doubt such advance demands many favorable concurrent circumstances; but
it may well be doubted whether the most favorable would have sufficed,
had not the rate of increase been rapid, and the consequent struggle for
existence extremely severe."[21] The end or aim of morality is the
general good, rather than the general happiness, though "no doubt the
welfare and the happiness of the individual usually coincide; and a
contented, happy tribe will flourish better than one that is
discontented and unhappy.... As all wish for happiness, the 'greatest
happiness principle' will have become a most important secondary guide
and object; the social instinct, however, together with sympathy (which
leads to our regarding the approbation and disapprobation of others),
having served as the primary impulse and guide."[22] And with regard to
the future, Darwin says: "Looking to future generations, there is no
cause to fear that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may
expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed
by inheritance. In this case the struggle between our higher and lower
impulses will be less severe, and virtue will be triumphant."[23]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] P. 381. This essay originally formed part of the chapter on
"Instinct" in "The Origin of Species," but was omitted for the sake of
condensation.
[2] Vol. I. p. 319.
[3] Pp. 320, 321.
[4] Appendix to "Mental Evolution in Animals," pp. 378, 379. The italics
are my own.
[5] "The Origin of Species," II. p. 286.
[6] Ibid. I. pp. 353, 354.
[7] "The Origin of Species," I. pp. 321, 322.
[8] Ibid. I. pp. 12-17.
[9] Appendix to "Mental Evolution in Animals," pp. 370, 383; see also
"The Descent of Man," I. p. 102 _et seq._; and "Nature" for Feb. 13,
1873, introduction to a letter to the editor from William Higginson.
[10] P. 103.
[11] Pp. 160, 161.
[12] P. 161.
[13] See also p. 171. And, p. 172, sympathy is designated as "a
fundamental element of the social instincts."
[14] P. 178.
[15] Pp. 174, 178.
[16] P. 173.
[17] "Descent of Man," I. p. 199, etc.
[18] Ibid. p. 179.
[19] Ibid. pp. 199-209.
[20] Ibid. p. 212.
[21] Ibid. pp. 219, 220.
[22] Ibid. p. 185.
[23] Ibid. p. 192.
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
"Whatever we may define instinct to be, it is evidently some form of
mental manifestation," says Wallace in his "Contributions to Natural
Selection" (1871). We know little of the senses of animals; some animals
may even possess senses which we have not, and by which stores of
knowledge of the outside world may be opened that are closed to us. We
do not know certainly, for instance, what is the office of the little
stalked balls that are the sole remnants of hind wings in flies, or what
is the office of the third joints of the antennae in the same insects,
though both these evidently correspond to some sense. How can we pretend
to fathom the profound mystery of the mental nature of animals, and
decide what or how much they can perceive or remember, reason or
reflect? Defining instinct, then, as "the performance by an animal of
complex acts, absolutely without instruction," Wallace refuses to accept
the theory of such action, in any case where all other modes of
explanation have not been exhausted; for "a point which can be proved
should not be assumed, and a totally unknown power should not be brought
in to explain facts, when known powers may be sufficient." He maintains
that there is a possibility, for instance, of the instruction of young
birds by old in the art of nest-building. It is quite likely that birds
remember the form, size, position, and materials of the nest in which
they were hatched, as it is also probable that young birds often pair
with old ones who have experience in nest-building. Man's architecture
is also chiefly imitative. "Birds brought up from the egg in cages do
not make the characteristic nest of their species, even though the
proper materials are supplied them, and often make no nest at all, but
rudely heap together a quantity of materials." "No one has ever yet
obtained the eggs of some bird which builds an elaborate nest, hatched
those eggs by steam or under quite a distinct parent, placed them
afterwards in an extensive aviary or covered garden, where the situation
and the materials of a nest similar to that of the parent-birds may be
found, and then seen what kind of nest these birds would build. If under
these rigorous conditions they choose the same materials, the same
situation, and construct the nest in the same way and as perfectly as
their parents did, instinct would be proved in their case; now it is
only assumed.... So no one has ever carefully taken the pupae of a hive
of bees out of the comb, removed them from the presence of other bees,
and loosed them in a large conservatory with plenty of flowers and food,
and observed what kind of cells they would construct. But till this is
done no one can say that, with every new swarm there are no bees older
than those of the same year, who may be the teachers in forming the new
comb."[24] "Young birds never have the song peculiar to their species
if they have not heard it, whereas they acquire very easily the song of
almost any other bird with which they are associated." Moreover, there
are failures and imperfections in the nesting of birds that are not
compatible with the theory of instinct, which is supposed to be
infallible, but are quite so with the theory of intelligence and
imitation. Furthermore, in their manner of building, birds adapt
themselves to circumstances and frequently alter and improve. The theory
of instincts in man is likewise in the wrong. The sucking of the child,
which is said to be instinctive, is merely one of those _simple_ acts
dependent on organization, like breathing or muscular motion. "So
walking is evidently dependent on the arrangement of the bones and
joints, and the pleasurable exertion of the muscles, which lead to the
vertical posture becoming gradually the most agreeable one; and there
can be little doubt that an infant would learn of itself to walk, even
if suckled by a wild beast."
The theory of instinct "implies innate ideas[25] of a very definite
kind, and if established, would overthrow Mr. Mill's Sensationalism and
all the modern philosophy of experience."
The reason why natural selection acts so powerfully upon animals, is to
be found mainly in their individual isolation. "A slight injury, a
temporary illness, will often end in death, because it leaves the
individual powerless against its enemies.... There is, as a rule, no
mutual assistance between adults, which enables them to tide over a
period of sickness. Neither is there any division of labor; each must
fulfil _all_ the conditions of its existence, and therefore natural
selection keeps all up to a pretty uniform standard." But in man as we
now behold him, this is different. He is social and sympathetic; and in
society, a division of labor takes place that leaves the physically
defective still something to do by which he may sustain life, and saves
him from the extreme penalty which falls upon animals so defective. By
his skill in constructing for himself tools and clothing and in planting
his own food, man has an immense advantage over the animals, in whom a
change of structure must take place in adaptation to changed conditions.
Moreover, he not only escapes natural selection himself, but "is
actually able to take away some of that power from nature, which, before
his appearance, she universally exercised," establishing so his
supremacy by means of that subtle force we term mind. "We can anticipate
the time when the earth will produce only cultivated plants and domestic
animals, when man's selection shall have supplanted natural selection."
We must, in future geological study, trace back the gradually decreasing
brain of former races to a time when the body as well begins materially
to differ, if we would wish to reach the starting-point of the human
family. Before that time man had not mind enough to preserve his body
from change. From this point, however, we shall probably see that, while
all other forms of animal life changed again and again, man's physical
character became fixed and almost immutable, advance taking place only
in his mental and moral characteristics, with which are united
modifications of the brain, as well as of the head and face, parts that
are immediately connected with the brain and the medium of the most
refined emotions. By man's superior sympathetic and moral feelings, he
becomes fitted for the social state. There is one feature, however, in
which natural selection will still act upon him--namely, the color of
the skin, which, as Mr. Darwin has shown, is correlated with
constitutional peculiarities, liability to certain diseases being often
accompanied by marked external characteristics; so that, in certain
countries, certain tints would be likely to be weeded out, and certain
other tints, with which, again, color and texture of the hair seem to be
associated, would be established by natural selection.
Natural selection has no power "to produce modifications which are in
any degree injurious to their possessor, and Mr. Darwin uses the strong
expression that a single case of this kind would be fatal to his theory.
If, therefore, we find in man any characters which all the evidence we
can obtain goes to show would have been actually injurious to him on
their first appearance, they could not possibly have been produced by
natural selection. Neither could any specially developed organ have been
so produced if it had been merely useless to its possessor, or if its
use were not proportionate to its degree of development. Such cases as
these would prove that some other law, or some other power, than natural
selection, had been at work. But if, further, we could see that these
very modifications, though hurtful or useless at the time when they
first appeared, became in the highest degree useful at a much later
period, and are essential to the full moral and intellectual development
of human nature, we should then infer the action of mind, foreseeing the
future and preparing for it, just as surely as we do when we see the
breeder set himself to work with the determination to produce a definite
improvement in some cultivated plant or domestic animal"; we should
infer a creation by law. Skull-measurement shows that the brain of the
savage was, and is, larger than it needs to be, and "capable, if
cultivated and developed, of performing work of a degree and kind far
beyond what he ever requires it to do." In evidence of this, Wallace
cites the measurements of Esquimaux skulls and the testimony of Paul
Broca to the fine form and capacity of the skulls of Les Eyzies, a race
of cave-dwellers undoubtedly contemporary with the reindeer in Southern
France.[26] He also argues that the loss, by man, of the hairy covering
so long persistent in the mammalia, cannot have taken place on account
of its lack of usefulness, since even the most savage tribes show a need
of it, endeavoring to replace it by artificial coverings, especially on
the back. This naked skin is, however, of importance to civilization,
since it leads to the adoption of both clothing and houses, and
develops, through the former, the sense of modesty. The loss of the
prehensile character of the whole foot, and especially of the pedal
thumb, is a preparation for civilization. So, too, the capacity of the
human voice for music, of little use to savages, since their singing
consists only in a sort of monotonous howling, must be regarded as a
preparation for the civilized man's delight in music, and probably also
for a higher state than that to which we have yet attained.
Nor can the sanctity which attaches to virtue, even among savages, be
explained by utility or natural selection. The "mystic sense of wrong,"
which, although few laws enforce truth, yet attaches to untruth, even
among whole tribes of utter savages, is an example of such sanctity.
Wallace adds, however, in the same breath: "No very severe reprobation
follows untruth. In all ages, falsehood has been thought venial or even
laudable under certain conditions." He asserts that "the utilitarian
doctrine is not sufficient to account for the development of the moral
sense," but seems, nevertheless, to adopt a utilitarian principle as the
basis of the moral sense when he says: "Where free play is allowed to
the relations between man and man, this feeling [_i.e._ of sanctity]
attaches itself to those acts of universal utility or self-sacrifice
which are the products of our affections and sympathies which we term
moral"; and he adds: "while it may be, and often is, perverted to give
the same sanction to acts of narrow and conventional utility which are
really immoral,--as when the Hindoo will tell a lie, but will sooner
starve than eat unclean food; and looks upon the marriage of adult
females as gross immorality." The explanation of this inconsistency is,
according to Wallace, that the strength of the moral feeling, in any
case, will depend on the individual or racial constitution, and on
education and habit; and the acts to which its sanctions are applied
will depend on the extent of modification of the simple feelings and
affections by custom, law, and religion. If a moral sense is an
essential part of our nature, it is easy to see that its sanction may
often be given to acts which are useless or immoral, just as the natural
appetite for drink is perverted by the drunkard into the means of his
destruction.
These phenomena of the preparation of the human being for civilization
and morality can be explained only on the supposition of a superior
intelligence which has guided man's development in a definite direction,
just as man guides the development of many animal forms. By a superior
intelligence is not necessarily meant the supreme intelligence. The
modern cultivated mind seems incapable of realizing between it and the
Deity other grades of intelligence, which the law of Continuity would,
however, force us to infer: and rejecting first causes for any and every
especial effect in the universe, except in the sense that the action of
any intelligent being is a first cause, we can still conceive that the
development of the essentially human portions of man's structure may
have been, in this sense, "determined by the directing influence of some
higher intelligent beings acting through natural and universal
laws."[27] "It is probable that the true law of this development lies
too deep for our discovery." Wallace quotes, in support of his theory,
some of Professor Tyndall's much-disputed statements,--to the effect
that the chasm between the phenomena of mind and those of brain is
impassable. "To say that mind is a product or function of protoplasm, or
of its molecular changes, is to use words to which we can attach no
clear conception. You cannot have in the whole what does not exist in
any of the parts;[28] and those who argue thus should put forth a
precise definition of matter with clearly enumerated properties, and
show that the necessary result of a certain complex arrangement of the
elements or atoms of that matter will be the production of
self-consciousness. There is no escape from the dilemma,--either all
matter is conscious, or consciousness is[29] something distinct from
matter, and in the latter case its presence in material forms is a proof
of the existence of conscious beings outside of, and independent of,
what we term matter.
"The merest rudiment of sensation or self-consciousness is infinitely
removed from absolutely non-sentient or unconscious matter. We can
conceive of no physical addition to, or modification of, an unconscious
mass which should create consciousness, no step in the series of changes
organized matter may undergo, which should bring sensation where there
was no sensation or power of sensation at the preceding step. It is
because the things are utterly incomparable and incommensurable that we
can only conceive of _sensation_ coming to matter from without, while
_life_ may be conceived as merely a specific modification and
cooerdination of the matter and the forces that compose the universe, and
with which we are separately acquainted. We may admit with Professor
Huxley, that _protoplasm_ is the 'matter of life' and the cause of
organization; but we cannot admit or conceive that _protoplasm_ is the
primary source of sensation and consciousness, or that it can ever of
itself become _conscious_ in the same way as we may perhaps conceive
that it may become _alive_."
Wallace then reaches, without further preliminary discussion, the
conclusion that "matter is essentially force" (arguing that we may draw
this conclusion from the preceding considerations); that "matter, as
popularly understood, does not exist, and is, in fact, philosophically
inconceivable. When we touch matter, we only really experience
sensations of resistance, implying repulsive force; and no other sense
can give us such apparently solid proofs of the reality of matter as
touch does." Wallace considers it a great step in advance thus "to get
rid of the notion that matter is a thing in itself which can exist _per
se_, and must have been eternal, since it is supposed to be
indestructible and uncreated,--that force, or the forces of nature, are
another thing given or added to matter, or else its necessary
properties,--and that mind is yet another thing, either a product of
this matter and its supposed inherent forces, or distinct from and
co-existent with it"; and to be able to substitute for this theory "the
far simpler and more consistent belief, that matter, as an entity
distinct from force, does not exist; and that FORCE is a product of
MIND."
"If we are satisfied that force or forces are all that exist in the
material universe, we are next led to inquire what is force." We are
acquainted with two kinds of force--our own will-force, and the forces
of nature. Freedom of the will cannot be disproved, for it cannot be
shown that there is not one-thousandth of a grain's difference between
the force exerted by the body and the force derived from without. "If,
therefore, we have traced one force, however minute, to an origin in our
will, while we have no knowledge of any other primary cause of force, it
does not seem an improbable conclusion that all force may be will-force;
and thus, that the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but
actually _is_ the _will_ of higher intelligences, or of one Supreme
Intelligence."
But though Wallace declares "natural selection, as the law of the
strongest, inadequate" to account for man's mental and moral
development, since the finer feelings and capacities could have been of
no use to human beings in the early stages of barbarism, and further
maintains that it is also difficult to understand how "feelings
developed by one set of actions could be transferred to acts of which
the utility was partial, imaginary, or altogether absent," he
nevertheless has other passages like the following: "In proportion as
physical characteristics become of less importance, mental and moral
qualities will have increasing influence on the well-being of the race.
Capacity for acting in concert for protection and for the acquisition of
food and shelter; sympathy, which leads all in turn to assist each
other; the sense of right, which checks depredations upon our fellows;
the smaller development of the combative and destructive propensities,
self-restraint in present appetites; and that intelligent foresight
which prepares for the future, are all qualities that, from their
earliest appearance, must have been for the benefit of each community,
and would, therefore, have become the subjects of natural selection. For
it is evident that such qualities would be for the well-being of man;
would guard him against external enemies, against internal dissensions,
and against the effects of inclement seasons and impending famine, more
surely than could any merely physical modification. Tribes in which such
mental and moral qualities were predominant would therefore have an
advantage over other tribes in which they were less developed, would
live and maintain their numbers, while the others would decrease and
finally succumb." "From the time, therefore, when the social and
sympathetic feelings came into active operation, and the intellectual
and moral faculties became fairly developed, man would cease to be
influenced by natural selection in his physical form and structure. As
an animal, he would remain almost stationary, the changes of the
surrounding universe ceasing to produce in him that powerful modifying
effect which they exercise over other parts of the organic world. But
from the moment that the form of his body became stationary, his mind
would become subject to those very influences from which his body had
escaped; every slight variation in his mental and moral nature which
should enable him better to guard against adverse circumstances, and
combine for mutual comfort and protection would be preserved and
accumulated; the better and higher specimens of our race would therefore
increase and spread, the lower and more brutal would give way and
successively die out, and that rapid advancement of mental organization
would occur which has raised the very lowest races of man so far above
the brutes (although differing so little from some of them in physical
structure) and, in conjunction with scarcely perceptible modifications
of form, has developed the wonderful intellect of the European races."
"When the power that had hitherto modified the body had its action
transferred to the mind, then races would advance and become improved,
merely by the harsh discipline of a sterile soil and inclement seasons;
under their influence a hardier, a more provident, and a more social
race would be developed." And especially: "If my conclusions are just,
it must inevitably follow that the higher--the more intellectual and
moral--must displace the lower and more degraded races; and the power of
natural selection, still acting on his mental organization, must ever
lead to a more perfect adaptation of man's higher faculties to the
conditions of surrounding nature and to the exigencies of the social
state. While his external form will probably ever remain unchanged,
except in the development of that perfect beauty which results from a
healthy and well-organized body, refined and ennobled by the highest
intellectual faculties and sympathetic emotions, his mental constitution
may advance and improve, till the world is again inhabited by a single
nearly homogeneous race, no individual of which will be inferior to the
noblest specimens of existing humanity.
"Our progress towards such a result is very slow, but it still seems to
be a progress."
In "Darwinism" (1889), Wallace advocates Weismann's theory of heredity.
With regard to instinct, he uses arguments similar to those of his
earlier work. He says of the hunting instincts of dogs: "At first sight
it appears as if the acquired habits of our trained dogs--pointers,
retrievers, etc.--are certainly inherited; but this need not be the
case, because there must be some structural or physical peculiarities,
such as modifications in the attachments of muscles, increased delicacy
of smell or sight, or peculiar likes and dislikes, which are inherited;
and from these, peculiar habits follow as a natural consequence, or are
easily acquired." So that he thus defines instinct, by implication, as
he does also in his former book, as inherited habit which has no
correlative in physical organization, and is unconnected with feelings
of liking or disliking. He further says: "Again, much of the perfection
of instinct is due to the extreme severity of the selection, any failure
involving destruction"; and adds that, even if we admit the inheritance
of the effects of the direct action of the environment on the
individual, the effects are so small in comparison with the amount of
spontaneous variation of every part of the organism, that they must be
quite overshadowed by the latter.[30] In his theory of a higher
intelligence guiding human development, Wallace seems, in this book, to
have abandoned all his former arguments except those from the mental and
moral faculties, and it is perhaps due to a perception of the
inconsistencies of his former utterances on the subject of the moral
sense that he barely touches upon it in this book. On the other hand, he
has elaborated his arguments from the mathematical and artistic
faculties, and added an argument from wit and humor, none of which are
found, he urges, among savages, except in their very rudiments, and none
of which could have been developed by natural selection, since none
could have been a cause of man's conquest in his struggles with wild
beasts or with other tribes or nations. In answer to the objection that
the law of Continuity, which he has quoted as favoring the belief in the
existence of grades of supernatural beings between man and the Deity,
tells against the introduction of new causes in man's development,
Wallace maintains that there are certainly two other points in evolution
where such new causes come into play,--namely, at the beginning of life
and at the beginning of consciousness. "Increase of complexity in
chemical compounds, with consequent instability, even if we admit that
it may have produced protoplasm as a chemical compound, could certainly
not have produced living protoplasm,--protoplasm which has the power of
growth and reproduction, and of that continuous process of development
which has resulted in the marvellous variety and complex organization of
the whole vegetable kingdom, or, that is, vitality."[31] "All idea of
mere complication of structure producing" consciousness is "out of the
question." "Because man's physical structure has been developed from an
animal form by natural selection, it does not follow that his mental
nature, even though developed _pari passu_ with it, has been developed
by the same causes only."[32] Yet, in assuming Weismann's theory,
Wallace asserts: "Whatever other causes have been at work, Natural
Selection is supreme, to an extent which even Darwin himself hesitated
to claim for it." "While admitting, as Darwin always admitted, the
cooeperation of the fundamental laws of growth and variation, of
correlation and heredity, in determining the direction of lines of
variation, or in the initiation of peculiar organs, we find that
variation and natural selection are ever-present agencies which take
possession, as it were, of every minute change originated by these
fundamental causes, check or favor their further development, or modify
them in countless ways according to the varying needs of the
organism."[33]
In the opening portions of this book Wallace introduces a teleological
argument to the effect that the pain which we ordinarily conceive as
connected with the struggle for existence among lower species is mostly
a figment of our imagination. Periods of suffering are comparatively
short, since death speedily and without anticipation puts an end to
those animals in any way incapacitated. Livingstone describes how, when
seized by a lion, a sort of stupor succeeded the first shock, so that he
felt neither fear nor pain; it is probable that terror induces this same
condition in animals seized by beasts of prey, and that their end is
therefore painless after the first shock. Cold is generally severest at
night and tends to produce sleep and painless extinction. Hunger is
scarcely felt during periods of excitement, "and when food is scarce,
the excitement of seeking it is at its greatest." Nor is the gradual
exhaustion and weakness of slow starvation necessarily painful.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] For criticism of these arguments, see Romanes, "Mental Evolution in
Animals," p. 225, etc.; also "Animal Intelligence." In his second
edition of this book (1891), Wallace notices a few of the instances
cited by Romanes in objection to his theory: such as the recognition of
the hen's call by a chicken hatched in an incubator, the fear shown, on
the other hand, at the note of a hawk, and the fear exhibited by most
young animals at the voice or presence of their natural enemies. Of
these he says, however: "But in all these cases we have comparatively
simple motions or acts induced by feelings of liking or disliking, and
we can see that they may be due to definite nervous and muscular
cooerdinations which are essential to the existence of the species. That
a chicken should feel pleasure at the sound of a hen's voice, and pain
or fear at that of a hawk, and should move towards the one and away from
the other, is a fact of the same nature as the liking of an infant for
milk and its dislike of beer, with the motion of the head towards the
one and away from the other when offered to it." Of two authentic cases
of the building of a nest by young birds, without instruction, he says
that, in one case (that of ring-doves), the nest is a very simple one,
and that the birds also received some assistance; and in the other case
the nest was not built with the neatness ordinarily characteristic of
the species. (See "Natural Selection and Tropical Nature," pp. 108-112.)
The most of Romanes' instances and arguments he does not notice or
answer.
[25] In his second edition, Wallace writes "not only innate ideas, but
innate knowledge."
[26] In the second edition of this book, Wallace maintains the same
position with regard to skull-measurement as a criterion of mental
capacity. Nor does he notice distinctions in skull-form or the
proportions of different parts of the brain to each other, except in the
one case of the Eyzies.
[27] See Wallace on "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," "The
Psycho-physiological Sciences and their Assailants," and "The Scientific
Aspect of the Supernatural."
[28] Wallace omits this particular clause in his second edition.
[29] The second edition reads "is, or pertains to."
[30] Pp. 442, 443.
[31] This is contradictory of the passages on the subject of life above
noticed as occurring in the "Contributions to Natural Selection," and
retained in the second edition of that book.
[32] P. 463.
[33] P. 444.
ERNST HAECKEL
In his "Anthropogenie" (1874), Haeckel says: "The soul, or 'psyche' of
man has evolved, as function of the cerebro-spinal nerve-chord
simultaneously with the latter, and just as, even yet, brain and spinal
column develop from the simple nerve-chord, so the human mind, or the
soul-activity of the whole human race, has evolved, gradually and step
by step, from the lower vertebrate soul. 'Spirit' and 'soul' are only
higher and combined or differentiated powers of the same function which
we designate with the general expression 'force.'"[34] In his essay on
"Cell-souls and Soul-cells" (1878), Haeckel attributes to all animals
the possession of soul, and adds that "we cannot wholly deny a soul to
the plants also." The possession of soul he defines as the "capacity of
sensibility in the organism to excitations of various sorts, and of
reaction upon these excitations with certain movements." "This uniform
character of protoplasm gifted with soul permits us the hypothesis that
the ultimate factors of the soul-life are the plastidules, the
invisible, homogeneous, elemental particles, or molecules, of
protoplasm, which, in limitless multiplicity, compose the unnumbered
cells." The soul connected with the higher developments of brain and
spinal column is likewise a higher development, and differs from the
soul connected with the uncentralized organization of lower species. In
the latest edition of his "Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte" (1889), he
further asserts that all matter is possessed of soul, and that "the
antithesis which we have assumed between living and dead nature does not
exist. When a stone, thrown into the air, falls to the earth according
to fixed laws, or when a crystal is formed in a solution of salts, or
when sulphur and quicksilver combine to form cinnabar, these phenomena
are not more and not less mechanical phenomena of life than the growth
and bloom of the plants, than the propagation and sense-activity of
animals, than the perception and thought-processes of human beings."[35]
And both in this work and in his "Anthropogenie" he quotes the words of
Goethe, that "matter can never exist and act without soul, the soul can
never exist and act without matter." This last statement is, however,
rather a metaphysical one, in distinction from Haeckel's other
statements on this subject, which are properly naturalistic.
In his lecture on "Cell-souls and Soul-cells," Haeckel says of instinct:
"Unbiassed observation, applying its tests without prejudice, shows
conclusively that the so-called 'instinct' of the animals is nothing
else than a sum of psychical functions originally acquired by
adaptation, fixed by habit, and descending from generation to
generation by inheritance. Originally carried out with consciousness and
reflection, many instinctive actions of the animals have become
unconscious, as have, in like manner, the ordinary acts of intelligence
in man. These too, may, with the same justice, be regarded as the
expression of innate instinct, as often is the impulse to
self-preservation, maternal love, and the social impulse. Instinct is
not an exclusive attribute of the animal-brain, nor is reason an
especial endowment of man; there is, on the contrary, for the unbiassed
observer, a long, long scale of gradual improvement and evolution in
psychic life, which may be traced step by step, from the higher to lower
human beings, from the perfect to the imperfect animals, until we reach
those simple worms, whose nerve-ganglia are the beginning of all the
numberless brain-forms of the scale."
In his "Anthropogenie," Haeckel denies Free Will, maintaining that all
phenomena are the result of mechanical causes--_causae efficientes_, not
_causae finales_. In an essay on the "Relation of the Theory of Evolution
in its present form to Science in General" (1877), he says of Ethics:
"By far the most important and the most difficult demand which Practical
Philosophy makes upon the theory of Evolution seems to be that of a new
theory of Morals. Certainly in the future, as in the past, the careful
development of moral character and of religious conviction must be the
chief problem of education. But until now the greater number of people
have clung to the conviction that this most important problem could be
solved only in connection with certain ecclesiastical articles of faith.
And since these dogmas, especially as connected with ancient myths of
the Creation, are in direct opposition to the facts of evolution, the
latter have been believed to be, in the highest degree, inimical to
religion and morality.
"This fear we believe to be erroneous. It has its origin in the
continual confusion of the true, reasonable, nature-religion and the
dogmatic, mythological, church-religion. The Comparative History of
Religions, an important branch of Anthropology, teaches us the manifold
nature of outward form in which different peoples and epochs have, in
accordance with their individual character, enveloped religious thought.
It shows us that the dogmatic teachings of the church-religion itself
are subject to a slow, continuous evolution. New churches and sects
arise, old ones disappear; at the best, a particular tenet of faith
lasts but a few thousand years, an inconsiderably short space of time
compared with the aeons of the geological periods. Finally, the History
of Civilization shows us to how small an extent true morality has been
associated with any particular ecclesiastical form. The greatest
rudeness and barbarity of custom often goes hand in hand with the
absolute dominion of an all-powerful church; in confirmation of which
assertion one need only remember the Middle Ages. On the other hand, we
behold the highest standard of perfection attained by men who have
severed connection with every creed.
"Independent of every confession of faith, there lives in the breast of
every human being the germ of a pure nature-religion; this is
indissolubly bound up with the noblest sides of human life. Its highest
commandment is love, the restraint of our natural egoism for the benefit
of our fellow-men, and for the good of human society whose members we
are. This natural law of morality is much older than all
church-religion. It has developed out of the social instincts of the
animals. We meet with its rudiments among all animals, especially among
all mammals. Following the laws of association and of division of labor,
many individuals of such species unite to form the higher community of
the swarm, herd, or tribe. The existence of the latter is necessarily
dependent upon the mutual relations of the members of the community and
the sacrifices which these make to the whole society at the cost of
their own egoism. The consciousness of this necessity of self-sacrifice,
the sense of duty, is nothing else than a social instinct. But this
instinct is always a psychical habit, which was originally acquired, but
which, becoming in the course of time hereditary, appears at last as
innate.
"In order to convince ourselves of the wonderful power of the sense of
duty among animals, we need only to destroy an ant-hill. Immediately we
see, in the midst of the destruction, thousands of zealous citizens
employed, not in the rescue of their own precious lives, but in the
protection of the beloved community to which they belong. Brave soldiers
of the ant-state prepare to offer strong resistance to our intruding
finger; instructors of youth rescue the so-called ant-eggs, the precious
larvae, on which the future of the state depends; busy workers
immediately begin with undiminished courage to clear away the ruins and
to prepare new dwellings. But the admirable state of civilization among
these ants, among bees and other social animals, has been developed,
just as has been our own, from the rudest beginnings.
"Even those finest and most beautiful forms of human emotion which we
especially celebrate in poetry are to be found prefigured among the
animals. Have not the tender mother-love of the lioness, the touching
affection between male and female parrots, the self-sacrificing fidelity
of the dog, been long proverbial? The noblest emotions of sympathy and
love, which direct action, are here, as with human beings, nothing else
than ennobled instinct." Beginning with this conception, the Ethics of
Evolution has to seek for no new principle, but, on the contrary, to
trace back the old rules of duty to their scientific basis. Long before
the rise of all church-religion, these natural commandments regulated
the lawful relations of human beings, as of gregarious animals. This
significant fact the church-religions should utilize, instead of
disputing. For the future does not belong to that Theology which
declares war against the triumphant Theory of Evolution, but to that
which makes it its own, acknowledges it, and turns it to advantage.
"Far, therefore, from fearing, from the influence of the Theory of
Evolution, a subversion of all accepted moral law and a destructive
emancipation of Egoism, we, on the contrary, look forward to a system of
Ethics erected upon the indestructible foundation of unchanging natural
law, since at the same time with the clear recognition of our true place
in nature, the study of Anthropogeny opens to us the comprehension of
the necessary character of our old rules of duty. Like theoretical
science, Practical Philosophy and Pedagogy will no longer derive their
most important principles from so-called revelations, but from the
scientific truths of Evolution. This victory of Monism over Dualism
opens to us a most hopeful prospect of an unending continuation of our
moral, as of our intellectual evolution. In this sense, we welcome the
Theory of Evolution in its present form newly stated by Darwin, as a
challenge--the most important challenge of pure and applied science."
As touching on the idea of a nature-religion as conceived by Haeckel,
may be noticed, however, a passage which occurs at the end of chapter
XII. of the "Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte," as well as the passage
before referred to in which it is asserted that we know only _causae
efficientes_, never _causae finales_. The passage is as follows: "The
general significance of the degenerated or rudimentary organs in the
most important questions of natural philosophy cannot be over-estimated.
On these may be founded a theory of Disteleology as opposed to the
ancient, usual Teleology."
With especial theories of Heredity advocated by Haeckel we are not
concerned, except in one respect. Even in the first edition of his
"Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte," Haeckel makes a distinction between
conservative and progressive inheritance, and in the edition of 1889 he
still maintains this division against Weismann and others, claiming the
heredity of acquired habit, under certain circumstances, and showing
conclusively that even wounds and blemishes received during the life of
an individual may be, in some instances, inherited by descendants.[36]
The laws of progressive heredity he gives as four: (1) the law of the
inheritance of adaptation; (2) the law of the surer inheritance of
qualities fixed by continual operation of its causes on individual
generations; (3) the law of homochronous inheritance or inheritance at a
corresponding age; (4) the law of homotypous inheritance, which may be
otherwise called the law of inheritance in corresponding parts of the
body.[37]
Having thus glanced at the special theories by which the great original
authorities paved the way for a system of Evolutional Ethics, we may
direct our attention to the more purely philosophical writers who have
turned these theories to advantage and elaborated them. The first on the
list is
FOOTNOTES:
[34] P. 703 _et seq._
[35] Erster Vortrag.
[36] P. 194 _et seq._
[37] For illustrations and proofs of these laws, see the "Natuerliche
Schoepfungsgeschichte," pp. 193-197.
HERBERT SPENCER
In treating of Mr. Spencer's work, it is necessary to begin with a book
which made its appearance before the publication of "The Origin of
Species," namely, "Social Statics" (1851), Mr. Spencer's first
noteworthy publication. In this are contained some remarkable
statements, which are of especial worth as showing in what measure the
thought of the time was already tending in the direction of the
revelations of its greatest prophet, and science, in England as in
Germany, was slowly coming to recognize the unity of nature in life and
human progress. An analysis of the first and theoretical part of this
work will be, therefore, of use, and with this we will begin.
Mr. Spencer opens his book with some criticisms of Utilitarianism or the
"Expediency Philosophy." Every rule, in order to be of value, must have
a definite meaning. The rule of "the greatest happiness to the greatest
number" supposes mankind to be unanimous in the definition of the
greatest happiness; the standard of happiness is, however, infinitely
variable, in nations and in individuals. For happiness signifies a
gratified state of all the faculties; and no two individuals are alike
in faculties. In endeavoring to fix a standard, we are met by such
insolvable problems as: What is the ratio between mental and bodily
enjoyments constituting the greatest happiness? Which is most truly an
element in the desired felicity, content or aspiration? The conclusion
we inevitably reach is that a true conception of what human life should
be is possible only to the ideal man,--in whom the component feelings
exist in their normal proportions. The world as yet contains no such
men, and we are left with an insolvable riddle on our hands.
There is the same uncertainty as to the mode of obtaining the greatest
happiness.
The Expediency Philosophy believes that man's intellect is competent to
observe accurately and to grasp at once the multiplied phenomena of life
and derive therefrom the knowledge which shall enable him to say whether
such or such measures will conduce to the greatest happiness of the
greatest number.
If without knowledge of terrestrial phenomena and their laws, Newton had
attempted a theory of planetary and stellar equilibrium, he might have
cogitated to all eternity without result. Such an attempt, however,
would have been far less absurd than the attempt to find out the
principles of public polity by a direct examination of that wonderfully
intricate combination, Society. In order to understand Society it is
necessary to comprehend Man.
Another mistake of the Expediency Philosophy is that it assumes the
eternity of government, which marks a certain stage of civilization, but
which will by no means necessarily last forever. Time was when the
history of a people was the history of its government. Feudalism,
serfdom, slavery,--all were forms of government. Progress means less
government; constitutional forms, political freedom, democracy, all mean
this. Government is a sign of imperfection, an evil necessary against
knavery; it must exist only so long as this exists. The Expediency
Philosophy is, however, founded on government; takes it into
partnership: but a system of moral philosophy professes to be a code of
correct rules for the best, as well as the worst, members of society,
and applicable to humanity in its highest conceivable perfection. Of the
Expediency Philosophy it must, therefore, be said that it can claim no
scientific character, since:
Its fundamental proposition is not an axiom but a problem to be solved;
It is expressed in terms possessing no fixed acceptation;
It would require omniscience to carry it into practice;
And, moreover, it takes imperfection for its basis.
The existence of society argues a certain fitness and desire of mankind
for it; without this, it would not exist, as eating and drinking, and
the nourishment and protection of offspring would not take place if
there were no corresponding desires, but merely an abstract opinion in
favor of the worth of the two. In the method of nature, there is always
some prompter, called a desire, answering to each of the actions which
it is requisite for us to perform. It is probable, therefore, that we
shall find an instrumentality of this sort prompting us to morality. In
objection to the theory of a moral sense, the want of uniformity in
judgment as to what is right is often advanced. But none deny the
importance of appetite, though all know that it is by no means an
infallible guide in the choice of kind or quantity of food. The same may
be said of parental affection. The foundation of the claim of any man
that he has as great a right to happiness as any other can be found in
the last analysis in feeling only; he feels that it is so.
None but those committed to a preconceived theory can fail to recognize
the workings of such a faculty as the moral sense. It is clear that the
perceptions of propriety or impropriety of conduct do not originate with
the intellect but with the emotional faculties. The intellect,
uninfluenced by desire, would show both miser and spendthrift that their
habits were unwise; whereas the intellect, influenced by desire, makes
each think the other a fool, but does not enable him to see his own
foolishness.
This is a universal law: Every feeling is accompanied by a sense of the
rightness of those actions which give it gratification. From an impulse
to behave in a way we call equitable arises a perception that it is
proper, and a conviction that it is good. There is, however, a
perpetual conflict amongst feelings, from which results an incongruity
of beliefs.
It has been said that codes derived from the moral sense have no
stability since this sense ratifies one principle at one time and place,
another at another. The same objection applies, however, to every other
system of morals, and happily there is an answer to the objection. The
error criticised is one of application, not of doctrine. The decisions
of the Geometric Sense are conflicting; yet there are certain axioms
upon which all agree; and in the same manner there are moral axioms to
be found, upon which all must agree. Disagreement is to be looked for
among imperfect characters. But nature's laws know no exception: Obey or
suffer are the alternatives. A progress from entire unconsciousness of
these laws to the conviction that law is universal and inevitable,
constancy an essential attribute of divine rule, is the substance of the
progress of man. The end of these unbending utterances is universal
good; we have no alternative but to assume the law of constancy to be
the best possible one. As with the physical, so with the ethical; all
religions teach the inevitableness of punishment and reward, with which
deeds are _necessarily_ and _indissolubly_ connected. It is of infinite
importance to recognize and follow the laws of society. To the objection
that one cannot always be guided by abstract principles, that there are
exceptions where prudence must act, it may be replied that there are no
exceptions to the laws of nature; that even if, in a particular
instance, partial good may result, a far greater general evil is
entailed by the opening of the way to future disobediences, and that we
cannot, moreover, be sure that an exceptional disobedience will bring
the anticipated benefits. Moral as well as physical evil is the result
of a want of congruity between the faculties and their sphere of action.
With regard to the results of varying conditions upon man, we have three
alternative theories from which to choose: either man remains entirely
unaltered by his surroundings, or he grows more unfitted for them, or
else he grows more fitted for them. The first two suppositions being
absurd, we are obliged to admit the remaining one. And since all evil
results from non-adaptation, and non-adaptation is being continually
diminished, it follows that evil must be continually diminishing. The
evil in society shows that man is not yet completely adapted to a state
which requires that each individual shall have such desires only as may
be fully satisfied without trenching upon the ability of other
individuals to obtain a like satisfaction. The primitive condition of
man required that he should sacrifice the welfare of other beings to his
own; the old attribute still clings to him in some measure; the belief
in human perfectibility amounts to the belief that man will eventually
become completely suited to his mode of life. Progress is not an
accident but a necessity; and if, instead of proposing it as a rule of
human conduct, Bentham had simply assumed the "greatest happiness" to be
the creative purpose, his position would have been tenable enough. It is
one thing, however, to hold that greatest happiness is the creative
purpose, and quite a different thing to hold that greatest happiness
should be the immediate aim of mankind. Truth has two sides, a divine
and a human; or, it is for man to ascertain the conditions which lead to
the greatest happiness, and to live in conformity with these.
The men who are to realize this greatest sum of happiness must be such
as can obtain complete happiness without diminishing the activity and
happiness of others. The first great condition of the attainment of the
end is, therefore, justice, and, as a supplement to this, negative and
positive beneficence,--abstinence from diminishing the spheres of
activity of others, and further, a positive increase of their pleasure.
For man is sympathetic, and the sympathetic pleasures increase the sum
total of happiness.
The exercise[38] of all the faculties in which happiness consists is not
only man's right but also his duty. For the fact of pain, of punishment,
proves that God intends and wills such exercise. But the exercise of all
the faculties is freedom; all men have, therefore, a right to freedom of
action. This principle, however, implies a limitation of man by men,
whereby we arrive at the general proposition that every man may claim
the fullest liberty to exercise his feelings _compatible with the
possession of a like liberty in every other man_. In the progress of
mankind, or adaptation, the conduct which hurts necessary feelings in
others must inevitably undergo restraint and consequent limitation;
conduct which hurts only their incidental feelings, as those of caste or
prejudice, will not inevitably be restrained, but if it springs from
necessary feelings, will, on the contrary, be continued at the expense
of these incidental feelings and to their final suppression. Morality is
_not_, therefore, to be interpreted as a refraining from the infliction
of any pain whatever, for some sentiment must be wounded; and by much
wounding it is gradually weakened. When men mutually behave in a way
that offends some essential element in the nature of each, and all in
turn have to bear the consequent suffering, there will arise a tendency
to curb the desire that makes them so behave.
Questions of individual morality seem to present a difficulty to this
theory of freedom. Thus, for instance, on the principle above adopted,
the liberty of drunkenness cannot be condemned as long as the drunkard
respects a like liberty in others; and here we fall into the
inconsistency of affirming that a man is at liberty to do something
essentially destructive of happiness. However, if we admit, as we must,
that liberty is the _primary_ law, no desire to get a secondary law
fulfilled can warrant us in breaking this primary one; we must deal with
secondary laws as best we can.
The first principle above stated may also be secondarily derived. The
regulation of conduct is not left to the accident of a philosophical
inquiry; the agent of morality is the Moral Sense.
In all ages, but more especially in recent ones, have there been
affirmations of the equality of all men and their equal right to
happiness. When we find that a belief like this is not only permanent
but daily gaining ground, we have good reason to conclude that it
corresponds to some essential element of our moral constitution; more
especially since we find that its existence is in harmony with that
chief prerequisite to greatest happiness lately dwelt upon; and that its
growth is in harmony with the law of adaptation, by which the greatest
happiness is being wrought out.
To assert, however, that the sense of justice is but the gradually
acquired conviction that benefits spring from some kinds of action, and
evils from other kinds, the sympathies and antipathies contracted
manifesting themselves as a love of justice and a hatred of injustice,
is as absurd as to conclude that hunger springs from a conviction of the
benefit of eating.
The Moral Sense must be regarded as a special faculty, since, otherwise,
there would be nothing during the dormancy of the other faculties, which
must sometimes occur, to prevent an infringement on the freedom
requisite for their future action.
As Adam Smith has shown in his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," the proper
regulation of our conduct to others is secured by means of a faculty
whose function it is to excite in each being the emotions displayed by
the beings about him. The sentiment of justice is nothing but a
sympathetic affection of the instinct of personal rights, a sort of
reflex function of it. Other things being equal, those persons
possessing the strongest sense of personal rights have, also, the
strongest sense of the rights of others. There is no _necessary_
connection between the two; but in the average of cases they bear a
constant ratio.
It may be objected that if the truth that every man has a freedom to do
all that he wills, provided he infringe not upon the equal freedom of
others, be an axiom, it should be recognized by all, as is not the case.
This difficulty seems in part due to the impossibility of making the
perfect law recognize an imperfect state. It may further be answered
that the Bushman knows nothing of the science of mathematics, yet that
arithmetic is a fact; the difference in men's moral perceptions is no
difficulty in our way, but rather illustrates the truth of our theory,
since man is not yet adapted to the social state.
In further confirmation of the doctrine of the free exercise of
function, it may be added that, since non-fulfilment of desire produces
misery, if God is to be regarded as willing such non-fulfilment, he must
be regarded as willing men's misery; which is absurd. If men are not
naturally free, then a doctrine of the divine right of kings is easily
reached, and whoever is king must be regarded as such by divine right,
no matter how he reached the throne.
Spencer then proceeds to apply his first principle or axiom of freedom
to prove the right to life and liberty, to the use of the earth, to
property and free speech; and considers further the rights of women and
of children, and the political rights of individuals; the constitution
and duty of the state; commerce, education, and the poor-laws;
government colonization, sanitary supervision, postal arrangements, etc.
A remarkable feature of this part of "Social Statics" is that Spencer,
while applying his principle with quite an opposite result to all other
property, advocates the nationalization of the land, on the ground that
the freedom of the individual is right only in so far as it does not
hinder a like freedom in others; and that the monopolization of the
privileges of land-ownership by individuals does prevent the enjoyment
of the same privilege by others.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
The course of civilization could not possibly have been other than it
has been.
Progress shows us that perfect individuation joined to the greatest
mutual dependence will be reached in the future of the race. There will
be an ultimate identity of personal and social interests, and a
disappearance of evil. Spencer gives, however, a number of arguments to
prove that the interest of society is, at present also, the interest of
the individual.
* * * * *
The "Theory of Population" (published in 1852), which is founded on the
theory of an antagonism between the intellectual and the reproductive
powers, and on the ancient theory of a direct relation between
skull-capacity or brain-size and intellectual power, contains this
passage: "From the beginning, pressure of population has been the
proximate cause of progress. It produced the original diffusion of the
race. It compelled men to abandon predatory habits and take to
agriculture. It led to the clearing of the earth's surface. It forced
men into the social state; made social organization inevitable; and has
developed the social sentiments. It has stimulated to progressive
improvements in production, and to increased skill and intelligence. It
is daily pressing us into closer contact and more mutually dependent
relationships. And after having caused, as it ultimately must, the due
peopling of the globe, and the bringing of all its habitable parts into
the highest state of culture,--after having brought all processes for
the satisfaction of human wants to the greatest perfection,--after
having, at the same time, developed the intellect into complete
competency for its work, and the feelings into complete fitness for
social life,--after having done all this, we see the pressure of
population, as it gradually finishes its work, must gradually bring
itself to an end."
In a letter to Mr. Mill, published in Bain's "Mental and Moral Science"
(p. 721, 3d edition), Spencer repudiates the title of Anti-Utilitarian,
which Mr. Mill, in view of the criticisms of Utilitarianism contained in
"Social Statics," had applied to him. He defines his position in respect
to Utilitarianism as follows: "I have never regarded myself as an
Anti-Utilitarian. My dissent from the doctrine of Utility as commonly
understood, concerns, not the object to be reached by men, but the
method of reaching it. While I admit that happiness is the ultimate end
to be contemplated, I do not admit that it should be the proximate end.
The Expediency Philosophy, having concluded that happiness is a thing to
be achieved, assumes that Morality has no other business than
empirically to generalize the results of conduct, and to supply for the
guidance of conduct nothing more than its empirical generalizations.
"But the view for which I contend is, that Morality properly
so-called--the science of right conduct--has for its object to determine
how and why certain modes of conduct are detrimental, and certain other
modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be accidental, but
must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things, and I
conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce from the laws
of life and the conditions of existence what kinds of action necessarily
tend to produce happiness and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having
done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and
are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness
or misery.
"Perhaps an analogy will most clearly show my meaning. During its early
stages, planetary astronomy consisted of nothing more than accumulated
observations respecting the positions and motions of the sun and
planets; from which accumulated observations it came by and by to be
empirically predicted, with an approach to truth, that certain of the
heavenly bodies would have certain positions at certain times. But the
modern science of planetary astronomy consists of deductions from the
law of gravitation--deductions showing why the celestial bodies
necessarily occupy certain places at certain times. Now the kind of
relation which thus exists between ancient and modern astronomy is
analogous to the kind of relation which, I conceive, exists between the
Expediency Morality and Moral Science properly so-called. And the
objection which I have to the current Utilitarianism is, that it
recognizes no more developed form of morality--does not see that it has
reached but the initial stage of Moral Science.
"To make my position fully understood, it seems needful to add that,
corresponding to the fundamental propositions of a developed Moral
Science, there have been, and still are, developing in the race, certain
fundamental moral intuitions; and that, though these moral intuitions
are the results of accumulated experiences of Utility, gradually
organized and inherited, they have come to be quite independent of
conscious experience. Just in the same way that I believe the intuition
of space possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from the
organized and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals,
who bequeathed to him their slowly developed nervous organizations--just
as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and
complete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of
thought, apparently quite independent of experience; so do I believe
that the experiences of utility organized and consolidated through all
past generations of the human race, have been producing nervous
modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have
become in us certain faculties of moral intuition, certain emotions
responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in
the individual experiences of utility. I also hold that, just as the
space-intuition responds to the exact demonstrations of geometry, and
has its rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them, so will
moral intuitions respond to the demonstrations of Moral Science; and
will have their rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them."
In "Recent Discussions in Science, Philosophy, and Morals"[39] (1871),
Spencer, after quoting portions of the above letter as defining his
position, continues with a consideration of the continual readjustment
of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable, the former of
which prescribes a system far too good for men as they are, the latter
of which does not of itself tend to establish a system better than the
existing one; and he reiterates his law of the perfect man as follows:--
"Granted that we are chiefly interested in ascertaining what is
_relatively_ right, it still follows that we must first consider what is
absolutely right; since the one conception presupposes the other."
Spencer further expressly repudiates empirical Utilitarianism, and
denies the assertion of Mr. Hutton that he by implication recognizes no
parentage for morals beyond that of the accumulation and organization of
the facts of experience. On this head he says:--
"In the genesis of an idea, the successive experiences, be they of
sounds, colors, touches, tastes, or be they of the special objects that
combine many of these into groups, have so much in common that each,
when it occurs, can be definitely thought of as like those which
preceded it. But in the genesis of an emotion, the successive
experiences so far differ that each of them, when it occurs, suggests
past experiences which are not specifically similar, but have only a
general similarity; and, at the same time, it suggests benefits or evils
in past experience which likewise are various in their special natures,
though they have a certain community of general nature. Hence it results
that the consciousness aroused is a multitudinous confused
consciousness, in which, along with a certain kind of combination among
impressions received from without, there is a vague cloud of ideal
combinations akin to them, and a vague mass of ideal feelings of
pleasure or pain that were associated with them. We have abundant proof
that feelings grow up without reference to recognized causes and
consequences, and without the possessor of them being able to say why
they have grown up, though analysis, nevertheless, shows that they have
been formed out of connected experiences. The experiences of utility I
refer to are those which become registered, not as distinctly recognized
connections between certain kinds of acts and certain kinds of remote
results, but those which become registered in the shape of associations
between groups of feelings that have often recurred together,
though the relation between them has not been consciously
generalized"--associations which though little perceived, nevertheless
serve as incentives or deterrents. Much deeper down than the history of
the human race must we go to find the beginnings of these connections.
The appearances and sounds which excite in the infant a vague dread
indicate danger; and do so because they are the physiological
accompaniments of destructive action.
"What we call the natural language of anger is due to a partial
contraction of those muscles which actual combat would call into play;
and all marks of irritation, down to that passing shade over the brow
which accompanies slight annoyance, are incipient stages of these same
contractions. Conversely with the natural language of pleasure, and of
that state of mind which we call amicable feeling; this, too, has a
physical interpretation."
Of the altruistic sentiments, Spencer says: "The development of these
has gone on only as fast as society has advanced to a state in which the
activities are mainly peaceful. The root of all the altruistic
sentiments is sympathy, and sympathy could become dominant only when the
mode of life, instead of being one that habitually inflicted direct
pain, became one which conferred direct and indirect benefits; the pains
inflicted being mainly incidental and indirect." Sympathy is "the
concomitant of gregariousness; the two having all along increased by
reciprocal aid."
"If we suppose all thought of rewards or punishments, immediate or
remote, to be left out of consideration, it is clear that any one who
hesitates to inflict a pain because of the vivid representation of that
pain which rises in his consciousness, is restrained not by any sense of
obligation or by any formulated doctrine of utility, but by the painful
associations established in him. And it is clear that if, after repeated
experiences of the moral discomfort he has felt from witnessing the
unhappiness indirectly caused by some of his acts, he is led to check
himself when again tempted to those acts, the restraint is of like
nature. Conversely with the pleasure-giving acts, repetitions of kind
deeds and experiences of the sympathetic gratifications that follow tend
continually to make stronger the association between deeds and feelings
of happiness."
Spencer continues: "Eventually these experiences may be consciously
generalized, and there may result a deliberate pursuit of the
sympathetic gratifications. There may also come to be distinctly
recognized the truths that the remoter results are respectively
detrimental and beneficial--that due regard for others is conducive to
ultimate personal welfare, and disregard of others to ultimate personal
disaster; and then there may become current such summations of
experience as 'honesty is the best policy.' But so far from regarding
these intellectual recognitions of utility as preceding and causing the
moral sentiment, I regard the moral sentiment as preceding such
recognitions of utility and making them possible. The pleasures and
pains directly resulting, in experience, from sympathetic and
unsympathetic actions, had first to be slowly associated with such
actions, and the resulting incentives and deterrents frequently obeyed,
before there could arise the perceptions that sympathetic and
unsympathetic actions are remotely beneficial or detrimental to the
actor; and they had to be obeyed still longer and more generally before
there could arise the perceptions that they are socially beneficial and
detrimental. When, however, the remote effects, personal and social,
have gained general recognition, are expressed in current maxims, and
lead to injunctions having the religious sanction, the sentiments that
prompt sympathetic actions and check unsympathetic ones, are immensely
strengthened by their alliances. Approbation and reprobation, divine and
human, come to be associated in thought with the sympathetic and
unsympathetic actions respectively. The commands of a creed, the legal
penalties, and the code of social conduct, mutually enforce them; and
every child, as it grows up, daily has impressed on it, by the words and
faces and voices of those around, the authority of these highest
principles."
The altruistic sentiments develop, and altruistic action becomes
habitual, "until at length these altruistic sentiments begin to call in
question the authority of those ego-altruistic sentiments which once
ruled unchallenged."
And Spencer sums up his objections to the interpretation of his theory
of the development of the moral sentiment as follows: "What I have said
will make it clear that two fundamental errors have been made in the
interpretation put upon it. Both Utility and Experience have been
construed in senses much too narrow.
"Utility, convenient a word as it is from its comprehensiveness, has
very inconvenient and misleading implications. It vividly suggests uses
and means and proximate ends, but very faintly suggests the pleasures,
positive or negative, which are the ultimate ends, and which, in the
ethical meaning of the word, are alone considered; and, further, it
implies conscious recognition of means and ends--implies the deliberate
taking of some course to gain a perceived benefit. Experience, too, in
its ordinary acceptation, connotes definite perceptions of causes and
consequences, as standing in observed relations, and is not taken to
include the connections found in consciousness between states that occur
together, when the relation between them, causal or other, is not
perceived. It is in their widest senses, however, that I habitually use
these words, as will be manifest to every one who reads the 'Principles
of Psychology.'"
In his essay on Prison Ethics (1860), Spencer says: "The antagonistic
schools of morals, like many other antagonistic schools, are both right
and both wrong. The _a priori_ school has its truth; the _a posteriori_
school has its truth; and for the proper guidance of conduct there
should be due recognition of both. On the one hand, it is asserted that
there is an absolute standard of rectitude; and respecting certain
classes of actions, it is rightly asserted. From the fundamental laws of
life and the conditions of social existence are deducible certain
imperative limitations to individual action--limitations which are
essential to a perfect life, individual and social; or, in other words,
essential to the greatest possible happiness. And these limitations,
following inevitably as they do from undeniable first principles, deep
as the nature of life itself, constitute what we may distinguish as
absolute morality.
"On the other hand, it is contended, and in a sense rightly contended,
that with men as they are, and society as it is, the dictates of
absolute morality are impracticable. Legal control, which involves the
infliction of pain, alike on those who are restrained and on those who
pay the cost of restraining them, is proved by this fact to be not
absolutely moral, seeing that absolute morality is the regulation of
conduct in such way that pain shall not be inflicted. Wherefore, if it
be admitted that legal control is at present indispensable, it must be
admitted that these _a priori_ rules cannot be immediately carried out.
And hence it follows that we must adapt our laws and actions to the
existing character of mankind--that we must estimate the good or evil
resulting from this or that arrangement, and so reach _a posteriori_ a
code fitted for the time being. In short, we must fall back on
expediency." Spencer then goes on to argue that an advanced penal code
is as impossible to an early stage of civilization as is an advanced
form of government; a bloody penal code is both a natural product of the
time and a needful restraint for the time, and is also the only one
which could be carried out by the existing administration.
The aim of morality is life, of absolute morality complete life; society
is therefore justified in coercing the criminal who breaks through the
conditions of life or constrains us to do so. Coercion is legitimate to
the extent of compelling restitution, and preventing a repetition of
aggressions; no further. Less bloody systems of punishment, wherever
introduced, have borne excellent fruit. It may be deductively shown that
the best of all systems must be that best calculated to reform the
criminal; too severe punishment, instead of awakening a sense of guilt,
prevents the same, begetting a sense of injustice towards the
inflicting power, which causes resentment; so that, even if the
criminal, on reentering society, commits no further crime, he is
restrained by the lowest of motives--fear. The industrial system applied
in prisons must have the best results--counteracting habits of idleness,
strengthening self-control, and educating the will.
The principle of freedom, which runs through all Spencer's works, is
especially enounced again, in his essay, "The Man versus the State"
(1884), in which he combats "the great political superstition" of
so-called "paternal government." He says: "Reduced to its lowest terms,
every proposal to interfere with citizens' activities further than by
enforcing their mutual limitations, is a proposal to improve life by
breaking through the fundamental conditions of life."[40]
In "The Data of Ethics" (published 1874), Mr. Spencer assumes a somewhat
different standpoint from that of his earlier works bearing on morals.
The course of reasoning contained in this book is as follows:--
The doctrine that correlatives imply one another has, for one of its
common examples, the relation between the conceptions of whole and part.
Beyond the primary truth that no idea of a whole can be framed without a
nascent idea of parts constituting it, and that no idea of a part can be
framed without a nascent idea of some whole to which it belongs, there
is the secondary truth that there can be no correct idea of a part
without a correct idea of the correlative whole. Still less, when part
and whole are dynamically related, and least of all when the whole is
organic, can the part be understood except by comprehension of the whole
to which it belongs. This truth holds not only of material but also of
immaterial aggregates.
Conduct is a whole and, in a sense, an organic whole, and Ethics, of
which it is a part, cannot be understood except through the
understanding of the whole of conduct.
A definition of conduct must exclude purposeless actions,--such, for
instance, as those of an epileptic in a fit. Hence the definition
emerges either: acts adjusted to ends; or, the adjustment of acts to
ends; according as we contemplate the formed body of acts, or think of
the form alone. And conduct, in its full acceptation, must be taken as
comprehending all adjustments of acts to ends, from the simplest to the
most complex, whatever their special natures and whether they are
considered separately or in their totality.
A large part of conduct is non-ethical, indifferent; this passes, by
small degrees and in countless ways, into conduct which is either moral
or immoral.
The acts of all living creatures, as acts adjusted to ends, come within
the definition of conduct; the conduct of the higher animals as compared
with that of man, and of the lower animals as compared with the higher,
differs mainly in that the adjustments of acts to ends is relatively
simple and relatively incomplete. And as in other cases, so in this
case, we must interpret the more developed by the less developed; human
conduct as a part of the whole of the conduct of animate beings. And
further: as, in order to understand the part of human conduct with which
Ethics is concerned, we must study it as a part of human conduct as a
whole, and in order to understand human conduct, we must again study it
as a part of the whole of conduct exhibited in animate beings, so, in
order to comprehend this too, we must regard it as an outcome of former,
less developed conduct, out of which it has arisen. Our first step must
be to study the evolution of conduct.
Morphology deals with physical structure, physiology with the processes
carried on in the body. But we enter on the subject of conduct when we
begin to study such combinations among the actions of sensory and
motor-organs as are externally manifested.
We saw that conduct is distinguished from the totality of actions by the
exclusion of purposeless actions; but during evolution this distinction
arises by degrees. We trace up conduct to the vertebrates and through
the vertebrates to man, and find that here the adjustments of acts to
ends are both more numerous and better than among lower mammals; and we
find the same thing on comparing the doings of higher races of men with
those of lower. These better adjustments favor, not only prolongation,
but also increased amount of life.
And among these adjustments of acts to ends, there are not only such as
further individual life but also, evolving with these, such as favor the
life of the species. Race-maintaining conduct, like self-maintaining
conduct, arises gradually out of that which cannot be called conduct.
The multitudinous creatures of all kinds which fill the earth are
engaged in a continuous struggle for existence, in which the adjustments
of acts to ends, being imperfectly evolved, miss completeness because
they cannot be made by one creature without other creatures being
prevented from making them. This imperfectly evolved conduct introduces
us, by antithesis, to conduct which is perfectly evolved,--such
adjustments that each creature may make them without preventing other
creatures making them also. The conditions of such conduct cannot exist
in predatory savage life; nor can it exist where there remains
antagonism between individuals forming a group, or between groups of
individuals,--two traits of life necessarily associated, since the
nature which prompts international aggression prompts aggression of
individuals on one another also. Hence the limit of evolution can be
reached by conduct only in permanently peaceful societies; can be
approached only as war decreases and dies out.
The principle of beneficence is not derived by Spencer from the
principle of freedom, in "Social Statics"; and here, as in the latter
book, Spencer has difficulty with it. He says: "A gap in this outline
must now be filled up. There remains a further advance not yet even
hinted. For beyond so behaving that each achieves his ends without
preventing others from achieving their ends, the members of a society
may give mutual help in the achievement of ends. And if either
indirectly by industrial cooeperation, or directly by volunteered aid,
fellow-citizens can make easier for one another the adjustments of acts
to ends, then their conduct assumes a still higher phase of evolution;
since whatever facilitates the making of adjustments by each increases
the totality of the adjustments made, and serves to render the lives of
all more complete."
Thus, then, says Spencer, "we have been led to see that Ethics has for
its subject-matter that form which universal conduct assumes during the
last stages of its evolution."
By comparing the meanings of a word in different connections, and
observing what they have in common, we learn its essential significance.
Material objects we are accustomed to designate as good or bad according
as they are well or ill adapted to achieve prescribed ends. The good
knife is one which will cut; the good gun is one which will carry far
and true; and so on. So of inanimate actions, and so, also, of living
things and actions. A good jump is a jump which, remoter ends ignored,
well achieves the immediate purpose of a jump; and a stroke at billiards
is called good when the movements are skilfully adjusted to the
requirements. So too our use of the words good and bad with respect to
conduct under its ethical aspects has regard to the efficiency or
non-efficiency of the adjustments of acts to ends. This last truth is,
through the entanglements of social relations, by which men's actions
often simultaneously affect the welfares of self, of offspring, and of
fellow-citizens, somewhat disguised. Nevertheless, when we disentangle
the three orders of ends, and consider each separately, it becomes clear
that the conduct which achieves each kind of end is regarded as
relatively good; and conduct which fails to achieve it is regarded as
relatively bad. The goodness ascribed to a man of business, as such, is
measured by the activity and ability with which he buys and sells to
advantage, and may coexist with a hard treatment of dependents which is
reprobated. The ethical judgments we pass on such self-regarding acts
are ordinarily little emphasized; partly because the promptings of the
self-regarding desires, generally strong enough, do not need moral
enforcement, and partly because the promptings of the other-regarding
desires, less strong, do need moral enforcement. With regard to the
second class of adjustments of acts to ends, which subserve the rearing
of offspring, we no longer find any obscurity in the application of the
words good and bad to them, according as they are efficient or
inefficient. And most emphatic are the application of the words, in this
sense, throughout the third division of conduct comprising the deeds by
which men affect one another. Always, then, acts are good or bad,
according as they are well or ill-adapted to ends. That is, good is the
name we apply to the relatively more evolved conduct; and bad is the
name we apply to that which is relatively less evolved; for we have seen
that "evolution, tending ever towards self-preservation, reaches its
limits when individual life is the greatest, both in length and breadth;
and we now see that, leaving other ends aside, we regard as good the
conduct furthering self-preservation, and as bad the conduct tending to
self-destruction." With increasing power of maintaining individual life
goes increasing power of perpetuating the species by fostering progeny;
and the establishment of an associated state both makes possible and
requires a form of conduct such that life may be completed in each and
in his offspring, not only without preventing completion of it in
others, but with furtherance of it in others; and this is the form of
conduct most emphatically termed good. "Moreover, just as we saw that
evolution becomes the highest possible when the conduct simultaneously
achieves the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in
fellow-men; so here we see that the conduct called good rises to the
conduct conceived as best, when it fulfils all three classes of ends at
the same time."
Has this evolution been a mistake? The pessimist claims so, the optimist
claims not. But there is one postulate in which both pessimists and
optimists agree--namely, that it is evident that life is good or bad,
according as it does, or does not, have a surplus of agreeable feeling;
if a future life is included in the theory of either, the assumption is
still the same, that life is a blessing or a curse according as
existence, now considered in both worlds, contains more of pleasure or
of pain; and the implication is therefore that conduct which conduces to
the preservation of self, the family, and society, is good or bad in the
same measure. "Thus there is no escape from the admission that conduct
is good or bad according as its total effects are pleasurable or
painful." So that if self-mutilation furthered life, and picking a man's
pocket brightened his prospects, we should regard these acts as good.
Approach to such a constitution as effects complete adjustment of acts
to ends of every kind is, however, an approach to perfection, and
therefore means approach to that which secures greater happiness.
"Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an
inexpugnable element of the conception" of moral aim.
Here follow criticisms of the religious school of morals, which bases
its system on the will of God, and of the school of "pure
intuitionists," who hold "that men have been divinely endowed with moral
faculties." "It must be either admitted or denied that the acts called
good and the acts called bad naturally conduce, the one to human
well-being and the other to human ill-being. Is it admitted? Then the
admission amounts to an assertion that the conduciveness is shown by
experience; and this involves abandonment of the doctrine that there is
no origin for morals apart from divine injunctions. Is it denied that
acts classed as good and bad differ in their effects? Then it is tacitly
affirmed that human affairs would go on just as well in ignorance of
the distinction; and the alleged need for commandments from God
disappears." To affirm that we know some things to be right and other
things to be wrong, by virtue of a supernaturally given conscience; and
thus tacitly to affirm that we do not otherwise know right from wrong,
is tacitly to deny any natural relations between acts and results. For
if there exist any such relations, then we may ascertain by induction,
or deduction, or both, what these are. And if it be admitted that
because of such natural relations happiness is produced by this kind of
conduct, which is therefore to be approved; while misery is produced by
that kind of conduct, which is therefore to be condemned; then it is
admitted that the rightness or wrongness of actions is determinable, and
must finally be determined, by the goodness or badness of the effects
that flow from them, which is contrary to the hypothesis. Spencer also
repeats and enlarges upon his formerly stated objections to
utilitarianism as superficial: "The utilitarianism which recognizes only
the principles of conduct reached by induction, is but preparatory to
the utilitarianism which deduces these principles from the processes of
life as carried on under established conditions of existence."
Every science begins by accumulating observations, and presently
generalizes these empirically, but only when it reaches the stage at
which its empirical generalizations are included in a rational
generalization, does it become developed science. So with Ethics; a
preparation in the simpler sciences is presupposed. It has a biological
aspect; since it concerns certain effects, inner and outer, individual
and social, of the vital changes going on in the highest type of
animals. It has a psychological aspect; for its subject-matter is an
aggregate of actions that are prompted by feelings and guided by
intelligence. And it has a sociological aspect; for these actions, some
of them directly, and all of them indirectly, affect associated beings.
Belonging under one aspect of each of these sciences,--physical,
biological, psychological, sociological,--it can find its ultimate
interpretations only in those fundamental truths which are common to all
of them, as different aspects of evolving life.
THE PHYSICAL VIEW
While an aggregate evolves, not only the matter composing it, but also
the motion of that matter, passes from an indefinite, incoherent
homogeneity to a definite, coherent, heterogeneity. It is so with
conduct. The conduct of lowly organized creatures has its successive
portions feebly connected. From these up to man may be observed an
increase in cohesion. Man, even in his lowest state, displays in his
conduct far more coherent combinations of motions; and in civilized man
this trait of developed conduct becomes more conspicuous still. But an
even greater coherence among its component motions broadly distinguishes
the conduct we call moral from the conduct we call immoral. The
application of the word dissolute to the last, and of the word
self-restrained to the first, implies this fact. The sequences of
conduct in the moral man are more easily to be specified, as implied by
the word trustworthy applied to them; while those of the less principled
man cannot be so specified; as is implied by the word untrustworthy.
Indefiniteness accompanies incoherence in conduct that is little
evolved; and throughout the ascending stages of evolving conduct there
is an increasingly definite cooerdination of the motions constituting it,
until we reach the conscientious man, who is exact in all his
transactions. With this increase of definiteness and coherence goes also
an increase of heterogeneity; the moral man performs more varied duties,
adjustments of acts to ends in more varied relations, than does the
immoral man.
Evolution in conduct is, like all other evolution, towards
equilibrium,--not the equilibrium reached by the individual in death,
but a moving equilibrium. His evolution consists in a continual
adjustment of inner to outer relations, until a state of society shall
be reached in which the individual will find his nature congruous with
the environment.
THE BIOLOGICAL VIEW
"The truth that the ideally moral man is one in whom the moving
equilibrium is perfect, or approaches nearest to perfection, becomes,
when translated with physiological language, the truth that he is one in
whom the functions of all kinds are duly fulfilled." Either excess or
defect in the performance of function results in a lowering of life, for
the time being at least. Hence, the performance of every function is, in
a sense, a moral obligation. One test of action is thus given us. An
action must be classed as right or wrong in respect of its immediate
bearings, according as it does or does not tend either to the
maintenance of complete life for the time being or the prolongation of
life to its full extent. This is true even though the remoter bearings
of the action may call for a different classification. The seeming
paradoxy of this statement results from the tendency, so difficult to
avoid, to judge a conclusion which presupposes an ideal humanity, by its
applicability to humanity as now existing. In the ideal state, towards
which evolution tends, any falling short of function implies deviation
from perfectly moral conduct.
"Fit connections between acts and results must establish themselves in
living things, even before consciousness arises; and after the rise of
consciousness these connections can change in no other way than to
become better established. At the very outset, life is maintained by
persistence in acts which conduce to it and desistence from acts which
impede it; and whenever sentience makes its appearance as an
accompaniment, its forms must be such that in the one case the produced
feeling is of a kind that will be sought--pleasure, and in the other
case is of a kind that will be shunned--pain." So, in the case of the
seizure of food, for example, "the pleasurable sensation," everywhere
where it arises, must be itself the stimulus to the contraction by which
the pleasurable sensation is maintained and increased; or must be so
bound up with the stimulus that the two increase together. "And this
relation, which we see is directly established in the case of a
fundamental function, must be indirectly established with all other
functions; since non-establishment of it in any particular case implies,
in so far, unfitness to the conditions of existence." "Sentient
existence can evolve only on condition that pleasure-giving acts are
life-sustaining acts."
It is true that, in mankind as at present constituted, guidance by
present or proximate pleasures and pains fails throughout a wide range
of cases. This arises throughout evolution by changes in the
environment, from which result partial misadjustments of the feelings,
necessitating readjustments. This general cause of derangement has been
operating on human beings in the changes from a primitive to a
civilized condition through the direct opposition and struggle of the
militant and the industrial spirit, in a manner unusually decided,
persistent, and involved.
But there is a still further relation between pleasure and welfare to be
considered. There are connections between pleasure in general, and
physiological exaltation, and between pain in general and physiological
depression. Every pleasure increases vitality, every pain decreases
vitality. Non-recognition of these general truths vitiates moral
speculation at large. "'You have had your gratification--it is past; and
you are as you were before,' says the moralist to one; and to another he
says: 'You have borne the suffering--it is over; and there the matter
ends.' Both statements are false; leaving out of view indirect results,
the direct results are that the one has moved a step away from death,
and the other has moved a step towards death."
However, it is with the indirect results that the moralist is especially
concerned; since remote consequences of action are especially to be
considered in ethical questions. But doubtless a better understanding of
biological truths would be to the benefit of moral theory and society at
large.
Spencer especially combats, in a note at the end of this chapter,
Barratt's theory, stated in "Physical Ethics," that movements of
retraction and withdrawal and movements that secure the continuance of
the impression of any acting force, are the external marks,
respectively, of pain and pleasure. A great part of the vital processes,
even in creatures of developed nervous systems, are carried on by
unconscious reflex action, and there is, therefore, no propriety in
assuming the existence of what we understand by consciousness in
creatures not only devoid of nervous systems but devoid of structures in
general. It is more proper to conceive such feelings as arising
gradually, by the compounding of ultimate elements of consciousness.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
"Mind consists of feelings and the relations among feelings.[41] By
compositions of the relations, and ideas of relations, intelligence
arises. By composition of feelings, and ideas of feelings, emotion
arises. And, other things equal, the evolution of either is great in
proportion as the composition is great. One of the necessary
implications is that cognition becomes higher in proportion as it is
remoter from reflex action; while emotion becomes higher in proportion
as it is remoter from sensation."[42]
"The mental process by which, in any case, the adjustment of acts to
ends is effected and which, under its higher forms, becomes the
subject-matter of ethical judgments, is, as above implied, divisible
into the rise of a feeling or feelings constituting the motive, and the
thought or thoughts through which the motive is shaped and finally
issues in action. The first of these elements, originally an excitement,
becomes a simple sensation; then a compound sensation; then a cluster of
partially presentative and partially representative sensations, forming
an incipient emotion; then a cluster of exclusively ideal or
representative sensations forming an emotion proper; then a cluster of
such clusters forming a compound emotion; and eventually becomes a still
more involved emotion composed of the ideal forms of such compound
emotions. The other element, beginning with that immediate passage of a
single stimulus into a single motion, called reflex action, presently
comes to be a set of associated discharges of stimuli producing
associated motions; constituting instinct. Step by step arise more
entangled combinations of stimuli, somewhat variable in their modes of
union, leading to complex motions, similarly variable in their
adjustments; whence occasional hesitations in the sensori-motor
processes. Presently is reached a stage at which the combined clusters
of impressions, not all present together, issue in actions not all
simultaneous, implying representation of results, or thought. Afterwards
follow stages in which various thoughts have time to pass before the
composite motives produce the appropriate actions, until at last arise
those long deliberations during which the probabilities of various
consequences are estimated, and the promptings of the correlative
feelings balanced; constituting calm judgment. That, under either of its
aspects, the later forms of this mental process are the higher,
ethically considered as well as otherwise considered, will be readily
seen."[43]
"Observe, then, what follows respecting the relative authorities of
motives. Throughout the ascent from low creatures up to man, and from
the lowest types of man to the highest, self-preservation has been
increased by the subordination of simple excitations to compound
excitations,--the subjection of immediate sensations to the ideas of
sensations to come,--the overruling of presentative feelings by
representative feelings, and of representative feelings by
re-representative feelings. As life has advanced, the accompanying
sentience has become increasingly ideal; and among feelings produced by
the compounding of ideas, the highest, and those which are evolved
latest, are the re-compounded or doubly ideal. Hence it follows that, as
guides, the feelings have authorities proportionate to the degrees in
which they are removed, by their complexity and their ideality, from
simple sensations and appetites. A further implication is made clear by
studying the intellectual sides of these mental processes by which acts
are adjusted to ends. Where they are low and simple, these comprehend
the guiding only of immediate acts by immediate stimuli--the entire
transaction in each case, lasting but a moment, refers only to a
proximate result. But with the development of intelligence and the
growing ideality of the motives, the ends to which the acts are adjusted
cease to be exclusively immediate. The more ideal motives concern ends
that are more distant; and with approach to the highest types, present
ends become increasingly subordinate to those future ends which the
ideal motives have for their objects. Hence there arises a certain
presumption in favor of a motive which refers to a remote good, in
comparison with one which refers to a proximate good."[44]
Out of the three controls of conduct, the political, the religious, and
the social, the first and the last of which are generated in the social
state through the supremacy of individuals in the midst of a control
that is also, in some degree, exerted by the whole community, the moral
consciousness grows; the feeling of moral obligation in general arising
in a manner analogous to that in which abstract ideas are generated, out
of concrete instances. As in such groupings of instances the different
components are mutually cancelled to form the abstract idea, so in
groupings of the emotions, there takes place a mutual cancelling of
diverse components; the common component is made relatively appreciable,
and becomes an abstract feeling. That which the moral feelings--the
feelings that prompt honesty, truthfulness, etc.--have in common, is
complexity and re-representative character. The idea of
authoritativeness has, therefore, come to be connected with feelings
having these traits: the implication being that the lower and simpler
feelings are without authority. Another element--that of
coerciveness--originated from experience of those several forms of
restraint that have established themselves in the course of
civilization--the political, religious, and social. By punishment is
generated the sense of compulsion which the consciousness of duty
includes, and which the word obligation indicates. This sense, however,
becomes indirectly connected with the feelings distinguished as moral;
and slowly fades as these emerge from amidst the political, religious,
and social motives, and become distinct and predominant. The sense of
duty is, therefore, transitory, fading as a motive as pleasure in
right-doing is evolved.
THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW
"Not for the human race only, but for every race, there are laws of
right living. Given its environment and its structure, and there is, for
each kind of creature, a set of actions adapted in their kinds, amounts,
and combinations, to secure the highest conservation its nature
permits." Yet in man we find an additional factor in the formula for
life: for man is sociable to a degree not found anywhere else among
animals. The conditions of the associated state have therefore called
for an emphasizing of those restraints on conduct entailed by the
presence of fellow-men. "From the sociological point of view, then,
Ethics becomes nothing else than a definite account of the forms of
conduct that are fitted to the associated state, in such wise that the
lives of each and all may be the greatest possible, alike in length and
breadth." "But here we are met by a fact which forbids us thus to put in
the foreground the welfare of citizens, individually considered, and
requires us to put in the foreground the welfare of the society as a
whole. The life of the social organism must, as an end, rank above the
lives of its units." These two ends are not harmonious at the outset,
since as long as communities are endangered by rival communities, a
sacrifice of private to public claims is necessary. When, however,
antagonism between communities shall cease, there will cease to be any
public claims at variance with private claims; the need for the
subordination of individual lives to the general life will cease, and
the latter, having from the beginning had furtherance of individual
lives as its ultimate purpose, will come to have this as its proximate
purpose. Between the commands of duty towards members of the same
community and towards those of different communities as between the
sentiments answering to these relations, there is, at present, conflict.
In the course of evolution, however, the various forms of subjection
countenanced by a warlike regime--slavery, the subjection of women to
men, and paternal absolutism, become more and more unpopular, and are
done away with. For each kind and degree of social evolution, there is
an appropriate compromise between the moral code of enmity and that of
amity; this is, for the time being, authoritative.[45] But such
compromise belongs to incomplete conduct; the end of evolution is in the
annihilation of enmity between societies as between individuals. Nor is
a mere abstinence from mutual injury enough. Without cooeperation for
satisfying wants the social state loses its _raison d'etre_. In all
efforts for cooeperation equivalence of exchange is a necessary basis;
all failure to fulfil such equivalence causes antagonism and thus a
diminution of social coherence; in the social, as in the animal
organism, waste without repair destroys the equilibrium of the parts;
fulfilment of contract is, therefore, the primary condition of the
welfare of society.
And even mutual punctiliousness in the fulfilment of contract is not
sufficient to the moral ideal. Daily experience proves that every one
would suffer many evils and lose many goods, did none give him unpaid
assistance. The limit of the evolution of conduct is not reached until,
beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to others, there are
spontaneous efforts to further the welfare of others. The form of nature
which thus adds beneficence to justice, is one which adaptation to the
social state produces. "The social man has not reached that
harmonization of constitution with conditions forming the limit of
evolution, so long as there remains space for the growth of faculties
which, by their exercise, bring positive benefit to others and
satisfaction to self. If the presence of fellow-men, while putting
certain limits to each man's sphere of activity, opens certain other
spheres of activity in which feelings, while achieving their
gratifications, do not diminish but add to the gratifications of others,
then such spheres will inevitably be occupied."[46] But of beneficence,
as well as of justice, sympathy is the root.
The assumption that feelings can be arranged in a scale of
desirability, against which Mr. Sidgwick especially argues in his
objections to (empirical) egoistic hedonism, is not necessarily an
element of such hedonism, although Bentham, in naming intensity,
duration, certainty, and proximity as traits entering into an estimation
of the relative value of a pleasure or pain, has committed himself to
it. But if a debtor who cannot pay offers to compound for his debt by
making over to me any one of various objects of property, will I not
endeavor to estimate their relative value, though I may not be able to
do it exactly; and if I choose wrongly is therefore the ground of choice
to be abandoned? Mr. Sidgwick's argument against empirical hedonism must
tell, moreover, in a still greater degree, against his own
utilitarianism, since this is applicable, not to the individual simply,
but to many classes of differing individuals. To this difficulty must be
added, moreover, the future indeterminateness of the means for obtaining
such universal happiness. Mr. Sidgwick's objection contains, however, a
partial truth; for guidance in the pursuit of happiness through the mere
balancing of pleasures and pains is, if partially practicable throughout
a certain range of conduct, futile throughout a much wider range. "It is
quite consistent to assert that happiness is the ultimate aim of action,
and at the same time to deny that it can be reached by making it the
immediate aim. I go with Mr. Sidgwick as far as the conclusion that 'we
must at least admit the desirability of confirming or correcting the
results of such comparisons (of pleasures and pains) by any other method
upon which we may find reason to rely'; and I then go further, and say
that throughout a large part of conduct guidance by such comparisons is
to be entirely set aside and replaced by other guidance."
The fact cited by Mr. Sidgwick as the "fundamental paradox of hedonism,"
that to get the pleasures of pursuit one must "forget" them, is
explained by the fact that the pleasures of pursuit lie greatly in the
consciousness of capability in the efficient use of means, and the sense
of the admiration excited thereby in others. And so the "fundamental
paradox" disappears. Yet the truth of the pleasure derived from means as
distinguished from ends is of significance. Throughout the evolution of
conduct we find a growing complexity of adjustment of acts to ends, the
interposition of more and more complex means, each as a step to the
next, and leading to the final attainment of even remoter ends. Of
these means, each set, with its accompanying satisfaction, developed
with the function, comes at last to be regarded as proximate end, and
constitutes an obligation; and each later and higher order of means
comes to take precedence in time and authoritativeness of each earlier
and lower order of means. In this manner arises the authoritativeness of
moral requirements, as designating the latest and highest order of
means.
Such means are more determinable than the end--happiness--for any
society. What constitutes happiness is more difficult of determination
than what constitutes the means of its attainment. We may now see our
way to reconciling sundry conflicting ethical theories, which generally
embody portions of the truth, and simply require to be combined in
proper order in order to embody the whole truth. The theological theory
contains a part. If for the divine will, supposed to be supernaturally
revealed, we substitute the naturally revealed end towards which the
Power manifested throughout Evolution works; then, since evolution has
been, and is still, working towards the highest life, it follows that
conformity to those principles by which the highest life is achieved, is
furtherance of that end. The doctrine that perfection or excellence of
nature should be the purpose of pursuit, is in one sense true; for it
tacitly recognizes that ideal form of being which the highest life
implies, and to which evolution tends. There is a truth, also, in the
doctrine that virtue must be the aim; for this is another form of the
doctrine that the aim must be to fulfil the conditions to achievement of
the highest life. That the intuitions of a moral faculty should guide
our conduct is a proposition in which a truth is contained; for these
intuitions are the slowly organized results of experiences received by
the race while living in presence of these conditions. And that
happiness is the supreme end is beyond question true; for it is the
concomitant of that highest life which every theory of moral guidance
has, distinctly or vaguely, in view.
Thus, those ethical systems which make virtue, right, obligation, the
cardinal aims, are seen to be complementary to those ethical systems
which make welfare, happiness, pleasure, the cardinal aims.
Spencer follows up this argument with a chapter on the relativity of
pleasures and pains, and then proceeds with an argument against
excessive altruism as, in the end, selfish, since it is destructive to
the power for work and to individual life, diminishes the vigor of
offspring, and finally results in the survival of the less altruistic as
the fittest; this chapter is under the heading "Egoism versus Altruism."
It is followed by a chapter on Altruism versus Egoism, in which is shown
that some individual self-sacrifice, at least to offspring, is found far
down in the scale of being; that altruism is, therefore, "no less
primordial than self-preservation,"[47] and hence no less imperative;
that this altruism, at first unconscious, becomes, in higher stages of
evolution, conscious; and that if often selfish in motive, it may be
without any element of conscious self-regard, although it conduces
greatly to egoistic satisfaction. Indeed, pure egoism defeats itself,
since pleasure palls by over-indulgence, is dulled by maturity, and
almost destroyed by old age. He that can find pleasure in ministering to
that of others has, however, a source of pleasure which may serve in
place of personal pleasure. In the associated state, a certain altruism
is, and must necessarily be, an advantage to each member of the
community. Whatever conduces to the well-being of each is conducive to
the well-being of all.
Here follows a criticism of utilitarianism as one form of pure altruism,
since, according to the utilitarian doctrine, each individual is to
count for one, not more than one, and the individual share of happiness
thus becomes infinitesimal as compared with general happiness. Shall A,
who has, by labor, acquired some material happiness, take the attitude
of a disinterested spectator with regard to their use, as Mr. Mill
recommends? And will he, as such, decide on a division of these means to
happiness with B, C, and D, who have not labored to produce them? From
the conclusion that a really disinterested spectator would not decree
any such division, Spencer seems to draw the conclusion that Mr. Mill's
position is untenable. He further illustrates the untenability of
utilitarianism (as pure altruism) by the figure of a cluster of bodies
generating heat, each of which will have, as long as it generates heat
for itself, a certain amount of proper heat and a certain amount of heat
derived from the others; whereas the whole cluster will become cold as
soon as each ceases to generate heat for itself and depends on the heat
generated by the rest. Utilitarianism involves the further paradox that,
to achieve the greatest sum of happiness, each individual must be more
egoistic than altruistic. "For, speaking generally, sympathetic
pleasures must ever continue less intense than the pleasures with which
there is sympathy." And while the individual must be extremely
unegoistic in that he is willing to yield up the benefit for which he
has labored, he must, at the same time, be extremely egoistic, since he
is so selfish as willingly to let others yield up to him the benefits
they have labored for. "To assume that egoistic pleasures may be
relinquished to any extent is to fall into one of those many errors of
ethical speculation which result from ignoring the laws of biology....
To yield up normal pleasure is to yield up so much life; and there
arises the question:--to what extent may this be done?... Surrender,
carried to a certain point, is extremely mischievous, and to a further
point, fatal."[48] After beginning, however, with this assertion that to
assume that egoistic pleasure may be relinquished to any extent is to
fall, from ignorance of biology, into an error of ethical speculation,
Spencer reaches only the conclusion that, if the individual is to
continue living, he _must_ take "certain amounts" of those pleasures
which go along with the fulfilment of the bodily functions, and that
"the portion of happiness which it is possible for him to yield up for
redistribution is a limited portion." He further argues that "a
perfectly moral law must be one which becomes perfectly practicable as
human nature becomes perfect"; but that the law of utilitarianism does
not so become practicable, since opportunities for practising altruism,
which originate in imperfection in others, will diminish and finally
disappear in the ideal state. There is no addition to happiness by
redistribution, and there is the additional labor and loss of time of
such redistribution. The conclusion must be that "general happiness is
to be achieved mainly through the adequate pursuit of their own
happiness by individuals, while reciprocally, the happiness of
individuals is to be achieved in part by their pursuit of the general
happiness." The chapter on the conciliation of altruism and egoism is
occupied with the development of sympathy, as the militant spirit grows
less. The expression of emotion, as also the power of interpreting such
expression, must become greater as the impelling cause to concealment
found in lack of sympathy, disappears. When conditions require any class
of activities to be relatively great, there will arise a relatively
great pleasure accompanying that class of activities; the scope for
altruistic activities will not exceed the desire for altruistic
satisfaction. Such altruistic satisfaction, though in a transfigured
sense egoistic, will not be pursued egoistically--that is, from egoistic
motives. General altruism will resist too great altruism in the
individual, and as the occasion for self-sacrifice disappears, altruism
will take on the ultimate form of sympathy with the pleasure of others
produced by the successful activities of these. And so there will
disappear the apparently permanent opposition between egoism and
altruism.
The last two chapters of "The Data of Ethics" deal with Ethics as the
law of the ideal man in an ideal society, and treat of the attainment of
general principles in this science as in other sciences by the neglect
of conflicting factors, and the recognition of fundamental factors, in
the gradually accumulated knowledge of society. On account of the
diversity of men and societies, a code of perfect personal conduct can
never be made definite; only certain general conditions of perfection
can be pointed out. As life is now carried on, the conflict of claims is
continual; and ethical science, here necessarily empirical, can do no
more than aid in making least objectionable compromises. Absolute
Ethics, which supplies the law of perfect right-doing possible only in
an ideal state, does not greatly aid Relative Ethics, yet it aids
somewhat, as keeping before consciousness an ideal conciliation of
claims, and suggesting search for the best form of compromise possible
under the circumstances.
"Justice," which constitutes Part IV. of "The Principles of Ethics," and
to which "The Data of Ethics" belongs as Part I., was published (1891)
in advance of Parts II. and III. The argument of the book runs as
follows:--
Ethics properly involves a consideration of the conduct of animals as
well as of human beings, for the primary subject-matter of Ethics is
conduct considered as producing good and bad results to self or others,
or both, not, as most people believe, conduct as calling forth
approbation or disapprobation. And even on this latter view, Ethics
includes Animal Ethics, since we feel approbation or disapprobation with
regard to many actions of animals.
Animal Ethics includes, as its two cardinal principles, the opposed
classes of altruistic and egoistic acts. For preservation of the
species, benefits received must be, during immaturity, inversely
proportionate to merit or capacities possessed, merit being measured by
powers of self-sustentation, and after maturity, directly proportionate
to worth as measured by fitness to the conditions of existence.
Furthermore, though the species is made up of individuals, many of these
individuals may disappear and the species still be preserved, whereas
its disappearance as a whole involves absolute failure in achieving the
end, so that, where preservation of individuals conflicts with
preservation of the species, the individuals must be sacrificed.
The principle that among adults benefits must be in proportion to
merits, implies in its biological aspect survival of the fittest. Its
violation involves double harm to the species by sacrifice of the
superior to the inferior, and consequent increase of the inferior.
"Interpreted in ethical terms, it is that each individual ought to be
subject to the effects of its own nature and resulting conduct"; and
throughout sub-human life this rule holds without qualification. The
same principle is displayed in the mutual relations of the parts of
organisms, every part being nourished in proportion to its use or
function, a balancing of the relative powers of the parts being thus
effected, and the organism "fitted as a whole to its existence by having
its parts continuously proportioned to the requirements." In a parallel
manner, the species as a whole is fitted to its environment by the
greater prosperity to self and offspring that comes to those better
adapted.
But sub-human justice is extremely imperfect, alike in general and in
detail.
In general it is imperfect, in that the sustentation of multitudinous
species depends on the wholesale destruction of others; so that, in the
species serving as prey, the relations between conduct and consequence
are so habitually broken that in very few individuals are they long
maintained. It is true the destruction of the species serving as prey is
the result of their natures; "but this violent ending of the immense
majority implies that the species is one in which justice, as above
conceived, is displayed in but small measure." Sub-human justice is also
imperfect in detail, in that the relation between conduct and
consequences is, in such an immense proportion of cases, broken by
accidents,--such as scarcity of food, inclemencies of weather, invasions
by parasites, attacks of enemies,--which fall indiscriminately on the
superior and the inferior. As organization becomes higher, sub-human
justice becomes more decided; as general superiority increases, there
is less dependence on accident, and individual differences become more
important.
With the beginning of gregariousness, we find the new element of
cooeperation, passive or active, which is an advantage to the species.
This involves so much restraint of conflicting acts as will leave a
balance of advantage; else survival of the fittest will exterminate the
variety in which association begins. The experience of the evils of not
maintaining such limits to action results in an inherited tendency to
maintain them. The general consciousness of the need for maintaining
them results in punishment of their disregard. Self-subordination among
solitary animals is found only in parenthood; among gregarious animals
there is a further subjection of the individual to his kind, and where
an occasional sacrifice of life furthers the preservation of species,
sub-human justice may rightly have this second limitation.
In order of priority, the law of relation between conduct and
consequence, the principle that each individual ought to receive the
good and evil resulting from his own nature, stands first; it is the
primary law holding of all creatures. The law of the restraint, in
gregarious animals, of interfering acts, is second in time and
authority, and is simply a specification of the form which the primary
law takes under conditions of gregarious life, since, in asserting
restriction of the interactions of conduct and consequence, it tacitly
reasserts that these interactions must be maintained in other
individuals, that is, in all individuals. The third law, of the
occasional sacrifice of individuals to their kind, is later and narrower
in application, and a qualification of the first law. The first law is
absolute for animals in general; the second is absolute for gregarious
animals; but the third "is relative to the existence of enemies of such
kinds that, in contending with them, the species gains more than it
loses by the sacrifice of a few members; and in the absence of such
enemies this qualification imposed by the third law disappears."
As human life is a development of sub-human life, so human justice is a
development of sub-human justice. According to pure justice, the
individual should suffer the consequences of his acts, and that such is
the general opinion is implied in such common expressions as: "He has no
one to blame but himself"; "He has made his own bed, and now he must lie
on it"; "He has got no more than he deserved"; or, "He has fairly earned
his reward."
The truth that, with higher organization, danger from accident becomes
less, longevity is greater, and so differences count for more, showing
their effects for longer periods, and justice therefore becomes greater,
applies also to human beings. The rate of mortality decreases with man,
and according to his civilization.
More clearly in the case of human beings than in that of other animals
is it shown that gregariousness establishes itself because it profits
the variety. Where a variety live on wild food, they associate only in
small groups; game and fruit, widely distributed, can support these
only. "But greater gregariousness arises where agriculture makes
possible the support of a large number on a small area; and where the
accompanying development of industries introduces many and various
cooeperations." The advantages of cooeperation can be had only by
conformity to the conditions which association imposes--by such
limitation of the pursuits of individuals as to leave a surplus of
advantage to associated life. "This truth is illustrated by the
unprosperous or decaying state of communities in which the trespasses of
individuals on one another are so numerous and great as generally to
prevent them from severally receiving the normal results of their
labors." Mutual restraint being more imperative with human beings than
with animals, there is with them a still more marked habit of
punishment.
"Through all which sets of facts is manifested the truth, recognized
practically if not theoretically, that each individual, carrying on the
actions which subserve his life, and not prevented from receiving their
normal results, good and bad, shall carry on these actions under such
restraints as are imposed by the carrying on of kindred actions by other
individuals, who have similarly to receive such normal results, good and
bad. And vaguely, if not definitely, this is seen to constitute what is
called justice."
In the highest gregarious creature, the necessity which we found, of an
occasional sacrifice of the individual in defence of species, assumes
large proportions, the defence being not only against enemies of other
kinds, but also against enemies of the same kind. This obligation is
less than that of care for offspring, or mutual restraint. It exists
only as necessary to protect the society against destruction, hence only
for defensive, not for offensive, war. It may be objected that war
peoples the earth with the stronger, but this is not necessarily so,
since the conquered may merely be fewer in number. And further, it is
only during the earlier stages of human progress that the development of
strength, courage, and cunning are of chief importance. But for an
accident, Persia would have conquered Greece; and Tartar hordes once
very nearly overwhelmed European civilization. The races best fitted for
social life do not necessarily conquer, and there are injurious moral
reactions on both conquering and conquered. Only defensive war retains a
quasi-ethical justification. It belongs, however, to a transitional
state, and is not justified by Absolute Ethics.
As the organs of inferior animals are moulded into fitness for the
requirements of life, so, simultaneously, through nervous modifications,
their sensations, instincts, emotions, and intellectual aptitudes are
also moulded to these requirements,--in the gregarious animals to the
conditions of gregarious life. Many evolutionists appear to regard the
variability of man as ceasing with civilized life, but the whole analogy
of nature is against such a theory; we must assume that man, like other
animals, is moulded to suit his requirements, and that moral changes are
among those thus wrought out. Aggressive actions often entail suffering
on the individuals of a group performing them, as well as on the group
as a whole, and on the other hand, harmonious cooeperation in a group
profits the average of its members; so that there is a tendency to
survival of groups having such adaptation of nature. And just as a love
of property, formerly gratified by possession of food and shelter, came
later to be extended to the weapons for obtaining these, and, later,
even to the raw materials, the pleasure in ownership becoming more and
more abstract and remote from material satisfaction, so the natural
impatience of animal nature at restraint of its powers becomes in man a
sentiment of egoistic justice, for justice requires the free play of all
forces in order that the results of character may fall upon the
individual. It is more difficult to understand how the altruistic
sentiment of justice comes into being. On one hand, its implication is
that it can be developed only by adaptation to social life; on the
other, it appears that social life is impossible without the maintenance
of those equitable relations which imply a sentiment of justice. These
requirements are fulfilled by a pro-altruistic sentiment of justice,
which takes its place. The first deterrent from aggression, among
animals, is fear of retaliation; a further restraint, with man, is fear
of reprobation or social disgrace. To these are to be added the feelings
arising under political and religious authority--the dread of legal
punishment and the dread of divine vengeance; and these four kinds of
feelings cooeperate, forming a body of feeling, which checks the
primitive tendency to pursue the objects of desire without regard to the
interests of fellow-men, and though containing nothing of the altruistic
sentiment of justice, makes social cooeperation possible. Creatures which
become gregarious, tend to become sympathetic in degrees proportionate
to their intelligence--by sympathy being meant the arousing of kindred
feeling by the witness of a display of feeling in others, sympathy being
fostered by common enjoyments and sufferings. The altruistic sentiment
of justice is slow in assuming a high form, "partly because its primary
component does not become highly developed until a late phase of
progress, partly because it is relatively complex, and partly because it
implies a stretch of imagination not possible for low intelligences."
As, until pain has been felt, there cannot be sympathy with pain, so the
altruistic sentiment of justice cannot be developed until the egoistic
sentiment has arisen; moreover, the sentiment of justice is concerned,
not only with concrete pains and pleasures, but also with their
conditions, and hence this sentiment demands a development of the power
of mental representation.
There is a close connection between the sentiment of justice and the
social type. Predominant militancy affords no scope for the egoistic
sentiment of justice, and at the same time sympathy is perpetually
seared by militant activities. On the other hand, as fast as voluntary
cooeperation, which characterizes the industrial type of society, becomes
more general than compulsory cooeperation, which characterizes the
militant type of society, individual activities become less restrained,
and the sentiment which rejoices in the scope for them is encouraged;
while simultaneously, the occasions for repressing the sympathies become
less frequent.
The idea of justice is different from the mere sentiment of justice; the
former gradually arising from the latter, in the course of generations,
by experience of the limits to which action can be carried without
causing resentment from others. But since the kinds of activity are many
and become increasingly various with the development of social life, it
is a long time before the general nature of the limit common to all
cases can be conceived. A further reason for the slowness of development
is, that the arising ideas of justice have been perpetually confused by
the conflicting requirements of internal amity and external enmity.
Two elements, a positive and a negative, constitute the idea of
justice--that of man's recognition of his claims to unimpeded activities
and the results they bring, and that of the limits which the presence of
other men necessitate. The primordial ideal suggested is inequality, for
since the principal is that each should receive the results due to his
own nature, then, since men differ in their powers, unequal benefits are
implied. But mutual limitations suggest a contrary idea, experience
showing that the bounds to which one may pursue his own ends are, on the
average, the same for all, so that the idea of equality arises.
Unbalanced appreciations of these two factors in human justice lead to
divergent moral and social theories.
Among the rudest men the appreciations are no higher than among inferior
gregarious animals. Where war has developed political organization the
idea of inequality predominates, but the idea is one, not of natural,
but of artificial apportionment. And in general, we find that the
primary or brute factor in justice is but little qualified by the human
factor.
All movements are rhythmical, social movements included, and after the
idea of justice in which inequality predominates comes a conception in
which the idea of equality unduly predominates--as in Bentham's ethical
theory, where "one person's happiness, supposed equal in degree (with
proper allowance made for kind), is accounted for exactly as much as
another's"; and this is the theory which Communism would reduce to
practice. It is an absolute denial of the principle of inequality, and
must apply alike to the worthy and unworthy, as well as to the superior
and inferior in physical and intellectual capacities, since moral
inequalities are as much inherited as others. Here we have a deliberate
abolition of that cardinal distinction between the ethics of the family
and the ethics of the state emphasized at the outset--"an abolition
which, as we saw, must eventuate in decay and disappearance of the
species or variety in which it takes place."
The true principle shows an amalgamation of these two. "The equality
concerns the mutually limited spheres of action which must be maintained
if associated men are to cooeperate harmoniously. The inequality concerns
the results which each may achieve by carrying on his actions within the
implied limits. No incongruity exists when the ideas of equality and
inequality are applied, the one to the bounds and the other to the
benefits. Contrariwise, the two may be, and must be, simultaneously
asserted."
"Any considerable acceptance of so definite an idea of justice is not to
be expected. It is an idea appropriate to an ultimate state, and can be
but partially entertained during transitional states; for the prevailing
ideas must, on the average, be congruous with existing institutions and
activities." During the thirty, or rather forty years' peace, and
weakening of militant organization, the idea of justice became clearer;
but since then the idea of regimentation has spread. It is predominant
in the conception of socialism with its army of workers with appointed
tasks and apportioned shares of products, and every act of Parliament
which takes money from the individual for public purposes shows a
tendency in the same direction. In the countries where militancy is most
pronounced, socialism is most highly developed. "Sympathy, which, a
generation ago, was taking the shape of justice, is relapsing into
generosity; and the generosity is exercised by inflicting injustice.
Daily legislation betrays little anxiety that each shall have that which
belongs to him, but great anxiety that he shall have that which belongs
to somebody else."
The formula of justice may be expressed thus: "Every man is free to do
that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any
other man."
This is not to be interpreted as meaning that aggression is permissible
as long as retaliation is permitted; for the formula means that
interference with another's life is limited, that life shall not be
impeded in one case further than is necessary to the maintenance of
other lives; it does not countenance a superfluous interference on the
ground that an equal interference may balance it. In earlier stages, the
conception of justice was this erroneous one of a balancing of
injuries--an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. By oscillations
which become gradually less, social equilibrium is approached; and with
this approach to equilibrium comes approach to a definite theory of
equilibrium.
In the reigning school of politics and morals, scorn is expressed for
every doctrine which implies restraint of immediate expediency, or what
appears to be such;--contempt for generalizations and abstract
principles, with unlimited faith in political machinery. Strangely
enough, we find this approval of political empiricism and disbelief in
any other guidance, in the world of science also. The accepted
scientific fact that causation holds of the actions of incorporated men
as of other parts of nature, remains a dead letter; there is no attempt
to identify the causation, and ridicule is visited upon those who
endeavor to find a definite expression for the fundamental principle of
harmonious social order.
Peoples with whom confusion is not caused by the conflicting disciplines
of outer war and internal peace, early arrive at the principle of
equity, and accordingly some uncivilized tribes show a stronger sense of
it than is found among civilized peoples. Nevertheless, the conception
of justice has slowly evolved to some extent, and is expressed in such
formulae as, "Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you"
(too sweeping a statement of the equality of claims, since it implies no
recognition of the inequality necessary in the shares of good
respectively appropriate), or in the Kantian rule, which is an
allotropic form of the Christian rule. Jurists, too, have recognized a
natural law of equity underlying human law. To the reproach that belief
in such a law is an _a priori_ belief, it may be answered that _a
priori_ beliefs are explained by the theory of evolution, as arising
with determination of the nervous system and certain resulting
necessities of thought, and that they differ from _a posteriori_ beliefs
merely in the circumstance "that they are the products of the
experiences of innumerable successive individuals, instead of the
experiences of a single individual." If we ask for the ground of the
greatest happiness principle, we come to an _a priori_ belief also; for
whence is the postulate? If it is an induction, where and by whom has
the induction been drawn; and if it is a truth of experience derived
from careful observation, then what are the observations, and when was
there generalized that vast mass of them on which all politics and
morals should be built? "Not only are there no such experiences, no such
observations, no such inductions, but it is impossible that any should
be assigned." The like is true of Bentham's rule: "Everybody to count
for one, nobody for more than one," and also of the objection to this
rule, that happiness cannot be divided, or greatest happiness obtained,
by equal division of the means to happiness; they all lead, in the last
analysis, to an _a priori_ belief. Moreover, the rule of natural equity,
the freedom of each limited only by the like freedom of all, is not an
exclusively _a priori_ belief, but although the immediate dictum of the
human consciousness after subjection to the discipline of prolonged
social life, it is deducible from the conditions to be fulfilled,
firstly for the maintenance of life at large, and secondly for the
maintenance of social life.
Rights, properly so-called, are corollaries from the law of equal
freedom, and "so far is it from its being true, as some claim, that the
warrant for what are properly called rights is derived from law, it is,
conversely, true that law derives its warrant from them."
In the application of this theory to practical questions, Mr. Spencer's
"Justice" differs from "Social Statics," which it resembles in form and
method, in general in the greatly increased conservatism of the views
expressed. This is shown in all parts of the book, though perhaps most
clearly in those parts relating to the Rights of Women, to the Land
Question, and to the Limits of State-Duties. "Social Statics" advocated
land-nationalization; but "Justice," though still asserting the original
right of the aggregate of men forming the community to the use of the
earth, as that from which all material objects capable of being owned
are derived and so that on which the right to property is originally
dependent, denies the expediency and the justice of a present
redistribution of the land according to this principle; and this because
of the confusion of claims at the present time, the impossibility of
ascertaining whose ancestors were the robbers and whose the robbed in
the gradually arising monopoly, the wrong of making descendants
responsible for the sins of their ancestors, and leaving those now
dependent on the land without compensation for their loss, and the fact
that any claim to the land is merely a claim to it in its original
condition, not in its present state of drainage and cultivation effected
by the labor of generations. Moreover, "under the existing system of
ownership, those who manage the land experience a direct connection
between effort and benefit, while, were it under state-ownership, those
who managed it would experience no such direct connection. The vices of
officialism would inevitably entail immense evils."
The whole of the practical part of "Justice" is especially directed
against Socialism; in general, the course of history shows a less and
less interference with personal freedom, and growing benefit from this
cause. The practicality of woman suffrage and of universal man suffrage
at the present time is denied. If earlier legislation was too much for
the benefit of wealthy and ruling classes, recent extensions of the
suffrage have resulted in still more injurious class-legislation of
another sort.
In this book, Mr. Spencer seems to adhere to his theory of a "final
perfect adaptation to the conditions of social life." Not only is the
distinction between Relative and Absolute Ethics still drawn, but there
are numerous references to an "ultimate state," though certain of these
references might suggest the view that by such a state was meant only
the attainment of so great a degree of civilization as would involve the
cessation of wars.[49] Other passages, however, seem to contradict this
view. One may be especially cited; it is as follows: "This law [of the
gradual reestablishment of deranged harmony, through adaptation and
heredity], holding of human beings among others, implies that the nature
which we inherit from an uncivilized past, and which is still very
imperfectly fitted to the partially-civilized present, will, if allowed
to do so, slowly adjust itself to the requirements of a fully-civilized
future." And after some consideration of adaptation up to the present
time, the paragraph concludes: "If, in the course of these few thousand
years, the discipline of social life has done so much, it is folly to
suppose that it cannot do more--folly to suppose that it will not, in
course of time, do all that has to be done."[50] But in the abridged and
revised edition of "Social Statics" (1892), the following passage occurs
as part of a note at the end of the chapter on "The Evanescence (?
Diminution) of Evil." "The rate of progress towards any adapted form
must diminish with the approach to complete adaptation, since the force
producing it must diminish; so that other causes apart, perfect
adaptation can be reached only in infinite time."[51]
Vol. I. of "The Principles of Ethics," including Parts I., II., and
III., appeared in August, 1892. In this volume, "The Data of Ethics,"
reprinted as Part I., remains unchanged, except for one or two
unimportant sentences. To this Part I. is, however, appended a chapter
which was, according to Mr. Spencer, written for the first publication
of "The Data of Ethics," but was either put aside for some reason, or
else overlooked, probably the latter, says the author, since it contains
material which should have been embodied. The chapter is headed "The
Conciliation," and seems to correspond to the two chapters on "Trial and
Compromise" and "Conciliation" which follow the chapters on "Egoism
_versus_ Altruism," and "Altruism _versus_ Egoism"; for it begins with a
consideration of the conflict of claims shown by "the last two
chapters," the apparent impossibility of the establishment of an
equilibrium, and the consequent apparent necessity of self-sacrifice.
But this conflict between egoism and altruism is merely transitional and
is in process of gradual disappearance, in the same manner in which the
present degree of conciliation of the two has been reached,--namely, by
the growth of such a constitution in each creature as entails pleasure
in altruistic action. Even with the lower animals, the acts which are
necessary to care for ova or young are the fulfilment of an instinct
which is gratified by the act; and in the human race, conciliation
between egoism and altruism, which goes hand in hand with evolution, has
reached a high degree. In the evolution of the human race itself, from
savagery to its present condition, there has been a marked increase of
this conciliation; this is true not only in the family, but to a small
extent also with regard to the larger groups of men constituting
societies. There is decrease of cruelty, increase of justice, both in
the form of state institutions and in their methods of administration,
more active benevolence, and a public sentiment that leads large numbers
of people to find egoistic gratification in the pursuit of the general
good even to the neglect of private interests. Self-sacrifice thus
ceases to be sacrifice in the ordinary sense of the word, since it comes
to bring with it more pleasure than pain. The future must hold in store
changes analogous to those of the past, but these must go on much more
rapidly under the present comparatively peaceful organization of society
than they have during the militant life of the past. This moral
development is retarded, however, not only by the degree of militancy
yet existing, but also by the necessity for a certain degree of
bluntness of feeling, too great sensitiveness to the suffering of others
entailing, while the pressure of population is as great as at present, a
misery that would make life intolerable. It is likely that, with social
progress, human fertility will decrease as cerebral activity increases,
until a comparative balance of fertility and mortality is reached as
"human evolution approaches its limit of complete adaptation to the
social state"; and sympathy will increase in proportion, no longer
entailing on its possessor more of pain than of pleasure, but the
contrary. "Sympathy is the root of every other kind of altruism than
that which, from the beginning, originates the parental activities. It
is the root of that higher altruism which, apart from the
philoprogenitive instinct, produces desire for the happiness of others
and reluctance to inflict pain upon them. These two traits are
inevitably associated. The same mental faculty which reproduces in the
individual consciousness the feelings that are being displayed by other
beings, acts equally to reproduce those states when they are pleasurable
or when they are painful."
The general corollary from the above-described process of evolution is
that, with the increase of sympathy there arises the double result, that
by its increase it tends to decrease the causes of human misery, and in
proportion as it does this, it becomes itself the cause of further
reflected happiness received by each from others. "And the limit towards
which this evolution approaches is one under which, as the amount of
pain suffered by those around from individual imperfections and from
imperfections of social arrangement and conduct, becomes relatively
small, and simultaneously the growth of sympathy goes on with little
check, the sympathy becomes at the same time almost exclusively a source
of pleasure received from the happiness of others, and not of pains
received from their pains. And as this condition is approached, the
function of sympathy is not that of stimulating to self-sacrifice and of
entailing upon its possessor positive or negative pain, but its function
becomes that of making him a recipient of positive pleasure." Thus
altruism will overgrow egoism, becoming itself a source of egoistic
pleasure, and eventually, with the diminution of the pressure of
population, there will come a state in which egoism and altruism are so
conciliated that the one merges in the other.
Among the social animals, with the ant and the bee, for instance, who
cannot be supposed to possess a sense of duty, we see that this
identification of egoism and altruism, as necessary to social life, has
taken place to a considerable extent; and since pleasure of every kind
is the concomitant of nervous structure, we can understand the pleasure
in altruistic as well as in egoistic activities, as soon as there exists
the nervous structure answering to these activities. As certainly as
there yet exist in civilized men instincts of the chase inherited from
savage ancestors, there are growing up and will continue to grow up in
men, these other structures which will prompt to altruistic activities.
Part II. of "The Principles of Ethics" is concerned with "The
Inductions of Ethics." It opens with a chapter on the confusion of
ethical thought due to the fact that, conforming to the general law of
evolution, "the set of conceptions constituting ethics, together with
the associated sentiments, arise out of a relatively incoherent and
indefinite consciousness; and slowly acquire coherence and definiteness
at the same time that the aggregate of them differentiates from the
larger aggregate with which it originally mingled. Long remaining
undistinguished, and then but vaguely discernible as something
independent, ethics must be expected to acquire a distinct embodiment
only when mental evolution has reached a high stage." "Originally,
ethics has no existence apart from religion, which holds it in solution.
Religion itself, in its earliest form, is undistinguished from
ancestor-worship," which passes, in the second stage, into worship of
dead rulers, and is a method of propitiation, prompted by self-interest.
Among some peoples, the idea of sin is limited to offences against the
gods; and in those other cases where there are ethical commands, the
propriety of not offending God is the primary reason given for obeying
them. This last phase of thought is illustrated by the religion of the
Hebrews, among whom good and bad conduct was but little associated with
the intrinsic natures of right and wrong. The popular belief is still
that right and wrong become such by divine fiat.
The gods of primitive, warlike peoples were gods of war, and the belief
in the moral virtue and honor of war still holds large place in the
thought of the world. The ethics of enmity, thus taught at the same time
with the ethics of amity necessary to the internal life of society, gave
rise to utterly inconsistent and contradictory sentiments and ideas,
which, in considerable measure, still exist side by side, in our
churches and outside them.
But, together with these ethical conceptions, there have slowly evolved
other, utilitarian conceptions, derived from a recognition of the
natural consequences of acts. Authority has been introduced into these
conceptions as the source of the duty of action in accordance with them;
yet there has generally been also some perception of their fitness. Such
utilitarian conceptions are to be found in the later Hebrew writings,
among the Egyptians, Greeks, etc. "The divergence of expediency-ethics
from theological ethics is well illustrated in Paley, who in his
official character derived right and wrong from divine commands, and in
his unofficial character derived them from observation of consequences.
Since his day, the last of these views has spread at the expense of the
first."
A still further simultaneous origin of moral dictates is found in the
sentiments which have arisen with such habits of conformity to rules of
conduct as have been furthered by survival of the fittest. We thus have
a conflict of ethical ideas arising from the conflict of these various
sanctions; and also from the further conflict that ensues where a later
religion has been grafted on a more primitive one, as is the case
everywhere in Christendom.
Among modern writers who assert the existence of a moral sense, there is
a division between those who regard the dicta of conscience as supreme,
and those
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