Chapter XXI: Part III: closes with reference to "an approximately complete adjustment (5)

It is by the agency of no other being that, in the mutual relation of physical and mental activity, consciousness is attained; man himself comes to a feeling of himself. In the being endowed with soul, who on the one hand attains, through integration, an independence that appears as the impulse to self-preservation, on the other hand becomes conscious of this impulse to self-preservation through a centralized nervous system that raises the part-sensations to feelings of the whole, sensation divides into two chief functions, which appear as passion and thought. We are not concerned, in thought and passion, with opposites, but with an opposition which a single phenomenon develops through manifold action and reaction with the rest of the world of phenomena. The distinction is merely a convenience in finer investigations; there is, in fact, as little thought without emotion as emotion without thought. And since emotion always manifests itself as will, this highest opposition is best defined as that of thought and will. In order to understand the human being, we must analyze these two sides of consciousness.

Carneri's examination of the primary laws of thought can be only touched upon here. In the law of Identity, or, negatively speaking, the law of Consistency,[72] there comes to our consciousness a more general Species which includes a determinate species. "The adequate, clear, correct, corresponding[73] concept is consistent with itself," means, the adequate concept finds itself again in every object which it includes. The law of Identity expresses, therefore, not entire sameness, with which the cessation of all thought would be reached, but simple consistency. It affords us, thus, the means of recognizing the Untrue in that which is not what it is called, hence also the means of recognizing the True. The law of Excluded Middle contains an extension or doubling of the law of Identity, in that the identity here appears, not in the form of consistency, but in that of contradiction; as, "either--or." Not one, but two cases are supposed, only one of which can exist or be true. The disjunctive proposition which corresponds to it is not less determinate than the categorical proposition which corresponds to the law or judgment of Identity, but is rather, on the contrary, a more forcible affirmation of it. In this determinate nature lies the worth of the Excluded Middle. Du Bois Raymond's address on the Limits of Knowledge has caused much joy to conservative thinkers; but these have made much more out of it than it really means. There is either for us a transcendental, or there is not; and if not, then we are limited to the knowledge of nature. The scientific limit set to our knowledge by our hypotheses and theories is, however, merely a limit set for the purpose of rounding knowledge to a whole, not of closing it to a further advancement; but such hypotheses must be consistent with experience and founded upon it; otherwise we leave knowledge behind us and abandon the hope of it. We cannot say what, within the province of science, man will not know, except that he never will know everything.

The law of Causality is the most important law of thought, after that of Identity. Reason and result are often confused with cause and effect. The reason on account of which we do a thing is not, however, the cause by which it occurs. The cause is the complexity of all conditions which make it possible, and the reason of its performance coincides with a conscious design on our part that constitutes our purpose. Causality has nothing in common with the concept of purpose. The principal of Sufficient Reason has been made the bridge between Causality and Design. Probably human experience reached first the conception that nothing occurs without sufficient reason, and only later, by a further mental step, the conviction that everything for which the necessary conditions exist takes place. With this conviction, the concept of causality became clear; but, at the same time the bridge which connects it with the theory of design in the succession of events was destroyed, so that only a logical leap can restore us to this incomplete conception of earlier experience. Causal necessity excludes purposed necessity. That which takes place may be regarded as, in one direction, conformable to an end, but may, on the other hand, conform to no end in any direction. A succession of events conforms to purpose only in so far as it is regarded by a particular consciousness which combines it in thought with ends of its own or such as it ascribes to another consciousness. In the law of Causality, as in the law of Identity, the necessity of self-consistency and the self-consistency of Necessity reaches expression. The sufficient reason is simply the completeness of the conditions, with the existence of which the event takes place, and the absence of which the event fails to take place.

Spinoza's "Will and intellect are one and the same" is the ethical law of Identity. All thought is willed; that is, indivisible from a certain coloring which it has in virtue of its identity with the will, just as all will is connected with thought; there is, indeed, a will-less thought, which might, however, just as correctly be called "unthinking thought,"[74] just as "unthinking willing" is, in reality, will-less willing. In all mental operations, the identity of the two functions is found. A will is unthinkable without something willed--an end, given by thought. It is the fact that, in his practical life, man recognizes purpose as a necessity, which causes him to read purpose into nature.

"At the basis of identity lies a concept which throws light upon the teleological principle. This is the concept of the General. The basis of the principle of identity is a concept of species which embraces the general in contrast to the singular and particular; just as the judgment of Identity constitutes an advance to still greater Generality. The concept of the General which reaches expression in species coincides with the concept: Law of Nature. The Law is, for a particular circle of events, what the Species is for a particular circle of objects. As in the Species, the characteristics are expressed which an object must exhibit in order to belong to it, so in the Law the conditions are expressed which much exist in order that the instance included under it may take place. The relation of Identity to Causality is unmistakable. Species and Law include no mere plurality of objects and instances, for as often as the instance comes to pass the law is fulfilled, and the number belonging to a species is, in conception, limitless. Worlds like our earth may come into existence again and again; hence specimens of a certain species, eternally destroyed, may eternally renew themselves, and instances which fall under a certain law may eternally occur. Simply their conditions must exist in order that they may occur. Such cases form, therefore, a whole; and this is Totality in Little." The importance of every whole which sets itself over against the greater whole has already been noticed. The former whole constitutes the concept of Individuality which, as Undivided Unity, becomes independent. "The limitlessness which we claim for the whole is one of conception; we thus seek to make that which is incomprehensible conceivable." The concept does not need to be imagined; it may be thought. "Every one knows what he means when he opposes the whole to the part. The whole is not a larger part, but the opposite of the part, as 'all' constitutes the opposite of the many and the particular."

What we aim at, in this analysis, is a true Realism in the conception of the Purposeful. The Purposeful is that which conduces to an end, the Useful. From Individuality follows the individual nature of ends. Every man has his own ends, and in the attempt to attain his ends does not hesitate to set himself in opposition to all the rest of mankind. If he is sufficiently energetic and cunning, he may even succeed, for a time, in his endeavors, to the harm of humanity. Yet to have the whole of humanity against oneself is to endeavor to proceed in the direction of greater resistance, and the process must, sooner or later, result in the triumph of the stronger power. In the struggle for existence, in its larger as well as its smaller manifestations, the individual seeks, with all his power, to satisfy the impulse to happiness which arises with conscious existence; while the species, as the complex of all energies developed by its parts, has an impulse to self-preservation of its own, which, by its action as type, has originated and preserved for centuries the conception of changeless kind.

"Here is the beginning of the dawn, whose sun, however, in order to become visible and impart warmth, must rise still higher. The certainty afforded in the law of Identity in positive form, in the law of Contradiction in negative form, in the law of Excluded Middle in the form of an opposition, and in the law of Sufficient Reason in conditional form, is based upon Causality, Community of Species, or Totality. For this reason, deduction and induction are only then to be relied upon when the first form of reasoning has for its middle proposition one that expresses causality, community of species, or totality, and the latter form of reasoning takes these for its point of departure. The analysis of Deduction is of worth as clarifying and confirming thought, and thus extending its field as often as the syntheses of Induction stand the proof of the process of clarification. The supernaturalism of Dualism leads to a dead, the natural character of Monism to a living, dialectic,--to the dialectic of Becoming. The concept assumes a concrete form, and, as higher and higher rising sun, enables us to conceive what it will be to us as Idea. The understanding knows nothing of ideas; their realm is that of the reason; yet since the reason is but a higher development of the understanding, the commencement of this dawn must be perceptible in it. Moreover, the division which we make between the two originates in our genetic treatment of the subject, which seeks to explain the concept by showing the course of its development. Yet the distinction is no empty abstraction which may not claim life and form to a certain extent. The human being is always the whole human being; but he is not always uniformly developed, either physically or mentally. In one individual the understanding, in another the reason, manifests itself more plainly in thought. This is also true of the race, the people, and the epoch, as of the individual. Modern development has turned more and more from the ideal to material interests; we seem to be progressing towards a reaction," but what that reaction will be, we cannot say; it may be a reaction in the worst sense. The mistakes of the understanding cannot be predicted. With the point of culmination, the extreme is reached, and in Spiritualism may be found traces of a touching of extremes. Yet the influence of the understanding is to be relied on in so far as it is the clear mirror of Necessity. The understanding may err, just because it is conscious; but experience always corrects these mistakes. Nature, as gifted with mind, is no new nature; the laws of thought are the natural laws of the mind. In their mirror the will sees the accomplishment of the first mental development, and learns to comprehend this, on higher mental planes, as Common Weal.

The opposition of the individual to the rest of the world which arises with self-consciousness and individuality is greater, the greater the individuality. To the struggle for existence is added the struggle for happiness, which, separating into numberless desires that gain in attractiveness with every obstacle opposed to their satisfaction, is the origin of all the passions,--of greed, jealousy, envy, hatred, etc. Through passion, which is the exaggeration of activities that, in a normal form, are good, man is led into a struggle for false happiness, just as the concepts under which his passions arise are false. The individual against the world cannot attain happiness for himself. The greatest good, peace of soul, freedom from passion, is attained only through knowledge, by which the concepts of the individual are corrected; it is attained, not as dead incapability of emotion, but only as clear enjoyment of life after past storm. Labor and education are the path to true happiness and, through true happiness, to virtue. The passions are not separate existences; the whole man is the passion of his heart; the whole man feels, just as the whole man thinks. But just for this reason, because of the identity of will and understanding, the correction of the concept is the correction of will. This is not saying that will and understanding are never in opposition to each other; the apparent opposition is, however, merely a hesitation of the will, which does not know what it really will. It is true that one passion can be conquered only by another; we cannot will an emotion that leads to a certain course of action; but we can fix our attention on the objects which produce it, and by thus reaching a clear recognition of their actual and necessary relations, affect our own action. It is true that man does as he wills; but he wills necessarily as he does. According to the doctrine of freedom, it must be exactly those who act without knowing wherefore they act, and who are thus driven by blind impulse, who are the most fully self-determined. A real freedom and conquest of necessity can, on the contrary, be attained only by obedience. Just as, in the animal, the summation of impulses and desires reaches a focus in feeling, so in man, in proportion to his development, the summation is in consciousness, the focus of which is the point of concentration of the will's activity. Spinoza's "Will and understanding are one" means: the activity of the will is the realization of the activity of thought. Every one, the more self-sacrificing, as the less self-sacrificing man, does that which is to him the pleasantest; egoism turns the scale in both cases; only in the one case the egoism has a basis of broader love. And since we act according to our conception of things, the question of our responsibility is the question of our full possession of consciousness. The necessity of nature must take away our desert, as far as a future life and its reward are concerned; but from the standpoint of a being who desires happiness and attains to it through evolution, necessity gains a new aspect. Natural Selection is Natural Necessity.

Yet not in the understanding, as such, but in the reason, is the reconciliation of the same with will. Reason in the narrower sense is a higher development of the understanding, constitutes its completion and perfection, and presupposes a high degree of culture; though in a wider sense, as the half-unconscious modification of the impulses by adjustment to the needs of the species, it develops early in man. By it alone man becomes man in the full sense of the word. The activity of the mere understanding is an analytical, that of the reason a synthetical one, the return of cold consciousness to warm feeling, of abstract mind to concrete nature. Truth lies, for the reason, in Totality; hence, to it, the General alone is comprehensible. It has to do, not with abstract concepts, to which nothing in the realms of the mental or physical corresponds, but with concepts of species, concrete concepts, which we call, in distinction from abstract concepts, ideas. By ideas is not meant existences in the Platonic sense, but the Typical in species.

The impulse to happiness which arises with consciousness as thought and will, calls itself "I." It is the individual who, with every nerve-cell and every drop of blood, attempts his own realization. But all individuals are alike in this, that they reach, at last, a point where they recognize the fact that their ego is but a miserable half which needs a Thou to its completion. In the union of the Thou and the I, the first I becomes a complete and perfect I. Man and woman both realize that only together do they represent the whole human being. I and Thou together constitute a We. The ego remains after, as before the union, the axis upon which the whole world turns. But the egoism of mere understanding is, by a broader thought, elevated to the altruism of reason. As the highest union of thought and will, the reason becomes Idea in and for itself, actual, absolute Idea. With the We was born the Saviour who should reconcile the sharply opposed factors of awaking consciousness. The light of his gospel spread in wider and wider circles; man and woman no longer beheld, each, merely his own happiness in the other; they saw their mutual happiness in their children, and their own and their children's happiness in friends, and their own and their children's and their friends' happiness in their fellow-men. The I of the reason is the self-conscious We.

The struggle for happiness has brought forth, out of the privileges and endeavors of individuals, civilization in its present form. Want and the necessity for labor have been the spur to endeavor and advance. Through the concepts of ends and of intention, the self-conscious will further evolved ideas, which themselves undergo a struggle in the activities to which they give rise; and this is no longer the struggle for existence, but the struggle for civilization.

There are three Ideas which, arising out of the extension of the I to Thou and We, are the spring of all ethical conceptions; these are Love, Humanity, and Public Spirit.[75] Love is the passion of passions and is the spring of all capacity to altruistic emotion. Love is life in its highest degree;[76] and by the manner in which a human being loves one may know what manner of man he is, and what will be the nature of his feelings towards his fellow-men in other relations of life. A man's conduct towards women is the surest test of his character. That which Spencer calls Integration, that which has created all nature, from the first germ to the perfect human being, and, as preservative cell-labor, still continues to create,--this infinite Something comes to consciousness in the human being, as Love. On the lowest plane it can appear only as simple impulse; but what, developing from stage to stage, it can accomplish, the history of Love shows us.

To these three ideas of Love, Humanity (or Benevolence), and Public Spirit correspond three outward phenomena, which bear such relation to them in the development of morality as the body bears to the soul. These are: the Family, the State-form, and the Representatives of Great Ideas. These latter, the men who have been pioneers of civilization, we do not need to pity or regard as victims, though life was to them a mighty struggle and a restless labor; in their suffering was their pleasure; and that which impelled them and compelled them to attain their end was the impulse to happiness. Therein lies the wonderful secret of the clarified impulse to happiness, that it finds its highest satisfaction in itself. Such representatives of great ideas are those in whom the species overcomes the individual, and out of the species "man" the species-man is developed. That which they express is the True, if only the True for, and in, mankind. In this lies their worth; as worth in Science also, and in the Beautiful, lies in the truth of the Idea that is therein expressed. The True becomes practical in the Good.

The reason is thus the first condition of happiness, and freedom of the will lies in the ethical ennoblement of reason, which is nothing more nor less than obedience, as the total result of all natural causes; by it the individual is lost in the species as a whole. This ethical height does not consist in impulse, but in the self-conscious activity of will. Its mental expression is an Ethical Sense, in distinction from the Moral Sense of the Intuitionists. Through it man is at one with himself as with his kind.

The Ethical Sense is not the common property of the species. Just as it has, however, reached expression in a few, so it is more and more realized in the many by the process of evolution, through which a common will, purpose, and good are necessarily finally evolved from all striving of individual wills after happiness. Ethical ideas arise as the result of experience, and in them man gradually attains reason.

For the Reason to which Love, Public Spirit, and Humanity are the natural element, the General (Common) as truth, is no empty conception, but a promise whose fulfilment is the Good and the Beautiful. The faithfulness of this Reason never swerves, since it depends on no fear, but springs from the clearest conviction, and therefore is one with the love which it feels and inspires. Its friendship is as strong as it is unselfish, for it does not call anything "friendship" that is based on other relations than those of mind. Its generosity is always strength, its mercy never weakness. As far as its power reaches, so far and no farther do its remorse and pity extend; for all passions which reduce or dim the activity of the soul are unreasonable. The way to the attainment of the ethical spirit is pleasure, which guides, though it often misguides us; fortunately, on the wrong paths we sooner or later meet with pain, while on the right path we are ever accompanied by pleasure as "transition from less to greater perfection," to quote Spinoza. The feeling of Responsibility consists in the soul's recognition of all its action and omission of action as its own, and in the courage to endure the consequences of these.

The ethical Ideal, which the ethical imagination as "scientific" conceives, is the truly happy man, the man fully in harmony with himself. This idea is to be regarded as a star by which we are to shape our course, not as an end to be fully attained. Through labor mankind approaches this ideal, attains knowledge from experience, and clarifies the concept of happiness. The "I" extends itself to an "I" of mankind, so that the individual, in making self his end, comes to make the whole of mankind his end. The ideal cannot be fully realized; the happiness of all cannot be attained; so that there is always choice between two evils, never choice of perfect good, and it is necessary to be content with the greatest good of the greatest number as principle of action.

This is an ideal which is actually and necessarily evolved. Benevolence has become more general, and has attained a degree not conceived of in former times. The ideal of a happy humanity has gained definite outlines, and has become an earnest aim towards which we steer with filling sails. The end is not to be reached by force, which brings in its train evil that cannot be gotten rid of for generations, but must be attained within the bounds prescribed by the state, through education and increase of intelligence. Nor can the state declare and ensure happiness; the duties of the state are chiefly negative, as Bentham has said. Each individual sacrifices a portion of his happiness in order that the rest may be secured to him by the state; the first-named part comprises his duties, the rest constitutes his rights; the office of the state is to hold each to his duties and secure to each his rights. There is no perfect state, just as there is no perfectly good individual; but there is progress in states as in individuals.

The merely Useful can never furnish a full solution of the problem of Ethics, any more than Mathematics and Mechanics or Physics and Physiology can do so. The Perfect is much more than the merely Useful. Spencer finds the condition of happiness in the exercise of function. But he regards happiness as the final end of morality, while, according to our system, the latter is the product of the former.

Carneri again pleads, in this book, for the like right of woman with man to mental culture, and to labor which shall make her independent of the caprice of man; the good of the family alone to be regarded as the limiting factor.

The extent of Carneri's work on the subject of Ethics makes it impossible to consider minor points of his theory, such as are included, for instance, in his criticism of Hartmann, of Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, and others; or to define more clearly than has been done his relation to Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, etc. His book "Entwicklung und Glueckseligkeit," published in 1886, is a collection of essays which first appeared separately in "Kosmos," and which, as such, do not hold to each other the relation of parts of an organic whole. They are chiefly a recapitulation of the views already expressed in the "Grundlegung der Ethik," with some extensions and possibly some modifications;--these last, however, chiefly of an extraneous character. In these essays Carneri demands a systematic moral training in the common school, to the end of the development of conscience, such training to be non-religious, though not anti-religious excepting in case the religion itself be seen to transgress the laws of right established by humane reason; he protests against the error of Materialism, as likewise against that of the Apriorists and the "Ideologists" or Idealists in the narrower sense of the word; and he reaffirms, defines, and further defends his standpoint as that of a "Real-idealist"; that is, of one to whom Kant is the point of departure in a farther evolution of theory. He reaffirms the oneness of the universe, so of man with nature, restates the self-identity of the individual in will and thought, limits the knowledge of man to nature as it is for us, but invests it with certainty within these bounds, and reasserts the necessity of the progress of the whole through the efforts of the many for happiness. He lays further stress upon the absence of morality, not only among the animals, in whom at least general ethical feelings, in distinction from those towards individuals, are not found, but also among savages; morality being not the incentive to, but the product of the state. From this standpoint, he combats Socialism as proposing impossible ideals, since it presupposes ethically perfect men as governing and being governed by the laws, and since it disposes of the freedom of the individual. The theory of compulsion reckons without the will of man as he is and must be. Man has no primordial rights (except, perhaps, the right to get and keep all he can); he has only rights that he has gained by the help of the state. There is no one commandment in which man's whole duty may be expressed, unless it be, perhaps, some such new rendering of Kant's words as this: Act always in such a manner that the maxims of thy will might be taken as the principle by which to render happy the greatest possible number of human beings. But this can never become a categorical imperative for all men. Morality lies in the Will to Good, which becomes in the moral, or according to Carneri's phrase, the ethical man, a second nature: his sense of duty is joy in duty, highest satisfaction of his desire for happiness. It might perhaps be claimed that Carneri, in his theory of the Conscience, has in this book laid more stress on feeling than in his others; however, it is to be recollected that, with him, thought and feeling are no distinct faculties, but that conscience means less an impulse unconscious of final ends than a self-conscious attitude or readiness of the will as the result of conviction.

Carneri's latest book, "Die Lebensfuehrung des modernen Menschen" (1891), is practical rather than theoretical, a consideration of general problems and rules of action.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] Wirklich.

[66] Stofflichkeit; by this word Carneri designates "das Gemeinsame aller Gegenstaendlichkeit."

[67] An sich autonom, unterwirft sich das Leben den Cesetzen, die aus der allgemeinen Entwicklung sich ergeben.

[68] Daseinstrieb.

[69] Pp. 112, 113.

[70] Dunkle Triebe.

[71] Affecte.

[72] Widerspruchslosigkeit.

[73] Entsprechend.

[74] Gedankenloses Denken.

[75] Gemeinsinn oder Gemeingeist, pp. 340, 410. Carneri explains this word as equivalent to the English "common-sense," but defines the latter as feeling for the general, the universal.

[76] Potenz.

HARALD HOeFFDING

"ETHICS" ("Ethik," 1887)

Ethical judgments contain an estimate of the worth of human actions. Every such estimate presupposes the existence of a need, a feeling which spurs us on to the judgment of the action, as also the existence of a standard, an ideal, according to which we judge. The motive to the ethical judgment may be called the basis of Ethics. The standard involved in the ethical judgment determines the content of Ethics, in that it decides which actions, which directions and modes of life, are to be called good in the ethical sense. The ethical basis is the subjective, the standard the objective, principle in Ethics; the character of an ethical conception depends upon this presupposed basis, the applied standard, and the relation between the two.

The feelings and impulses of the individual are not only influenced by his own experience, but bear also a character derived from the experience of the whole species; hence the ethical judgments delivered by the individual are the result of the whole experience of his kind. It is by virtue of this circumstance that the ethical system of the individual gains its power; as ethics of the species, it is a condition of the health and vitality of human life.

This actual working Ethics of the species and of life has been named Positive Morality. Such Positive Morality manifests itself in the every-day judgments and principles of men, often in the form of proverbs, and may express either the enduring worldly wisdom of a nation, a tribe, or a religious society, or the less enduring "public opinion" of a century or an epoch.

Is it well to treat such Positive Morality to a criticism, which, arousing, as it must, doubts and questions, will interfere with the certainty and energy of action that characterize unreflecting instinct? Is it well to examine the principles of such a system from a scientific standpoint? We may answer: Life itself leads naturally to such questionings; only where the view is narrow and the problems simple is there full security from doubt. With the growth of experience begins a comparison of the different laws and ideals, the differing institutions of different epochs and peoples of which one learns; or new experience presents problems which cannot be solved by means of the system handed down; or the individual seeks some orderly arrangement of the great multiplicity of ethical judgments which he himself pronounces or hears others pronounce, for the purpose of distinguishing between the more and the less important ones. It is certainly a serious point in an individual's or a nation's development when reflection and criticism begin; but where life leads naturally to such questionings, we must either find some answer to them or else some reason why they shall not be answered. Moreover, it is to be noticed that certainty and force of action are not absolute Goods. The greatest energy may take a most disastrous direction, and must then be checked. To a new and better insight, when attained, one must endeavor to secure all the energy possible. All evolution consists in the diversion of energy from lower to higher ends.

A scientific system of Ethics does not, and cannot, take the place of Positive Morality; it only supplies the latter with a basis of reason, broadens, and develops it. Such a scientific system only endeavors to discover in accordance with what principles we direct our life, and to secure for these, when ascertained, greater clearness and inner harmony. In the mental life of the human being, a continuous action and reaction of the conscious and the unconscious takes place, as well as of perception, feeling, and will. What is won in the one province may profit the others also.

Two tasks of Scientific Ethics, as Historical Ethics and as Philosophical Ethics, are to be distinguished. Historical Ethics has to do with the description and explanation of the development of Positive Morality. Philosophical Ethics has to decide upon the worth of the various forms assumed by the latter. Philosophical Ethics is a practical science, and is based upon the supposition that we set ourselves ends which may be reached through human action. Every ethical judgment presupposes such an end, for feeling is set in motion by the sight or the thought of an act only when the latter promotes, or stands in the way of something, the existence and success of which are desired by us. Not all that is developed as practical morality can be pronounced good. On the other hand, customs which were at first assumed from motives which must be condemned by Philosophical Ethics, may yet prove themselves good, and may be practised, later, from higher motives; and such customs cannot then be condemned on account of their origin. Hence, Philosophical Ethics is both conservative and radical; it respects nothing simply because it exists; but since it endeavors to furnish guidance beyond present standards, it attempts to show how that which has been developed historically may be given new forms and thus used for further progress. It is difficult, from a broader view, to distinguish perfectly between Historical and Philosophical Ethics; the historian has an ideal which he applies more or less in his researches; and the philosopher in Ethics is more or less ruled by the prevailing opinions of his time. This necessitates a continual re-discussion of problems. Yet it does not prevent the existence, in any system, of lasting principles among the less enduring ones.

Theological Ethics is directly opposed to Historical Ethics as well as to Philosophical Ethics. It builds upon tradition, upon truth as something historically revealed. So far, it might appear as if Theological Ethics were related to Historical Ethics. But the system of the former does not recognize the method of scientific research, since the revelation on which it is based is due, according to its doctrine, to an interposition of supernatural forces not to be explained by the physical, psychological, and social laws that serve as the foundation of historical science. It demands a unique position for its historical basis, and asserts that this must be looked at in an entirely different light from that in which the rest of the history of the world is regarded. It appears to approach Philosophical Ethics in instituting an examination of the worth of historic acts and modes of life. But it undertakes this examination, not according to any principle that can be found in nature, but from the point of view of a supernatural revelation of an ideal. Its foundation is an absolute principle of Authority; its good is that which is God's will. But how is the individual to be sure as to what, in the single case, is God's will? By the inward testimony? How is he to distinguish certainly between such and his own natural thoughts and feelings; what means of distinction can be applied? In passing thus to the province of Psychology, we assume a human means of distinction, and the principle of Authority loses its force. Or if it be said that we should receive this principle of Authority because it answers to a need of our nature, we may ask how we know that the need is one that should be satisfied? Its mere existence cannot guarantee that. Or how, then, are we to distinguish which of other wishes and needs of our nature should, and which should not, be gratified? Is the principle of Authority to decide this? Then we argue in a circle.

A similar circle is adopted by such theologians as attempt to combine the two assertions: "The good is good because God wills it"; and "God wills it because it is good." If the good is identical with God's will, this means that he wills it because it is his will; if he, however, first recognizes something as good, and therefore wills it, then his will bows to a law and rule, and is not, in itself, the cause whereby the Good is good.

Have we not, as a fact, already broken with the absolute principle of Authority as soon as we begin to reflect, to endeavor to bring the various commandments of Authority into harmony with each other, thus applying the measure of our own reason to them?

But it is not these inner contradictions alone which hinder Philosophical Ethics from making use of theological assumptions; that which has called Philosophical Ethics into existence and lends it interest, is the conviction that the ultimate reason of the ethical must lie in man himself. However lofty may be the ideal, it can become man's ideal only through his own recognition of it as ideal. For this reason Socrates was the founder of Ethics by the command: "Know thyself!" In this command is expressed the principle of free investigation, the opposite to that of blind obedience. The desire to make Ethics as far as possible independent of assailable assumptions is likewise active in the establishment of a system of Philosophical Ethics.

In the great, sometimes too great, regard paid to the distinction between the subjective and the objective worth of actions, and the contest as to the relative importance of the two factors, the fact is often overlooked, that the standard by which ethical judgment is pronounced is itself of subjective nature. The question arises as to wherefore we seek a general and objective standard.

It is a fact that human beings reflect upon their own acts, pronouncing them, according to the result of this reflection, good or bad. How are such judgments as these possible?

We will suppose, first, the simplest conceivable case, namely, that the acting subject pronounces judgment on his own act without consideration of the existence of other beings. Such a judgment must presuppose memory; but it presupposes something more, namely pain or pleasure through memory; an end is aimed at only because the thought of a result causes pleasure. In the simple case supposed, the feeling which determines the end can be only that of the individual himself, and the latter will judge the act as good or bad according as it has affected his own life. The character and significance of the judgment will depend on whether the feeling of pain or pleasure is determined only by the single moment or has reference to the life of the individual as a whole. The lower the life of consciousness, the more isolated and independent are the single moments of time in relation to each other, and the less is the significance of the memory and the thought of the ego as a whole embracing the single moments with their content. Only a half-unconscious instinct hinders the individual from losing himself in the moment; the instinct of self-preservation leads him to consider the future and to make use of the experience of the past. The more he loses himself in the moment, the less is the power of judgment, since comparison and action and reaction of the different states cannot take place. The single moment bears to all others the relation of an absolute egoist, who does not wish to relinquish any part of its satisfaction for their advantage.

And here we may perceive the possibility of a standpoint upon which all judgment is dispensed with. Such a standpoint is represented by Aristippus of Cyrene, who asserts the sovereignty of the moment. It is not without its justification. Ethics itself must show cause for the relinquishment of the satisfaction of the moment in favor of other moments.

If the principle of the sovereignty of the moment could be practically carried out, no reasoning could overthrow it. However, there can scarcely be a conscious individual in whom there are not instincts and impulses which reach beyond the moment. When a momentary state of feeling, as the effect of an act of the subject, comes together in consciousness with the feeling determined by the conception of the life as totality (the result of memory and comparison), a new feeling arises which is either one of harmony or one of discord. The standard by which judgment is pronounced is determined by this feeling. The capacity for such feelings is conscience, as this may manifest itself in entirely isolated individuals. Conscience, in the broadest sense of the word, is a feeling of relations, and requires only a relation between central and peripheral feelings,--feelings of wider, and feelings of narrower thought-connection. The single moment and the single act are judged according to their worth as parts of the individual life as totality.

And here the individual is confronted by the necessity of bringing the single parts of his life into harmony. The problem is certainly never solved by any individual involuntarily. The estimation of earlier acts according to the assistance they give in this task is, therefore, at this point, of great importance to the individual. The judgment pronounced is thus not only made possible through the central feeling which corresponds to the life as totality, but is determined by it. An acute sense for that which benefits the individual life whose single members are the moments, is a condition of the continuance and development of the life; it is a higher sort of instinct of self-preservation, and need not be confined to the continuance of physical life, but may also refer to the ideal needs.

And here we come upon the standpoint of Individualistic Ethics. From such a standpoint, the problem is to determine, not only how much energy may be used in the single moments of time, but also in what manner it should be used in order to secure as great variety and many-sidedness as may be consistent with the interests of the life as totality. Nor are the interests of the life to be summed up in physical self-preservation; the individual acquires, in the natural course of things, interests of increased ideality and complexity, through which the life gains in content.

The ethical law, from the standpoint of Individualism, is expressed by a formula which requires harmonious relation between the interest of the life as totality and the impulse of the moment; it consists of two chief mandates: (1) The single instant should have no greater independence than corresponds to its significance in the life as totality; (2) but, on the other hand, the single moments should be as richly and intensely lived as is consistent with the preservation of the life's totality.

Of Individualism, or the principle of the Sovereignty of the Individual, the same is true as of the sovereignty of the moment, that no reasoning can overthrow it; if the individual recognizes no end but his own life, there is no logical way of transition to another standpoint. A change of aim can take place only through such a change in the central feelings which determine the standard of the individual that a wider circle of conceptions enter into his reflections. Until this takes place, there is no use in appealing to conscience.

The science of Ethics has often claimed to be a science of pure reason. This claim is opposed to its character as a practical science, since action can be judged only according to the ends it had in view, and ends presuppose feelings of pain and pleasure. On the other hand, there is, in the mere capacity for pain and pleasure, no limitation of the extent of the circle of conceptions with which the feelings of pain and pleasure are connected.

Individualism can be carried out in practice only approximately; the individual has his origin in the species, and lives his whole life as a part of the life of his kind, with an organization in which the results of the action and passion of earlier generations are inherited, and in a mental atmosphere which has induced the development of his species. And just as the instinct of self-preservation did away with the isolation of the single moments of the individual life, becoming, thus, the basis of feelings determined by the interests of the life as totality, so the sympathetic instincts do away with the isolation of the single individuals and determine the conditions of the life of the species in the minds of its individuals. The most primitive form of the sympathetic instincts is exhibited in the family. Here, however loose and variable the relation of man and wife may be, that of mother and child cannot, by its nature, be done away with or essentially changed. In this case, the sympathetic feeling springs immediately from the natural instinct, and the relation is the nucleus which makes possible the higher forms of family life. In the family circle, the sympathetic feelings are cultivated, and arrive at such strength that they come to include ever wider and wider circles of human beings. Indeed, the mother-love remains forever the image and criterion of all sympathy, as well in respect to strength as to purity.

When sympathy has reached full purity, it is a feeling of pain or pleasure determined by the fact that other beings feel pain or pleasure. The most important point of its development was when it so broadened as to include all mankind. The Peripatetic and the Stoic schools of Greek philosophy led to this idea of love to all humanity and the natural union of all men in one great society. But this idea acquired greater historic importance when it became a chief commandment of a great religion,--of Christianity. To this sympathetic feeling the criterion of good and evil is no longer to be found in the individual life, but is dependent on the life of the whole society of which the individual is a member.

Yet sympathy is not, from this standpoint, identical with the ethical feeling, conscience. Conscience is here, too, a feeling of relations determined by the relation between the ruling or central feeling of the individual and the results of action. When the individual feels his own interests subordinate to the good of the whole of which, through sympathy, he regards himself as a part, the ethical feeling appears as the feeling of duty. A feeling of duty may be spoken of, likewise, from the standpoint of pure Individualism, for the concept of duty expresses only the relation of a lower, narrower consideration to a higher; and this is represented, in Individualism, by the relation of the single moments to the life as a whole.

From another point of view, the ethical feeling appears, in its higher development, as the feeling of justice, which, while regarding the good of the whole as the chief end, considers also the peculiarities of individuals. Sympathy in its active form is impulse to share. This sharing must be carried out according to fixed principles; where sympathy is universal, differences of division can be justified only by the fact that the Goods divided, if otherwise divided, would not be in so high a degree Goods to those to whom they reverted, or would not conduce to so great progress of the society as a whole. The ethical law upon this standpoint, the standpoint of Humane Ethics, can be no other as to content, than that action shall conduce to the greatest possible welfare and the greatest possible progress of the greatest possible number of conscious beings; and this law includes two chief mandates, a negative and a positive mandate: (1) The individual may not receive more than befits the position which, in consequence of his peculiar qualities, he occupies among his kind; (2) but, on the other hand, the capacities and impulses of every individual shall be as fully and richly developed and satisfied as is consistent with the demands of the life of the species as a whole. These two mandates follow with logical necessity from the concept of society as a multiplicity of conscious beings united into one whole. It is contrary to the unity of society, that an individual, or that individuals, should be wilfully preferred to others; every exceptional position must be justified by the demands of the general conditions of life; on the other hand, a society is the more perfect the more freely and more independently the single members move, and the larger the number of different possibilities it realizes, if, at the same time, unity is preserved and attains an ever higher character and ever increasing validity.

When the ethical feeling develops, upon the basis of sympathy, to the feeling of duty and justice, the principle included in the above law becomes the standard according to which the individual judges his own actions as well as those of others, and pronounces them good or bad. The good is that which preserves and develops the welfare of conscious beings.

The ethical principle now arrived at applies to the deeds of conscious beings, presupposing an end in view. Unconscious nature affects man's life, but its workings have no ethical character. The ethical judgment is itself determined by the principle on which it is pronounced, and hence it serves to produce greater welfare. This is especially to be seen where the judging and the acting individual are one and the same person; in other cases, it becomes a special problem to bring the acting individual to the recognition of the principle; this is a problem of psychologic-pedagogical nature.

The word "welfare" is used in preference to utility or happiness in order to prevent misunderstanding, and may be defined as including all that serves to satisfy the needs of man's nature. Ethics must take into consideration all the gradations of life, and cannot, therefore, distinguish in the beginning between outer and inner, higher and lower, welfare. Such a distinction is already an ethical judgment, and can be made only after determination of the ethical criterion. Another mistake is the stress often laid upon momentary feelings of pain and pleasure. Pain signifies, it is true, the beginning of the disintegration of life, and pleasure its normal and harmonious development; yet each must be considered in its relation to the whole consciousness, the whole character, and the whole social state. So-called utilitarianism has injured its own cause by resolving consciousness into a sum of feelings, and society into a collection of individuals. The significance of single feelings of pain and pleasure for the welfare of society cannot be determined as if the problem were a simple arithmetical one.

The reasoning of Philosophical Ethics must not be confused with practical reflection. In the last we are led by instincts and impulses, by motives of which we are, for the most part, wholly unconscious, by thoughts and feelings the first origin of which we cannot designate. We follow the "positive morality" to which we have accustomed ourselves and which is, in part, an inheritance of our species. Ethics as an art precedes Ethics as a science; the aim of the latter is partly to show by what principles the former is guided, and partly to correct these principles.

The ethical principle broadens out, thus, from the single moment of the individual life until it embraces the whole of mankind; but there are many points in the course of the development at which we can make a stand, and there may, therefore, be as many philosophical systems as there are larger or smaller totalities. The position of the man who holds fast consistently to a principle that determines the criterion by the family, the caste, the nation, a sect, as highest totality, is as unassailable as we have seen that of the individualist to be. The psychologic-historical evolution alone can bring us, through the changes which it produces in the feelings, beyond these criterions. In other words, every criterion has a psychologic-historical basis. He who is to recognize and carry out practically the principle of the greatest possible welfare, must be no egoist or individualist, no fanatical patriot or sectarian; this is the subjective condition necessary to the objective principle. The conscience which is to be regulated by the objective principle is always itself the condition of the recognition of this principle. A system which leaves this fact out of consideration takes on a dogmatic character. The basis of all ethical judgments is feeling. By this is not meant, however, that the standpoint of an individual cannot be influenced by argument; the feelings are always connected with concepts, and discussion of these concepts is both possible and must react upon them even if only very gradually.

Conscience is not infallible in its application of the objective principle; a wider experience may show it to have erred. Conscience is highest authority, but still an authority which may continually perfect itself. The objective principle makes possible the mutual correction of different consciences and the self-correction of the conscience of the individual through self-judgment.