Chapter V: Introduction (1)

In all ages conscience has been the theme of priest, politician, philanthropist and obstructionist. So often used and so seldom analysed, beyond a bare assertion of its function, it is curious to reflect on the strange medley of uses to which this word is put.

Conscience is at once the standard and the refuge of orthodox and fanatic, patriot and anarchist--according as they are described by admirer or detractor--but, let us believe with Lecky,[4] least often of the genuine hypocrite.

Never was a nation so beset with "conscientious" men and women as England is to-day; some helping, some hindering, some having little effect on the national welfare. Some flaunt the badge obtrusively, they label themselves "conscientious objectors to military service," "conscientious objectors to vaccination," "conscientious teetotallers"; in some cases anti-vivisectionists,[5] social reformers and (formerly) suffragettes proclaim their exertions endured for "conscience' sake"; so, for the most part, do missionaries and religious functionaries, and, in fact, all and any who engage in propaganda or obstruction, "because," they say, "something higher than reason prompts our motives--'conscience'."[6] Others refer to conscience shyly as of something too sacred to be spoken of publicly, and again others only in moments of intense earnestness--or alcoholic remorse.

A conscience, in fact, is an invaluable asset; where it does not gain approbation, it at least gains some measure of respect.

Most people, then, admit the existence and the reality of what we popularly call "conscience," and although fewer people are agreed as to its origin and nature, it is, nevertheless, accorded a high place of importance and almost universal recognition as an arbiter in the affairs of men.

So undisputed is this claim to inviolability of conscience in twentieth-century England that the State, in framing her laws, modifies their application by the interspersion of _caveats_ in the form of "conscience clauses."

The principle on which the conscience proviso is allowed to negative the universal applicability of the State's demand for service or compliance with her rules appears, however, to be somewhat arbitrary and uncertain, and can hardly be said to be devised solely in deference to any possible religious sanction, since, although a man's conscience is allowed to exempt him from vaccinating his children, the plea of religious sanction, in the case of a man professing the polygamous doctrine of Brigham Young,[7] would not exempt him from amenability to the law concerning bigamy; or, again, the conscience of a Quaker or of a Christadelphian[8] is recognized as a stronger qualification for exemption from combatant service than the equally recalcitrant consciences of, e.g. an Atheist or a Member of the Church of England. Yet the standardization of "privileged" denominational consciences is strongly disavowed! In spite, however, of a certain illogical inconsistency in practice, it is virtually conceded as a right that a man should justify any conduct by the plea of "conscience," even, in many cases, when it militates directly against the good of the State.

Even more than the State and public opinion does the Protestant Church insist upon the authority and inviolability of "conscience." Driven, step by step, from the time of the Reformation, by the encroachments of science and the progress of Rationalism, from her defence of the infallibility of Doctrine and Scripture, the Protestant Church has sought to render her position impregnable by increased insistence upon the inviolability and sanctity of revelation and conscience. Lecky, speaking of the trend of "Protestant Rationalism," says: "Its central conception is the elevation of conscience into a position of supreme authority as the religious organ, a verifying faculty discriminating between truth and error."[9]

The most recent stalwarts of the Church of England are equally insistent upon this point, thus the Rev. G. L. Richardson writes: "We shall appeal to and invigorate the conscience in proportion as we rely upon the Holy Spirit as the one source of spiritual power.... 'The fellowship of the Holy Ghost' and His grace through the Church is the master word of the twentieth century."[10] This passage well illustrates the supreme importance, with regard to her position, which the Church attaches to the appeal to conscience at the present day. In another passage the same author says, "the authority of conscience is ... paramount for the individual." Dr. J. N. Figgis in his "Churches in the Modern State" says that any doctrine which would "destroy the springs of spiritual life in the individual conscience would be disastrous to civic as well as to religious life."

Having raised the individual conscience to a pinnacle of ethical omniscience, the ecclesiastic next proceeds to bring it into line with, or rather into synchronous subordination to, the aggregate "Church Conscience." "The Church is a Divine society, her members will feel an obligation to be loyal to her discipline.... The conscience of her members will respond with approval or shame when they keep, or neglect to keep, her standards." From this the resulting "code and sentiment" is the "Church Conscience."[11]

Mr. G. K. Chesterton throws further light on this interrelationship. "The 'Church Conscience' is rather to be conceived as a fortress to which the individual may return for shelter and strength when the attacks of temptation threaten to overwhelm him. At such times it is well to feel that we are not dependent on the 'inner light' of conscience alone, but that we can throw ourselves on a social force mightier than our own, and behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a Divine company and a Divine Captain."[12]

Whilst Church and State are in agreement regarding its importance and sanctity, the same unanimity is not exhibited in dealing with the origin and character of conscience. Equally divided in this respect are the philosophers and psychologists.

Priests are fond of telling us that conscience is "the voice of God within us." To some men it appears strange that the voice of the same God should frequently induce men to oppose each other with such particular bitterness. This objection is sometimes met by the explanation that although it is the voice of God speaking through the medium of our souls, we fail to recognize or interpret rightly its significance. This explanation, again, is not altogether satisfactory, since, if that were the case, the voice of God must be so uncertain a guide it were better not to rely on it.

When we look back through the pages of History and consider the actions of men and the motives to which they ascribe them, and see what an orgy of blood, of persecutions, of burnings, of torturings, of blind passions and religious frenzy, of diabolical imaginings and monstrous eschatology has been conceived at the instigation of conscience and religion, and prescribed in the name of God, we are inclined to inquire more deeply into the meaning and credentials of this watchword of all ages.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] "Hypocrites, who from interested motives profess opinions which they do not really believe, are probably rarer than is usually supposed."--"Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe."

[5] A few years ago the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society distributed pamphlets from their headquarters in Piccadilly, beginning "Do not ask of your doctor his opinion on this matter, ask your _conscience_," etc.

[6] This distinction is commonly made between conscience and the intellectual faculty of reason; thus, when a man says, "My conscience tells me," he usually means, "No _reason_ will deter me."

[7] Mormon leader and preacher, died in 1877, leaving seventeen wives.

[8] The establishment of _bona fide_ membership of either of the above-mentioned religious societies (_inter alia_) by a "conscientious objector" was recognized by Military Service Tribunals (acting under official instructions) as sufficient cause for a verdict of exemption.

[9] "Rationalism in Europe," 1913 edition, p. 167.

[10] "Conscience, its Origin and Authority" (1915).

[11] "Conscience, its Origin and Authority," p. 150.

[12] "Orthodoxy," p. 137, quoted by G. L. Richardson.

II

THE VALIDITY OF MORAL JUDGMENTS

Any investigation of the phenomenon of moral conduct, and of its interpretation, brings us face to face with two sets of conflicting theories. These may, for convenience, be roughly divided into the two principal schools of thought which have been termed respectively the "Moral Sense" or "Intuitive" schools and the "Rationalistic schools of ethics." Certain writers in their search for the springs of moral conduct have attempted to place the issue between Naturalism or Determinism (by no means synonymous or necessarily connected) on the one side, and Theism on the other[13]; and, in their eagerness to discredit the former to the advantage of the latter, imagine they demolish Determinism (at any rate in the ethical sphere) by "pushing it to its logical conclusion" and by showing that it "has connected completely and indissolubly, as far as observation can carry us, mind with matter; it has established a functional relation to exist between every fact of thinking, willing or feeling, on the one side, and some molecular change in the body on the other side, and man, with all his ways and works, is simply a part of nature, and can, by no device of thought, be detached from or set above it."[14]

What, after all, is involved in the acceptance of such a conclusion? What is there to fear? To concede this, it is thought, would mean to relegate man to the position of a mere "automaton," freed from "accountability to God, responsibility to man, and the fears of conscience."

So far from ridding man of responsibility, the clear recognition by him of the true nature of his environment and antecedents, the laws by which they influence him, and his inherent capacity of resistance--in other words, the two processes observable in the world, action contrary to, and action along, the line of least resistance[15]--does, on the contrary, greatly increase his responsibility of action and his power to know himself.

Is not mind and matter subject to the same law? Do they not react to the same God? What matter, then, if we adopt the formula of Pampsychism and assert that "all individual things are animated albeit in divers degrees"? or endorse the conclusion of Professor James Ward, who "finds no ground for separating organic life from psychical life"? and continues: "All life is experience. We cannot therefore assume that experience has no part in the building up of the organism, and only begins when viable organism is already there."[16]

The belief that there can be no life without mind does not necessarily imply that there can be no mind without body. As John Stuart Mill pointed out, Determinism does not imply Materialism, a man may be a spiritual being but yet subject to the law of causation. Neither does it deny the dynamic character of will, but allows that not only our conduct but our character is in part amenable to our will. The causality involved in human actions would, however, enable any one who knew perfectly our character and our circumstances to predict our actions.

Such considerations, however, although contributory, do not, of themselves, decide the question with which we are here concerned, namely, What is the real meaning and what the authority of "conscience," or of that mental act which takes place in our minds when we call certain conduct "right" and certain conduct "wrong"?

Apart from the question of the ultimate sanction of moral conduct, there have always been two explanations of the mental act variously known as "ethical judgment," "moral faculty," "moral sense" or conscience. On the one side there have been those who considered that moral judgment was an emotion, an intuition, or instinctive recognition of right or wrong, which implied no rational or intellectual process beyond that which is involved in registering or perceiving the fact. And on the other side there have been those who treat moral approbation as essentially an act of judgment--the result of the reasoning and intellectual function of the mind.

The earliest exponents of a morality that in no way depended upon the work of Reason were the ancient Epicureans and Cyrenaics; since for them good was pleasure and evil was pain, the sources and tests of all ethical truth were necessarily, in consequence, the feelings and emotions.

In the eighteenth century there arose a school, associated with the names of the third Lord Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson, the Scotch philosopher, which became known as the "moral sense" school, widely different from the old hedonistic philosophers, since they were the first to assert the existence of a distinctively ethical, as opposed to a merely pleasurable, feeling.

The philosophers of the "moral sense" school attempted to prove that there existed a distinct moral "faculty" which differed from all other perceptions or ideas, in that it was a separate medium by which men could recognize ethical truth, which was rather a matter of the heart than of the head.

As a result of the attacks of the various rationalist schools this idea of a "moral faculty" has been for the most part abandoned by those who approach ethics from the Religious or Theistic standpoint, for they are far more concerned to establish the "Divine authority" and sacrosanct character of conscience than influenced by psychological or metaphysical distinctions. For the most part such writers are content to assume that "conscience" is the knowledge of one's own soul with regard to questions of right and wrong, but insist on that element of Divine Guidance which alone, they think, can give it the necessary authority and sanctity.

The Rev. G. H. Richardson[17] defines conscience as "the whole personality acting ethically; or, more precisely, conscience is the reaction, pleasurable or painful, of the whole personality in response to a human or Divine standard."

It is neither wholly emotional nor wholly rational, but "is sensitive to motives of which the pure reason would take no account; it is more akin to instinct than intelligence." Yet "without reason, conscience would be blind impulse, though it might feel the consciousness of obligation."[18]

Clearly, then, conscience can derive little validity from intelligence; the concession to the Rationalists does not amount to much; it might almost get on without reason altogether. It is the Divine authority of conscience which, for the Theistic writer, is the factor of prime importance.

"As we are bound to trust reason in the intellectual sphere, so we are bound to trust conscience in the moral sphere. To deny the authority of the one or the other is to distrust the Power in whom physical and moral law have their source. The authority of conscience is thus paramount for the individual; it will be better for me to do what is objectively wrong, but what I conscientiously believe to be right, than do what is in fact right, but what my conscience disapproves."[19]

Here the writer appears to abandon his Rationalistic friends altogether; the fanatic is given free rein, his ravings are sacred.

Dr. H. Rashdall, who by many is considered representative of rationalistic ethics, insists on the "objectivity of moral judgment. Feelings or emotions possess no objectivity; and 'without objectivity,' in the words of Eduard von Hartmann, 'ethic has no meaning'."[20]

The all-important task for the Theistic writer is to establish the factor of Divine impulse. "Therefore we say that conscience is a fundamental form of man's personal consciousness of eternity; that ineffaceable certainty that the relation of Duty, with Responsibility and Judgment, is not a relation which stands and falls with our relations to the world and to men, but in its essence is a relation to the holy and Almighty God.... Additional force seems to be given to this way of regarding the Authority of conscience if we consider that its activity is set in motion by an impulse from the Divine Personality."[21]

Bishop Butler refers to conscience as the "voice of God," and as "supreme among human faculties"; and this is endorsed by Richardson, who finds that Theism is essential to any doctrine of conscience, because the alternative is "destructive of its authority."

Let us now summarize the Theistic conscience, variously described in different passages, in the author's own words: "Its activity is set in motion by an impulse from the Divine Personality, and does not originate in the individual nor the world," yet it "reacts to public opinion," is "often unreasonable and inconsistent," is "subject to evolutionary growth" and is "not infallible," is "capable of _infinite_ variety of interpretation" and "reacts to a human standard," which, however, "trails some clouds of glory from its Divine original"; and in conclusion, "If we regard conscience not as a phosphorescent gleam playing upon the surface of consciousness, but as a vital impulse, partly rational, partly instinctive, welling up from the depths of Personality, we shall not run the risk of denying its authority."[22] It would be well, however, not to underestimate the risk, although it undoubtedly caters for a great variety of tastes.

Allied to the Emotional school for the purpose of proving conscience are those Rationalists, of whom we have taken Dr. Rashdall as an example, who have for an object the establishment of the "objective" validity of moral judgment. The real contention becomes clearer; the chief point at issue is the question of authority.

We see, then, that there are two points to be decided: (1) the ultimate validity, with which is connected the question of the Divine Authority, of moral judgments; and (2) the mode of recognition, with which is connected the cause or propellent which induces moral action.

Rashdall summarily dismisses the dual character of the problem in a phrase. "The question at issue between Rationalists and Emotionalists is not what impels me to do a virtuous act, but how I know it to be virtuous."[23] The connexion between motive and judgment is too closely related to be thus calmly ignored. It is agreed that the motive does not affect the intrinsic character or "rightness" of an action, but at the same time it most certainly does affect a man's _estimation_ of his action; and this, in order to arrive at the value of moral judgments, is most obviously relevant.

For Dr. Rashdall the distinction between how I know my action to be right or virtuous, and how it is virtuous, does not exist. Both imply recognition or statement of indisputable fact; for him there can be no ultimate doubt as to the character of moral "good," which can in no way be a matter of opinion, for good is _sui generis_: it is good and nothing else; happiness may be good, honesty may be good, but good is good for no other reason than because such an abstraction is supposed to exist as a transcendental fact. "Therefore good can be recognized just as any axiomatic truth can be recognized; as, for instance, the fact that 2 + 2 = 4, or two straight lines cannot enclose a space." How is it then that people even of the highest intelligence do not invariably agree about what _is_ good or morally right?

There are no two opinions about whether 2 + 2 does, or does not, equal 4, yet there is no such general agreement about what is right. If asked why a thing is right or good most people would reply either by giving a reason to show that it is _desirable_ or else by quoting the authority of some one else's _ipse dixit_ (in which case it is inferred that the authority quoted had some reason for supposing it desirable). The reason that 2 + 2 = 4 is, on the other hand, that there can be _no_ possible alternative. Yet is it true to say that there can be no possible alternative to what the consensus of opinion in any one country considers morally right? Some things that are considered immoral in England are considered moral in Japan, and _vice versa_.

Dr. Rashdall, however, conceives of but two alternatives in estimating moral values, the first of which he dismisses, because on this view "our moral judgments could possess no objective validity." He says: "... I examined the question whether our moral judgments are in ultimate analysis merely statements asserting the existence of a particular kind of feeling in particular minds, or whether they are intellectual judgments of universal validity--judgments, of course, of a very peculiar and distinctive kind, but just as much intellectual and universal judgments about the nature of Reality as the judgments 2 + 2 = 4, or 'this is a good inference and that is a bad one'."[24]

It is difficult to know whether this arbitrary elimination of the subjective element from ethical judgments, and the attempt to translate moral values into terms of mathematical formulae, is intended to denote the infusion of a mystic factor into the "exact sciences," or an attempt to reduce metaphysics and morality to rule of thumb! The following thesis, however, which will be elaborated in the course of this discussion, is based on a synchronous realization of rational principles and psychological processes.

Thus, what an individual conceives to be morally right and good, when he is conscious of having acted so according to his own standard, may be either:

(1) Wholly irrational, illogical, anti-social and undesirable (from every point of view except his own), even though arrived at solely by an intellectual and reasoning process; or

(2) An entirely instinctive, blindly impulsive or emotional action, afterwards endorsed by the intellect (i.e. subsequently rationalized); or

(3) The result of thoughtful deliberation, carefully and logically designed to bring about certain preconceived "moral" ends such as social happiness, justice, fulfilment of duty; all of which are artificial and conventional standards, and good _only_ because they are _desirable_, not because they are universally valid--irrespective of time, locality and circumstances; or

(4) Any combination of these three.

The foregoing applies as much to the aggregate moral consciousness of a community in different stages of civilization, or in varying states of emotional abnormality, as to the individual conscience.

It can also be shown that the "communal conscience" reacts upon the "individual conscience" in inverse ratio to the latter's emotional or intellectual capacity for resistance; and that the "communal conscience" (identified at a later stage of this inquiry with "Cosmic Suggestion") is the integral product of the numerical and dynamic strength of the convictions of the members of the community, and operates upon the "individual conscience," either consciously or subconsciously, in the same way that "Suggestion," according to the law discovered by Liebeault and employed by the Nancy School, operates in hypnotic phenomena.

It will then (if this view can be established) be shown that the factors of conscience are: (1) emotional, (2) intellectual, (3) internal (including hereditary and organic elements), and (4) external (environment--material and psychic); and that its validity, in ultimate analysis, can but rest on codes, which may be not only Conventional and Artificial, but also Rational or Intellectual, Social and Utilitarian; and in any case variable, in the same way that the soundest and most logical policies must, to a certain extent, be variable, or capable of adjustment as circumstances change; the only elements which should be constant and invariable in any policy (which is not a misnomer) being logic and truth. So it is with rules of conduct.

As regards the purely internal sanction of our actions and thoughts, that is to say, our relationship with Ultimate Reality, which is God or the Law of Existence, there is only one conception of the latter which seems to comprehend the infinite with the finite, and that is Force, because it is the continuity of Existence, or after the manner of Leibnitz: "Substance, the ultimate reality, can only be conceived as force." Any moral law which may be said to be fundamental in itself and independent of circumstances will be in relation to force. But such "laws" will also be independent of the moral imperatives and written codes, for they are independent of volition--of the will to obey them. Can a man be possessed of love, greatness, nobility, courage, honour, at a word of command? Therefore if it can be truly said that "love is the greatest thing in the world," it is because it is the most powerful force. Hate is disruptive, disintegrating and annihilating; love is integrating and strengthening.

But there is yet one "good," one fundamental imperative which needs no proof, and that is Truth--ultimate truth, because it is the statement of what Is; without which logic, or, indeed, intelligible language, would be impossible. But truth is not opinion, or assertion, or hope, or faith, or in the words of Huxley "those idols built up of books and traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs." Truth and all its derivatives--honesty, integrity, truthfulness and sincerity--have an intrinsic value of their own, for their negation implies the negation of the principles of Existence.

But men require more than this, they require a "moral code" or standard to give coherence to their relationships; this code, then, is that which is desired, or imposed, and this want is most efficiently supplied by the principle of "Utility."

FOOTNOTES:

[13] See "Conscience, its Origin and Authority," p. 25.

[14] W. H. Mallock, quoted by Richardson.

[15] Professor James Ward uses the terms "anabolic" and "catabolic" processes in this connexion, also in a sense analogous to the distinction between doing and suffering.

[16] J. Ward, "Heredity and Memory," 1913.

[17] "Conscience, its Origin and Authority," p. 69.

[18] _Ibid._, pp. 67 and 68.

[19] "Conscience, its Origin and Authority," p. 96.

[20] Hastings Rashdall: "Is Conscience an Emotion?"

[21] "Conscience, its Origin and Authority," p. 99.

[22] "Conscience, its Origin and Authority," pp. 99, 95, 96, 70, 72 and 73.

[23] "Is Conscience an Emotion?" p. 113.

[24] "Is Conscience an Emotion?" p. 52.

III

THE MEANING OF MORAL OBLIGATION

The author of "Conscience, its Origin and Authority," attempts, after the manner of priests, to demolish the Utilitarian principle of morality by stating that the Utilitarian must, to be logical, justify any means if the end is desirable. As though the Utilitarian and not the Theist was for ever trying to show that the intrinsic character or value of an action depended upon the motive (which must be distinguished from the _intention_; a man who saved another from drowning in order to put him to death afterwards would be influenced by an intention to murder, but the motives were: first, desire to rescue, and, for the subsequent action, desire to kill). Mr. Richardson writes: "The Good and the Right possess their authority to the Utilitarian because they tend to the greatest possible happiness of the greatest number of sentient beings." Now suppose a case which I do not think actually happened, but which may easily be conceived as happening. Suppose that Cecil Rhodes deliberately caused the South African War, as many people believed at the time. This would be characterized (and was, in fact, characterized) as an immoral act of unscrupulous aggression. But he might defend his action thus: "Granted that so many thousands of soldiers and citizens will be slain, and the land cleared of its inhabitants. In a few years the land so cleared will produce increased harvests of gold and grain. More food will mean an increase of human productiveness and an increase of population; thriving townships and farmsteads will support a people more numerous and richer in the comforts which make life desirable than could have existed without my action. Therefore on the Utilitarian hypothesis my action was right and good, and deserved, not reprobation, but approval."

Not only is this position not admitted by Utilitarians, but John Stuart Mill long ago pointed out that such a hypothesis "is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of morals, and to confound the rule of action with the _motive_ of it. It is the business of Ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty.... The great majority of good actions are intended, not for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals, of which the good of the world is made up; and the thoughts of the most virtuous man need not on these occasions travel beyond the particular persons concerned, except so far as is necessary to assure himself that in benefiting them he is not violating the rights--that is, the legitimate and authorized expectations--of any one else."[25]

This is sufficient refutation of such objections to Utilitarianism as the one brought forward by Richardson, and clearly founded on a misconception.

Mill, in what is still the best defence of this system, continues: "Utilitarians ... are ... of opinion that in the long run the best proof of a good character is good actions; and resolutely refuse to consider any mental disposition as good, of which the predominant tendency is to produce bad conduct."[26]

"The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness."[27]

The Theistic writer says "the essence of morality is sacrifice."[28]

The utilitarian morality does recognize in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice that does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted.

As regards "conscience": the Utilitarian, when he attempts an analysis, realizes that "in that complex phenomenon as it actually exists, the simple fact is in general all encrusted over with collateral associations derived from sympathy, from love, and still more from fear; from all forms of religious feeling; from recollections of childhood and of all our past life; from self-esteem, desire of the esteem of others, and occasionally even self-abasement."[29]

For the priest "ethics cannot be built securely upon anything less than religious sanctions, and it is for the sake of conscience that ethics have a practical value."[30]

Can an honest and unbiased thinker doubt that the first is the truer statement?

Let us now return to a further statement of the position of Utilitarianism as dealt with by J. S. Mill. From Professor Sidgwick and those Utilitarians who attempt to claim for the atheistic moralist a conscience of mathematical accuracy we are unlikely to derive much assistance.

"According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, the ultimate end, with reference to, and for the sake of which, all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people), is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality; the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against quantity, being the preference felt by those who, in their opportunities of experience, to which must be added their habits of self-consciousness and self-observation, are best furnished with the means of comparison."[31]

This, according to Utilitarians, is also the standard of morality.

In conformance with this principle of moral obligation, we choose the greater before the lesser good. Between General Morality and the obligation of Duty, with which he associates justice, Mill draws what appears to be a somewhat unnecessarily hard line of distinction, insomuch as the difference may be seen to consist more of degree than of kind. Other ethical writers make the same distinction when they divide moral duties into the two classes of perfect and imperfect obligation, "the latter being those in which, though the act is obligatory, the particular occasions of performing it are left to our choice, as in the case of charity or beneficence."

If, in assessing the "amount" of good, we take into consideration, besides the categories of quantity and quality, a third category of "proximity," it would, I think, prove a useful qualification by enabling the Utilitarian Good to embrace all moral obligation, including legal Duty, which is considered by Mill apart from general morality. By "proximity" it is intended to imply that the nearer good is more binding than the further good, which may in some measure counteract the value of "quantity and quality" where these are involved, and when a decision between conflicting moral obligations has to be made.

Though this additional category of Good may not altogether abolish the distinction which Mill makes between general morality and justice or duty which may be obligatory by law, it appears to amplify and extend the scope of the principle of Utility.

"Duty," in the words of J. S. Mill, "is a thing which may be exacted from a person as one exacts a debt. Unless we think that it might be exacted from him we do not call it his duty."

From this it might be assumed that there could never be any doubt about what is a person's duty, since when any one owes another or the community a debt, he is clearly conscious of it, even to the amount. In the case of right conduct which implies Duty, this, however, is not always so clearly recognized, especially when Duty implies Allegiance or Responsibility.

In this connexion we may say that the good we do for our own country is a nearer good than the good we do for an alien country, therefore if doing the good involves a choice we should choose our own country; for the debt we owe to our own country is greater than the debt we owe to humanity at large. Equally the good we owe to our own family is nearer than, and therefore comes before, the good we owe to society. To this most people will accede, and, in fact, the realization of this is at the base of all sense of Responsibility; thus every man, in whatsoever capacity he is acting, whether as statesman, county councillor, soldier or head of a family, should put the considerations of the body he represents or belongs to before all others; and finally he owes it to himself--or God[32]--to be true to himself, even before he can be true to another, in the sense that keeping faith with a friend will not excuse a man acting dishonestly or untruthfully towards himself. And this for the reason that Truth is independent of Utilitarian valuation, since Truth alone is an _a priori_ and self-evident "good"; by its very meaning it is a statement of "what is," temporally as well as ultimately; as such it must be a statement of indisputable fact, not opinion or faith which rests on assertion. Since more things are capable of being proved untrue than ultimately true, it follows that as a criterion of conduct its value is chiefly negative. It can thus be shown that lying, deception, breach of contract are wrong _per se_, for truth is the basic principle upon which all others depend, and the necessary postulate of the idea of God, whilst the value of our positive acts must for the most part depend upon some such standard as the Greatest Happiness or Utility principle.

As an illustration of the "nearer is the greater good" principle may be cited the line taken up by Disraeli when the controversy over the opium trade between India and China first came to the fore. Disraeli firmly refused to ruin our export trade in opium for any quixotic considerations involving the moral effect upon the Chinaman, whilst it in no way implied a breach of faith with him.

Less clear is the question of precedence when two primary obligations are conflicting; primary obligations are here intended to mean those obligatory duties which may rightly be exacted from a person by reason of his indebtedness to the corporate body to which he belongs, or which he represents, and which is entitled to a preference in the good he does.

For instance, it may sometimes be said that a man's duty to his country as a soldier conflicts with his duty to his family as its sole support; both are primary obligations; as long, then, as allegiance to one does not involve a betrayal of the other, which could only be if their interests were fundamentally opposed and directed against each other, both obligations must be equally acknowledged, and a _via media_ discovered to satisfy the claims of both to an equal extent.

Should, however, this confliction of interests be so direct and antagonistic as necessarily to involve an overt repudiation of the claims of one or the other, as in the hypothetical case of a soldier being ordered to execute the members of his own family, his conduct, supposing him to be actuated by a desire to act solely in conformance with ethical considerations, would be determined by his judgment as to which course would promote the greater good or Utility, having regard to the categories: quantity, quality and proximity; the "nearer" in this case undoubtedly being his family, though this fact alone would not necessarily outweigh the other values of quantity and quality. In certain Eastern countries it would possibly appeal to a man's sense of appropriateness to be the agent by which the crime or dishonour of his relative would be expiated.

A man is often heard to claim that his moral duty towards himself, in other words "his conscience," absolves him from the fulfilment of another primary duty or obligation. As I have attempted to show, the only real or _a priori_ duty which a man can prove he owes to himself, and therefore has a right to place before any other clear duty derived from the fact of his membership of any community or corporate body, is his obligation not to violate Truth, which is a statement of reality, _not of opinion_. Thus no other duty can rightly oblige a man to perjure himself.

If this maxim is accepted, it will be seen that a deadlock of this sort between a man's duty to his country as a citizen and his duty to himself or his "conscience," could rarely occur in a civilized or rational community. Against this a man might argue that he had solemnly vowed not to shed human blood, either as a soldier or otherwise, and that he is right to resist any attempt to conscript him for the army, since he would thereby be required to perjure himself. The answer is simple, for the man clearly violated his duty to his country in the first place by vowing he would deprive his country of his services should they be required, a right which no country has ever forsworn and which is considered the natural return due for free citizenship and state protection; these conditions are presumed to be accepted with the benefits of citizenship and protection of person and property; his first violation of duty towards his country will therefore not absolve him of a second.

Neither can it be shown according to this principle that a man is entitled to take an oath of this nature, regardless of potential conflicting obligations, on the score that such an oath is merely in conformance with the postulates of Truth, since the question of the Rightness or Wrongness of shedding blood under all circumstances is not susceptible of ultimate proof, but must remain finally on the authority of an _ipse dixit_, or of Utility.

Thus far we have examined to some extent the purely ethical basis on which the idea of priority of duty, as evinced by conscience or reason, rests: the sanction of conscience which rests on religious authority is dealt with elsewhere.

To further illustrate the "nearer good" principle with which we have been dealing, it may be profitable to refer to a passage from an account of the life of General Robert E. Lee, Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate troops during the American Civil War, a devoutly religious man, and a lifelong member of the Protestant Episcopal Church.[33]

"Colonel Lee was in command of the department of Texas in 1860, but was recalled to Washington early in 1861, when the 'irrepressible conflict' between the free and the slave states seemed imminent. When Lee reached the capital in March 1861, seven states had passed ordinances of secession from the Union, and had formed the Southern Confederacy. Virginia seceded from the Union on April 17, and Colonel Lee, believing that his supreme political allegiance was due to his state rather than to the Union, felt compelled to send his resignation to General Scott, which he did on April 20. The bitter struggle between his personal preferences and his high sense of duty is shown in the words of his wife written to a friend at the time: 'My husband has wept tears of blood over this terrible war; but he must as a man and a Virginian share the destiny of his state, which has solemnly pronounced for independence.'"

Lee's action in choosing the "nearer" duty to his own state in preference to the duty he owed to the Union as a soldier and a citizen, even against his personal preferences and, as far as one can discern them, his religious opinions, affords a striking example of the principle I have been attempting to illustrate.

Whether his decision was arrived at spontaneously and impulsively, or as the result of deliberation, is immaterial as affecting the "rightness" of his action. Equally immaterial is the possibility that he might have arrived at an opposite conclusion whilst still employing the same principles, by judging that the categories of "quantity" and "quality" outweighed that of "proximity." Whenever clear duties are mutually annihilating, which fortunately is very rarely the case, the problem will always have to be solved, if it is solved with scrupulous honesty, by a careful balance of values, whilst the result at best cannot be infallible.

What stands out, however, in this case, is the triumph of clearly recognized duty founded on "nearer" indebtedness, and so of responsibility, over lesser indebtedness, even though the latter was reinforced by personal predilection and religious sentiment.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] "Utilitarianism," 15th edition, p. 27.

[26] _Ibid._, p. 30.

[27] _Ibid._, p. 9.

[28] Richardson's "Conscience," p. 151.

[29] "Utilitarianism," p. 42.

[30] Richardson's "Conscience," p. 211.

[31] J. S. Mill, "Utilitarianism."

[32] The idea of God personified is often used as standing for a symbol or norm of ideal conduct, bearing an affinity to the ideal self or ego. The theory of conduct maintained here is therefore equally applicable to Theist or Atheist.

[33] N. B. Webster in "Chambers's Encyclopaedia."

IV

RELIGION AND MORALITY

As long as morality is regarded as a Divinely implanted principle, subject to no laws beyond the caprice and changing mood of a personal Deity, the essentials which underlie our conduct are lost sight of. Morality, that is to say those moral codes which are observed and recognized, consists of the imposition of values; but the meaning and the virtue of those values lie in the policy which will produce desired results. Moral values are subject to constant revision as world influences affect our outlook. Our endeavour should always be to probe the essentials. As long as morality is thought to depend on "Revelation" and religious superstition, the essentials are lost sight of. The connexion between Religion and Morality is arbitrary, and since Religions owe their power to the fear of the Unknown, and the virtue of Morality depends upon the necessity of conforming to that mode of conduct which will produce known results, Religions tend to mask the essentials in Morality and make it unreal.

Morality is held to include two distinct principles; moral obligation, or conduct towards others, and conduct towards, or the debt we owe, ourselves. We are here concerned chiefly with the first; the second--those rules of conduct which concern only ourselves, are bound up with the purpose of existence, with the ultimate end. Moral obligation has arisen out of the necessity for co-ordination and system in our mutual relationships. Without a moral code, social life would become chaotic and impossible, comparable only to the state of Russia under mob rule in the year of grace 1918--a state immeasurably more degraded than that of Britain in the era B.C.; the early Briton like the modern Kafir, at any rate, gave vent to his predatory and murderous instincts, for the most part, outside his own little tribe. The imposition of some recognized rules of conduct, safeguarding the security of life and property, is as necessary to the community as the existence of a coinage for the negotiation of commercial bargains; in fact it is more so. The two are analogous: the moral code must give effect to that first and universal principle of ethics expressed thus, "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you," which is only another way of saying, "You may expect others to treat you as you intend to treat them in similar circumstances." Hence the standardization of rules of conduct becomes a principle of Utility. Altruism has nothing whatsoever to do with it. Even indignation at the spectacle of acute suffering needlessly inflicted on animals, where considerations of reciprocal treatment on the part of the animal do not apply, is correctly based on the offence such a "discordance" causes to the aesthetic sensibility of the cultivated, or the induced sympathetic discomfort of the many. In many natures the pain-suggesting spectacle, or even the mere thought of it, spontaneously evokes anger, which seeks satisfaction in the punishment of the author of its occurrence. The only rational or intellectual process involved in the resulting "moral judgment" is, as a rule, confined to a realization of the pain-suggesting idea, and the direction of vengeful impulses against the offender, while the consequences or ends of conduct in no way determine the judgment. The particular idiocy of the anti-vivisection agitation is obvious. We are here, of course, purposely considering, _not_ actual and arbitrary morality, but the essentials upon which all moralities are based. We shall deal more fully as we proceed with those psychic and emotional factors which do, in fact, colour and distort all moral values. To return to our analogy--we may say then, that a conventional moral rule stands for the credit of national morality, much as a five-pound note stands for the credit of national wealth.

However wise a code of morality may be, it is necessarily artificial. It has grown up to suit the peculiar circumstances and demands of race, climate and time. The basic reason for its existence is too often encrusted and disguised by fears, superstitions and illusions, perpetual creatures of the human mind; the essentials are often lost sight of or forgotten, and Truth is parodied as the principle that gave birth to the ecclesiastical chimera which forms the edifice of modern cults. Is it surprising, then, that morality is garbed in the changing coat of a chameleon? That what is held moral to-day is immoral to-morrow, and that what is held immoral here is moral elsewhere?

The second and deeper morality concerns ourselves only. It demands an answer to the eternal question: What is the Ultimate Good? One great imperative stands out pre-eminent: we must be true to ourselves. He who would seek the truth must himself be true. Without truth there is no creation, no progress. But before we can be true to ourselves, we must know ourselves; that is the problem we are considering--knowledge of the ego.

Some men are content to supply synonyms for the Ideal--for Perfection, the goal of endeavour--imagining they are thereby showing the way. Others realize the first task must be to cleanse the way of the inadequacies and perversions which masquerade as the whole Truth, as the "word of God."

The Ultimate Good cannot be translated into the petty codes of human convenience, neither can it be deduced from the wanton phantoms of man's wild fancy, called religion, which, by attempting to expound everything, explains nothing.

What is religion? Is it the search for truth? Is it not an attempt to clothe our conception of the Infinite in terms finite?--the result being grotesque, bearing no relation to existence, a lawless chimera, born of man's dread of the unknown, an amorphous fantasy fashioned out of the distorted visions of man's hopes and fears, modelled, amended and shaped in course of time in accordance with the postulate of man's nature--man the religious animal!

Science cannot give us the whole truth and admits it! "Absolute beginnings or origins are beyond the pale of science."[34] But religion professes to know and is disproved at every step. It is when Religion refuses to learn that she is harmful; because her values are false and her thought retrospective that she is inadequate. It is not because the religions of the past and their legacies to-day cannot prove the Transcendent that they should be discarded, but because they attempt to prove it and turn the world into chaos in so doing. It is not only because, in the words of Huxley, "everywhere priests have broken the spirit of wisdom and tried to stop human progress by quotations from their Bibles or books of their Saints," that the old religion is outgrown, but because it is daily growing more and more impotent.

Whether for good or evil the influence of religion on the conduct of men daily grows less. Religious fanaticism is gradually giving place to secular and political fanaticism, whose votaries shriek in the name of Democracy, Socialism or other watchword of Utopia, ever attempting to impose new moral values bearing as little correspondence to reality as the old values. Neither can recent attempts to express the old religion in terms of modern thought revive that which is perishing of inanition. Huxley wrote thus of the attempt: "If the religion of the present differs from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present has become more scientific than that of the past, not because it has renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of _books_ and traditions, and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs, and of cherishing the noblest and most human of man's emotions by worship, 'for the most part of the Silent Sort,' at the altar of the _unknown and unknowable_...."

We have no desire to follow in the wake of an unprovoked attack on the churches, our concern is the defence of a rational, against the imposition of an irrational, code of morality.

But ethical systems are still built upon the fantastical dogmas of religious or political visionaries. "Ethics," say the former, "cannot be built securely upon anything less than the Religious Sanctions." The rules which govern the practical conduct of life must conform to "divine laws" which in their interpretation have passed through a metamorphosis as varied and dissimilar as the habits and customs which distinguish the twentieth century from the second! Was it a sign of the security and infallibility of ethics founded on religious beliefs that Christian England as late as the beginning of the Eighteenth Century[35] sanctioned the execution and torture of harmless old women for the imaginary crime of witchcraft? It must be remembered that the moral code of the period, enforced by the laws of the land, reflected contemporary religious thought. Lecky, referring to the causes upon which witchcraft depended, says:[36] "It resulted, not from accidental circumstances, individual eccentricities, or even scientific ignorance, but from a general predisposition to see Satanic agency in life. It grew from, and it reflected, the prevailing modes of religious thought; and it declined only when those modes were weakened or destroyed." 5.

The fact is, as most impartial students of psychology admit, that both religious and political ethics owe far more of their character to the "emotional cravings" combined with the interested propaganda current in the age, than to any real value they may possess from a utilitarian or, assuming the Divinity to be rational, from a Divine point of view. Ibsen has truly said that moral values are dependent on power-conditions; morals, politics and law are to a great extent shaped and propelled by might-conditions, by the fancied needs and interests of dominant classes; but the greatest factor in power-condition is psychic; the greatest world-propellant, the _ultima vires_, is more mind than muscle; it is this great world force which I have spoken of as Cosmic Suggestion.[37] Too little may yet be known of this force to trace its means of transmission, but the reality of its existence can no longer be doubted. It has been described in the following way: there exists an effluence or force generated by, or resulting from, the molecular activity of each individual brain. These forces are constantly influencing the souls of men, encountering, overcoming, and repelling opposition, and reacting upon the conscious intelligence of the authors of their generation; or they may unite themselves into groups and operate collectively, forming a psychic stream of power.[38]