Chapter XI (2)

KOSMICOS. I am glad that you put this matter of the ten commandments hypothetically, because otherwise we might have been led aside into an argument about the authenticity of the narrative. I recognize, however, the bearing of the question which you have put, and shall endeavor to answer it. Your question implies that the essential constitution of the human mind has been the same in all ages; that it was the same in this race of nomads, who had been, they and their fathers for ages, serfs of the Egyptian kings, that it is in us. Perhaps this assumption may be allowed; and, at all events, the real question is, How did the idea of a moral law originate, and what is the sense of moral obligation? Like all things else, it is a product of the process of evolution. I shall not argue this by any elaborate reasoning, but will proceed to state the grounds on which it rests. I will first give you what I understand to be Darwin's view of the origin of the habit of thinking and feeling, which we call the moral sense. Primeval man must have existed in a state of barbarism. When he had become developed out of some pre-existing animal, he was a mere savage, distinguishable from his predecessors only by the possession of some superior degree of mental power. Savages, like some other animals, form themselves into tribes or bands. Certain social instincts arise, out of which spring what are regarded as virtues. Individuals of the tribe begin to desire the sympathy and approbation of their fellows. They perceive that certain actions, such as protection of other and weaker individuals against danger, gain for them the sympathy and approbation of the tribe. There are thus formed some ideas of the common advantage to the tribe of certain actions, and of the common disadvantage of the opposite actions. Man is eminently a social animal, and this desire for the sympathy and approbation of his tribe, and this fear of their disapprobation, is so strong that the individual savage is led to perceive that the common good of the tribe is the object at which he must aim to conform. The first social instincts, therefore, are those which perceive the relations between certain kinds of conduct and the common good of the tribe; and out of these relations, with the aid of increasing intellectual powers, is developed the golden rule, "As ye would that men should do to you, do ye to them likewise," which lies at the foundation of morality. These social instincts, thus leading at last to the great rule of social morality, are developed very slowly. They are at first confined to the benefit of the same tribe, and they have no force in the relations of that tribe to the members of any other. To a savage it is a highly meritorious action to save the life of another member of his own tribe, and if he loses his own life in the effort it is so much the more meritorious. But he does not extend this idea of doing a good action to the members of a different tribe, and, whether his own tribe is or is not at war with the other tribe, he and his own community will think it no harm if he murders a member of that other tribe. But as the approach to civilization goes on--as man advances in intellectual power, and can trace the more remote consequences of his actions, and as he rejects baneful customs and superstitions, he begins to regard more and more not only the welfare but the happiness of his fellow-men. Habit, resulting from beneficial experiences, instruction and example, renders his sympathies more tender and widely diffused, until at last he extends them to men of all races, to the imbecile, maimed, and other useless members of society, and to the inferior animals. Thus the standard of morality rises higher and higher; but its origin is in the social instincts, which spring out of the love of approbation and the fear of disapprobation.[121]

But morality comprehends also the self-regarding virtues, those which directly affect the individual, and which affect society but remotely and incidentally. How did the idea of these originate? There is a very wide difference between the morality of savages, in respect to the self-regarding virtues, and the morality of civilized nations. Among the former, the greatest intemperance, utter licentiousness, and unnatural crimes are very common. But as soon as marriage was introduced, whether monogamous or polygamous, jealousy led to the inculcation of female virtue; and this, being honored, spread to the unmarried females. Chastity, the hatred of indecency, temperance, and many other self-regarding virtues, originating first in the social instincts, have come to be highly prized by civilized nations as affecting, first, the welfare of the community, and, secondly, the welfare of the individual. This was the origin of the so-called "moral sense." It rejects the intuitive theory of morality, and bases its origin on the increasing perception of the advantage of certain conduct to the community and the individual.[122]

SOPHEREUS. And in this origin of the social and the self-regarding virtues, which I understand you to say is the theory of Darwin, is the idea of a divine command to practice certain things, and to avoid doing certain other things, left out?

KOSMICOS. The idea of a divine command, as the source of morality, is not necessary to the explanation of the mode in which the social or the self-regarding virtues were gradually developed. In the progress from barbarism to civilization, what is called the moral sense has been slowly developed as an increasing perception of what is beneficial, and this has become an inherited faculty. We thus have a sure scientific basis for the moral intuitions which we do not individually stay to analyze when we are called upon to determine the morality or the immorality of certain actions. The supposed divine command is something that is aside from the process by which the idea of morality or immorality became developed.

SOPHEREUS. And is this also Mr. Spencer's philosophy of the moral sense?

KOSMICOS. Let me read you what Spencer says: "I believe that the experience of utility, organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, has been producing corresponding modifications which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain _faculties_ of moral intuition--certain _emotions_ responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no _apparent_ basis in the _individual_ experiences of utility."[123] I have emphasized certain words in this passage in order to make its meaning distinct. Mr. Spencer's theory is that we have certain _faculties_ of moral intuition, which have become such by transmission and accumulation; that the original ideas of right and wrong sprang from perceptions of utility; and that when to the individual the question of a good or a bad action in others or himself is now presented, he feels an _emotion_ which responds to right or wrong conduct, and feels it in the _faculty_ which he has inherited from ancestors, without referring it to his _individual_ experience of the utility or inutility of certain conduct.

Now, in regard to the divine command as the origin of our ideas of right and wrong, if you turn to Mr. Spencer's "Principles of Sociology," you will find an immense collection of evidence which shows the genesis of deities of all kinds. Beginning with the ideas formed by the primitive men of souls, ghosts, spirits, and demons, the ideas of another life and of another world, there came about the ideas of supernatural beings, aided in their development by ancestor-worship, idol-worship, fetich-worship, animal-worship, plant-worship, and nature-worship. Hence came the ideas of deities of various kinds, one class of which is that of the human personality greatly disguised, and the other is the class which has arisen by simple idealization and expansion of the human personality. The last class, although always coexisting with the other, at length becomes predominant, and finally there is developed the idea of one chief or supreme deity. Having traced the origin of this idea of a supreme deity, Mr. Spencer puts and answers this question: "While among all races and all regions, from the earliest times down to the most recent, the conceptions of deities have been naturally evolved in the way shown, must we conclude that a small clan of the Semitic race had given to it, supernaturally, a conception which, though superficially like the rest, was in substance absolutely unlike them?"[124] He then proceeds to show that the Hebrew Jehovah, or God, was a conception that had a kindred genesis with all the other conceptions of a deity or deities. "Here," he says, "pursuing the methods of science, and disregarding foregone conclusions, we must deal with the Hebrew conception in the same manner as with all the others." Dealing with it by the scientific method, he shows that behind the supernatural being of the order of the Hebrew God, as behind the supernatural beings of all other orders, there has in every case been a human personality. Thus, taking the narrative as it has come down to us of God's dealing with Abraham, he shows that what Abraham thought, or is described as thinking by those who preserved the tradition, was of a terrestrial ruler who could, like any other earthly potentate, make a covenant with him about land or anything else, or that he was the maker of all things, and that Abraham believed the earth and the heavens were produced by one who eats and drinks, and feels weary after walking. Upon either idea, Abraham's conception of a Deity remains identical with that of his modern Semitic representative, and with that of the uncivilized in general. But the ideas of Deity entertained by cultivated people, instead of being innate, arise only at a comparatively advanced stage, as results of accumulated knowledge, greater intellectual grasp, and higher sentiment.[125]

To return now to the supposed divine command as the origin of morality, it is obvious that the conception of the being who has uttered the command makes the nature of the command partake of the attributes ascribed to that being. Accordingly, the grossest superstitions, the most revolting practices, the most immoral actions, have found their sanction in what the particular deity who is believed in is supposed to have inculcated or required. I do not need to enumerate to you the proofs of this, or to tell you that the Hebrew God is no exception to it. One illustration of it, however, is worth repeating. Speaking of the ceremony by which the covenant between God and Abraham is said to have been established, Mr. Spencer says: "Abraham and each of his male descendants, and each of his slaves, is circumcised. The mark of the covenant, observe, is to be borne not only by Abraham and those of his blood, but also by those of other blood whom he has bought. The mark is a strange one, and the extension of it is a strange one, if we assume it to be imposed by the Creator of the universe, as a mark on a favored man and his descendants; and on this assumption it is no less strange that the one transgression for which every 'soul shall be cut off' is, not any crime, but the neglect of this rite. But such a ceremony insisted on by a living potentate, under penalty of death, is not strange, for, as we shall hereafter see, circumcision is one of various mutilations imposed as marks on subject persons by terrestrial superiors."[126]

So that the Hebrew God who made the covenant with Abraham was not, in Abraham's own conception, the First Cause of all things, or a supernatural being, but he was a powerful human ruler, making an agreement with a shepherd chief. In all religions, the things required or commanded by the supposed deified person have been marked by the characteristics of human rulers; and as a source of morality, or as a standard of morality, the requirements or commands of the deified person, however they are supposed to have been communicated, fail to answer the indispensable condition of a fixed and innate system of morality, which is that it must have proceeded from the Creator of the universe, and not from a being who partakes of human passions, infirmities, and desires, and is merely a deified human potentate.

Pass, now, to Mr. Spencer's "Principles of Morality"; and although but one volume of this work has been as yet published, we may see that he is entirely consistent with what he has said in his "Sociology" and his other writings.[127] He does not leave us in any doubt as to his theory of morals. It appears, from the preface to his "Data of Ethics," that he has been compelled by ill-health to deviate from the plan which he had mapped out for himself, and to publish one volume of his "Principles of Morality" before completing his "Principles of Sociology." But while we have reason for his sake and for the sake of the world to regret this, we can easily understand his system of morality. He means to rest the rules of right conduct on a scientific basis, and he shows that this is a pressing need. In his preface, he says:

I am the more anxious to indicate in outline, if I can not complete, this final proof, because the establishment of rules of right conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need. Now that moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin, the secularization of morals is becoming imperative. Few things can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has grown up to replace it. Most of those who reject the current creed appear to assume that the controlling agency furnished by it may be safely thrown aside, and the vacancy left unfilled by any other controlling agency. Meanwhile, those who defend the current creed allege that, in the absence of the guidance it yields, no guidance can exist; divine commandments they think the only possible guides. Thus, between these extreme opponents there is a certain community. The one holds that the gap left by disappearance of the code of supernatural ethics need not be filled by a code of natural ethics; and the other holds that it can not be so filled. Both contemplate a vacuum, which the one wishes and the other fears. As the change which promises or threatens to bring about this state, desired or dreaded, is rapidly progressing, those who believe that the vacuum can be filled are called upon to do something in pursuance of their belief.

The code of natural ethics which Mr. Spencer propounds, and which is a product of the process of evolution, may be summarized as follows: Conduct is an aggregate of actions which are not purposeless, but which include all acts that are adjusted to ends, from the simplest to the most complex. The division or aspect of conduct with which ethics deals, the behavior we call good or bad, is a part of an organic whole; but, although inextricably bound up with acts which are neither good nor bad, it is distinguishable as comprehending those acts with which morality is concerned. The evolution of conduct, from the simplest and most indifferent actions up to those on which ethical judgments are passed, is what Mr. Spencer means by the scientific method of investigating the origin of morality. We must begin with the conduct of all living creatures, because the complete comprehension of conduct is not to be obtained by contemplating the conduct of human beings only. "The conduct of the higher animals as compared with that of man, and the conduct of the lower animals as compared with that of the higher, mainly differ in this, that the adjustments of acts to ends are relatively simple and relatively incomplete. And as in other cases, so in this case, we must interpret the more developed by the less developed. Just as, fully to understand the part of conduct which ethics deals with, we must study human conduct as a whole, so, fully to understand human conduct as a whole, we must study it as a part of that larger whole constituted by the conduct of animate beings in general."[128]

Begin, for example, with an infusorium swimming about at random, determined in its course not by an object which it perceives and which is to be pursued or escaped, but apparently by varying stimuli in its medium, the water. Its acts, unadjusted in any appreciable way to ends, lead it now into contact with some nutritive substance which it absorbs, and now into the neighborhood of some creature by which it is swallowed and digested. Pass on to another aquatic creature, which, although of a low type, is much higher than the infusorium, such as a rotifer. With larger size, more developed structures, and greater power of combining functions, there comes an advance in conduct. It preserves itself for a longer period by better adjusting its own actions, so that, it is less dependent on the actions going on around. Again, compare a low mollusk, such as a floating ascidian, with a high mollusk, such as a cephalopod, and it is apparent how greater organic evolution is accompanied by more evolved conduct. And if you pass then to the vertebrate animals, you see how, along with advance in structure and functions, there is evolved an advance in conduct, until at length, when you reach the doings of the highest of mammals, mankind, you not only find that the adjustments of acts to ends are both more numerous and better than among the lower mammals, but you find the same thing on comparing the doings of the higher races of men with those of the lower races. There is a greater completeness of achievement by civilized men than by savages, and there is also an achievement of relatively numerous minor ends subserving major ends.

Recollecting, then, what conduct is--namely, the adjustment of acts to ends--and observing how this adjustment becomes more and more complete as the organism becomes more developed, we have to note the order of the ends to which the acts are adjusted. The first end, the first stage of evolving conduct, is the further prolongation of life. The next is that adjustment of acts to ends which furthers an increased amount of life. Thus far the ends are complete individual life. Then come those adjustments which have for their final purpose the life of the species. Then there is a third kind of conduct, which results from the fact that the multitudinous creatures which fill the earth can not live wholly apart from one another, but are more or less in presence of one another, are interfered with by one another. No one species can so act as to secure the greatest amount of life to its individuals and the preservation of the species--can make a successful adjustment of its acts to these ends--without interfering with the corresponding adjustments by other creatures of their acts to their ends. That some may live, others must die. Finally, when we contemplate those adjustments of acts to ends which miss completeness, because they can not be made by one creature without other creatures being prevented from making them, we reach the thought of adjustments such that each creature may make them without preventing them from being made by other creatures. Let me now quote Mr. Spencer's concrete illustrations of these abstract statements:

"Recognizing men as the beings whose conduct is most evolved, let us ask under what conditions their conduct, in all three aspects of its evolution, reaches its limit. Clearly while the lives led are entirely predatory, as those of savages, the adjustments of acts to ends fall short of this highest form of conduct in every way. Individual life, ill carried on from hour to hour, is prematurely cut short; the fostering of offspring often fails, and is incomplete when it does not fail; and in so far as the ends of self-maintenance and race-maintenance are met, they are met by destruction of other beings, of different kind, or of like kind. In social groups formed by compounding and recompounding primitive hordes, conduct remains imperfectly evolved in proportion as there continue antagonisms between the groups and antagonisms between members of the same group--two traits necessarily associated; since the nature which prompts international aggression prompts aggression of individuals on one another. Hence, the limit of evolution can be reached by conduct only in permanently peaceful societies. That perfect adjustment of acts to ends in maintaining individual life and rearing new individuals, which is effected by each without hindering others from effecting like perfect adjustments, is, in its very definition, shown to constitute a kind of conduct that can be approached only as war decreases and dies out.

"A gap in this outline must now be filled up. There remains a further advance not yet even hinted. For beyond so behaving that each achieves his ends without preventing others from achieving their ends, the members of a society may give mutual help in the achievement of ends. And if, either indirectly by industrial co-operation, or directly by volunteered aid, fellow-citizens can make easier for one another the adjustments of acts to ends, then their conduct assumes a still higher phase of evolution; since whatever facilitates the making of adjustments by each, increases the totality of the adjustments made, and serves to render the lives of all more complete."

In the outline which I have now given you of the evolution of conduct, you will perceive the foundation of Spencer's system of ethics. Actions begin to assume an ethical character--conduct becomes good or bad--when the acts tend to promote or to prevent the general well-being of the community. But how is the perception or recognition of this quality in an action reached? What is the determining reason for considering an action good or bad? Obviously, conduct is considered by us as good or bad according as its aggregate results to self, or others, or both, are pleasurable or painful. Mr. Spencer shows that every other proposed standard of conduct derives its authority from this standard: "No school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable state of feeling called by whatever name--gratification, enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an inexpugnable element of the conception. It is as much a necessary form of moral intuition as space is a necessary form of intellectual intuition."[129]

On this fundamental basis, Mr. Spencer rests his system of absolute ethics and relative ethics. Relative ethics are those by which, allowing for the friction of an incomplete life and the imperfections of existing natures, we may ascertain with approximate correctness what is the relatively right. This is often exceedingly difficult, because two cases are rarely the same in all their circumstances. But absolute ethics are the ideal ethical truths, expressing the absolutely right. Such a system of ideal ethical truths, which must have precedence over relative ethics, is reached only when there has been, in conformity with the laws of evolution in general, and in conformity with the laws of organization in particular, an adaptation of humanity to the social state, changing it in the direction of an ideal congruity. But, as in relative ethics, the production of happiness or pleasure is the aim, however imperfectly accomplished, so in the ideal state the aim is the same, the difference being that in the latter the accomplishment of happiness or pleasure and the exclusion or prevention of pain are complete.

SOPHEREUS. And do I understand you that in this system of ethics the idea of a moral law proceeding from and consisting of the command of a Supreme Lawgiver is left out?

KOSMICOS. Certainly it is. Did I not just now read to you from Mr. Spencer's preface his complete rejection of the supposed sacred origin of moral injunctions, and what he says of the necessity for the secularization of morals to take the place of that system which is losing its authority?

SOPHEREUS. And this philosopher is the same writer who negatives the idea of any creation of organic life, and who also negatives the idea that the human mind is an existence of a spiritual nature, owing its existence to a Creator?

KOSMICOS. Undoubtedly; we have gone over all that ground.

SOPHEREUS. And he is the same philosopher who denies the existence of a Supreme Being, Creator, and Governor of the universe?

KOSMICOS. Perhaps you may call it denial, although what he maintains is that we know, and can know, nothing on the subject of a personal God.

SOPHEREUS. Very well. I will reflect upon all this until we meet again.

FOOTNOTES:

[113] Probably Kosmicos did not mean that man excels all other animals in the delicacy and perfection of his nervous organization, for some of his senses are inferior to those of some of the other animals, as his movements are less swift. Apparently his meaning is that, taken as a whole, the nervous organization of man evinces the greatest power of variation and the widest range of action.

[114] Darwin's "Descent of Man," pp. 608, 609.

[115] Darwin's "Origin of Species," p. 428.

[116] "The Principles of Psychology," by Herbert Spencer, third edition. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1885.

[117] "Principles of Psychology," i, p. 162.

[118] "Principles of Psychology," ii, p. 503.

[119] "Principles of Psychology," ii, p. 503.

[120] Revised version.

[121] Darwin, "Descent of Man," Part I, chap. iv.

[122] "Descent of Man," Part I, chap. iv.

[123] Quoted in Darwin's "Descent of Man," p. 123.

[124] "Principles of Sociology," i, p. 433, § 202.

[125] Ibid., chap. XXV, p. 414 _et seq._

[126] "Principles of Sociology," i, p. 135.

[127] "Principles of Morality," vol. i. I. "The Data of Ethics." By Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1884.

[128] "The Data of Ethics," pp. 6, 7, by Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1884.

[129] "The Data of Ethics," pp. 45, 46, by Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1884.