Chapter XV: Morals and Moral Valuation (2)

[Footnote 2: "But the virtues we acquire by first exercising them, as is the case with all the arts, for it is by doing what we ought to do when we have learned the arts, that we learn the arts themselves; we become, _e.g._ builders by building, and harpists by playing the harp. Similarly it is by doing just acts that we become just, by doing temperate acts that we become temperate, by doing courageous acts that we become courageous.... Again the causes and means by which any virtue is produced, and by which it is destroyed, are the same; and it is equally so with any art; for it is by playing the harp that both good and bad harpists are produced, and the case of builders and all other artisans is similar, as it is by building well that they will be good builders, and by building badly that they will be bad builders.... It is by acting in such transactions as take place between man and man that we become either just or unjust. It is by acting in the face of danger and habituating ourselves to fear or courage that we become either cowardly or courageous. It is much the same with our desires and angry passions. Some people become temperate and gentle, others become licentious and passionate, according as they conduct themselves in one way or another way in particular circumstances." (Aristotle: _Ethics_, pp. 35-36, Weldon translation.)]

The mere preaching of virtue will thus not produce its practice. Those standards which reflection discovers, however useful in the guidance of life, are not sufficient to improve human conduct. They must, as noted above, be emotionally sanctioned to become habitual, and, on the other hand, only if they are early acquired habits, will the emotions associated with them be pleasant rather than painful. "Accordingly the difference between one training of habits and another from early days is not a light matter, but is serious or rather all-important."[1] Ideals of life, when they remain mere closet-ideals, are interesting academic specimens, but are hardly effective in the helpful amendment of the lives of mankind. "Whoever contemplates the world in the light of an ideal," writes Bertrand Russell, "whether what he seeks be intellect or art, or love, or simple happiness, or all together, must feel a great sorrow in the evils which men allow needlessly to continue and--if he is a man of force and vital energy--an urgent desire to lead men to the realization of the good which inspires his creative vision." Great thinkers upon morals have not been content to work out interesting systems which were logically conclusive, abstract methods of attaining happiness. They have worked out their ethical systems as genuinely preferred ways of life, they have offered them as solutions of the difficulties men experience in controlling their own passions and in adapting their desires to the conditions which limit their fulfillment.

[Footnote 1: Aristotle: _loc. cit._, p. 36.]

"Our present study," writes Aristotle, "is not, like other studies, purely speculative in its intention; for the object of our inquiry is not to know the nature of virtue, but to become ourselves virtuous, as that is the sole benefit which it conveys."[2] Reflection upon morals can map out the road; it cannot make people travel it. For that, an early habituation to the good is necessary.

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 36.]

But it should be noted further that the greatest ethical reformers have not been those who have convinced men through the impeccability of their logic. They have been rather the supreme seers, the Hebrew prophets, Christ, Saint Francis, who have won followers not so much by the conclusiveness of their demonstration as through the persuasive fervor and splendor of their vision.

THE DANGER OF INTELLECTUALISM IN MORALS. There has been throughout the history of ethical theory a tendency to oversimplify life by cramping it into the categories fixed by reason. Reflection tends to set up certain standards which the infinite variety of human experience tends to outrun. In the mere fact of setting up generalizations, reflection is arbitrary. Any generalization, by virtue of the very fact that it does apply to a wide variety of situations, must forego concern with the peculiar colors and qualities inhering in any specific experience. Various ethical writers have set up general rules, which they have attempted to apply to life with indiscriminate ruthlessness. They have tried to shear down the endless rich variety of human situations to fit the categories which they assume to start with. Unsophisticated men have complained with justice against the recurrent attempts of moralists to set up absolute laws, standards, virtues, which were to be applied regardless of the specific circumstances of specific situations. It was such formalism that Aristotle protested against throughout his _Ethics_.

There is the same sort of uncertainty with regard to good things, as it often happens that injuries result from them; thus there have been cases in which people were ruined by wealth, or again by courage. As our subjects [moral inquiries] then and our premises are of this nature, we must be content to indicate the truth roughly, and in outline.[1]

[Footnote 1: Aristotle: _loc. cit._, pp. 3-4.]

He points out repeatedly that situations are specific, that laws or generalization can only be tentatively made.

Questions of practice and expediency no more admit of invariable rules than questions of health. But if this is true of general reasoning upon Ethics, still more true is it that scientific exactitude is impossible in reasoning upon particular ethical cases. They do not fall under any art or any law, but the agents themselves are always bound to pay regard to the circumstances of the moment, as much as in medicine or navigation.[1]

[Footnote 1: Aristotle: _loc. cit._, p. 37.]

Instead of framing absolute general rules, Aristotle points out those specific conditions which must be taken into account in any act that can, without quibbling, be called good or virtuous.

It is possible to go too far, or not to go far enough, in respect of fear, courage, desire, anger, pity, and pleasure and pain generally, and the excess and the deficiency are alike wrong; but to experience these emotions at the right time, and on the right occasions and towards the right persons, and for the right causes and in the right manner is the mean or the supreme good, which is characteristic of virtue.[2]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_. p. 46.]

Reflection thus unduly simplifies the moral problem by setting up general standards which are not adequate to the multiple variety of specific situations which constitute human experience. But in reasoning upon the conduct of life, there has been displayed, furthermore, by ethical writers an inveterate tendency to identify the processes of life with the process of reason. One may cite as a classic instance of this point of view the ethical theory of Jeremy Bentham and the Utilitarians. According to the Utilitarians human beings judged acts in terms of their utility, as measured in the amount of pleasure and pain produced by an action. The individual figured out the pleasures and pains that would be the consequences of his action. We shall in the next section examine this point of view in more detail; we are referring to it here simply as an illustration of intellectualizing of morals. Few individuals go through anything remotely resembling the "hedonic calculus" laid down by Bentham.[3] The individual is not a static being, mathematically considering the amount of pleasure and pain associated with the performance of specific actions. We are, in the vast majority of cases, prompted to specific responses, not by any mathematical considerations of pleasures and pains, but by the immediate urgency of instinctive and habitual desires. Reflection arises in the process of adjustment of competing impulses, in the effecting of a harmony between various desires that are much more primary and fundamental than the reflection that arises upon them. We may largely agree with McDougall when he writes:

[Footnote 3: The hedonic calculus of Bentham was, briefly, the following: "Every proposed act is to be viewed with reference to its probable consequences, in (1) intensity of pleasures and pains, (2) their duration, (3) their certainty or uncertainty, (4) their nearness or remoteness, (5) their fecundity, _i.e._, the tendency of a pleasure to be followed by others, or a pain by other pains; (6) their purity, _i.e._, the tendency of a pleasure to be followed by pains and _vice versa_; (7) their extent, that is, the number or range of persons whose happiness is affected--with reference to whose pleasures and pains each one of the first six items ought in strictness also to be calculated. Then sum up all the pleasures which stand to the credit side of the account; add the pains which are the debit items, or liabilities, on the other; then take their algebraic sum, and the balance of it on the side of pleasure will be the good tendency of the act upon the whole." (Dewey and Tufts: _Ethics_, pp. 275-76.)

We may say, then, that directly or indirectly, the instincts are the prime movers of all human activity; by the conative or impulsive force of some instinct (or of some habit derived from an instinct) every train of thought, however cold and passionless it may seem, is borne along towards its end, and every bodily activity is initiated and sustained. The instinctive impulses determine the ends of all activities and supply the driving power by which all mental activities are sustained; and all the complex intellectual apparatus of the most highly developed mind is but a means towards these ends, is but the instrument by which these impulses seek their satisfactions, while pleasure and pain do but serve to guide them in their choice of the means.

Take away these instinctive dispositions with their powerful impulses, and the organism would become incapable of activity of any kind; it would lie inert and motionless, like a wonderful clockwork whose mainspring had been removed, or a steam-engine whose fires had been drawn.[1]

[Footnote 1: McDougall: _Social Psychology_, p. 44.]

Reflection is last rather than first; it is provoked and sustained by instinctive desires, and is the means whereby they may be fulfilled.

TYPES OF MORAL THEORY. Reflection upon morals produces certain characteristic types of moral theory. These may be classified, although, because of the complexity of factors involved in any moral theory, cross-division is inevitable. But in the long history of human reflection upon a reasonable way of life, certain divisions stand out clearly. The first great contrast that may be mentioned is that existing between Absolutism and Relativism, the contrast, namely, between theories of morals that regard right and wrong as absolute and _a priori_, unconditioned by time, place, and circumstance; and theories of morals that judge the rightness and wrongness of acts in terms of their consequences, in the happiness or welfare of human beings, however that be conceived. These two points of view represent radically different temperaments and differ radically in their fruits. The contrast will stand out more clearly after a brief discussion of each.

ABSOLUTISM. Absolutistic moralities are distinguished by their maintenance of the fundamental moral idea of Duty, Duty consisting in an obligation to conform to the Right. Implied in this obligation of absolute conformity is the conception that the Right is unalterable, universally binding, and imperative. Good and evil are not discoverable in experience, but are standards to which human beings must in experience conform. The right is not simply the desirable--frequently it is, from the standpoint of impulses and emotion, the undesirable; but it is a universal, an _a priori_ standard to which human beings must in experience conform. Morals are "eternal and immutable" principles, absolutely irrefutable and indefeasible in experience. We shall, in approaching the problem from the standpoint of moral knowledge, see that most absolutist moral philosophers have also supposed that these eternal principles of right action are intuitively perceived. What concerns us in this connection, however, is the nature of this absolutistic conception, and its bearings on the governance of human conduct.

According to the absolutist, the "goodness" of an act is not at all affected by its immediate consequences. The value of a good or a moral act does not consist in its results. The moral value of an act consists in the "good-will" of the agent, and the "good-will" of the agent consists in his willing and conscious conformity to the absolute moral principle involved. "Nothing is fundamentally good but the good-will." That is, an act to be moral, must be the conscious conformity of a rational agent to the moral law, which he recognizes to be morally binding. To Kant, the classic exponent of this position, an act performed out of mere inclination, if not immoral, certainly was not moral. A moral act could only flow from reason, and reason would dictate to an individual conformity to the moral law, which was a law of reason. Conduct that is determined by mere circumstance is not moral conduct. Morality is above the domain of circumstance. And the moral agent is above the defeats and compromises imposed by time and place. He is a free agent, that is, morally free. He accepts no commands, except those of reason. A man, in following impulse or being dictated to by circumstance, is a mere animal or a machine. He is only a reasonable, that is, a moral being, when he conforms to the laws which are above time and place and circumstance, and above the whirls and eddies of personal inclination.

Concretely, one may take the absolutistic attitude toward a specific virtue: honesty. The morality of telling the truth consists in a conscious conformity to the moral standard of honesty in the face of all deflections of inclination and particular situations. It makes no iota of difference what the result of telling the truth in a particular instance may be. It makes no difference what urgent and plausible and practically decent reason one has for not telling the truth. The truth must be told, as justice must be done, though the heavens fall. We have a case, let us suppose, where telling bad news to a very sick man may kill him. That temporally disastrous consequence is, from an absolutistic point of view, a totally irrelevant consideration, as is also the pain we feel in telling the truth under such conditions. But the single moral course is clear; there is no alternative; in absolutistic morals there are no extenuating circumstances. The truth must be told, whatever be the consequences. For to tell the truth is a universal moral law, and conformity to that law a universal moral obligation.

The defects of this position, if they are not obvious from its bare statement, will become clearer from the analysis of the relativist or teleological positions. But its specific virtues deserve attention. The Kantian or absolutistic position, by its emphasis on the indefeasible and unwavering character of moral action, suggests something that rouses admiration from common sense, unsophisticated by moral theory. We do not think highly of the man who is at the mercy of every chance appetite, or every casual incident. Morality must be constituted of more enduring stuff. We do not deeply admire the caliber of a man who yields to every pressing exigency, surrendering thereby every ideal, principle, or value, the attainment of which demands some postponement or some privation of the fulfillment of immediate desire. The man who compromises his political ideals in the attainment of his personal success, is a scornful figure morally. And we estimate more highly the character of an individual who can persist in the strenuous attainment of an ideal in the face of the counter-inclination of passing pleasures. In its emphasis on the autonomy and integrity of moral action, even its opponents credit the Kantian or absolutistic position with having hit upon a genuinely moral aspect of human action. It is, as we shall see, in the rigidity and formalism of its conception, in its fanatical allegiance to _a priori_ standards, and its absolute sanctification of given ways of action, that the theory is questionable.

RELATIVISTIC OR TELEOLOGICAL MORALITY. Contrasted with the theories of morals that maintain that right and wrong are absolute and eternal principles unaffected by time, place, and circumstance, are those moral philosophies which set out explicitly to discover a way of life by which human happiness in this world of time and place and circumstance may be attained. To know what is the supreme good, and to discover what are the means of its attainment, are, as Aristotle long ago and justly observed, of great importance in the regulation of life. It is this knowledge and discovery that constitute, according to Aristotle, the business of ethics. Regarding this "supreme good," we may quote his own expressions:

We speak of that which is sought after for its own sake, as more final than that which is sought after as a means to something else; we speak of that which is never desired as a means to something else as more final than the things which are desired both in themselves and as means to something else; and we speak of a thing as absolutely final, if it is always desired in itself and never as a means to something else.

It seems that happiness preëminently answers to this description, as we always desire happiness for its own sake, and never as a means to something else, whereas we desire honour, pleasure, intellect, and every virtue, partly for their own sakes,... but partly also as being means to happiness, because we suppose they will prove the instruments of happiness. Happiness, on the other hand, nobody desires for the sake of these things, nor indeed as a means to anything else at all.[1]

[Footnote 1: Aristotle: _loc. cit._, pp. 13-14.]

Happiness may, as Aristotle observes, be differently conceived by different people. To some it may mean a life of sensual enjoyment; to some men a life of money-making. But it is the attainment of _complete_ satisfaction and self-realization by the individual that ethical theories should promote; for such self-realization constitutes happiness. It is sufficient here to point out that all so-called "teleological" or "relativistic" moralities, insist that the morality of an action is not determinable _a priori_, or absolutely. They are _relativistic_ in the sense that they insist on taking into account the specific circumstances of action in the determination of its moral value. They are _teleological_ in that they insist on measuring the moral value of an action in terms of its consequences in human well-being or happiness, however those be conceived. To revert to the illustration used in connection with the discussion of Absolutism, to lie in order to save a life would, on this basis, be construed as good rather than evil.

UTILITARIANISM. One of the classic statements of relativistic and teleological morality is Utilitarianism. According to the Utilitarians the criterion of the worth of a deed was to be found in an estimation of the relative pleasures and pains produced by it. The view is thus stated by John Stuart Mill:

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. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded--namely, that pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.[1]

[Footnote 1: Mill: _Utilitarianism_ (London, 1907), pp. 9-10.]

Simply stated, Utilitarianism says: "Add together all the pleasures promised by a contemplated course of action, then the pains, and note the difference; the nature of the difference will determine whether the course is right or wrong." Pleasures and pains are thus conceived as being open to quantitative determination. Action is determined by mathematical calculation in advance of the pleasure and pain produced by any action. Bentham's name is particularly associated with the dictum, "the greatest happiness for the greatest number." But two implications of this doctrine must be taken into account, at least as Bentham interpreted it. The greatest happiness meant the maximum amount of pleasure. And each individual could desire the greatest happiness, only in so far as it contributed to his own happiness or pleasure. And, for Bentham, as for all strict Utilitarians, there was no qualitative distinction in the amounts of pleasure. "The quantity being the same," said Bentham, "pushpin is as good as poetry."

Utilitarianism is here considered as an instance of a type of ethical theory that set human happiness as the end, and made its judgments of actions depend on their consequences in human welfare. It must be pointed out, however, that its conception of happiness was dependent on a psychology now almost unanimously recognized as false: Bentham's assumption that the _reason_ human beings performed certain actions was _because_ they desired certain pleasures, completely reverses the actual situation. It puts, as it were, the cart before the horse. Pleasure is psychologically the accompaniment, what psychologists call the "feeling tone" of the satisfaction of any instinctive or habitual impulse. Human beings have certain native or habitual tendencies to action, and pleasure attends the performance of these. It is not because we want the pleasure of eating, that we decide to eat; we want to eat, and eating is therefore pleasant.

If the good Samaritan cared about the present feelings or the future welfare of the man fallen among thieves, it would no doubt give him some pleasure to satisfy that desire for his welfare; if he had desired his good as little as the priest and the Levite, there would have been nothing to suggest the strange idea that to relieve him, to bind up his nasty wounds, and to spend money upon him, would be a source of more pleasure to himself than to pass by on the other side and spend the money upon himself. In the case of the great majority of our pleasures, it will probably be found that the desire is the condition of the pleasure, not the pleasure of the desire.[1]

[Footnote 1: Rashdall: _Ethics_, p. 18.]

As has been previously pointed out in this and other chapters, action does not start with reflection upon pleasures, or, for that matter, upon anything else. Action is fundamentally initiated by instinctive promptings, or the promptings of habit. Satisfaction or pleasure attends the fulfillment of any inborn or acquired impulse, and dissatisfaction or pain its obstruction or frustration. Apart from the satisfactions experienced in the fulfillment in action of such impulses, pleasure does not exist. Actions, situations, persons, or ideas can be pleasant to us, but "pleasure" as a separate objective entity cannot be said to exist at all. The Utilitarians, again, made the intellectualist error of supposing that men dispassionately and mathematically weighed the consequences of their actions, whereas their relative impulsions to action are determined by the instincts they inherit and the habits they have already acquired.

Despite its false psychology, Utilitarianism does stand out as one of the great classic attempts to build an ethical theory squarely designed to promote human happiness. An execution of the same worthy intention, more acceptable to those trained in the modern psychology of instinct, is that moral conception variously known as Behaviorism, or Energism, a point of view maintained by thinkers from Aristotle to Professor Dewey in our own day. All behavioristic theories take the position that in order to find out what is good for man, we must begin by finding out what man is. In order to discover what will give man satisfaction, we must discover what his natural impulses and capacities are. In the utilization and fulfillment of these will man find his most complete realization and happiness. The standard of goodness, therefore, is measured in terms of the extent to which action promotes a complete and harmonious utilization of natural impulses and natural capacities. Ethics, from such a viewpoint, cannot set up arbitrary standards, but must form its standards by inquiries into the fundamental and natural needs and desires of men. Instead of laying down eternal principles to which human beings must be made to conform, it must derive its principles from observations of human experience, and test them there. The good is what does good; the bad what does harm. And what is good for men, and bad for men, depends not on rigid _a priori_ intellectual standards, but on the original nature which is each man's inheritance.

To base ethics upon an analysis of the conditions of human nature, as scientific inquiry reveals it, carries with it two implications. It means that nothing that is shown to be a part of man's inevitable original equipment can with justice to man's welfare be ruled out. Every instinct taken by itself is as good as any other. It is only when one instinct competes with another, so that excessive indulgence of one, as, for example, that of sex or pugnacity, interferes with all a man's other instincts or interests (or with those of other men), that an instinct becomes evil. It means, secondly, that since individuals differ, and since situations are infinitely various and individual, no arbitrary and fixed laws can be laid down as fundamental eternal principles.

MORAL KNOWLEDGE. The contrast between the two types of morality that have been historically current may be approached from the standpoint of moral knowledge. That is, moral theories may be classified on the basis of their answer to the question: How do moral judgments arise? The chief contrast to be drawn is that between Intuitionalism on the one hand, and Empiricism on the other. Intuitionalism holds briefly that the moral quality of an act is intuitively perceived, and is recognized apart from experience of its consequences. The empirical theory holds that moral judgments come to be attached to acts as a result of experience, and particularly experiences of the approval and disapproval of other people. The contrast will again become clearer by a discussion of each theory separately.

INTUITIONALISM. Intuitionalism takes two chief forms. The first, Perceptual Intuitionalism, as Sidgwick calls it, holds that the rightness of each particular act is immediately known. The second, called by the same author Dogmatic Intuitionalism, holds that the general laws of common-sense morality are immediately perceived. The popular view of "conscience," well illustrates the first-mentioned position of the Intuitionalist.

We commonly think of the dictates of conscience as relating to particular actions, and when a man is bidden in a particular case to "trust to his conscience," it commonly seems to be meant that he should exercise a faculty of judging morally this particular case without reference to general rules, and even in opposition to conclusions obtained by systematic deduction from such rules.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sidgwick: _Methods of Ethics_ (4th edition), p. 99.]

Conscience, this organ of immediate moral perception, is frequently taken to be divinely given at birth. There is no one so certain or immovable as the man whose actions are dictated by his "conscience." He does not have to think about his actions; he knows immediately what is right and what is wrong. The intuitionalist does not go into the natural history of scruples for or against the performance of certain actions. He takes these immediate aversions or promptings to act as the revelations of immediate and unquestionable knowledge, frequently presumed to be divinely implanted. Most Intuitionalists hold not that we experience an immediate intuition of the rightness or wrongness of action in every single situation, but that the common rules of morality, such common rules as good faith and veracity, are immediately recognized and assented to as moral. They insist that these are not determined by experience or by reflection, since stealing, lying, and murder are _known_ to be wrong by everyone, though most men could not tell way.

Intuitionalism carried out to logical extremes is represented by such men as Tclstoy, and, in general, those who genuinely and persistently act according to the dictates of their conscience, "who hold, and so far as they can, act upon the principle that we must never resist force by force, never arrest a thief, must literally give to him that asketh, up to one's last penny, and so on."

EMPIRICISM. To explain the grounds of the Empirical position is to exhibit the arguments in refutation of Intuitionalism. The most obvious and frequent line of attack that empirical moralists make upon Intuitionalism is to examine and compare the various "intuitions" of right conduct which have been held by men in different ages and places.

The traditional method of combating intuitionalism from the time of John Locke to that of Herbert Spencer has been to present the reader with a list of cruel and abominable savage customs, ridiculous superstitions, acts of religious fanaticism and intolerance, which have all alike seemed self-evidently good and right to the peoples or individuals who have practised them. There is hardly a vice or a crime (according to our own moral standard) which has not at some time or other in some circumstances been looked upon as a moral and religious duty. Stealing was accounted virtuous for the young Spartan, and among the Indian caste of Thugs. In the ancient world, piracy, that is, robbery and murder, was a respectable profession. To the mediæval Christian, religious persecution was the highest of duties, and so on.[1]

[Footnote 1: Rashdall: _loc. cit._, p. 59.]

The Empiricist asks: If all these intuitions are absolute; if men at various times and at various places, indeed, if, as is the case, men of different social classes and situations at the present time, differ so profoundly in their "intuitions" of the just, the noble, and the base, which of the conflicting intuitions, all equally absolute, is _the_ absolute? The Intuitionalist continually appeals to the universal intuition and assent of Mankind. But there is scarcely a single moral law for which universal assent in even a single generation can be found. One has but to survey the heterogeneous collection of customs and prohibitions collected in such a work as Frazer's _Golden Bough_, to see how little unanimity there is in the moral intuitions of mankind.

The Empiricist finds the origin of these divergent moral convictions in the divergent environments to which individuals in different places, times, and social situations are exposed. The intensity and apparent irrefutability of these convictions, which the Intuitionalist ascribes to their innateness, the Empiricist ascribes to their early acquisition, and the deep emotional hold which early acquired habits have over the individual. Those moral beliefs which we hold with the utmost conviction and intensity are, instead of being thereby guaranteed as most reasonable and genuinely moral, thereby rendered, says the Empiricist, the more suspect. They are evidences of the effectiveness of our early education, or of our high degree of sensitiveness to our fellows. Conscience is thus reduced to habitual emotional reactions produced by the contact of a given individual temperament with a given environment.

Thus acts come by the individual to be recognized as right or wrong, according to the tradition to which he has been educated and the contacts with other people to which he is continually exposed. The Empiricist does not deny that there are intuitions, or apparent intuitions. He denies their ultimacy, their unquestionable validity.

When ... we find ourselves entertaining an opinion about the basis of which there is a quality of feeling which tells us that to inquire into it would be absurd, obviously unnecessary, unprofitable, undesirable, bad form, or wicked, we may know that that opinion is a non-rational one, and probably, therefore, founded upon inadequate evidence.[1]

[Footnote 1: Trotter: _Instincts of the Herd_, p. 44.]

These so powerful convictions are the immediate promptings of instincts, or of the habits into which they have been modified. The humane Christian, had he been brought up in the Eskimo tradition, would with the most tender solicitude slaughter his aged parents, just as the humane Christian in the Middle Ages thought it his duty to slay heretics. There is no limit to the excesses to which men have gone on the dictates of conscience. To put actions on the basis of conscience is to put them beyond the control of reflection or the check of inquiry. It is to reduce conduct to caprice; to exalt impulse into a moral command. And the results of accepting blind intuitions as rational knowledge have been in many cases catastrophic.

If reason has slain its thousands, the acceptance of instinct as evidence has slain its tens of thousands. Day by day, in the ordinary direction of their lives, men have learned during hundreds of generations how untrustworthy is the interpretation of fact which Instinct offers, and how bitter is the truth contained in such proverbs as "Anger is a bad counsellor," or "Love is blind." ... Wars are often started and maintained, neither from mere blind anger, nor because those on either side find that they desire the results which a cool calculation of the conditions makes them regard as probable, but largely because men insist on treating their feelings as evidence of fact and refuse to believe that they can be so angry without sufficient cause.[1]

[Footnote 1: Graham Wallas: _The Great Society_, pp. 224-25.]

The Empiricist insists that the morality of an act cannot be told from the intensity of approval or disapproval which it arouses in the individual. Actions are not moral or immoral in themselves, but in their consequences or relations, which are only discoverable in experience. The goodness or badness of an act is measurable in terms of its consequences, and the consequences of action are discoverable only in experience. This does not imply that we calculate the results of every action before performing it, or measure the consequences of the acts of other persons before judging them. Our immediate reactions are frequently not the result of reflection at all, but are responses prompted by previously formed habits, or by instinctive caprice. These immediate intuitions are not to be relied upon as moral standards, precisely because reflection frequently comes to an estimate of an act, directly at variance with our instinctive reaction to it. We come, upon reflection, to approve acts that we are, by instinct, moved to condemn. And the reverse holds true.

When we see that a child's clothes have caught fire, we do not need to reflect on any consequences for universal well-being before we make up our minds that it is a duty to extinguish the flames, even at the cost of some risk to ourselves. It is clear that the act will conduce to pleasure and to the avoidance of pain. We should feel an equally instinctive desire to kick out of the room a man whom we saw making incisions in the flesh of a human being if we did not know that he was a surgeon, and that the making of incisions will tend to save the man's life. Were a competent physician to suggest that the burning of the child's clothes upon its back would cure it of a fever, every reasonable person would consider it his duty to reconsider his _prima-facie_ view of the situation.[1]

[Footnote 1: Rashdall: _Ethics_, pp, 51-52.]

The Empiricist insists that moral standards are matters of discovery; that the laws of conduct must be derived from experience, just as must the laws of the physical sciences. To condemn an act as evil means that the performance of that act has in experience been found to produce harmful results. Those moral laws which at the present stage of civilized society seem to have attained universal assent, _have_ attained it because they are rules whose practice has, in the history of the race, repeatedly been found to produce desirable results. Even the conception of justice, which has by so many thinkers been held to be absolute, to inhere somehow in the nature of things, is by Mill demonstrated at length to be merely a particularly highly regarded utility:

It appears ... that justice is a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation than any others; though particular cases may occur where some other social duty is so important as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice. Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medical practitioner.[2]

[Footnote 2: Mill: _Utilitarianism_ (London, 1907), p. 95.]

Indeed it is clear, that in the processes of natural selection those tribes would survive whose rules of morality did in general promote welfare. And it is the business of reflection, says the Empiricist, not to accept either his own conviction or those of others on ethical questions, but in cases of ambiguity to establish, after inquiry, a standard the practice of which promises the widest benefits in human happiness.

ETHICS AND LIFE. All ethical theories are more or less deliberately intended as definitions of the good, and as instruments for its attainment. They must, therefore, be immediately tested by their fruits in life. An ethical theory that is only verbally concerned with the good, but does not in practice promote human welfare, is futile pedantry or worse. Reflection upon conduct arises in man's attempt to control the nature which is his inheritance in the interests of his happiness. Men have learned through experience that to follow each impulse without forethought brings them pain, misery, and sometimes destruction. They have found that to achieve happiness some harmony must be established between competing desires, and that only by balances, adjustment, and control, can they make the most of the nature which is theirs inescapably. This nature consists, as we have seen, in certain specific tendencies to action. Men are natively endowed with instincts to love, to fight, to be curious, to long for and enjoy the companionship of their fellows, to wish privacy and solitude, to follow a lead and to take it, to fear and hate, and sympathize with others. The satisfaction of any one of these impulses gives pleasure. Any one of these may become a dominant passion. But it is not through yielding to a single imperious impulse that men attain genuine happiness. To be excessively pugnacious or amorous or fearful is to court unhappiness, both for the individual and his fellows. It is only by giving each instinct its proportionate chance in the total context of all the instincts, that happiness is to be found.

It is for this reason that, as Aristotle first pointed out, a study of what is good for man must start with a study of what man himself is. The study of ethics must consequently fall back for its data upon psychology. It must note with precision the things that men can do, before it tells them what they ought to do. For the things they ought to do, are dependent on the conditions which limit and determine their ideals. Any ethical system that deliberately excludes from its formulation natural human desires and capacities, is denying the very sources of all morality. For every ideal has its root back in some unlearned human impulse, and an ideal that has no basis in the nature of man, is not an ideal, but a negation. The ideal "way of life" is one that provides for the harmonious utilization of all those possibilities which lie in man's original nature. To deny a place to the sex impulse is to deny a place to ideal love. To deny the moral legitimacy of the fighting instinct is to take away the basis of that immense energy which goes to sustain great moral reformers. The place of ethical theory is not to deny human impulses, but to turn them to uses in which they will not hinder other impulses either of the individual or of others. Through physical science, men have sought to make the most of their physical environment; through moral science, they can try to make the most of the human equipment which is theirs for better or for worse. This human equipment is an opportunity; and the utilization of this opportunity constitutes happiness. It is in the realization of the possibilities offered by our original human nature that reflection upon morals is justified. It is in the effective fulfillment of this opportunity that its success must be measured.

MORALITY AND HUMAN NATURE. A moral theory that is merely coercive and arbitrary, therefore, is not in a genuine sense moral. A morality, to justify itself, must appeal to the heart of man. The good which it recommends must be a good which man can without sophistry approve. And the good for which man can whole-heartedly strive is not determined by logic, but, in the last analysis, by biology. Human beings cannot freely call good that to which they have no spontaneous prompting. Those ascetics who have denied the flesh may have displayed a certain degree of heroism, but they displayed an equal lack of insight. For it is out of physical impulses alone that any ideal values can arise.

It is only when one instinct interferes with its neighbors, or one individual with his fellows, that instincts or activities can be called evil. They are called evil in relation, in context, with reference to their consequences. In itself no natural impulse is subject to condemnation. It is just as natural as thunder or sunshine, and is to be taken as a point of departure, as a basis for action, rather than as a chance for censure. Impulses demand control simply because, left to themselves, they collide with each other, just as individuals uncontrolled by custom, law, and education, collide with each other in the pursuit of satisfaction. The ideal is a way of life, which will allow as much spontaneity as the conditions of nature and life allow, and provide as much control as they make necessary. To be thus in control of one's desires is to be free. It is to utilize one's interests and capacities in the light of a harmony both of one's own desires, and in so far as this harmony is universal, of the desires of all men. It is to lead the Life of Reason:

Every one leads the Life of Reason in so far as he finds a steady light behind the world's glitter, and a clear residuum of joy beneath pleasure and success. No experience not to be repented of falls without its sphere. Every solution to a doubt, in so far as it is not a new error, every practical achievement not neutralized by a second maladjustment consequent upon it, every consolation not the seed of another, greater sorrow, may be gathered together and built into this edifice. The Life of Reason is the happy marriage of two elements--impulse and ideation--which if wholly divorced would reduce man to a brute or to a maniac. The rational animal is generated by the union of these two monsters. He is constituted by ideas which have ceased to be visionary and actions which have ceased to be vain.[1]

[Footnote 1: Santayana: _Reason in Common Sense_, p. 6.]

Nor does the leading of a moral life, as Kant and other moralists said or implied, demand a stern and lugubrious countenance and a sad, resigned determination to be good. A moral system should promote rather a hallelujah than a halo. One may suspect the adequacy to human happiness of those moral systems which promote in their holders or practitioners a virtuous somberness and a moral melancholy. A morality that demands such unwholesome outward evidences is inwardly not beautiful. As art is an attempt to give perfection and fulfillment to matter, so is morals an attempt to give perfect and complete fulfillment to human possibility. A genuine morality will, in consequence, be spontaneous and free. In Matthew Arnold's well-known lines:

"Then, when the clouds are off the soul,
When thou dost bask in Nature's eye,
Ask, how _she_ view'd thy self-control,
Thy struggling task'd morality.
Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air
Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair.
* * * * *
"There is no effort on _my_ brow--
I do not strive, I do not weep.
I rush with the swift spheres, and glow
In joy, and when I will, I sleep."[1]

[Footnote 1: From _Morality_.]

MORALS, LAW, AND EDUCATION. No moral code, however adequate in its theoretical formulation or the means of its attainment, is socially effective merely as theory. No matter how completely it takes into account all the natural desires and possibilities which demand fulfillment, it remains merely an academic yearning. It becomes an instrument of happiness only when it has been made the habitual mode of life of the individual and the group, through the long continuous processes of education and law. There is a familiar discrepancy between theory and practice, even when the discrepancy is not due to insincerity. Philosophy cannot make a man virtuous, however much it may convince him of the path to virtue. Socrates thought that if men only knew the good they would follow it. But modern psychologists and ordinary laymen know better. The good must become a habitual practice if men are to follow it, and it can only become a habitual practice if education and social conditions in general provide for the early habituation of the individual to conduct that is socially useful. Aristotle, who himself framed a theory of morals that was built on the firm foundation of human possibility, was aware of the inadequacy of theory by itself to make men good:

Some people think that men are made good by nature, others by habit, others again by teaching.

Now it is clear that the gift of Nature is not in our own power, but is bestowed through some divine power upon those who are truly fortunate. It is probably true also that reason and teaching are not universally efficacious; the soul of the pupil must first have been cultivated by habit to a right spirit of pleasure and aversion, like the earth that is to nourish the seed.[1]

[Footnote 1: Aristotle: Ethics, book X, chap. X, p. 344 (Weldon translation).

It is only when people find pleasure in the right actions, that they can be depended upon to perform them. And it is by their early and habitual performance that they will become pleasant. In the formation of such socially and individually useful habits, education is the incomparable instrument. The conduct of individuals is, as we have repeatedly seen, largely fixed by the customary recognition of certain acts as approved, and others as disapproved. These approvals and disapprovals are transmitted through education. Education is used here to refer not simply to the formal institutions of teaching, but to the complete social environment, the approvals and disapprovals with which an individual comes in contact. Formal education is, however, the chief means by which society inculcates into younger members those values, traditions, and customs which its controlling elements regard as of the most pivotal importance.

Social customs which are transmitted in education, become fixed in law. So that, as Aristotle points out in this same connection, laws are symptomatic of the moral values which the group regards as of the highest importance. Laws are customs given all the sanction, support, and significance that the group can put into them. Education transmits the values, ideals, and traditions cherished by the group, but the laws and customs already current largely control the scope and methods of education. "Education proceeds ultimately from the patterns furnished by institutions, customs, and laws. Only in a just state will these be such as to give the right education."[1]

[Footnote 1: Dewey: _Democracy and Education_, p. 103.]

The state of law and education which is exhibited by a society, thus accurately mirrors the degree of moral progress of the group. And what is, perhaps, more significant, the kind of law and education current determines the moral ideals and conditions the moral achievements of the maturing generation. Education, more especially, is the instrument through which the young can be educated not only to ideals and customs already current, but to their reflective modification in the light of our ever-growing knowledge of the conditions of human welfare.

INDEX

Ability, education and native. Absolutism in morality. Acquisitive instinct. Activity, creative (see Creative activity); mental; physical; social. Æsthetic experience; and form; in industry; in science; sense satisfaction basis of; standards, effect of custom on; value of science; values; _vs._ moral values; _vs._ practical values. _See also_ Art. Affection. _See_ Love. Age, influence of on learning. Altruism. Ambition. Animal, instincts compared with human; man as an; man a social. Appreciation. _See_ Æsthetic. Aristocracy. Aristotle. Arnold, Matthew. Art, and emotion; and morals; and nature; appreciation of; as an industry; as propaganda; as realization of ideals; as recreation; as vicarious experience; expression of ideas by; fine; for art's sake; imagination in; industrial; origin of; standards in. _See also_ Æsthetic. Attention in habit formation. Awe.

Bacon, Francis. Bagehot. Bain. Beauty. _See_ Art, and Æsthetic. Behavior, habitual; instinctive; types of human. Behaviorism. Belief, gregariousness in; individuality in. Bentham. Bergson. Bible. Blame. _See_ Praise. Bloomfield, Leonard. Boas. Bryce. Burke, Edmund. Burns, C. Delisle. Bury. Butler.

Cannon. Career of reason. Carlyle. Carnegie. Cattell. Change, in customs; in habits; in language; opposition to. Character. _See_ Personality, and Self, development of. Christ. Christianity. Church, the, as a social institution; educational functions of; political functions of. Civilization, and acquisitive instinct; control of instincts in; factors in development of. _See also_ Society. Classification in science. Coefficient of correlation. Common sense and science. Communication. _See_ Language. Companionship. _See_ Gregariousness. Comte, Auguste. Conduct, cultivation of socially desirable; social standards of. Confession. Conscience. Conservatism, place of fear in; of habit. Continuity, cultural. Cooley. Courage. Creative activity, and eccentricity; as sublimation of sex instinct; in art; in industry; in society. _See also_ Imagination. Culture, continuity of; dependent on environment. Curiosity, instinct of; and scientific inquiry. Custom, attitudes toward; and art; and morals; changes in; effects of on progress; preservation of; social value of.

Dante. Darwin. Deduction. Democracy. Dewey. Dickens. Dickinson, G. Lowes. Differences, individual, and education; causes of; in industry; in leadership; in reflection: influence of environment on; of heredity; of race; of sex. Discontent, due to repression of instincts. Dislike. _See_ Hate. Divine, as the human ideal; description of. Dogmatism. Dow. Dowson, Ernest.

Eccentrics. Education, and individual differences; and morals; as transmitter of the past; by the church; instrument for social betterment and control; made possible by prolonged period of infancy; and by language. _See also_ Learning. Egoism. Emerson. Emotion, accompanies satisfaction or frustration of instincts or habits; and art; and language; aroused in maintenance of self; as driving power; difficulty of classifying; in morals; impedes reflection; James-Lange theory of; of dislike or hate; of fear; of pity; of love; physical indications of. Empirical morality. Enthusiasm; religious. Environment, control of by science; influence of on æsthetic appreciation; on individual differences; on racial differences; on instincts; maladjustment between individual and; possibility of choice of. Ethics, and life; contrast between professed and practiced. _See also_ Morality. Euripedes. Evolution. Experience, art as vicarious; modifies man's instincts. Experiment, to determine learning process in animals; number of instincts in animals; in children. Experimental moral standards. Experimentation in science. Expression, art as means of. _See also_ Æsthetic, and Religion.

Fatigue, influence of on learning; in relation to industry; mental; nervous; physical. Fear, and religious experience; instinct of; of the new. Field, Eugene. Fighting instinct. _See_ Pugnacity. Fiske. Folkways. Food, instinct of. Form, and æsthetic experience. Freedom of speech. Freudian psychology. Friendship. _See_ Love. Frost, Robert.

Galton, Francis. Garibaldi. Generalization in reflection. Genius. God. Goethe. Goff. Goldmark. Gregariousness, effect of on innovation; importance of for social solidarity; in action; in belief; instinct of. Group-feeling; influence of on language. _See also_ Society.

Habit, as time-saver; importance of in morals; language as a; of reflection, importance of; strength of in individual; in society. Habits, and emotion; and instincts; disserviceable; education a deliberate acquisition of; formation of, influence of on thinking; modification of by reflection; of mind; specific not general; transference of. Hard, William. Harrison, Jane. Hart. Hate. Health, influence of on learning. Hegel. Henley. Heraclitus. Herd instinct. _See_ Gregariousness. Heredity. Hinks. History, and religion. Hobhouse. Housman. Hunger, instinct of. Huxley.