Chapter XXIV: Part 24

The independence of America was a necessary thing, but it came in the worst way possible. The colonies resisted taxation, imposed by a parliament 3000 miles away,—in those days fifteen times that distance in time,—in which parliament they had no voice. The quarrel came to blows; but the colonists had no idea of separation from England, until Thomas Paine persuaded them that independence alone could end such quarrels. That was true, but it was a heavy misfortune, from which we still suffer, that independence was secured by war. The colonies had exhausted their resources in their success; but they had not exhausted England. The British government, sore and humiliated, still held the north and northwest of America, commanded the force of the great aboriginal tribes, controlled the whole American coast with its ships. The Colonies, still confronted by the powerful enemy they had made, were compelled to unite for common defence. These colonies had radical differences, political, religious, commercial; some were free, some held slaves. But in presence of the common foe they had to unite at once, and sink their differences. When they met to frame a constitution for their union the majority had no notion of any constitution save that of England, and little accurate knowledge of that. What they framed was a crude imitation of the undeveloped English constitution of a hundred years ago. They made two legislatures because England seemed to have two; but made them equal, not knowing that in England the two were not equal. They supposed England was really governed by the king; so, having knocked down George III. they set up a monarch much more powerful, who to-day under the name of president possesses more power than any throne on earth. They formed a Senate, able to defeat the popular House.

The Senate is a peerage of states, in which New York has no more power than states hardly larger than some of its counties. This anomaly was advocated on the ground that in England boroughs of a few hundred voters had equal representation with others of many thousands. The old monstrosity, now the extinct "rotten borough" system, was here actually raised into a constitutional principle. Command of the Army and Navy, there nominally lodged in the crown, was really lodged with the American monarch, so that he may slip from his civil to his military throne, and rule by martial law. This powerful monarch is not elected by the people of the United States, but of the states separately, through electors proportioned to their members of Congress. Consequently, as New York has the greatest number of electors, the monarch in nine cases out of ten, is chosen by one state. The present President got a trifling majority in New York, and was elected. Mr. Cleveland received some 100,000 majority of votes in the nation, and was defeated. A popular superstition calls that the Great Republic. Since the electors ceased to be real electors, as the constitution intended, and became mere messenger-boys carrying votes they never cast, this government is not so republican as is now that its revolution overthrew a hundred years ago. Even at its best our hasty constitution gave new lease to an England discredited at home, and a new lease to slavery, which had been decaying. Slavery entered its new stronghold, and ruled America for generations; had it not lost its head and assailed its own stronghold, it might be ruling still. Our much eulogised constitution, by its compromise with slavery, cost America a million lives, and a billion of money. And all of those evils, involving a steady degradation of our politics, are due to the fact that America got its independence not by evolution,—which would have surely secured it, leaving England its friend,—but by revolution, which made England its enemy; necessitating a premature, crude, military union; preventing the mature discussion and development which could have made the constitution an advance in political civilisation instead of a retrogression. When our fathers had swept English authority out of the country, they had not swept political superstitions, monarchal notions, out of it; so they re-enthroned in their garnished habitation the defects of the system they had fought. When Washington was presently both reigning and governing in America, when he was the idol of monarchs, with a petted courtier representing him in every European Court, poor Thomas Paine, who made the revolution, was a prisoner in Paris for trying to moderate the gory giant he had evoked; and pleading for something like the ministerial government of England, which was steadily adopting his principles of toleration, and the rights of man, by sure forces of evolution. By such forces,—by argument, petition, parliamentary influence,—England has secured something like republican government under its mask of monarchy.

When people are suffering, it is natural for them to attribute their sufferings to this or that institution which has an appearance of anachronism and injustice. But it is precisely when institutions are thus antiquated and anomalous that evolution is able to utilise them for an advance. The United States monarch is able to transfer office from his opponents to his supporters. He is powerful because he is removed every four years. He can claim that the nation has freshly given him all that power. The English sovereign has no political power at all. The nation is governed by responsible ministers. The president may snap his fingers at a parliamentary majority; the English executive may be dismissed in a night. Why has the English monarch been thus deprived of power? The cause is traceable to its hereditary character,—that same hereditary character which seems so anomalous. It was found of old that the throne, because it was hereditary, sometimes fell to a baby, who could not rule. Grown up people had to act for the child. To escape interruptions of government, when the monarch might be incapable, ministers became essential; and thus ministerial government and responsibility were developed out of the antiquated hereditary anomaly. Popular government, in its development, was able to act through this elected ministry, and the monarch, though an adult, could not claim that he had the national authority behind him, except by accordance with an elected ministry. Moreover in a monarchy all classes are interested to reduce a power which only one family can enjoy; but under a presidency all are anxious to enhance the power of an office to which all may aspire,—especially where it is renewed every four years by an electoral revolution.

In England other antiquated things have subserved progress. For the very reason that hereditary legislation is anomalous, antiquated, the peers became weak; the "upper" house became "under," by an evolution that had been impossible had it been elective. But in this very irresponsibility to the popular vote lay that independence of popularity which gives their House weight as a debating and revising body. A further step in evolution, which should determine the exact number of times that the Lords might reject a measure, after which its passage through the Commons would make it law, might make the peers a useful body in checking popular passion and haste. Their independence causes the Lords to pass bills for opening Museums and Art Galleries on Sunday, which are killed by the Commoners for fear of the Sabbatarians among their constituents. This independence of the popular breath makes the House of Lords the source of a Supreme Court whose justice was lately shown by the redress it gave Bradlaugh at the very moment when the Commons were inflicting wrongs on him, in fear of their sectarian constituents. The like may be said of another antiquated institution in England—the Church. By reason of its anomalous establishment in a nation of various creeds and a hundred and fifty sects, that Church is theologically disestablished. Subjected to the forces of political and ethical evolution, it is now preserving the vast property bequeathed by England's superstitious Past to its free-thinking Future, keeping it from being divided up among the sects, before the religious thought of the country has come of age to claim its endowment. The Church cannot spend this wealth for sectarian ends, precisely because that Church is antiquated, and without authority to represent spiritually the nation of to-day.

We might thus go through one after another anachronistic institution and show each subservient to agencies of evolution, whereas, if destroyed by revolution, they could only be succeeded by new institutions embodying, in stronger forms, the snobbery, the superstition, the sectarianism, still remaining in the country. It being certain, at the same time, that no revolution can possibly reach the troubles which alone could cause one. In England the troubles of labor are due to the fact that the birth rate is double the death rate. So long as paupers are multiplied twice as fast as they are removed, pauperism must increase. The more charity and medical care lower the death rate, the more they intensify the struggle for existence. In other swarming countries of Europe overpopulation once led to brigandage, but they are now largely relieved by emigration. This involves a steady flood of paupers to America, in addition to those spawned by native animalism. That evil may be checked when in welcoming the sound world, we shall quarantine the unsound world,—the diseased, the criminal, the ignorant. An immigrant without a dollar may be more safely admitted than one who cannot write his name.

We have a right to evolutionary legislation. We should prevent the congestion of our cities with paupers while millions of our fields are waiting to be tilled. New York will not be comforted, weeping for her children because they are not counted in the census. Rather should she weep for a multitude of those that are counted,—immigrants from its own slums as well as from the slums of Europe. Evolutionary legislation would prevent early marriage, and forbid marriage where there is no means of supporting offspring. Such unions are just as illicit as if there were no ceremony at all, and the children more cruelly illegitimate.

Until there is a high moral standard which shall restrain such cruelty to the unborn, Pauperism, prolific parent of both vices and crimes, can only be mitigated by a development of communal life. A hundred people, dining at a common table, can get the same dinner for ten cents each, that, separately would cost each twenty-five cents. That is, so far as food is concerned, communal life more than doubles every man's wages. There is no more reason why a poor family should support a kitchen of its own than that it should support a carriage of its own, instead of going in the omnibus. Gentlemen in their clubs get the advantage of wholesale prices, while the poor do not. The principle of combination is more largely applicable to lodgings also than is now the case. It costs far less to procure and keep clean one large tenement than a number of separate houses, to say nothing of the humanising influence, on manners and morals, of communal interests, and the social spirit so engendered. The home brute would be checked, the drunkard sobered, by amenability to the larger social censorship, and to a standard of communal conduct. When the working people have learned to utilise in normal life such combination as they occasionally use for strikes, they will find their means increasing enough even to strike, when necessary, with less recoil on themselves. They will also find that where institutions of that kind once take root, endowments and bequests seek them out, and make them centres of happiness and culture.

Political and social evolution must not be confused with natural selection: it is human selection. Some years ago a cotton-planter in Georgia observed that the leaves on one of his plants was unlike the usual leaf; it was divided as if into fingers. So far nature had gone. The planter added his intelligence. He concluded that such a divided leaf would let in more sunshine on the cotton. Also such a leaf would not be comfortable for caterpillars. So he searched out one or two of these peculiar plants, transplanted them to a field by themselves; as they propagated, he plucked up those with the old leaf, cultivated those with the new,—and now these new cotton plants, finer than the old, free from caterpillars, are spread through many regions. That is human selection, based on natural selection, securing the fruits of evolution. It is just as applicable to man as to vegetation. A better man may be bred as well as a better kind of cotton. Already many old forms of crime have been largely bred out of society, by the substitution of imprisonment for thefts instead of the capital punishments which juries refused to inflict. Crime being largely hereditary, the offenders used to get free, and multiplied their bad species. But when punishments were assigned which juries were ready to inflict, the criminals were isolated for years, or transported, and their race diminished. The crime that now flourishes most is murder; because its death penalty survives. It was recently shown in Parliament that about three fourths of English murderers escape, mainly through aversion of juries, and merciful people, to inflict a savage and irrevocable penalty. Were capital punishment abolished the three fourths would be isolated for life. They would be kindly treated, but must have no offspring. No such survival of autocracy as a pardoning power could exist; no individual would be able to alter decrees of courts and juries. Instead of aiming at the murderer evolution aims at the murder. It will secure a survival of the peaceful, and breed ferocity out of man as it has bred the wolf out of dogs.

But that implies breeding the wolf out of our law. The eye for eye, blood for blood, spirit is wolfish. So is the whole revolutionary spirit, whether shown in armed violence, or in arbitrary laws. It can be acted upon, controlled, shamed out of society, only by pure moral and intellectual forces. There is no greater power than instructed thought, animated by love to man, enforced by honor and character.

There is as yet no civilised nation; civilisation exists in oases, which gradually encroach on the deserts. They have largely encroached on some of these already, but civilisation can only extend as it is real. The European nations are slicing up Africa among them. This we are told is Christian civilisation: they are taking their neighbor's property only because they love him like themselves. What is the civilisation going out there? You can see it in the dens of European cities. The Africans have got to be dragged through all that. What kind of religion will go there? A Bible recording divinely ordered massacres will be put in every savage hand. Stanley says that when in sore trouble, in the African forest, he made a vow that if God would only help him, he would acknowledge his aid among men. His troubles began to clear next day. God was indifferent, it seems, so long as man and beast were suffering, but when this great temptation was held out to Jehovah—this promise of distinguished patronage—he at once interfered. There is nothing new about that God. In the Bible, his providence is always purchasable by glory. There are thousands of such gods in Africa. But Europeans are going there as representatives of civilisation, and will say to them in the name of German and English Science, in the name of Berlin, Oxford, and Cambridge,—"These be thy gods, O Africa! Only agree to call their name Jehovah, who helped Jephtha, when he vowed a sacrifice which proved to be his daughter, and who helped Stanley on condition that the service would be reported in the press."

The intellect of Europe knows better than that; but it has very few organs of its protest against surviving barbarisms that devour the world under pretence of civilising it. And it forms few such organs because itself needs humanising. Just there America may lend a hand. Our science, our literature, and art, still lack moral earnestness, and human sympathy. The value of our every liberal moral movement and organ is therefore incalculable. It was a hopeful sign to see lately on the platform of the Ethical Congress in New York leaders in various denominations,—Heber Newton, President Andrews, Lyman Abbott, Rabbi Isaacs, Felix Adler,—uniting to establish a College for Moral Culture; all admitting that the theological seminaries, public schools, and universities, had left them uninstructed in the great social, economic, ethical, and political problems which have now come urgently to the front. The prophets of Jehovah once said of Baal, "Peradventure he sleepeth." The prophets of Jehovah now admit the same concerning their ancient Syrian deity. But the divine humanity is awaking. It will rise above prejudice and party. It will inspire no man to lay an axe at the root of his neighbor's holy tree because it is not his own, but to plant beside it one which they both agree is good, and agree to nourish, and which shall prove so fruitful, so sweet, that strength shall be drawn away from the roots of evil institutions, and they shall wither away. That which, assailed by revolution, is sure to be defended, and, if felled, to be reared again, evolution may gently wither by production of the more fit. The sacred groves of the Past may still cherish their traditional names, but, if not shattered by revolutionary lightnings, they will turn themselves to fences around the garden where fruits of knowledge and the happier life are growing.

MONCURE D. CONWAY.

A CONVICTED ANARCHIST'S REPLY TO PROFESSOR LOMBROSO.

I have read with much interest Professor Lombroso's article about the anarchists, and I found many things in it that are true, but also many errors. Even should we admit Professor Lombroso's theory to be correct, it would in the present case avail but little, because the portraits from which he made his deductions are not sufficiently truthful for his purpose. 'Schaak's' book is said to be a fictitious 'robber story,' and I am informed that it contains many untruths absolutely invented for ornament and decoration. It is in the highest degree improbable that such a book should not have caricatured the portraits of the anarchists. In books designed for sale to the masses, the illustrations are not, as a rule, of any value as works of art, even if the persons pictured in them enjoy the author's favor. The only true to life pictures are the photographs which Dr. Carus sent to Professor Lombroso, and these were taken in the county jail; but it appears that the Professor thought little of them, for he says, 'Perhaps these photographs were taken some years before the crime, when they were very young,' and the pictures in the _Vorbote_ were drawn after the photographs, and are therefore of no account so long as the photographs themselves are accessible.

Certain as it is that vice, crime, and brutality very often find a characteristic expression of face, so equally certain is it also that prominent physiognomists very often judge inaccurately and falsely. There are many instances of this. In Mantegazza's work are found examples. Now, if it is difficult to arrive at a correct opinion under favorable circumstances, it is almost impossible to do so if such pictures as those of Schaak's, with Schaak's explanations, form the basis and starting point of the inquiry.

Johann Most has an unsymmetric face; this however, is not the fault of nature, but of an unskilful surgeon. Of Engel I know nothing, except that he joined the socialists at an advanced age. In his earlier years he advocated anti-Socialistic ideas. After his first arrest he was set free upon the good word of Coroner Herz, who declared that he knew Engel for years as a quiet and well-behaved citizen.

With Lingg I was not on friendly terms, and therefore propriety demands that I keep silent about him.

Spies was born in the house of a forester, which had formerly been a _Raubschloss_. The connection between this fact and the other one that Spies twenty years later was converted to socialism by an American, is not very clear to me. He was undoubtedly the most gifted of all the indicted anarchists, and he had a most intelligent appearance; his forehead was well developed. Temperance in eating and drinking was one of his qualities, but as regards his intellectual activity, I regret to say that this was not the case. Many of his articles betrayed nervous over-excitement. In the beginning of the year 1886, all intellectual work was forbidden him by his physician, and for a few weeks he followed his advice. He was full of compassion for the poor and wretched, and he helped them wherever he could. Concerning his charities he observed strict silence. Any reference to them was disagreeable to him, and made him angry. A man who had once rudely offended him without cause, being in distress Spies obtained work for him. I came to the knowledge of this by accident. One of the employees of the _Arbeiter-Zeitung_ who received but a small salary told me that Spies out of his own pocket gave him for some months $2.00 a week to pay a doctor and procure medicine. The salary of Spies was only $19.00 a week, and from this he supported his mother. Spies was of a very tender nature, and what his comrades thought of his blood-thirstiness may be gathered from the following anecdote. A certain man by the name of Matzinger had translated an article from the French, "The Day After the Revolution," and Spies asked an acquaintance of mine, "What would you do the day after the revolution?" The answer was, "I should imprison you till all was over, for your sentimentality would prevent us from any energetic methods." The bystanders laughed; Spies flushed and said nothing.

Fielden has been treated worst by Professor Lombroso. His father has been characterised as a sort of genius, and in closest connection with it, the Professor says, "Almost all the sons of men of genius are lunatics, idiots, or criminals." I hope the Professor, mindful of this, is not married.

If the term genius has so wide a meaning, the above statement is certainly incorrect. Goethe on his mother's side had very talented ancestors, and his father was extremely well gifted. The son of Goethe was a drunkard, but we know that this unfortunate inheritance came from his mother's side. The Darwin family was famous for two hundred years. The sons of Hegel and Schelling were also able men. Many more instances of that kind could be adduced; and whenever a genius or his posterity goes to the wall, there are often external circumstances that cause it. The Fielden who became famous as a Member of Parliament at the time of the Chartist movement in England, was a relative, but not the father of Sam Fielden. Sam Fielden's father was a very intelligent laborer, who also took part in the Chartist movement, without, however, becoming very prominent in it. By the bye, the descendants of the first named Fielden are neither "lunatics, idiots, nor criminals," but wealthy manufacturers. And now to Sam Fielden; no lunatic, idiot, or criminal could make the speech which he made when asked why sentence of death should not be pronounced against him, a speech concerning which Mr. Grinnell, the prosecutor, said that "had it been made to the jury, they would have acquitted him." Mr. Luther Laflin Mills, formerly States Attorney, declared in my presence that it was a masterpiece. That there was any criminal disposition in Sam nobody ever had any idea. He was nearly forty years old when arrested, and his wealthy employers considered him an honest man, and a harmless enthusiast of an amiable nature. He had become entangled in the Anarchist prosecution by a strange concatenation of circumstances.

Professor Lombroso's opinion concerning Fielden, formed by the study of portraits, stands in a strange contrast to the estimate of character made by the judge who tried and sentenced the anarchists. Three days before the execution Judge Gary wrote the following letter to Governor Oglesby:

Chicago, Ill., November 8, 1887.

To the Hon. Richard J. Oglesby, Governor of Illinois.

Sir: In the application of Samuel Fielden for a commutation of
his sentence, it is not necessary as to the case itself that I
should do more than refer to the decision of the Supreme Court
for a history of his crime.

Outside of what is there shown, there is in the nature and
private character of the man, a natural love of justice, an
impatience at all undeserved suffering, an impulsive temper;
and an intense love of and thirst for the applause of his
hearers made him an advocate of force as a heroic remedy for
the hardships that the poor endure. In his own private life he
was the honest, industrious, and peaceable laboring man.

In what he said in court before sentence he was respectful
and decorous. His language and conduct since have been
irreproachable. As there is no evidence that he knew of any
preparation to do the specific act of throwing the bomb that
killed Degan he does not understand even now that general
advice to large masses to do violence makes him responsible
for the violence done by reason of that advice, nor that
being joined by others in an effort to subvert law and order
by force makes him responsible for the acts of those others
tending to make that effort effectual.

In short, he was more a misguided enthusiast than a criminal
conscious of the horrible nature and effect of his teachings
and of his responsibility therefor. What shall be done in his
case is partly a question of humanity, and partly a question
of state policy, upon which it seems to me action on the part
of your excellency favorable to him is justifiable.

I attach this to a copy of his petition to your excellency and
refer to that for what he says of the change that has come
upon himself.

Respectfully Yours,

JOSEPH E. GARY.

Professor Lombroso wrote his article with the best intentions, I fully recognise the fact; and certainly he was governed by the most humane motives. But even conceding the correctness of his theory he necessarily failed from the insufficiency of his materials.

One thing more, Anarchism is a collective term like Liberalism. People understand by it many different and sometimes contradictory theories. That part of it which is not in harmony with human progress will fail, shall fail, and must fail, but that part of it which is good will live in spite of all. The mistake, however, which has been made in our special case will not again be made in America; and that also will be for the general good.

Joliet Penitentiary.
M. SCHWAB.

THE PRINCIPLE OF WELFARE.

I.

If we wish to discuss ethical problems in a fruitful manner and form just judgments of ethical theories, we must always bear in mind the fact that there is not merely one single ethical problem, but many. With the solution of one of these problems the solution of the others is not necessarily given, and thinkers who have treated a single problem have not, in dealing with that problem, always determined their position with reference to the others. At all events, it will be an especial and separate task to investigate the relation to each other, the reciprocal dependence or independence, of the different ethical problems. When we speak of _the_ ethical problem as an especial philosophical problem, we must not forget that upon closer examination it resolves itself into a number of different problems.

The reason of this tendency to regard the ethical problem as simple and indivisible throughout, may be partly sought in the fact that philosophical ethics did not develop until the positive religions had lost their undisputed control over the minds of men. Religious ethics is simple and indivisible by virtue of its principle. It is founded on authority. Its _contents_ are the revealed commands of authority; the _feeling_ which impels us _to pass ethical judgments_ is the fear or reverence or love with which men are filled in the presence of divine authority; the same motives impel man to follow in his conduct the commands of the authority; and the principles of the education of individuals and of the order of society are just as immediately given by definite relation to this authority. It is upon the whole the peculiarity of positive religions and the cause of their great importance in the history of mankind that they grant man satisfaction in a lump for _all_ his intellectual wants. The true believer has concentrated in his belief his whole mental life; his belief is at once the highest science, the highest virtue, the highest good, and the highest æsthetics. Philosophical ethics has sought too long to retain the simple unity which is peculiar to religious ethics. The mistakes of the greatest philosophical ethicists may be in part traced to this source. A criticism of Kant and Bentham would more fully illustrate this. The fundamental error—one so often found in the science of the past—is too great a love of simplicity.

I shall try, in the briefest possible manner, to give an outline of the most important ethical problems.

Ethical judgments, judgments concerning good and bad, in their simplest form are expressions of feeling, and never lose that character however much influence clear and reasoned knowledge may acquire with respect to them. An act or an institution that could awaken no feeling whatsoever would never become the object of an ethical judgment, could never be designated as good or bad. And the character of the judgment will be dependent upon the character of the feeling that dictates the judgment. From the point of view of pure egoism the judgment of the same act will be wholly different from what it is when regarded, say, from a point of view that is determined by motives of sympathy embracing a larger or smaller circle of living beings. An ethical system, accordingly, will acquire its character from the _motive principle of judgment_ upon which it builds. This motive principle is the power that originally and constantly again gives rise to ethical judgments.

If our motive principle is to operate with clearness and logical consequence it must set up a definite standard. A _test principle of judgment_ must be established that will furnish guidance in individual cases by enabling us to infer consequences from it in instances where simple, instinctive feeling fails. The natural course will be that the test-principles will correspond directly with the motive principles at their base. The relation between the two may, however, be more or less simple. If we fix upon the feeling of sympathy as our basis, regarding it as the main element of ethical feelings, it follows of itself that the criterion we adopt must be the principle of general welfare, that is the principle that all acts and institutions shall lead to the greatest possible feeling of pleasure among living beings. This principle merely defines with greater precision what is unconsciously contained in the feeling of sympathy and in the instinct that springs from this feeling. The same test-principle (as Bentham's "Deontology," for example, shows) may also be accepted as valid from the point of view of pure egoism, only in this case the relation between the motive principle and the test-principle is more indirect. We must in this case endeavor to prove that the happiness of others is a necessary _means_ to our own happiness. Our own happiness is then the real end, but in order to reach this end we must take a roundabout course, and ethics is the presentation of the system of the courses thus taken. Kant arrives in a different way again at establishing the happiness of others as an end of ethics. It would be the business of a special investigation to determine the extent to which this varying motivation of the principle of test must influence the consequences derivable from it.

A third question is, By what motive shall an individual act be determined? The _motive to action_ is not necessarily the same as the motive that dictates judgment. The man who is animated with love for his fellow-creatures has reason to rejoice that ambition and the instinct of acquisition constitute grounds of action of so very general a character; in that results become thereby possible which,—for such is the unalterable character of human nature,—would otherwise remain unaccomplished. A special investigation would have to point out whether cases occur in which motive of action and motive of judgment must coincide if the act is to be approved of, and whether there are not motives to action which would rob the act of all ethical character.

Different from the problems already mentioned is the pedagogic problem: How can the proper and necessary motives be developed in man? This problem arises as well with respect to the motive principle of judgment as with respect to the motive principle of action. It is clear that between points of view that rest upon entirely different psychological foundations, (the one, for example, starting from egoism, the other from sympathy, and the third from pure reason,) the discussion can be carried only to a certain point. The person who with conscious logic makes himself the highest and only aim can never be refuted from a point of view which regards every individual as a member of society and of the race, and therefore not only as an end but also as a means. If an understanding is to become possible, the emotional foundation adopted (the motive spring of judgment) must be changed; but the change is not effected by mere theoretical discussion: a practical education is demanded in addition thereto which life does not afford all individuals, although our inclination to make ourselves an absolute centre is always obstructed by the tendency of society to subject us all to a general order of things. There is an education of humanity by history the same as there is an education of single individuals in more limited spheres. This education demands its special points of view, which are not always directly furnished by general ethical principles. The same is true of the motive to action. For pedagogical reasons it may be necessary to produce or to preserve motives that do not satisfy the highest demand, because such motives are necessary transitional stages to the highest motives. Thus, ambition and the instinct of acquisition may be the means of attaining to true ethical self-assertion. Reverence for authorities historically given can be of extraordinary effectiveness in the development of character, since only thereby are concentration or fixity of endeavor as well as the power of joyful resignation acquired,—without our being able to see in such reverence the highest ethical qualities. A ground-color in fact must often be laid on before the final, required tint can be applied. The law of the displacement of motives operates here which in ethical estimation generally is of the utmost importance.

There must still be mentioned here finally the socio-political problem. This problem has reference to that particular ordered arrangement of society which is best adapted to a development in the direction of ethical ideals. As the former problem leads inquiry out of the domain of ethics into that of pedagogics, so this one leads us from ethics into political economy and political science.

Although in the present discussion I intend to occupy myself only with a single one of these problems, I have nevertheless mentioned them all in order that the light that I shall attempt to throw upon the problem I deal with may be seen in its proper setting. As will be observed from what follows, the principle of welfare will be misunderstood if the problem to whose solution it is adapted is confounded with any one of the other ethical problems. The systematism of ethical science is still so little advanced that it is necessary to draw out a general outline before we pass on to any single feature. The value of systematism is namely this, that we are immediately enabled to see the connection of the single questions with one another as well as their distinctive peculiarity. In ethics we are not yet so far advanced.

II.

1) If we accept the principle of welfare as our test or criterion in judging of the value of actions and of institutions, these are then good or bad according as in their effects (so far as we can trace them) they produce a predominance of pleasurable feeling or a predominance of painful feeling in a larger or smaller circle of sentient beings. Every action may be compared to a stone thrown into the water. The motion produced is propagated in large or in small circles; and the estimation of its value depends upon whether it produces in the places it strikes predominant pleasure or pain. Just as theoretical science explains the single natural phenomenon by its connection with other natural phenomena, so ethics tests the single feeling by its relation to other feelings: the satisfaction of a person acting over the accomplishment of the act is only then to be called justifiable or good when it does not create a disturbance in the pleasurable feeling of other beings, or when such a disturbance can be proved to be a necessary means of a greater or more extended pleasurable feeling. This principle, as a principle of test or valuation, corresponds directly with sympathy as motive of judgment. The extent to which it is possible to accept this from other points of view I cannot here investigate in detail.

The act of estimation, the testing, does not stop at the outer action but goes down to the motives of the person acting, to the qualities of his character, to the whole inner life from which the act has sprung. This has its ground in the nature and significance of the estimating judgment. Ethical judgments, in fact, are in their original and simplest form spontaneous expressions of feeling. But the great practical significance of such expressions of feeling lies in the fact that they operate decisively upon the will (upon the individual will and that of others) and produce motives of future action. Logically, accordingly, they must be directed towards the point at which an altering effect on the power that produces the act is possible, and this point lies precisely in the inner life, in the character of mind of the person acting. For this reason feelings and impulses, disturbances and desires, are also judged of according to the tendency which they have of producing acts and effects that will increase pleasurable feeling or avoid unpleasurable feeling in more extended or more limited circles.

Only by its effects do we know the power. We form by inferences our conclusions as to what takes place in the mind of a man, his motives and his capacity. Goodness or greatness that never expressed itself in action could never become the object of ethical approbation; it would not even exist in fact, but would rest upon a self-deception, upon an illusion. At least some inner activity, a longing and endeavor in the direction demanded by the ethical principle must manifest itself. The individual in self-judgment must often take refuge in this inner activity, and any deep-going, unpharisaical ethical estimation will have to follow him there;[122] but just here do we have a beginning of that which is demanded by the principle of welfare, except that in consequence of individual circumstances its prosecution is impossible.

[122] Compare my article "The Law of Relativity in Ethics" in
the _International Journal of Ethics_, Vol. I. p. 37, et seqq.

Equally important as the principle that we can know the power only from the effects is the other principle that the effect need not appear at once. When good and great men are so often mistaken by their contemporaries the fact is explained by the circumstance that only a very wide-embracing glance can measure the significance of their efforts and activity. Their goodness and greatness is founded in the fact that their thought, their feeling, their will, comprehend far more than their short-sighted and narrow-minded contemporaries see. A long time may elapse before it is possible for them to be generally understood, and for what they have done to be assimilated. It is therefore by no means implied in the principle of welfare that people are to direct their conduct so as to be in accord with impulses and wants which men have at the moment. The principle of welfare demands in very fact that we should not shrink from the battle with prejudice and with inertia. The best thing, often, that we can do for others is to make them feel that they stand on entirely too low a level in their wishes and wants and do not make adequate demands generally. Thus, to take a single instance, the great artist often treads a solitary path ununderstood or even mistaken by the great mass. Yet in so doing he follows, perhaps without being aware of it, the principle of welfare,—if he rigorously observes the demands of art. He increases the mental capital of the species, and gives it a power which later on can operate in broad spheres. Only a short-sighted conception and application of the principle of welfare stops with the need of the moment and dismisses the consideration of the permanent conditions of life and the permanent sources of new life and new activity.[123]

[123] This last argument is taken from my _Ethics_ (Danish
edition, p. 94, German edition, p. 110).

2) The principle of welfare simply furnishes a norm which may be laid at the foundation of the testing of all classes of actions. But it by no means demands, as has at times been supposed, that consideration for welfare should also be the ground and motive for every act. We have recourse to general principles only in order to be able to set ourselves aright in cases in which direct judgment, instinctive feeling cannot determine the question presented, that is in cases of doubt, or when we have in view a systematic treatment of ethical questions. The ethical feeling may operate quite involuntarily and without real ratiocination, in that we can be moved directly by the act (whether possible or real) as it appears to us, just as in our æsthetical feeling we may without æsthetical reasoning be struck by the beauty of a work of art or of a landscape. Or, we follow with confidence the "unwritten laws" that are contained in custom, in tradition, and generally in so-called "positive morality." And in agreement precisely with the principle of welfare, is immediacy of this kind to be recommended and maintained, so long as it does not lead to the neglect of real problems and questions. It is the state of innocence out of which no one dare be wrested unnecessarily. Abstract principles become necessary aids when direct reliance fails; but frequently they can only be applied to individual concrete cases by the employment of a great number of complicated intermediary steps, and do not easily acquire a practical influence upon the will. Indeed, the principle of welfare may even demand quite different motives from ethical feeling or devotion to the requirements of positive morality. It is in fact most beautiful and best that a man should care for his wife and children because he loves them and not because his ethical instinct requires it. Where conscious duty has to be invoked in the innermost relations between man and man, it is as a rule a sign of an unfortunate state of affairs. Perfect love dispels not only fear but also duty.

In his "Ethics," at page 339, Wundt advances the following objection to the principle of welfare: "It is conceivable that a person should sacrifice himself for another; it is conceivable that a person should yield up life and possessions for definite ideal ends, for his country, for freedom, for religion, for science. But it has never come to pass, and never will, that people shall renounce a thing solely to increase the sum of happiness of the world." This objection overlooks the fact that the principle of the valuation of an act that is regarded as good need not be the motive to this act. The thought and feeling of the person acting may stop very properly at country, freedom, or any other ideal object, without the person's instituting any formal reflections whatsoever with regard to the reasons of the value of the ideal ends for which he sacrifices himself. But in systematic ethics or in practical cases of doubt we inquire what value and importance love of country, freedom, poetry, and science possess for human life. If, for example, freedom were not a good for a people, the individual would do wrong to sacrifice his life for it. It is never of course a question of the abstract notion of welfare of and in itself, just as in a single theoretical problem it is never a question of the abstract idea of cause. But in ethics we lay down the principle of welfare and in the theory of knowledge the principle of causality; endeavoring, thus, to go back through analysis to the final assumptions of our practical and theoretical intellectual activity.

3) It is no argument against the principle of welfare that pleasure must be so often bought with pain. Pain is in that case only the necessary transitional step, and the significance of the principle of welfare is precisely the requirement it makes that the duty of demonstration shall rest on those who maintain the necessity of such an intermediary step. Any infliction of pain must be supplied with a motive, whereas the feeling of pleasure in and of itself (that is if its causes do not at the same time produce additional painful effects) is justified. The principle of welfare simply says: Produce by thy conduct as much pleasure and as little pain as is possible! The degree to which it is possible to realise this demand, of this the principle in and of itself says nothing. A principle is not subverted by the difficulties of its application.

As experience teaches, there is a happiness that is not bought too dearly with pain. Clara's song in Goethe's "Egmont":

"Himmelhoch jauchzend, _zum Tode betrübt_!"

has been cited in disproof of the principle of welfare. But let us hear Clara to the end and note the last line of the song, in which she gives the result of the entire train of her emotion. She says:

"_Glücklich_ allein ist die Seele die liebt!"

The phenomenon is this. There is a movement of the heart and mind, a life of feeling, which are joined with a satisfaction so deep and great that the powerful oscillation between pleasure and pain does not destroy the total feeling of happiness, but strengthens it. Two psychological factors co-operate here. The one is, that the pain (the dis-pleasure or grief), unless it transcends a certain degree, forms the background of the pleasurable feeling and is thereby able to intensify the latter. In this very fact a sufficient motive lies to choose conditions of this sort in preference to such as do not stand so high in intensity but are nevertheless conditions of more unmixed pleasure. The other factor is, that there can be an element of attraction even in grief, simply because intense life, powerful movement, and the straining of faculties that come with it, produce of themselves satisfaction. All exertion of power which is not out of proportion is connected with a feeling of pleasure. The feeling of pleasure that accompanies grief and anxiety asserts itself in the fact that we do not _wish_ to be transported out of it. An important element here is also the organic process connected with every powerful state of mind (the effect of the condition of the brain on the circulation of the blood, on breathing, and on the organs of digestion), granting that it is not the whole cause.

When Auguste Comte lost the woman who exerted so decisive an influence on the direction of his mind in the last period of his life, he said once in an outburst of sorrow evoked by her memory: "I owe it to thee alone that I shall not leave this life without having known in a worthy manner the best emotion of human nature.... Amid the severest pains that this emotion can bring with it I have never ceased to feel that the _true condition of happiness_ is, to have filled the heart—though it be with pain, aye with bitterest pain."

Auguste Comte and Clara are accordingly quite in agreement, and the ethics of welfare is in agreement with them both. If we desire to be wholly secure against pain and anxiety, then we dare not love anything. But what if love were the greatest happiness, even though it brought as much sorrow again with it! With powerful action and great fulness of life come also great costs, great contrasts, and great vibrations. Yet who has said that the highest was to be had for little expenditure?

The feeling of pleasure is the only psychological criterion of health and power of life. That which in all its immediate or remote effects in all the creatures that it touches produces only pleasurable feeling, cannot possibly be condemned. Welfare, therefore, in the sense of permanent pleasurable feeling, is the final test-principle of action. Pain is everywhere the sign of an incipient dissolution of life.[124] This is exhibited in the simplest manner in the "physical" pain that arises through the tearing of organic tissue. But it also holds true of the "mental" pain that arises from anxiety, doubt, or repentance. It points to a disharmony between the different forces and impulses of the mind, a disharmony that can lead to the dissolution of consciousness. If pain is a necessary intermediary step, the fact is partly founded in the two psychological laws above mentioned, partly also in the circumstance that it means the dissolution of something in us that impedes a more free and more varied development of life. Childbirth is accompanied with pain because the new life can only come into the world at the cost of the old. Analogously the knowledge of truth is often gained with pain because prejudices and illusions must first be shattered. In the pain of repentance a lower self is dissolved in order that a new and higher self may develop.

[124] Compare my _Psychology_ (Danish edition, pp. 315-318;
German edition, pp. 343-347).

4) A circumstance that has especially fostered the opposition to the principle of welfare is undoubtedly the tendency to think exclusively, in connection with the expression 'pleasurable feeling,' of the most elementary sensual forms of pleasure. The latter are not excluded by the principle of welfare; the principle, however, takes all the aspects of human character into consideration, maintaining that permanent pleasurable feeling is not to be established with certainty if an essential aspect of this character is neglected. The defect of elementary feelings of pleasure is that for the great part they correspond to only momentary and limited relations.

A being whose feeling is of a purely elementary kind can maintain itself as long as the simple conditions of life to which it is adapted do not change. Thus some of the lowest animal forms like the infusoria and rhizopods appear to have existed throughout infinitely long periods of time in exactly their present condition. Here the adaptation to the given conditions is as good as perfect. The same may be the case with beings that at an earlier stage of their development have possessed more developed organs and forms. Animals that live free in their youth, afterwards however as parasites, lead a purely elementary life and lose all the nerves and muscles that do not directly subserve this form of existence. This is also true of man. Of the Fuegians, whose wretched existence (wretched in our eyes) he portrays in vivid colors in his "Journey Around the World," Darwin says: "There is no reason for believing that the Fuegians are diminishing in number; we must therefore assume that they enjoy a sufficient measure of happiness (of whatever character this may be) to give life value in their eyes. Nature, which makes habit an irresistible power and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and the products of his wretched country." Primitive peoples of a higher type even (and not only primitive peoples) afford examples of an adaptation to conditions which excludes all motives to change and progress. It is dire necessity that has brought man into the path of progress. Where such a compulsion does not operate human emotional life is conditioned by a narrow sphere of relations only and is therefore itself narrow and restricted. Perhaps more complete, more unmixed satisfaction can be obtained here than would be possible under more manifold and more complicated circumstances. A small vessel may be fuller than a large one although it holds less.[125]

[125] Fieri potest, ut vas aliquod minus majore plenius sit,
quamvis liquoris minus contineat. Cartesius, Epistola iv, Ad
principem Palatinam de sita beata.