A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution Part 19

"The moral ideal consists in a certain equilibrium established on the basis of certain conditions--wants and sentiments in moral agents." It involves advance just for this reason, because the act of adjustment implied in good conduct itself alters the sentiments of the agent, and creates new needs demanding a new satisfaction. The change is not always in the same direction, however; for cultivation in one direction may cause the individual to become aware of capacities or wants in quite another direction, or the advocacy of one side of a question, persevered in, may so open up the other side as to end in complete change of view.

In any case, however, there is an enlargement of experience, and the old facts are themselves changed by it as well as are the individuals subject to it.

This change or adjustment leads to a maladjustment requiring a new adjustment. This maladjustment is to be distinguished from the rearrangements which are contemplated by the statical ideal and due to the mere rotation of wants in society; the latter are within the moral system as a system of mobile equilibrium. The maladjustment is of another sort. "The good act ceases to be good by its performance. The moral ideal ceases to satisfy." The two forms of change may be compared respectively to a s.h.i.+fting of position on the same locus, and to such a s.h.i.+fting of position as involves a s.h.i.+fting of locus. Thus, by change after change of this sort, a new variety replaces its parent, and this variety in time producing a fresh variety, there is finally reached a new species. Progress thus becomes a necessary fact, and the difference of so-called stationary societies from progressive ones can lie only in the comparative slowness of change.

"As there is a difference between different societies in rate of change, so there is a similar difference as between different parts of conduct."

Law, a part of morality, lags behind in moral progress. However, there is nevertheless always advancement, otherwise legislators would be unnecessary. And the direct outward change of form is preceded by other change, laws which fall into disfavor by means of moral progress being modified, in application, within the possible limits of interpretation, and less and less rigidly enforced. There is good reason why law should have a certain permanence.

The moral standard appears to have a similar more or less fixed character, while morality itself is in continuous change. There are two reasons for this appearance: (1) the changes in the moral order are infinitesimal and not perceived by us except as acc.u.mulated through some period of time; and, moreover, what is commonly called the moral standard is only a kind of generalization from the extremely various opinions of different persons as to what is right, and differs from the real standard which "registers the conduct const.i.tuting equilibrium, and is possessed by the good man. Perfectly good men are impossible. The standard current is therefore nothing more than a common understanding, which every one, even every good man, expresses differently; it is no more an exact expression of the truth than is, let us say, a great scientific conception (like development) which regulates all knowledge, but is amongst the educated little more than the name of a general way of thinking, while the thing itself is becoming, at the hands of men of science, modified or even transformed." (2) The mistake is often made of describing morality, not by inst.i.tutions, but in terms of virtues, and while the name applied to different virtues remains the same, their content changes from age to age.

This idea of variability affects the statical conception of order with regard to habit--the moral requirement being that the fixed habits of morality should not be so fixed as to be incapable of advancement; and with regard to conscience, of which it might be said that, instead of representing the moral order, it was more occupied in changing than in maintaining it, but which in reality thus represents the moral order, to which the ideal is a changing one.

Two difficulties or objections may arise with regard to this idea of a changing ideal. The progress has been represented by personifying the ideal and supposing the person to change with each new ideal. Again, "goodness consists, we saw, of a system of conduct in the individual himself or in society, and this system forms a series in time. It would seem to follow that, if goodness is always progressive, no second act would be performed under the same law, although the very idea of the law means a series of acts." But we are not to suppose that, if fifty good men in a society act rightly, fifty new ideals are established, for the ideal represents the equilibrium of the members of the society, and it depends on whether the new ideals of the fifty men represent the new equilibrium whether we shall call the persons good or bad. Again, the ideal at any moment would be in fact realized in a series, supposing the conditions did not alter meanwhile; and while the system of conduct is serial, it is realized at any one moment in the mind of the man whose sentiments correspond to its requirements.

"In this process we see exhibited the interplay of the element of goodness or rightness with that of perfection. In all actual goodness, we have perfection attained as well; but in the statical notion of goodness perfection is subordinate--only that exercise is perfect which is legitimate. But in the notion of progressive goodness, perfection regains its rights. For goodness, having secured perfection, creates new materials which destroy the old equilibrium and call for a new one.

Goodness determines perfection, but change in perfection determines, therefore, changes in goodness." Morality is the creation of a better; this better is change from a lower to a higher development, not the growth of a greater rightness. All good conduct is _absolutely_ good, and the good man of former days was as good as the good man of to-day, although he performed acts not allowable by the higher moral standard attained as highest development. Accordingly, there is no such thing as an absolute morality, in comparison with which other conduct is variable and relative. The relativity of good conduct, instead of being a reproach, is in reality its highest praise, for it implies that the conduct takes account of exactly those conditions to which it is meant to apply. This conception of morality as absolute runs into that of morality as an eternal and identical law: eternal, for the morality of given conditions remains eternally true for those conditions; identical, for although it cannot be called identical in the sense that virtues do not change with inst.i.tutions, it is identical in form,--as an equilibrium of social forces in an order of conduct. The more important conception of the moral law is its unity in which, as the stages of one continuous law, its ident.i.ty consists. "Progress is not mere destruction of the lower, but fulfilment."

In considering how morality arises, it would be erroneous to suppose that it comes into existence by an actual compromise. It arises through a process of continuous change, parts of which may be an insensible growth, parts the self-conscious adoption of a proposed new scheme. In the latter case, a slight reform may be adopted with but little opposition from members of the society other than the proposer, as meeting a recognized, common want; or, in the case of a more extended reform, the idea as first proposed may be long contended against, and only finally adopted after much alteration by reason of contact with such opposition. In its acceptance innumerable forces are combined, innumerable different motives determine its acceptation by different persons. Whatever the motive, however, the conduct of the person accepting it alters in accordance with its acceptation.

The chief importance of pleasure and pain lies in the part they take in such choice. They are "the tests of the act being suitable or the reverse to the character (in the widest sense) of the agent." If a reform does not suit the character, it will cause pain and urge to removal of the pain by resistance; and on the other hand, when the reform is accepted, it must be that it gives pleasure to the persons concerned. But in saying this we have to remember the distinction between ethical (or effective) and pathological (or incidental) pleasures and pains. The total reaction of character on a stimulus may be pleasurable, but this pleasure results from a mixture of pleasures and pains weighed against one another. This balancing of pleasures and pains is not reflective, but takes place by a kind of intuitive act in which only subsequent reflection may be able to distinguish the elements. The pleasure or pain involved in acceptance or rejection is not the ground of acceptance or rejection. The cause of the acceptance or rejection is the nature of the reform itself, its congruity or incongruity with the natures of the persons accepting or rejecting it.

"When the new ideal is definitely established, those who do not obey it are bad, those who do are good." Those who were good under the old may thus be bad under the new ideal, and _vice versa_.

The gradual reform through the choice of individuals who act upon their feelings without knowing the whole aim or bearing of their conduct is similar to that where a definite reform is the end in view. It is a gradual adjustment of wills under new conditions and represents the position of equilibrium which would be completely realized if all the society were good.

The new ideal is not to be defined as merely the will of the majority, the possession of a majority being nothing but the fact of its prevalence. The ground of prevalence is that it represents the equilibrium. "There is no virtue in mere preponderance; it is not that reforms follow the majority, but that a majority is attracted by a suitable reform."

A new ideal arises by a struggle of varieties a.n.a.logous to that in the organic world,--the word "struggle" being metaphorical in both cases, since actual conflict is not necessary to either. "The distinction of good and bad corresponds to the domination of one variety... which has come to prevail in virtue of its being a social equilibrium," and thus representing suitability to all the conditions of life. Evil is simply that which has been rejected and defeated in the struggle with the good.

The reformer, as not representing the predominating ideal and so the social equilibrium, and the man who turns out to be bad by the new ideal, thus stand originally upon the same level. "Each is an instance of a variety of the original species, but the former is the successful variety"; his ideal "represents the real forces of society and can be adopted by the whole." The struggle is one of character and conduct, and results not necessarily in the extinction of life, but in the extinction of unsuitable ideals.

"The distinction of the _formally_ bad from the _materially_ good rests upon the transition from the old ideal to the new, though sometimes we use those terms as describing what is only legally wrong though morally approved. A reformer, until his reform is established, is formally wrong. He can be considered materially right only prospectively;... time only can prove whether he had really forecast the movement of his society." "Sometimes a society may be so divided, as in our civil war, that neither variety is predominant. In such a case we must say, not that there was no rule of right, but that there was a different rule for each of the two halves of the nation." "There does not arise any need for the distinction of formally and materially right conduct, until the limits have been overstepped, within which it is in any age considered right for a man to act upon his own conviction. These limits are placed very differently in different ages."

Does good action, then, depend on the bad man as well as on the good?

"Good and evil arise together, and good is therefore always relative to evil, but we do not therefore take our morality from the bad. We cannot, in fact, know who is bad until the standard is created, but once created, we maintain it against bad men by punishment. But, on the other hand, the moral standard does depend upon the forces which, when allowed free play, are distinguished as bad.... A large part of conduct consists of precautions which it is not only legitimate but inc.u.mbent to take, but which we should dispense with under happier conditions.... And in a second way, morality depends on 'badness,' for when a habit of action which we dislike and call bad comes to be strong enough to make itself felt, we seek to satisfy its claims as reasonable. There is... no external standard by which we can settle once and for all what claims are legitimate and what are not. We derive our conception of the reasonableness of things from our experience of their vitality and effective powers. A wise man who thinks the feelings and beliefs of his neighbors ridiculous will, by persuasion or force, resist them with all his energies, but when he finds them persist in spite of all his efforts, he will recognize that there are more things in human nature than stir within the narrow limits of his own breast. If what we now call bad conduct, murder, adultery, theft, could be conceived to become predominant under greatly changed and of course impossible conditions, it would cease to be bad and would be the ideal of life."

From the view that morality depends upon victory, misconceptions may arise. The question may be asked: Should one, in case of doubt, follow one's own conviction, or join the side it is thought will prevail? But that good is created by predominance is a theory of the means by which ideals come into existence, not a statement of the motive of those who partic.i.p.ate in the struggle. The struggle is between characters and their forces, and not victory is the end, but the a.s.sertion of certain principles.

"Interest or good in general is a different conception from the right or the morally good. Interest means what is good for an individual considered from his own point of view, and without regard to similar claims of other individuals. It is the maximum of happiness or satisfaction which he can secure under his conditions. By 'maximum happiness' is meant that distribution of satisfactions or of the energies which produce them, any deviation from which on either side implies a less fulness of life." It refers, however, to his good as a social, not as an isolated individual.

As a general rule, interest is in agreement with goodness; misdeeds are unprofitable. But there are instances where goodness and interest do not coincide, though not in the case of the good man. That virtue and interest are in general identical means, statically, that morality is a reconciliation of interests by which wants are satisfied, and is established by the creation of a new type of character, which has wants of only certain kinds; and, dynamically, it represents the fact that forces are arrayed on the side of the good which are too powerful for the bad. "Good is the victorious ideal"; and though we may say that it would really be to the bad man's interest to be bad, if circ.u.mstances were such that his variety could maintain itself, we may add that such hypothetical interests cannot be secured. However, interest does not coincide with morality--

(1) Where the individual does not care for punishments and social censures. (2) Where a man, by reason of certain superiorities of force over others with whom he is more directly in contact, is able to obtain power and suppress their resistance, or where the moral weakness of others leaves him unpunished. In these exceptional cases, we have the contradictory phenomenon that an ideal which can maintain its existence is yet declared to be bad. "Such cases mark a stage of transition in the process by which the distinction of good or bad is established." In the struggle of animal species, the same phenomenon may be found; an exceptional individual of a vanis.h.i.+ng variety maintains his existence for a time by reason of his exceptional endowment or of coming in contact merely with the weaker members of the successful variety.

There are two ways in which the moral ideal is maintained,--by education and by punishment. Punishment is the condemnation of wrong-doing by censure or by legal penalties. The unpleasant consequences of neglect of the self-regarding virtues are not punishment; but the reaction of the good forces of society against wrong-doing is as natural as the unpleasant physical effects of imprudence.

"If the question as to what moral sanction is means, 'What reason is there why morality exists?' the answer lies not in enumerating the penalties of wrong-doing, but in tracing the origin of morality as an equilibrium of the forces of society.... But the question, 'Why should I be moral?' means, most naturally and usually, What inducements are there to me to do right?" The answer is that motives differ for different individuals. With some, outer social inducements, with others, the approbation and disapprobation of conscience are stronger. These latter ethical pains and pleasures which are felt at the idea of an action stand on a different footing from feelings having regard to external rewards and punishments and also the prospective pleasures and pains of conscience. The man who does right because he shrinks from prospective pains of conscience is not a good man, but intermediate morally between the bad man who seeks only to escape legal punishment and the good man whose pains of conscience felt at the idea of a wrong act prevent his performing it.

Punishment wears different shapes according to the point of view from which it is regarded, but, in the distinctively moral view, is reformatory. All punishment is retribution, but not in the sense that it is personal vengeance. The value of this idea of retribution lies in the fact that it places punishment on a line with the process of self-a.s.sertion by which species maintain their life; it is a part of the reaction of the organism against anything which impedes its vitality.

If, however, punishment avenges the evil deed, it is a confusion to say that it is for the sake of vengeance. The purpose in the mind of those punis.h.i.+ng is not necessarily vengeance, and the idea of mere retribution is repugnant to the good man. From the juridic point of view, the object of punishment is prevention; from the moral point of view, reformation.

The reformation seeks to destroy a bad ideal, and does not necessarily destroy the individual in whom it is found; but in some cases the wrong-doer's mind is so perverted that only death, it is judged, will suffice. "Here, too, paradoxical as it may seem, though perhaps the chief object of our punishment is the indirect one of bettering others, we punish with death in order to make him a good man and to bring him within the ideal of society.... The penalty of death is thought necessary to bring home to him the enormity of his guilt."

The object of punishment is not always achieved, but this matters not for its moral character, which lies in its conscious object. The idea of punishment as reconciling the criminal with society includes the aspect of retribution or expiation, under which punishment may be viewed from without; but it is only when the suffering is attended by reformation that it can be considered in a proper sense expiation or atonement.

Responsibility differs from obligation by introduction of the element of punishment. Obligation is the necessity of good conduct which arises out of the relation of the act to the order of which it forms a part.

"Responsibility is the negative aspect of this relation. When I think of conduct as required of me, I think of it as my duty; when I think of it as conduct which if I do not perform, I shall be rightly punished, I have the sense of responsibility." The sense of responsibility is thus a knowledge of the requirements of the law, and it is only as we have law-abiding instincts that we feel it; and we feel it differently according as we think of the authority of the law as derived from its mere enactment or as founded upon the social good, or as established in our own conscience and self-respect, which represent the social good. As including recognition of certain conduct as right, the sense of responsibility is more than the mere knowledge and fear of punishment.

"It is only those who can appreciate that punishment will be deserved to whom the idea of responsibility applies. There is, therefore, no difference between the fact of responsibility and the sense of responsibility, any more than there is between goodness and the feeling of approbation, or duty and the sense of duty. When we declare a bad man responsible, we mean that the good man holds him to be justly punished."

Responsibility depends, then, on two things,--that a man is capable of being influenced by what is right, and that whatever he does is determined by his character. This capacity depends on his being aware of the meaning of his acts, and so of their connection with other acts, and contains thus an element not present in the relations of animals.

"Except for the authority of one or two great names, there seems to be a general agreement that the will is determined by character." If character means the principle of volition, as it is regarded in our a.n.a.lyses, the a.s.sertion is a truism. It is no less true if character is defined as disposition; all our dealings with our fellow-men reckon on their acting in accordance with their character. The distinction made by Green that the mind acts from its own nature (the motive and the whole process of willing being within the mind) is no more and no less true of the action of other bodies. The emergence of new sentiments in character might be urged as an argument for free will; but this is of no more significance than the budding of trees in springtime. The sense of freedom is the sense of choice between two motives; but this merely depends upon the intellectual property that the object willed is present to consciousness,--in case of choice two objects being present to the mind. "So far is the consciousness of freedom from being a ground for a.s.suming an arbitrary or undetermined power of volition that it is exactly what would be expected to accompany the process of determination when the object concerned was a conscious mind. Pull a body to the right with a force of twelve pounds and to the left with a force of eight; it moves to the right. Imagine that body a mind aware of the forces which act upon it; it will move in the direction of that which, for whatever reason, appeals to it most; and in doing so it will, just because it is conscious, act of itself, and will have the consciousness of freedom."

But which motive is chosen is fixed and dependent upon character, that cannot choose otherwise than it does; and the sense of freedom is a sheer delusion. The feeling that one ought to have acted otherwise implies another sort of freedom, according to which he only is truly free who chooses the right; in such choice it is, however, the character which acts, and though a man is free, in this sense, _if he chooses_, his choice is determined. The argument of free will in regard to punishment does not explain punishment, but renders it inexplicable.

It would be senseless to punish except as, by so doing, we can influence a man's character. Determinism does not make punishment wrong; it is not cruelty, but kindness to punish: it saves a man from worse, from degradation of character, enabling him to change his ideal, and thus bringing himself into equilibrium with his kind. The reason of certain doubts which are beginning to be felt to-day with regard to punishment is the larger knowledge of the dependence of men on their surroundings, hence of the culpability of society as a whole; it is not an objection to responsibility as such, but to the distribution of responsibility.

Education, the second means by which the moral ideal is defended, is not identical with social progress, by which the moral ideal is itself changed, but is the individual progress included within each definite moral ideal. Education and progress are, however, inseparably bound together, in that education goes hand in hand with punishment, and in that it leads to the discovery of new ideals. If we take only the irregular line which includes the good, and discard the ideals which are exterminated or left behind, the movement of ideals is continuous with education, and progress may therefore be described as an education of society. The education of children has to put them in possession of the present moral achievement, and to make them independent individuals,--so to penetrate them with the moral order that it shall appear in them as spontaneous character. It is an evolving of an ideal already present; for, to be capable of education, a person must have already set foot on the right path.

As in the physical world, so in the moral, we have the survival of many different genera and species,--various ideals of conduct or inst.i.tutions of life, some of which may be grouped together by strong resemblances, others of which stand to each other in the relation of lower to higher organisms; the survival of archaic inst.i.tutions in the higher as well as their history of progress showing their affinities with the lower.

"History is the palaeontology of moral ideals," and provides us with a better means of studying the growth of morality than exists for the study of the growth of species. As in the organic world, varieties develop from species by a gradual and continuous movement of sentiment, each successful variation forming the basis of a new variation, and the differences of the varieties from each other and from the original species increasing with their distance from the original species, until the difference amounts to a difference of species. We may call these modifications "accidental," but, as in the physical world, they are so only as we regard them from the position occupied by a person before the event; they have their causes if we can find them. These causes are to be found in the contact of different minds. Variability depends to a considerable extent on the size of a genus, but only in so far as greater size involves greater complexity and variety of interests; the vast but h.o.m.ogeneous societies of the East being less progressive than the smaller but more complex ones of the West. "Where freer scope is left to individual inclinations or apt.i.tudes, there the friction of mind against mind is more intense. New ideas are generated in the more vivid consciousness of the people, and life becomes more inventive."

Species developed from a common genus will show some common traits and some rules of mutual observance, savage peoples which have divided into tribes being an exception to the latter part of the statement, for the reason that lower societies have very little moral cohesion; they may be compared to lower organisms which reproduce themselves by fission, or to h.o.m.ogeneous colonies of animals, like sponges. Under the generic inst.i.tutions we must not include those which arise merely as the result of similar circ.u.mstances. Ideals once formed advance at very different rates, though the tendency to divergence is always being corrected by the diffusion of ideas. But where one nation takes ideas from another, these ideas are not borrowed, in the sense that they come wholly from the other nation; there must have been, in the borrowing nation, a development of ideas up to the point that makes the borrowing possible,--a similar development to that of the nation from which the borrowing takes place, due to similar circ.u.mstances. The communication of moral ideas does not depend upon race-community, as is shown by the ready adoption of Western ideas by such nations as the Hindoos and j.a.panese.

In general language, we identify development and progress; and this is true also in the case of morality. Goodness means progress; wickedness, retrogression or else stagnation, which, compared with advance, is retrogression. "In changing from one form to another, morality changes from what is right under one set of conditions to what is right under another set, and such change from good to good is what we mean by becoming better. To deny this is to find some other standard of advance than in the actual movement which has taken place, to put an _a priori_ conception of development in place of the facts." "The moral ideal is always, therefore, a progress, for either the society is single, and goodness represents the law of its advance, or if the society is part of a larger one, its ideal can be retrogressive only because the society is so far bad." "And since goodness and badness exhaust the field of moral possibilities, if the propositions that goodness means progress, and badness regress, are both true, we must be able to convert them, and maintain that all progress is due to goodness and all regress to badness." To do this, we must distinguish between degradation and a mere degeneration which involves a return to simpler conditions as an adaptation to changed environment. Such degeneration as adaptation to circ.u.mstances, in an individual or a society as a whole, is progress.

Fish who become blind by living in the dark become thus better fitted to their circ.u.mstances, and the like is true of moral degeneration under simpler conditions. Old age and death are characteristic of the higher type of organism, in distinction from the lower types which, multiplying by fission, are practically eternal; they are conditions of the advantage of type, in which the individual is partaker. So a good society under simpler conditions is on the side of progress, though it may lie outside the main line of advance.

It is true that bad persons often help on progress, but the good they do lies in their representation of the will of society for progress, the evil lies in their use of this will as means to their own ends. It may be objected, too, that the good man is sometimes a hindrance to progress through stupidity; but to this is to be answered that intellect itself becomes morally characterized in action.

All events and inst.i.tutions are thus determined by their conditions; but there is a movement forward distinguishable from the delay of stragglers and the resistance of enemies, and this distinction is enforced by the moral predicates of good and bad.

Our theory does not imply that whatever is, is right; such a statement involves the use of the word right in the sense of "correct," or "intelligible," "accountable by reflection." Nor is the doctrine fatalistic. Fatalism implies that men act at the impulse of some force which they do not understand; "but the history of mankind is the history of beings who, through their own gift of consciousness, subdue circ.u.mstances to their own characters." In judging a nation's development, we must not interpret it according to our own likings, as progression or retrogression; nor must we imagine retrogression from relaxation of duties in some certain directions, but must regard the society and its inst.i.tutions as a whole.

The test of higher organization usually given is that of increasing differentiation of parts with corresponding specialization of function.

But the main course of progress is not linear, or in one continuous direction; apparent reversions to former types are only apparent; the new type stands higher than the old. In other words, history moves in cycles. It follows, from this, that mere differentiation is insufficient for definition. While the differentiation advances, its significance alters, or, let us say, the relative places of specialization and of unity alter. Along with differentiation goes a process of integration.

Great revolutions simplify. The result of greater and greater heterogeneity is to produce a new principle, which combines the warring elements. The definition of progress by increased differentiation is lacking in two ways: It tells us nothing of the forces by which progress is produced, and it gives no connected view of the actual facts of historical development. A general statement of progress in its formal sense is found in the conception of a struggle of ideals. But as in this struggle the survival of the fittest does not necessarily mean the destruction of those who represented the defeated ideal, but the supplanting of their ideal by another, the movement is one of comprehension, and we should expect to find, and do find, the history of morality exhibit the gradual development of a universal moral order, good not for one group of men but for all. It would be a misapprehension to regard this change as merely quant.i.tative, as if the virtues were the same whether they applied on a larger or a smaller scale. "The quant.i.tative extension is parallel with, and in reality proceeds from, a change in the conception of the human person himself." In primitive communities, the individual is so limited that he can hardly be called an individual at all. First among the Greeks do we find the person the embodiment of the social order, but in a limited sense. "When this limitation breaks down, and the individual stands forth as independent and self-conscious, the author of the laws he obeys, we have at the same time the extension of the area of persons with whom he is in moral relation."

"It matters little that the Western ideal of a society of humanity is realized to so slight an extent. The ideal exists and implies the inclusion of mankind." The principle of democracy, which we are engaged in working out, "continues, or perhaps supersedes, under much more complex conditions and over a wider range of inst.i.tutions, the same principle as Christianity introduced." It is not merely an identical element in many individual states, but a comprehensive ideal. The power of naturalization, extradition laws, international action among the working cla.s.ses, etc., imply this.

This "comprehension" is not merely one of breadth, but of depth as well: the ideal includes not only the present of mankind, but its whole future also. Duties have always been recognized to posterity, but the range of generations to whom they applied was small, and the interests which it was believed could be secured were limited also. _Apres moi le deluge_ describes a form of selfishness of all ages, but different ages have understood the _apres moi_ quite differently. At the present day, the range of responsibility is extending indefinitely.

A common political ideal does not mean a universal peace. Coa.r.s.er forms of dispute disappear, but, on the other hand, as nations grow more refined in their ideals, they grow more susceptible. What a political humanity, or a political community of Europe, would mean, is the subst.i.tution of international punishment for the self-willed conflicts of irresponsible nations.

We cannot say what the future of society and of morality may be,--whether mankind will be able to take mechanical means against a period of ice, or whether human society may not, as a whole, be destroyed, to be replaced by a higher type of existence, which may arise on the earth from the development of humanity, or may, on some other planet, take up the tale of human civilization as we take up that of the civilization of Greece and Rome.

Two things follow from the progressive character of the moral ideal: (1) that the cla.s.sification and description of duties will vary with each age; (2) that, as the ideal changes from age to age, the highest moral principle or sentiment will change with it.

At the present time, a belief has gained great authority, that the sense of duty is transitory and will finally disappear; but whether we, with Spencer, identify obligation with coercion, or understand it as the relation of a part of conduct to the rest, in neither sense is the proposition true as it stands. If duty means constraint, it by no means follows that constraint will cease with progress; for constraint arises from confronting one inclination with a higher idea, and its disappearance would mean that inclinations had become constant; this is, however, impossible. The fiction of a final stage of mobile equilibrium is an unwarranted conclusion from the fact that all morality involves a cycle of conduct in mobile equilibrium. But the theory represents a truth,--the truth that morality at no time implies in itself the sense of duty. The sense of duty, as involving the hard feeling of compulsion, of subjection to authority, and bound up with the sense of sin, a sense stronger in proportion to merit or the interval between first inclination and final moral willing, may and is giving place to a higher conception. In the family, this may already be found, where self-sacrifice and aid are matters of affection and rendered freely. In the higher ideal, we have that love of man for a higher and larger order than himself which morality represents as solidarity with society, a continually progressive society of free individuals; which religion represents as the love for and of G.o.d.

And at the last two questions may be asked: (1) whether the difficulties in which Christianity is placed at the present day do not arise from absorption of its highest idea into the conceptions and the practice of morality, so that the religious sentiment is starved; and (2) whether the ideal of a free cooperation in the progress of humanity may not be used to interpret the belief in immortality, putting in the place of individual immortality the continuance of life in the persons whom the individual may affect. In "The International Journal of Ethics" July, 1892, Alexander combats some misinterpretations of "Natural Selection in Morals," which he says are partly due to Spencer's Individualism.

Natural Selection in social life does not mean necessarily destruction of individuals, but is a struggle of ideals, such as that between Individualism and Collectivism,--in which Selection seems to favor Collectivism.

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