A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution Part 9

Hence it will be well to trace, a little more closely, their mode of formation, and their connection with muscular activity.

"When in the course of experience a certain sequence of sensation frequently recurs, the consciousness becomes habituated to it, and the return of the first sensation is followed by an idea or a.s.sociative image of the others.... Hence the idea of pleasure or pain not actually felt comes to be a.s.sociated with objects, which, if placed in certain different positions, would effect us in the way imagined.... Pleasure may thus be a.s.sociated through a train of ideas of any length.... After a time this process becomes organic, the intermediate terms are lost, and pleasure is _directly_ connected with sensations and ideas that are in themselves not distinctly pleasurable.

"Now by various trains of a.s.sociation, various pleasures and pains are connected with the same object. These different combinations of pleasures and pains, some of which arise, before reasoning, by unintentional a.s.sociation, but the higher of which are the results of automatization of reasoning, form the different emotions....

"Action in its origin is simply the correlative of sensation.

Contractility and irritability are the two general properties of vital tissue, or rather are two sides of one fundamental property which is also known under the name of sensibility--the power of contraction under irritation, or of expressing impressed force. Irritability means merely the phenomena of consciousness, the development of which we have hitherto been tracing, though we have been throughout obliged to express ourselves in the language of the inner, and not of the outer experience.... This internal development we have already examined; we must now turn to the obverse external development which takes its origin in contractility.

"The connection between these two fundamental properties is exceedingly intimate, that of ultimate ident.i.ty or at any rate inseparability. For not only is contraction universally the result of irritation, but the only evidence that we have of irritation is the contraction which follows, and in their early stages the two represent one and the same process. When, however, the expression, in action, of force impressed in sensation, becomes indirect and immediate, the name of irritability is given to the _immediate_, internal results of its impression, while contractility expresses the action _ultimately_ expressed. Hence the seat of irritability is preeminently the nervous system, while contractility, or the _vis musculosa_, is the name of the special property of the muscular tissue.

"Considering them however in their origin, they together represent a certain form of the transmission of force.... Some kinds of impressed force are followed by movements of retraction and withdrawal, others by such as secure a continuance of the impression. These two kinds of contraction are the phenomena and external marks of pain and pleasure respectively. Hence the tissue acts so as to secure pleasure and avoid pain by a law as truly physical and natural as that whereby a needle turns to the pole, or a tree to the light.... Hence, the law of Self-Conservation, or of the direction of Action, is merely another mode of expressing the fundamental property of animal tissue, which we have every reason to believe is derived from the more elementary physical properties of matter. The course of action is just as dependent on physical laws as that of a stone which falls to the ground. The belief in external consciousness makes no difference either way; the earliest phenomena of such consciousness are those of pleasure and pain, therefore we can suppose it to exist only as pleasure and pain. In the one case we say that action aims at, or naturally results in, the phenomena of pleasure; in the other case that it aims at the actual consciousness of pleasure.

"The expression of impressed force, or the connection of action and sensation, is at first in the unorganized tissue direct and immediate, without the agency of nervous communication, or to return again to the ordinary psychological language, is unintentional or involuntary.... The earliest modification is due to a.s.sociation, whereby secondary sensations, or (as they are called later when they become perceived) ideas are produced. These manifest themselves as weaker repet.i.tions of the primary pleasures and pains, and, therefore, are naturally followed by like results.... The process is this: the force originally impressed by the first sensation, instead of being all expressed in action, is partly induced by habituation into an internal channel, and so transformed into the kind of force which generally impresses the second kind of sensation, and this now produces its appropriate action. Hence part of the original force has undergone two transformations instead of one; the immediate antecedent of action being the force produced by a.s.sociation, or in other words, the a.s.sociated pleasure. This is the rudiment of _motive_, which, however, is not generally called by that name till it is _perceived_. The same process may go on through two or more links of a.s.sociation; the first transformed force being again transformed internally instead of expressed, and the second again in its turn, until eventually a transformation is reached which finds its easiest way of escape in action; the immediate motive power being that transformation of force, or that a.s.sociated pleasure, which immediately precedes the action. Actions of this kind const.i.tute the lower phenomena of instinct: and we see therefore that they may depend on any number of links of unperceived, or, as we say, unconscious reasoning; and that their motive is also 'unconscious.' These actions stand half way between Reflex and Voluntary Actions....

"We now come to the third and last development of a.s.sociated action.

Here not only is each a.s.sociated idea perceived, but the change, in each case, is also a fresh centre of a.s.sociation; whereby similar changes are connected with it, and it is referred to a cla.s.s. Hence the whole train is perceived, not only by the cla.s.sification of each of its parts with similar previous sensations, but by the cla.s.sification of each of its sequences with previous like sequences: in other words, it is now a chain of reasoning from the past to the present. That a.s.sociated pleasure from which this reasoned train commences is now called the _motive_ (though really the immediate motive power lies in the last transformation which directly precedes the active expression) and the series of ideas intervening between this and the action is called the _means_. Hence the motive a.s.sociates the means, and the motive power is transmitted through them till it is finally expressed in the action which is appropriate to the attainment of the pleasurable state whose idea is its source. This a.s.sociation of means with ends is at first sight opposed to the natural direction, which is from antecedent to consequent; but when a line of nervous connection is formed, a current may be transmitted indifferently in either direction. An effect may lead us to think of its cause, as easily as a cause a.s.sociates its effect.

By the sequence of action and sensation, a connection is established between their ideas, which is independent of the order of excitation.

This last kind of action is that which we call voluntary, and the series of cla.s.sified ideas and relations which lead to it is called Reasoning.

If at any point the current is attracted in two or more directions by different trains of a.s.sociation, deliberation is the result; and the eventual victory of one and the consequent transmission of the force along it is ent.i.tled Will.

"We have therefore distinguished four kinds of action: _Reflex Action_, which is purely physical and independent of a.s.sociation, and which is the last link in all the derived varieties; _Lower Instinctive Action_, which is caused by the first introduction of a.s.sociation, and is hardly to be distinguished in its phenomena from the last;... _Higher Instinctive Action_, which involves perception of qualities or objects;... and finally, _Voluntary_ or _Intentional Action_, such as we find it in man.... Though we have separated these cla.s.ses from each other for clearness of description, there is no distinct line to be drawn anywhere between them. Each fades insensibly into the next....

Evolution, we must remember, does not advance by stages; these are merely marks that we make ourselves, like the constellations in astronomy, for convenience of study.

"Finally, we must remark that the last two kinds of Action ever tend to relapse into the second, which subjectively is a mere form of the first.

a.s.sociation of all kinds tends to become organic. By this we mean that, as the connection becomes more definitely marked and easy, the perpetual radiation which occurs as the current pa.s.ses the different points on its path, disappears; and the whole current pa.s.ses unimpaired. First, the radiation caused by the changes disappears, and reasoning becomes instinct, as in doing a mathematical example from mere memory of the different steps. Secondly, the radiation from the different nervous centres also disappears, and the current which ends in action becomes not only unreasoning but unperceived, as in walking or reading aloud while thinking of something else....

"Long habituation has two effects: it increases the number of trains connected with each object, and also the length of each. If we suppose the simpler emotions to have, by this time, become organic or apparently simple states of consciousness, a continuance of a.s.sociation tends to connect them together in bundles, as they themselves were originally bundles of elementary pleasures and pains. Hence the emotions become organized in their turn so as to form higher emotions, and eventually, when a.s.sociation has completed its work,... this organization ends in one supreme emotion, which is the head of the emotional or sensitive side of the consciousness....

"Turning next to the second effect of prolonged habituation, we find that, with objects or actions with which pleasure was at first a.s.sociated and which so were called pleasurable, further a.s.sociation often connects a subsequent pain which increased experience has shown always to follow upon the immediate pleasure. This pain often more than counterbalances the preceding pleasure; hence when it is taken into the emotion, that emotion becomes one no longer of appet.i.tion but of aversion, and the object or action is remembered as one not to be sought after but avoided. It cannot, however, be called painful, because it causes immediate pleasure, so a new name has to be invented, and it is called Bad, or Evil. Similarly, many things which are immediately a.s.sociated with pain are found to be eventually followed by pleasure which more than counterbalances the pain, and as this experience becomes consolidated by the power of a.s.sociation, they attract rather than repel, and for a name whereby to distinguish them, are called Good; so that Good and Evil are correlative terms like Pleasure and Pain, and mean respectively the greatest total Pleasure, and the greatest total Pain. Now this experience when once acquired is never lost, but by virtue of hereditary transmission descends from parents to children.

But, as in the case of the simpler emotions, only the results survive, and not the means whereby they were arrived at; so that, in a short time, the words Good and Evil come to be quite separated from Pleasant and Painful; nay, as might be expected from their origin, they tend to acquire exactly opposite meanings; for Pleasure and Pain come to signify only immediate pleasure and pain; and the final reckoning is often considerably at variance with the first item; as in a race the man who leads for the first lap seldom wins in the end....

"This, then, is the origin of the Moral Sense.... The Moral Sense, therefore, is merely one of the emotions," though the last of all in the order of evolution; it can only claim a life of some two or three centuries; and there are even some who still doubt its existence. "Man at any rate is the only animal who possesses it in its latest development; for even in horses and dogs we cannot believe that it has pa.s.sed the intentional or conscious stage.... Good, with them, has no artificial meaning; it is simply identical with the greatest pleasure."

Only by complete and perfect obedience to all emotions can perfect freedom from regret be obtained in the gratification of all desire. Man is at present pa.s.sion's slave, because he is so only in part; "for the cause of repentance is never the attainment of some pleasure, but always the non-attainment of more: not the satisfaction of one desire, but the inability to satisfy all. The highest virtue, therefore, consists in being led, not by one desire, but by all; in the complete organization of the Moral Nature."

OF THE SOCIAL RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL

When we a.s.sert the end of Action to be Pleasure, do we mean the pleasure of the individual, or universal happiness? "Good has been shown to follow immediately on the adaptation of an organism to circ.u.mstances; it is evident that external objects can affect it only in so far as they form part of these circ.u.mstances. Hence it follows that the pleasure and pain of others can come in only incidentally; from the fact that each man is not an isolated unit, but a member of society. But further, this social medium itself is, after all, nothing but a part of the individual affected by it; it is one division of that primary side of his nature, by which the other side, the emotional, the intellectual, the moral, is being continually moulded and fas.h.i.+oned; and even if we take the narrower meaning of self, the pleasures and pains of others cannot possibly affect a man's actions or emotions except in so far as they become a part of his. If man aims at pleasure merely by the physical law of action, that pleasure must evidently be ultimately his own; and whether it be or be not preceded by phenomena which he calls the pleasures and pains of others, is a question not of principle but of detail, just as the force of a pound weight is unaltered whether it be composed of lead or of feathers, or whether it act directly or through pulleys.

"The principle, therefore, is clear enough, that the happiness of others can have only an indirect influence upon the good of each individual.

But it is equally clear that this direct influence must be of no mean extent, and that it is now our duty to trace its history." Here follows a scheme of the development of the state from the family, which last was necessitated by the helplessness of infancy, and from which arose the habit of human a.s.sociation. We have no evidence from history or science that mankind has not always existed in a state of society; there is no warrant for a.s.suming an earlier condition of isolation. "Hence to the human race the earliest Good was inseparably bound up with what we now call the Family Virtues."[64] The state, thus originated, developed as a social organism, with ever greater integration, heterogeneity, and complexity of parts, and "the End or Good of each individual became largely modified by the extension of the medium to which his actions had to be adapted"; man became a member, not only of the family but of the state, and the conceptions of his nature and duty became wider, "so that at last the more perfectly each attains his own interest, and the more pleasure he gathers to his own store, the more certainly does he secure the universal happiness of mankind." If a man aims, as Spinoza remarks, at doing real good to himself, he will be sure to do most good to others.

THE UNSELFISH EMOTIONS

Under this head is traced the genesis of sympathy through representation of the pains and pleasures of others and interpretation of them by individual experience in the same environment; and the genesis of benevolence, the active side of sympathy, through habit a.s.sociated with the ideas of the pleasures and pains of others. Love is defined as "originally the a.s.sociation of many pleasures with one individual." From the wider experience of man as a member of a state is developed justice or the sense of equality of right, patriotism, etc. All these feelings are hereditary.

OF THE RELATION OF MAN TO NATURE

This portion of the book treats of the gradual development of knowledge to wider and wider generalization; of the extension of sympathy from man to the animal world also; of the universality of consciousness, which exists in the inanimate as well as the animate world; of the perfection of morality through the perfection of knowledge, since "knowledge moulds emotion, and absolute virtue is nothing but absolute correspondence with nature in action resulting from thought"; and of the evolution of religion, through knowledge, to a religion of knowledge of the real universe or of humanity.

OF THE WILL

Under this heading the metaphysical doctrine of freedom of the will is combated as a contradiction of the laws of Cause and Effect. Praise and blame, reward and punishment, are desirable because of their effect on action.

OF OBLIGATION

Barratt defines obligation as a "violent motive." Paley says: "If a man finds the pleasure of sin to exceed the remorse of conscience, of which he alone is the judge, the moral-instinct man, so far as I can understand, has nothing more to offer." What, then, asks Barratt, has he himself to offer if a man finds the pleasure of sin to exceed the pain entailed by disobedience to the external command? It may, indeed, be the fact that particular kinds of motive only come from particular sources, but unless we can prove that those coming from a command are always the strongest, we cannot claim for them a position such as that implied by the word obligation, of being the highest or most universal motives. In a contest between two motives, it is not the kind but the quant.i.ty which decides. For if two pleasures or pains be equal, what does it matter where they came from? And if they be not equal, the greater, whatever its source, will always be the stronger motive.

"Hence obligation is nothing more than a 'violent motive.' Prudence and duty are both the following of the greatest pleasure; but so far as in ordinary language we make a distinction between them, the pleasure aimed at in prudence is proximate and only slightly greater than the pain, whereas in duty it is not only very considerably greater, but the greatness is further glorified by a dim aureole of magnificent generalities and the halo of an unfathomable future....

"And as the result of a motive is in no way dependent on its external source, so neither is it influenced by its mode of internal operation. A motive may be strong either by its own natural force as a large excess of a.s.sociated pleasure in one direction, or by the facility artificially given to its expression by the long-continued custom, either in ourselves or in our fathers, of acting in a certain way on certain occasions. In other words, the strength of a motive is not absolute, it is relative to the habits and predispositions of our organisms; but the strongest motive, whatever its kind, prevails in all cases.

"Obligation is often, again, confounded with compulsion: but submission to physical force is not morally an act at all, because its [Greek: arche] or immediate antecedent is external to us, and therefore independent of our moral laws."

OF PLEASURES THAT ARE CALLED BAD

"We saw that Good differs from Pleasure simply by a widening of the field of calculation; whereby the pleasure of the moment is often found to entail future pain greater than itself (allowance being made for perspective), and is therefore condemned as Bad. When, therefore, we speak of Pleasure as opposed to Good, we always mean the pleasure of the moment; or very often by a still further narrowing of the term, sensual as opposed to intellectual pleasures."

FOOTNOTES:

[63] Pp. 39, 40.

[64] P. 73.

LESLIE STEPHEN

"THE SCIENCE OF ETHICS" (1882)

While with regard to the matter of Ethics,--the general cla.s.sifications of right and wrong conduct,--moralists are almost unanimous, with regard to its form,--the essence and criterion of right and wrong,--there is great disagreement. All widely spread opinions deserve respect by their mere existence; they are phenomena to be accounted for. On the subject of morals, as on all other subjects, opinions gradually modify and approach each other; but a perfect agreement will probably not be arrived at.

Leaving aside metaphysical questions, however, we may be able to find, as in physical science, some constants or ultimate elements which, though they, according to the metaphysician's view, require further a.n.a.lysis, yet const.i.tute, within their sphere, scientific knowledge independent of metaphysics. The follower of Hegel means, in all probability, precisely the same thing as the follower of Hume, when he says that a mother loves her child; though, when they come to reflect upon certain ulterior imports of the phrases used, they may come to different conclusions. The formula remains the same; for all purposes of conduct it evokes the same impressions, sentiments, and sensible images, and it therefore represents a stage at which all theories must coincide, though they start, or profess to start, from the most opposite bases.

"Mothers love their children" is not unconditionally true; some mothers do not love their children; but the statement is of worth as approximating scientific truth. It may be well to attempt to ascertain in how far it may be rendered scientific.

In the physical sciences, the statements of laws arrived at by the labor of generations are ideal statements, in which a ma.s.s of modifying circ.u.mstances are disregarded for the sake of simplification. Even in these sciences, the power of prediction is small. Of the complicated conditions of human action we have even less accurate knowledge than of those of physical phenomena, though this does not lead us, any more than in the physical sciences, to suppose that prediction would not be possible if we knew the conditions. So far as man is a thing or an animal, it is comparatively easy to determine his conduct. Given a starving dog and a lump of meat in contact, you can predict the result.

But to determine the behavior of a human being with a gla.s.s of water presented to his lips, you must be able to calculate the action of human motive and to unravel the tangled skein of thought and feeling in its variation in the individual under consideration. Moreover, much of the life of the individual is ruled, not by conscious motive, but by automatic habit, acquired through education. The prediction of action in society as a unit is not less difficult than the prediction of individual action, for if individual differences neutralize each other, so that a certain uniformity in the influence of circ.u.mstances is shown by statistics, it is not the less difficult to predict what these uniformities will be. Society as an organism, not a mere aggregate, presents, in the interaction of more complicated conditions, greater difficulties than does the individual as such; and it may be said that prediction of the course of history, even in general terms and for a brief period, would require an intellect as much superior to that of Socrates as the intellect of Socrates is superior to that of an ape.

And yet mankind does possess knowledge of conduct, which does not differ in kind from scientific knowledge; there is, in fact, but one kind of knowledge, which pa.s.ses into scientific knowledge as it becomes more definite and articulate. The knowledge that mankind possesses consists in what we have thus far taken for granted, that under the same circ.u.mstances of outward environment and inward character, human conduct does not change. Of society, as of an organism, we cannot say _a priori_ that it is so and could not have been otherwise; we can only show, _a posteriori_, how different parts mutually imply each other, so that, given the whole, we can see that any particular part could not have been otherwise. Our gain from such knowledge is the recognition that there may be discoverable laws of growth essentially relevant to our investigation of conduct. So long as reasoning was conducted upon the tacit a.s.sumption that social phenomena can be satisfactorily explained by studying their const.i.tuent elements separately, attention was diverted from the important principles of the interrelation of parts to the whole. The theory of evolution brings out the fact that every organism, whether social or individual, represents the product of an indefinite series of adjustments between it and its environment. Every race or society is part of a larger system, product of the continuous play of a number of forces constantly s.h.i.+fting with an effort towards general equilibrium, so that every permanent property represents, not an accidental similarity, but a correspondence between the organism and some permanent conditions of life. To solve the problem of existence by calculation is an impossibility; but our own lives are working it out; the evolution of history is the solution of our problem. And when we fully recognize that a problem is being solved, we have only to gain some appreciation of its general nature and conditions, in order to reach some important, though limited, conclusions, which may fairly be called scientific, as to the meaning of the answer. These conclusions are not scientific in the sense of giving us quant.i.tative and precise formulae, but they may be so far scientific as to be certain and reliable.

Thus we may be able to show how a given set of instincts corresponds to certain permanent conditions under which they were developed, and (returning to the problem of differing theories of morals with which we started) to show what is the cause of differing opinions. Our investigations of the problem of morality have nothing to do, in the first instance, with moral principles which are, or profess to be, deduced from pure logic, independent of any particular fact; they deal with actual moral sentiments as historical facts. The word moral, as used in our considerations, does not, therefore, refer to an ideal moral code, but to the one actually existing in the case considered.