Recent Tendencies in Ethics Part 4

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 410.]

[Footnote 2: Appearance and Reality, p. 415.]

[Footnote 3: Taylor, Problem of Conduct, p. 179 ff.]

[Footnote 4: Appearance and Reality, p. 416.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 414.]

[Footnote 6: Ibid., p. 419.]

This discrepancy of aim, and then coming together of the hostile factors only in the annulling and disappearance of both, is a process quite in accordance with the general dialectic of Mr Bradley. But two things may be noted with regard to it. In the first place the effort after system is called self-a.s.sertion, and the effort after width or expansion is called self-sacrifice. Perhaps the author may claim a right to give what names he likes to the processes he describes. But in this case the names have a recognised meaning in the literature of morals, and no hint is given that they are used here in any meaning other than the ordinary. And surely the term 'self-sacrifice' is an inappropriate term for describing the conduct which seeks expansion by multiplying the objects of desire--by the pursuit of whatever offers a chance of widened interests, whether social or intellectual, aesthetic or sensual,--even although "my individuality suffers loss" thereby, and "the health and harmony of my self is injured."[1] Loss may be the result; but aggrandis.e.m.e.nt is what is sought, though the effort fails through lack of organisation or system. And again 'self' is not the only possible centre for the systematisation of conduct. System in conduct may be realised in other ways than as self-a.s.sertion. It is sought as truly by the man of science who gives up everything for the pursuit of truth or by the philanthropist who forgets himself in promoting the social welfare. Such modes of life as these--and not merely self-a.s.sertive conduct--may become centres of a moral activity which aims at system.

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p, 417.]

The second remark which has to be made on this final point is, that neither on the method of system and self-a.s.sertion nor on the method of expansion and self-sacrifice has the author given or suggested any criterion for the distinction of good and evil. He has cast his net so wide as to include all conduct within it without discrimination of moral worth. His own result is that "the good is, as such, transcended and submerged."[1] But this result loses all significance if it is the case, as our enquiry seems to prove, that the good as such has never been reached at all, nor any tenable suggestion offered for distinguis.h.i.+ng it from evil.

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 419.]

This is the fundamental question for any philosophy of ethics; but it receives no answer at all from the prevailing school of metaphysical thought. This school offers no solution of the problem which was found insoluble by the type of philosophy whose aim is to co-ordinate the results of science. A comparison of the purposes and results of the two schools may be instructive.

Mr Herbert Spencer has told us that since the time of his first essay, "written as far back as 1842," his "ultimate purpose, lying behind all proximate purposes, has been that of finding for the principles of right and wrong in conduct at large a scientific basis.... Now that moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin, the secularisation of morals is becoming imperative. Few things can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has grown up to replace it.... Those who believe that the vacuum can be filled, and that it must be filled, are called on to do something in pursuance of their belief."[1] But more than fifty years after the publication of this first essay, as, with the completion of the 'Principles of Ethics,' his whole system of philosophy lay unrolled before him, he made the significant and pathetic confession that "the doctrine of evolution has not furnished guidance to the extent I had hoped.... Right regulation of the actions of so complex a being as man, living under conditions so complex as those presented by a society, evidently forms a subject-matter unlikely to admit of definite conclusions throughout its entire range."[2] And the lack of confidence which the author himself felt in these parts, there is good reason to extend to the whole structure of evolutionary ethics.

[Footnote 1: Preface to Data of Ethics, 1879.]

[Footnote 2: Preface to Principles of Ethics, vol. ii., 1893.]

Neither the purpose of their structure nor its collapse is so explicitly proclaimed by the metaphysicians with whom this lecture has dealt. But we hardly need to read between the lines in order to see the prominence of the moral interest in all that Green wrote; and it was after he had shown the inadequacy of the empirical method in the hands of Hume to give any criterion or ideal for conduct that he made his significant appeal to "Englishmen under five-and-twenty" to leave "the anachronistic systems. .h.i.therto prevalent amongst us" and take up "the study of Kant and Hegel."[1] His call to speculation has been widely responded to; but, if we turn to the most important product of this speculative movement, we have to extract what enlightenment we can from the dictum that, in the only sense in which the Absolute is good, it "manifests itself in various degrees of goodness and badness."[2]

[Footnote 1: Green, Introduction to Hume's Treatise (1874), ii. 71.]

[Footnote 2: Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 411.]

The most notable recent systems of philosophy, idealist as well as naturalist, are thus presented to us, almost confessedly, as void of application to conduct. This result, and foresight of this result, have led to a widespread suspicion of any attempt at ethical construction which is based upon a theory of reality. In consequence, recourse is sometimes had to a purely empirical treatment of morality such as that indicated at the close of the second lecture. Such an account, however, can never rise from the description of conduct to setting up an ideal for life. And accordingly some thinkers have remained convinced of the necessity of ideals for the moral life, although unable to find an adequate ground for these ideals in their system of reality.

This att.i.tude was adopted by F.A. Lange, who, at the close of his History of Materialism, declared that there was need for an Ideal of Worth to supplement the deficiencies of the facts of being. "One thing is certain," he said, "that man needs to supplement reality by an Ideal World of his own creation, and that in such creations the highest and n.o.blest functions of his mind co-operate. But must this free act of the mind bear ever and ever again the deceptive form of demonstrative science? If it does so, materialism will always reappear and destroy the over-bold speculations."[1] It would thus seem that moral life postulates an ideal which the mind is able to frame, but for which it can establish no connexion with the world of reality.

[Footnote 1: Geschichte des Materialismus, 3rd ed., p. 545 f.]

More recently a brilliant French writer, who has attempted to establish a system of "morality without obligation or sanction," has suggested that the place of the categorical law of duty may be taken by a speculative hypothesis, and that hope may serve where there is no ground for belief. "The speculative hypothesis is a risk taken in the sphere of thought; action in accordance with this hypothesis is a risk taken in the sphere of will; and that being is higher who will undertake and risk the more whether in thought or action."[1] Thus, "for example, if I would perform an act of charity pure and simple, and wish to justify this act rationally, I must imagine an eternal Charity at the ground of things and of myself, I must objectify the sentiment which leads to my action; and here the moral agent plays the same _role_ as the artist.... In every human action there is an element of error, of illusion": and it is conjectured that this element increases as the action rises above the commonplace: "the most loving hearts are the most often deceived, in the highest geniuses the greatest incoherences are often found."[2]

[Footnote 1: Guyau, Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction (1885) p. 250.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., pp. 226, 227.]

This solution can hardly be regarded as other than a counsel of despair. Its ethical value is merely apparent. What is of importance for ethics is not so much the presence of some ideal: it is the kind of ideal that matters. It is possible to have an ideal of selfishness as well as an ideal of love, a sensual ideal as well as a spiritual.

Nietzsche's over-man is an ideal; the Mohammedan paradise is an ideal; and conduct can be modelled on them. But it is not enough to have system in conduct, irrespective of the worth of the ideal which determines the system. Some criterion is needed for deciding between competing ideals. As long as they are looked upon as mere illusions, as expressions of doubt, or as a hazard staked on the unknowable, caprice takes the place of law; where all is equally uncertain there is no security for the worth of the ideal itself.

Unsatisfactory as they are in this form, the opinions referred to are echoes of a pregnant doctrine of Kant's--the doctrine that the moral consciousness brings us into closer touch with reality than the merely theoretical reason can reach. Various lines of recent thought may be said to have been suggested by this view. Almost every idealist metaphysician has tended to look upon thought itself as const.i.tuting the inmost reality of the universe which it conceives or understands; and Kant's doctrine may make us pause and ask whether this tendency is not simply an a.s.sumption without warrant.

Again, the psychological a.n.a.lysis of knowledge has brought out the fact of its constant dependence upon practical interests. It is the need to perform or attain something, which is the motive that leads to the understanding of things; and the understanding of things with which alone we are satisfied is commonly that which helps us so to describe our experience as to be able to control some practical result. 'Knowledge is power'; and not only so, but in its early stages and in most of its later developments, knowledge is _for_ power: it is for purposes of his own that man becomes the 'interpreter of nature.'

It is to men of science rather than to philosophers that we owe the 'descriptive theory' of scientific concepts which, within the last few years, has gone far to revolutionise the prevailing att.i.tude of philosophy to science. Concepts, such as 'ma.s.s,' 'energy,' and the like, are no longer held to express realities the denial of which would be treason to science; they are simply descriptive notions whose truth consists in their utility: that is to say, in their ability to comprehend all the relevant facts in a simple description. And, in the same way, scientific principles are of the nature of postulates, whose justification is no necessary law of thought, but must rather be sought in the results of scientific investigation.

These three doctrines--the descriptive theory of science, the practical nature of knowledge as it is brought out by psychological a.n.a.lysis, and the special claims of the moral consciousness--have combined to bring about a tendency strongly opposed to the older idealist tradition, the tendency to regard practical results as the sole test of truth.

This conception is put forward now in philosophical literature as a new and independent point of view. The point of view is only in process of being hardened into a theory; but, under the name of Pragmatism, it has already become the subject of a vigorous propaganda. With the value of this doctrine as a general theory of reality we need not at present concern ourselves. In spite of the high claims it makes for the theoretical significance of moral ideas, its adherents have not as yet devoted much attention to the question of the worth of these moral ideas and the criteria by which that worth may be determined. Yet this surely is the fundamental question for ethical theory. On the other hand, as against a merely theoretical interpretation of the universe, into which the moral element enters only as a sort of loosely-connected appendix, the pragmatists are amply justified. Practical ends are prior to theoretical explanations of what happens. But practical ends vary, and some measure of their relative values is needed.

There is one thing which all reasoning about morality a.s.sumes and must a.s.sume; and that is morality itself. The moral concept--whether described as worth or as duty or as goodness--cannot be distilled out of any knowledge about the laws of existence or of occurrence. Nor will speculation about the real conditions of experience yield it, unless adequate recognition be first of all given to the fact that the experience which is the subject-matter of philosophy is not merely a sensuous and thinking, but also a moral, experience. The approval of the good, the disapproval of the evil, and the preference of the better: these would seem to be basal facts for an adequate philosophical theory: and they imply the striving for a best--however imperfect the apprehension of that best may always remain. Only when these facts--the characteristic facts of moral experience--are recognised as const.i.tuents of the experience which is our subject-matter, are we in a position profitably to enquire what is good and what evil, and how the best is to be conceived.

The recognition of these facts would only be a beginning; but it would be a beginning which would avoid the cardinal error fallen into not only by the leading exponents of evolutionist morality, but also to be found in much of the ethical work of idealist metaphysicians. It seems to have been a.s.sumed that moral principles can be reached by the application of scientific generalisations or of the results of a metaphysical a.n.a.lysis which has started by overlooking the facts of the moral consciousness. Even as a metaphysic this procedure is inadequate; and the interpretations of reality to which it has led have erred by over-intellectuality.

The systems of naturalism and of idealism, whose ethical consequences have been pa.s.sed in review, have one feature in common; and it is a feature which from of old has been regarded as a mark of genuine philosophy. They both seek the One in the many; but they seek it on different roads. For the naturalist the most comprehensive description of things may be the conception of ma.s.s-points in motion; or it may be some more recondite conception to which physical a.n.a.lysis points. In either case the unity reached will be mechanical. For the idealist, on the other hand, reason may be said to be the central principle of things: the unity of reality is a rational unity. I have contended in these lectures that neither the mechanical unity of the naturalists nor the rational unity of the idealists has succeeded in comprehending within its unifying principle the essential nature of morality with its deep-going dualism of good and evil. But while I have maintained that even the conception of reality as the reproduction of itself by an eternal self-consciousness is an inadequate conception, it is still possible to hold that reality is a connected whole, and that its true principle of unity is an ethical principle.

If I were asked what is meant by an ethical unity, I should answer, in the first place, that it implies purpose. The unity of reality is not exhibited by a description of its present or past conditions or even by an account of its causal connexions. These modes of description are all affected by the fragmentariness which always belongs to temporal apprehension. But, when things are seen in the light of a purpose, a view of them as a whole becomes possible, and the fragmentariness of time is transcended. And, in the second place, I should say that an ethical unity implies the presence within itself of different finite centres of conscious activity, whose freedom is not inconsistent with their relation to one another and to the Whole.

In his own life, so far as it is a moral life, each individual seeks system or unity. And this unity is realised on three different levels--as we may call them--which may be distinguished for clearness'

sake, though it is not possible actually to separate them. On each level morality is realised through system, and system is brought about by the rule of the morally higher and the submission of the morally lower: in this goodness lies, in the opposite evil. If we isolate the individual and consider him apart, he may be said to attain goodness by the due ordering and control of his sensuous and pa.s.sional nature by rational or spiritual ends. The result may be described, negatively, as the suppression of sensualism. But the positive description remains imperfect until we can say what the rational or spiritual principle is which is to weld all man's 'particular impulses' into an organic whole.

And this cannot be done so long as we contemplate the mere individual in isolation. We cannot remain at the level of bare individuality.

Personality itself is not a merely individual product: neither the knowledge nor the activity of the individual can be explained without reference to his position as a member of society; his inheritance is a social inheritance. Nor can the individual establish a claim to deal with his own personality as a merely individual end. It is a factor in social life; and, in systematising his own life, he must have regard to the social factor. In this respect he attains goodness only when his individual life seeks a unity higher than that of his own individuality, and not centred in his selfish interests. From this point of view we may say, again negatively, that goodness consists in the suppression of selfishness. But once again there is a difficulty about the positive description. Many moralists, undoubtedly, are content to rest with the social aspect: to regard the 'health' or 'vitality' of society as the final expression of morality. But a life which is simply absorbed by society cannot be said to be a perfect unity. Society itself is a process; and its changes are determined in large measure by the moral ideals of its members. For its unity we must look to an end--an ideal--of which its actual forms can offer indications only. Both man and society are factors in a universal order; and their perfection cannot be independent of the purpose of this order. When the consciousness of it fills man's life, morality is merged in religion.