Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics Part 5

Our account of morality may be called the eudemonistic account, from the Greek eudemonia, happiness, or the teleological account, from telos, an end. It a.s.serts, that is, that morality is to be judged by the end it subserves; that end is happiness. We have seen the sort of protest that arises with respect to the word "happiness." We may now note a danger that arises from the use of the concept "end"; it finds expression in the familiar proverb, "The end justifies the means."

Conduct is to be judged by the end it subserves; therefore, if the end is good any means may be used to attain it. This has been the defense of much wrongdoing. The Jesuits who lied, slandered, cheated, and murdered, to promote the interests of the Church, the McNamara brothers, who dynamited buildings and bridges as a means toward the final end of attaining for laborers a just share of the fruits of their labor, the suffragettes who have been burning private houses, sticking up mail-boxes, and breaking windows, have justified their crimes by reference to the great ends they expected thereby to attain. What shall we say to this plea?

(1) The motto means: Conduct in itself undesirable may be justified IF the end attained is important enough to warrant it. In every case, then, the question must arise: Is the end to be attained worth the cost? To justify means that are intrinsically bad, it must be shown that the end attained is so good as to overbalance this evil. WAS the advancement of the Church worth the cost in human suffering, estrangement, and bitterness that the Jesuits exacted? IS the advancement of labor interests worth the destruction of property and life, the fostering of cla.s.s-enmity and of moral anarchism that the criminal wing of the I. W. W. stands for? ARE votes for women worth the similar evils which British suffragettes are drifting into? Sometimes a cause is so important that almost any act is justified in its advancement. But such cases are rare, at least in modern life. Always there must be a balancing of good and evil. And the trouble with the att.i.tude of mind which we have ill.u.s.trated is that the end sought is usually not so all-important as to warrant the grave evils which its seekers cause. When the t.i.tanic was sinking, the boat's officers shot several men who tried to jump into the lifeboats ahead of the women and children. It was probably the only way to stop a mad panic stricken rush, which would have endangered the lives of all as well as broken the chivalrous code which is worth so much sacrifice. The evil of shooting down unarmed and frightened men was great; but it was undoubtedly justified by the end attained. Whether any of the other instances mentioned are cases where the evil done would be similarly justified by the end, if thereby attained, we shall not here discuss.

But the principle is evident. The end justifies evil means only if it is so supremely good as to overbalance that evil.

(2) It is pertinent, however, to add two considerations. First, we must feel sure that no less harmful means are available. And secondly, we must feel sure that these evil means are really adapted to attain the purpose. Is there no other way of securing votes for women than by the hysterical and criminal pranks our British sisters have been playing? And will those irritating acts actually forward their cause, or tend to bring about a revulsion of feeling? Did the crimes of the Jesuits make the Church triumphant? Not in the long run. Immediate gains may often be won by unpleasant methods, as in the case of the t.i.tanic. But when the struggle is bound to be a long one, as in the case of woman's suffrage and industrial justice, methods which (not to beg the question) would ordinarily be criminal are seldom in the end advantageous. The McNamara case hurt the I. W. W. sorely. Suffrage legislation has possibly been r.e.t.a.r.ded in Britain. And in both cases there are probably more efficacious, as well as less harmful, ways of attaining the desired end.

(3) It is strictly true that THE end, human welfare, justifies any means necessary to attain it. Whatever pain must be caused to bring about the greatest possible human happiness is thereby exempt from reprobation. Whatever conduct is necessary for that supreme end BECOMES morality, or virtue; for that is precisely what morality IS. For example, it is undoubtedly necessary at times to murder, to steal, and to lie for the sake of human welfare; in such cases these acts are universally approved. Only, we give the acts in such cases new names, that the words "murder," etc, may retain their air of reprobation. We call murder of which we approve "capital punishment"

or "justifiable homicide" or "patriotic courage." If taking a man's property without his consent is stealing, then the State steals; but, approving the act, we call it "eminent domain."

(4) The motto has its chief danger, perhaps, in the tendency it encourages to ignore remoter consequences for the sake of immediate gain. This point we will consider under the following topic.

What is the justification of justice and chivalry?

If the greatest total of human happiness is the supreme end of conduct, was not Caiaphas right in deeming it expedient that one man should die for the people, even though he were innocent of all sin? Were not the French army officers sane in preferring to make Dreyfus their scapegoat rather than bring dishonor and shame upon their army? For that matter, does not the aggregate of enjoyment of a score of cannibals outweigh the suffering of the one man whom they have sacrificed to their appet.i.te, or the delirious excitement with which a brutal crowd witnesses a lynching overbalance the pain of their solitary victim?

Yet our souls revolt against such things. We cry, ruat caelum, fiat just.i.tia! Justice is prior to all expediency! Is this irrational, or can it be shown to be teleologically justifiable?

Justice is undoubtedly justifiable; and the only reason that we ever hesitate to acknowledge it in any concrete case is that we tend to overlook indirect and remote results and see only the immediate effect of action. The harm done by injustice consists not merely in the pain inflicted upon the victim. There is the sympathetic pain caused in all those who are at all tender hearted. There is the sense of insecurity caused in each by the realization that he too might some day be a victim; when justice is not enforced no man is safe. There is the stimulation given to human pa.s.sions by one indulgence which will breed a whole crop of pain. There is the danger that if injustice is allowed in one case where a great good seems to warrant it, it will be practiced in other cases where no such necessity exists. Men are not to be trusted to judge clearly of relative advantages where their pa.s.sions are concerned; they must bind themselves by an inflexible code. The cases cited are comparatively clear. No one would seriously contend that cannibalism or lynching, the execution of Christ, or the banishment of Dreyfus, made in the direction of the greatest happiness of mankind. But it has been seriously urged that the insane and the feeble and the morally worthless should be killed off, as they were in some sterner ancient states. Why should we guarantee life and liberty to such as are a useless drag upon the community, spend upon them millions which might be spent for bringing joy and recreation to the rest of us? Or again, if medical men need a living human victim to experiment upon, in order to conquer some devastating disease, why not pounce upon some good-for-nothing member of the community and force him to undergo the pain? The considerations enumerated in the preceding paragraph, however, bid us halt. Imagine the anxiety and the anguish that would be caused if some commission were free to determine who were insane or feeble or worthless enough to be put out of the way!

Or free to select a human victim for vivisection whenever experts deemed it wise! The widespread horror and uneasiness of such a regime, the callousness to suffering it would engender, the private revenges and crimes that might insidiously creep in under the guise of public good, are alone enough to render vicious such a procedure.

It is true that one person's suffering is less of an evil than the suffering of many. The State, by universal consent, inflicts undeserved suffering upon individuals when the social welfare seems to require it; as when it takes away a man's beloved acre to built a railroad or highway, or when it compels vaccination, or when it drafts soldiers for the national defense and sends them to their death. When a man volunteers to risk his life or to endure pain for his fellows we rightly applaud his act. In such a case the ill effects above-mentioned do not follow, and the gain is clear; in addition, the stimulating value of the voluntary self-sacrifice is great. The American soldiers, who risked their lives to rid Cuba and the world of yellow fever, by offering themselves for inoculation with the disease, stand among the world's heroes.

It is also true that "rights" are not primitive and transcendent; their existence rests upon purely utilitarian grounds. The right to liberty and life is limited by the community's welfare. So is the right to property. But in estimating advantage we must beware of a superficial calculation. The concept of justice, and the enthusiasm for it, have been of enormous value to man's happiness. It is of extreme importance, from a eudaemonistic standpoint, to cherish that ideal. Even if in some individual case a greater general happiness would result from infringing upon it, we cannot afford to do so; we should find ourselves lapsing into less advantageous habits and incurring unforeseen penalties.

Chivalry is in like case with justice. It might have seemed better for the world that the able and distinguished men should have been saved from the t.i.tanic-some of them were men of considerable importance in various lines of work-rather than less-needed women. But the effect of the n.o.ble example in strengthening the will to sacrifice self for others, and in maintaining our beautiful devotion to woman, was worth the cost. Fox was right when he said, "Example avails ten times more than precept." Even if the loss had been greater than it was, it would have been better to incur it than to allow an exception to the code of chivalry. Such codes are formed with infinite pains and are very easily shattered; a little laxity here, a tolerated exception there, and the selfishness and pa.s.sions of men rise to the surface and undo the work of years. AT ALL COSTS WE MUST MAINTAIN THE CODE. In the end it pays. The greatest genius must run the risk of drowning in the endeavor to save the life of some unknown person who may be a worthless scamp. He may die and the scamp live, a great loss to the world. But only so can the code of honor be maintained which in the long run adds so much positive joy to man and saves him from so much pain.

In most instances, though not in some of those cited, the reward of justice and chivalry is sufficient for the individual himself. As Socrates said to Theodoras, [Footnote: Plato, Theoetetus, 176.] "The penalty of injustice cannot be escaped. They do not see, in their infatuation, that they are growing like the one and unlike the other, by reason of their evil deeds; and the penalty is, that they lead a life answering to the pattern which they resemble." "On the other hand,"-to supplement Plato with Emerson, [Footnote: Essays, First Series: "Spiritual Laws." Cf. George Eliot, in Romola: "The contaminating effect of deeds often lies less in the commission than the hero the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows it himself and is pledged by it to sweetness of peace and to n.o.bleness of aim, which will prove in the end a better proclamation of it than the relating of the incident." And, we may add, a greater joy.]

But even in view of the cases where no apparent compensation comes to the individual, the ideals of justice and chivalry, like the more general concept of duty, are among the most valuable possessions of man's fas.h.i.+oning. Cross our inclinations as they often do, cost dearly as they sometimes will, the habit of unquestioning allegiance to them is one of the greatest of all gains as means to the attainment by mankind of a stable and a.s.sured happiness.

A brief discussion of the conflict of duty and inclination will be found in Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap. XVII, first few pages.

Carlyle's declamations against happiness are too scattered and unsystematic to make reference to specific chapters useful. The general point of view may be found, more temperately stated, in F. H. Bradley's Ethical Studies, the chapter ent.i.tled "Why Should I be Moral?"

Contemporary accounts of the nature of obligation will be found in the International Journal of Ethics, vol. 22, p. 282; vol. 23, pp.

143, 323.

A discussion of the motto, "The end justifies the means" will be found in F. Paulsen's System of Ethics, book II, and chap. I, sec. 4. The justification of justice is treated in J. S. Mill's Utilitarianism, chap. V. [in the consequent adjustment of our desires, the enlistment of our self-interest on the side of falsity. The purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact that by it the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the n.o.ble att.i.tude of simplicity.]

CHAPTER IX

THE JUDGMENT OF CHARACTER

Wherein consists goodness of character?

Character is the sum of a man's tendencies to conduct. Our estimate of a man's character is a sort of weather forecast of what he will do in various situations. Goodness of character consists, then, of such an organization of impulses as will lead to good acts-to acts productive ultimately of a preponderance of intrinsic good, or happiness.

The blame and approval that attaches in our minds to certain acts becomes attached also to the disposition that is fruitful of such acts. A good man is he whose mind is so set and adjusted that it will turn away from evil deeds and espouse the right. We can say, then, with Dewey and Tufts, "Goodness consists in active interest in those things which really bring happiness." [Footnote: Ethics, p. 396.] Similarly, Paulsen writes, "Virtues may be defined as habits of the will and modes of conduct which tend to promote the welfare of individual and collective life." [Footnote: System of Ethics, Eng. p. 475.] And Santayana puts it more tersely in the statement, "Goodness is that disposition that is fruitful in happiness." [Footnote: Reason in Common Sense, p. 144.] It is easy, then, to understand the enthusiasm that men feel for goodness; it is the resultant of the pa.s.sionate longing to be delivered from the domination of evil impulses, the instinctive joy in splendid and unselfish acts, the sense of relief and grat.i.tude felt toward those from whom one has nothing to fear. Contrariwise, the shrinking from a bad man springs primarily from the dread of what he may do, from the disgust which the sight of his foolish and ruinous acts inspires and from various other reactions of the spectator which we need not enumerate. If character were a sort of merely inward possession, unconnected with conduct, we should not Jeel thus toward it. Merely to FEEL virtuous is pleasant, but it is not important. Imputed goodness must be judged by the kind of conduct it yields, and that conduct in turn by its consequences. "By their fruits ye shall know them." But this inward disposition, though important chiefly for its effects, is more important therefore than we are apt to realize. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is." The scientific study of psychology has emphasized the fact, which is open to everyday observation, that even secret thoughts and moods influence inevitably a man's outward acts. What we do depends upon what we have been thinking and imagining and feeling. The Great Teacher was right when he bade men refrain not merely from murder, but from angry thoughts; not merely from adultery, but from l.u.s.tful glances; not merely from perjury, but from the desire to deceive. Epictetus puts it, "What we ought not to do we should not even think of doing." And Marcus Aurelius writes, "We should accustom ourselves to think upon othing that we should hesitate to reveal to others if they asked to know it."

This is sound advice. Without attempting to settle the problem of determinism or indeterminism, which falls properly within the sphere of natural rather than of moral philosophy, it is evident that our conduct is largely the result of that set of potentialities which we call character, that our happiness is in great degree shaped by our inward mental states.

Hence the large role of "motive" and "intent" in ethical theory. High motives and good intentions lead-sometimes to disastrous, acts we know what place is paved therewith. We need the wisdom of the serpent as well as the innocence of the dove. But other things being equal, pure desires tend to right conduct. A man whose mind dwells upon the good side of his neighbors, who loves and sympathizes, and enjoys their friends.h.i.+p, will be far less likely to give vent to acts of cruelty or malice than one who indulges in spiteful feelings, fault finding, and resentment. Our habitual thoughts and desires make us responsive to certain stimuli and indifferent to others. The words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart, as well as the trifling acts that we perform, in themselves however unimportant, have their subtle and acc.u.mulative influence in determining our momentous acts. The familiar case of the drinker who says, "This gla.s.s doesn't count" can be paralleled in every field of life. It pays to keep in moral training, to cultivate kindly and disciplined thoughts, to forbid ill natured and unworthy feelings, and self-indulgent dreams. Otherwise before we know it the barriers of resistance will crumble and we shall do what we had never supposed we should do, some act that is the fruit of our unregulated inner life. [Footnote: Cf. George Eliot in Romola: "t.i.to" (who, having posed as a rich and n.o.ble gentleman, being unexpectedly confronted with his plebeian father, on the spur of the moment disowned him with the merciless words, "Some madman, surely!") "Was experiencing that inexorable law of human souls, that we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil that gradually determines character."] Can we say, with Kant, that the only good is the Good Will? It is not uncommon for instrumental goods to come to receive a homage greater than that which is paid to the ends they serve. It is notably and necessarily so with the various aspects of the concept of morality; virtue, conscience, goodness of character are actually more important for us to think about and aim for than the happiness to which they ultimately minister. But this apotheosis denial of its fundamentally instrumental value. As with the miser who rates his bank notes more highly than the goods he could purchase with them, an abstract moralist occasionally exalts the means at the expense of the end. We are told that only goodness counts; that its worth has nothing to do with its relation to happiness; that goodness would command our allegiance even if it brought nothing but misery in its train.

The best-known exponent of this blind wors.h.i.+p of goodness is Kant.

He writes, "A Good Will is good, not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition; that is, it is good in itself Its fruitfulness or fruitlessness can neither add nor take away anything from this value ... Moral worth ... cannot lie anywhere but in the principle of the Will, without regard to the ends which can be attained by the action." [Footnote: The Metaphysic of Morality.

To be found in Kant's Theory of Ethics, trans. by Abbott, pp. 10, 16.]

So far does Kant carry this wors.h.i.+p of the idea of goodness that he separates it from the several virtues that make up goodness in the concrete and bows down before the resulting bare abstraction Good Will, the will to do good. This leads him to a curiously dehumanized position. Prudential acts, he declares, are obviously good in their consequences; they therefore deserve no praise; whatever one does calculatingly, with view to future results, has no moral worth. And on the other hand, whatever good acts one does instinctively, pushed on by animal impulses, including love and sympathy, deserve no praise and have no moral worth. It is only what one does from the single motive of desiring to do the right that awakens Kant's enthusiasm.

"The preservation of one's own life, for instance, is a duty; but, as every one has a natural inclination to which most men usually devote to this object has no intrinsic value, nor the maxim from which they act any moral import." [Footnote: The Metaphysic of Morality, sec. I.] What shall we say to this?

(1) Kant's statements are a mere crystallization of an una.n.a.lyzed feeling; their plausibility rests upon our ingrained enthusiasm for goodness. But if that enthusiasm be challenged, how shall we justify it? How do we know that good will is good, unless we can see WHY it is good? Many other things appeal to our instincts as good; may not this particular judgment be mistaken, or may not all these other things be equally good with good will? Kant's Hebraic training is clearly revealed in his exaltation of good will; it reflects the practical Lebensweisheit we have learned from the Bible. To the Greek it would have been foolishness, fanaticism. We want not only good will, but wisdom, sympathy, skill, common sense. Also we want health, love, wives and children, friends, and congenial work. All of these things are part of the worth of life. What would it profit us if we lost all these and had only our good will! [Footnote: A reduction ad absurdum of the Kantian view may be found in Cardinal Newman's statement of the Catholic Christian view. "The Church holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fall, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremist agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse." (Anglican Difficulties, p. 190.)] The valuation that ignores all natural goods but one is unreal, inhuman, fanatical; it leads when unchecked to the emasculated life of the anaemic mediaeval saint or anchorite. Kant's eloquent eulogy of good will appeals to one of our n.o.blest impulses; but that impulse is as much in need of justification to the reason as any other, and it is only one of a number of equally healthy and justifiable natural preferences. Good will, the desire to do right, is perhaps, on the whole, IN THE EMERGENCY, a safer guide to trust than warm-blooded impulse or reasoned calculation. Moreover, it has a thin, precarious existence in most of us at best, and needs all the encouragement it can get. Practically, we need Kant's kind of sermonizing; we need to exalt abstract goodness and resist the appeal of immediate and sensuous goods. So Kant has been popular with earnest men more interested in right living than in theory. But as a theorist he is hopelessly inadequate.

(2) It is true that we admire good will without consideration of the effects it produces, and even when it leads to disaster. But if good will USUALLY led to disaster we should never have come to admire it.

Chance enters into this world's happenings and often upsets the normal tendencies of acts. But we have to act in ways that may normally be expected to produce good results. And we have to admire and cherish that sort of action, in spite of the margin of loss. The admiration that we have come to feel for goodness is partly the result of social tradition, b.u.t.tressing the code that in the long run works out to best advantage; and partly, of course, the spontaneous emotion that rises in us at the sight of courage, heroism, self-sacrifice, and the other spectacular virtues. But however naive or sophisticated a reaction it may be, its psychogenesis is perfectly intelligible, U and its existence is no proof of the supernal nature of the goodness of "good will."

(3) Kant argues as follows: "Nothing can possibly be conceived, in the world or out of it, which can be called good WITHOUT QUALIFICATION, except a good will." [Footnote: Op. cit, sec. I.]

He goes on to show that wit, courage, perseverance, etc, are all bad if the will that makes use of them is bad as in the case of a criminal; while health, riches, honor, etc, may inspire pride or presumption, and so not be unmitigated thing that can in every case be called good.

But is this so? May not a man have good will and yet do much mischief?

If courage, wit, etc, need to be employed by good will, so does good will need to be joined with common sense, knowledge, tact, and many other helpers. Good will is good only if it is sanely and wisely directed; else it may go with all sorts of fanaticism. If one says, "It is still good qua good will," we may reply, "Yes, but so are all goods; courage is always good qua courage, knowledge qua knowledge,"

etc. All harmless joys are good without qualification, and all goods whatever are good except as they get in the way of some greater good or lead to trouble.

(4) Kant's formula "good will" is ambiguous. OF COURSE a GOOD act of will is good; that is a mere tautology, and gives us no guidance whatever. Which acts of will ARE good is our problem. Kant, however, worked out his empty formula into a concrete maxim, "Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature." But how should we WISH others to act in the given situation?

It would be quite possible for a l.u.s.tful man to be willing that unrestrained l.u.s.t should be the general rule; he would be much more comfortable and freer if it were. There is nothing in the law of consistency to direct him; men might be consistently bad as well as consistently good. We have still no criterion, only an appeal to coolness, to detachment from hot impulses and selfishness.

Practically, what the Kantian viewpoint amounts to is an exaltation of conscience-a much more concrete (and variable) thing than this abstract formula. Do your duty, at any cost! Our hearts respond to such preaching, but our intellects remain perplexed, if the practical apotheosis of goodness is not supplemented by an adequate theoretic justification thereof.

What evils may go with conscientiousness?

At this point it may repay us to note more carefully the inadequacy of that mere blind conscientiousness which is the practical burden of the Kantian teaching. One would think that the only source of our troubles lay in our lack of desire to do right! As a matter of fact, there is a vast amount of good will in the world which effects no good, or does serious harm, for want of wise direction. Much of the tragedy of life consists of the clashes between wills equally consecrated and pure. Conscientious cranks and blunderers are perhaps even more of a nuisance than out-and-out villains; they hurt every good cause they espouse and bring n.o.ble ideals into ridicule; they provoke discouragement and cynicism. There is hardly a folly or a crime that has not been committed prayerfully and with a clear conscience; the saint and the criminal are sometimes psychologically indistinguishable indeed, by which name we call a fanatic may depend upon which side we are on.

We may discriminate among the types of perverted conscience:

(1) The fanatical conscience, the meddling conscience, that feels a mission to stir up trouble. Under this head come the parents who interfere needlessly with their children's ways when different from their own, the breakers-up of love-affairs, the fault-finders, the militantly religious, all that great mult.i.tude of men who with prayer and tears have felt it their duty to override others' wills and impose their codes upon the world.

(2) The obstructive conscience, that has become set and will not suffer change. Here we can put all the earnest "stand-patters," who resist innovation of every sort. Slaves of the particular standards that they happen to have grown up in, unable to conceive that their individual brand of religion may not be the ultimate truth, horror-struck at the suggestion that we should forsake the ways of our fathers, their conscientious conservatism stands like a rock in the way of progress.

(3) The ascetic conscience, that overemphasizes the need of sacrifice, and deletes all the positive joy of life for the sake of freedom from possible pain. This particular misdirection of conscience is not prominent in contemporary life; but at certain periods, as among some of the mediaeval saints, or the early Puritans, this hypertrophy of conscience has been a serious blight.

(4) The anxious conscience, that magnifies trifles and gives us no rest with its incessant suggestions, lest we forget, lest we forget.

This type of over conscientiousness is a form of unhealthy self consciousness, a bane to its possessor and a nuisance to every one within range.

These familiar evils that may go with the utmost good will show us that good will or conscientiousness is not enough. The conscientious man may not only leave undone important duties; his good will may lead him to push in exactly the wrong direction and do great harm. There are thus two ways of judging a man. First, did he do the best he knew?

Did he live up to his conscience? Secondly, did he do what was really best? Was his conscience properly developed and directed? Our approval must often be divided; we may rate him high by the standard of conscientiousness, but low in his standard of morality. This is the familiar distinction between what is objectively right and what is subjectively right. An objectively right action is "one such that, if it be done, the total value of the universe will be at least as great as if any other possible alternative had been done by the agent"; whereas "it is subjectively right for the agent to do what he judges to be most probably objectively right on his information"-whether he judges correctly or not. [Footnote: C. D. Broad in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 24, pp. 316, 320.] It may then be right (in one sense) for a man to do an act which is wrong (in the other sense) [Footnote: Strictly speaking, there are four possible usages of the word "right": An act is right which (a) is actually going to have the best consequences; which (b) might be expected, on our best human knowledge, to have the best consequences; which (c) the actor, on his partial information, and with his partial powers of judgment, expects to have the best consequences; or which (d) his conscience approves, without reference to consequences.] What is the justification of praise and blame? Kant was expressing a familiar thought when he wrote that a man deserved no praise for either instinctive or calculating acts.

Why should we praise a man for doing what he wants to do, what is the most natural and easy thing for him to do, or what he can foresee will bring about desirable consequences? Should we not praise only the man who fights his inclinations, does right when he does not want to, and without foresight of ultimate gain?

As a matter of fact, however, we do praise and admire and love the saints who do right easily and graciously. We do not refuse our admiration to Christ because it was his meat and drink, his deepest joy, to do his Father's work; nor do we imagine him as having to wrestle with inner devils of spitefulness and ill-temper. The type of character we rate highest is that from which all these lower impulses have been finally banished, the character that inevitably seeks the pure and the good. And on the other hand, as we have just seen, we often blame the man who, with the n.o.blest intentions, and at great cost to himself, does what we consider wrong.

It is thus true that our reactions of praise and blame are complicated and inconsistent. We often praise a man and blame him at the same time; praise him for following his conscience, and blame him for having a narrow and distorted conscience to follow. Different people in a community will praise or blame him according as they consider this or that aspect of his conduct. What, then, is the rationale of these emotion-reactions?