CHAPTER II.
THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM.
“Certain spirits, by permission, ascended from hell, and said to me,
‘You have written a great deal from the Lord, write something also
from us.’ I replied, ‘What shall I write?’ They said, ‘Write that
every spirit, whether he be good or evil, is in his own delight, — the
good in the delight of his good, and the evil in the delight of his evil.’
I asked them, ‘What may your delight be?’ They said that it was the
delight of committing adultery, stealing, defrauding, and lying. . . .
I said, ‘Then you are like the unclean beasts.’ . . . They answered,
‘If we are, we are.’” — Swedenborg, Divine Providence.
“There’s nothing, either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” —
Hamlet.
With which of the two considerations mentioned
in our introduction shall a religious philosophy
begin? Of its two chief considerations, the moral code,
and the relation of this code to reality, which is the
one that properly stands first in order? We have
already indicated our opinion. The philosophy of
religion is distinguished from theoretic philosophy
precisely by its relation to an ideal. If possible,
therefore, it should early be clear as to what ideal
it has. The ideal ought, if possible, to be studied
first, since it is this ideal that is to give character to
our whole quest among the realities. And so the
first part of religious philosophy is properly the
discussion of ethical problems.
I.
The theoretic philosopher might interpose just
here, and insist that as one can be moral only in a
real world, the philosopher has a theoretical right
and duty to point out, first of all, wherein consists
the reality of the world and whereon is based our
assurance of this reality. Yet this strictly logical
order we must decline, in the present discussion, to
follow. Our interest is, first of all, with the ideal
in its relation to human life. So much of the world
of commonplace reality as we have to assume in any
and every discussion of the ideal, we accept in this
first book wholly without theoretical question. For
such questions, in their relation to religious philosophy,
the proper place will come later. But at the
outset we will suppose a moral agent in the presence
of this concrete world of human life in which we all
believe ourselves to exist. Beyond the bright circle
of these commonplace human relations, all shall for
the present remain dark to this moral agent. His
origin, his destiny, his whole relation to nature and
to God, if there be a God, he shall not at the outset
know. But he shall be conceived as knowing that
he is alive in the midst of a multitude of living
fellows. With them he is to have and to define and
to develop certain moral relations. For his life, or
for human life in general, he is to form his ideal.
Then later, after forming and striving to realize this
ideal of his, he is to come to the real physical world,
and to ask of it how it stands related to these, his
moral needs. In the answer to this question he is to find, if at all, the completion of his religious
philosophy. When he comes to this second stage, which
our second book is to treat, he may find himself
obliged to analyze afresh and skeptically the naïve
theoretic notions that he has possessed concerning
nature, and so even concerning his own fellow-men. But
for his analysis itself he will have a fresher courage,
because he will have filled himself with the love of
an ideal, whose realization he will be hoping
somehow to find all through all the tedious wanderings
of his theoretic study. If the order of his whole
thought is thus not the order of the truth itself, still
his little inconsequence in beginning his religious
philosophy with assumptions that he proves only
after he has gone some distance in his investigation,
may be a useful concession both to his own human
weakness and to the needs of his practical nature.
With the search for the ideal, then, we begin,
expressly assuming, in this part of the first book,
without proof, as much of the world of daily life as may
be necessary to a study of the moral law in its
application to this daily life. Yet, with this explanation,
we are only at the beginning of the troubles
that arise in examining the relation between the
basis of ethics and the real world. These troubles
form a great part of the obscurity of moral
doctrine.
II.
In treating of ethical doctrine, it is common to
avoid by all sorts of devices the main and most
difficult problem of all. Men like to fill half a volume with a description of the “moral sentiments,” or
with a panegyric of the “moral principle in man,” or
in these days especially, with a great deal of talk
about savages and about the “evolution of the moral
sense.” Having occupied so many pages in entertaining
digressions, when they come, if they ever do
come, to the central problem, namely, the nature of
moral distinctions considered purely as such, such
writers have no time to do more than to appeal to
the common sense of readers, and then to pass on to
consequences. It seldom occurs to them that a
description of the “moral faculties” in this man or in
that, or a history of moral and immoral notions and
practices as they have come up among men in the
order of evolution, is no more a “moral philosophy,”
in the proper sense, than is a description of the
coinage or of the products of any country or of the world
a true explanation of the difference between
commercial solvency and insolvency.
We for our part shall be obliged, however, by our
limited space, to aim forthwith at the heart of the
problem of a philosophical ethic. What is the real
nature of this distinction between right and wrong?
What truth is there in this distinction? Is this
truth relative to particular conditions, or independent
thereof? What ideal of life results? These
things we want to know; and we do not want to
spend our time more than we shall be obliged to do
in irrelevant descriptions of the mental states of this
or that man. All mental states now interest us only
in so far as we first see what logical bearing they
may have upon our problem. We shall have to describe a good deal, but that work will have only its
proper subordinate place.
As for the main problem itself, we can best bring
its nature home to ourselves by considering forthwith
some aspects of an old and often neglected
question, namely, the very question before referred
to about the proper relation of one’s moral ideal to
the reality that he may have recognized.
We are to form a moral ideal apart, as we have
said, from any theory of the physical universe
outside of man. But is this practicable? Is not every
moral theory dependent in truth on a theory of
things? Is it possible for us to make for ourselves
our ideal, and only afterwards to go to the real world
and to see if our ideal is realized? Must not rather
our ideal be founded, in the very nature of the case,
on what we know, or think we know, about the
world? Is not then this whole undertaking of ours
a blunder? Is a rational moral distinction possible
save through a knowledge of the facts about the
world? Can the ideal say to the world: “I demand
that thou shouldst be like me?” Must not the ideal
rather humbly say: “Thus and thus it is in truth,
and therefore I am what I am?”
The nature of moral ideals and distinctions is
plainly involved just here. We must look closely
at these questions; for to answer them aright is to
answer the fundamental questions of all ethical
philosophy.
To understand then more justly the nature of this
difficulty, let us consider more closely the two possible
answers to the foregoing questions. Let us call a man who insists in spite of all upon going to the
real world, to find there in some way the sole basis
for his ideal distinctions between good and evil, an
ethical realist. Let us on the other hand call him
who would somehow demonstrate if he could some
ideal as the true and only moral ideal, without in any
wise making it depend upon physical reality, a moral
idealist. Let us then let the two parties discuss, in
their opposing ways, the question at issue. Let us
hear their views briefly stated and argued. First the
view of the extreme ethical realists: “Go to
reality,” they say, “and to whatever reality you need to
consider. Thence derive your notion of duty.
Morality must not be built in the air, but on a solid
foundation of natural fact. Your moral doctrine
may have to depend upon all that you can find out
about the universe.” — On the other hand we have
the idealistic doctrine: “Morality,” say the supporters
of this view, “is for the first an ideal. From
reality one learns the relations that are to be judged
by the ideal, but cannot by any searching find the
ideal itself. From reality one can learn the means;
the End of action is an Ideal, independent of all
reality save the bare existence of our choice of this End.
As Prometheus defied Zeus, so the moral consciousness
could and must defy the forces of nature in case
they made the ideal forever hopeless. If the good
be unattainable, that makes it no less the good. If
the existent world were the worst world imaginable,
it would not be justified by the mere fact that it was
the real world. Ideals must be realized in so far as
we can realize them, but what can be realized need not therefore turn out to be the ideal. The
judgments: This is, and, This is good, are once for all
different; and they have to be reached by widely
different methods of investigation.” — Such are the two
opposing views. We cannot yet repeat in detail the
arguments for each, but we can suggest a few of
them.
“See,” says the supporter of the first view, “how
absurd it is to evolve moral theories out of one’s
inner consciousness. What happens to such theories?
Either nature favors them, and then they survive in
the struggle for life, or they are unequal to the tasks
of the real world, and then their supporters go mad,
or die. But in the first case they are merely such
theories as could have been much better reached by
a process, not of guessing at truth, but of studying
nature’s laws. In the second case, the result is
enough for common sense people. The moral theory
that is destined to die out for want of supporters can
hardly triumph over more useful opinions. If we
want a moral theory, we must therefore consider what
kind of action, what rule of life, wins in the battle
of existence, and tends most to outlive its rivals.
That rule is the one destined to become universal.”
The maintainers of the second view are ready with
their answer. “What sort of morality is this?” they
say. “Is this the morality of the martyrs? Is this
an ideal that can satisfy us? The preservation of
truly valuable life may indeed be an end in itself,
and therefore an action that tends, on the whole, to
destroy rather than to save such life may be bad from
any point of view; but the moral thinker is not, on that account, bound to choose a code that will make
its believers survive. The believers are not all who
are affected by obedience to the code, and it may be
the believer's place to be sacrificed, either because
his life is worth less than his ideal, or because the
unbelievers may somehow be bettered through his
death. And, in general, what would be the
consequence of the consistent following out of the
principle that the true goal is conformity to reality?
Assume that, for instance, a man in society is to
regulate his actions solely according to the demands
that society as a real power makes upon him, in view
of his place in the social organism, and that morality
thus expresses simply the requirements that the
individual must meet if he is to remain a successful
member of this social organism. Then, to get your
moral code, you are to examine the facts of social
life. You are to see, for example, what each man
must nowadays do if he is to be tolerable to his
fellows. You will find something of this sort: It
will not do for him to kill his fellows, or to steal
from them, or openly to insult them. It will be
unprofitable for him to be caught in cheating them, or
in lying to them. He will do well to help them as
far as his means allow, and so to get a reputation
for kind-heartedness and public spirit, as well as for
strict integrity. For such, at least in our society,
are some of the requisite or useful kinds of adjustment
to our environment. On these is founded our
moral code, if it is to be founded on reality alone.
“But these requirements are not equally good in
all societies. Once a power to kill certain kinds of people was a necessary condition to happy social life.
A reputation for fearlessness, for prowess, for
military skill, for a certain kind of cunning, for perfect
willingness to take your weaker enemy’s property;
all this was a part of the necessary adjustment to
one’s environment. Was all this then for that
society true morality? If morality were the body of
rules governing successful adjustment to the social
environment, then morality would be relative to the
environment, and would vary with it. So even now
such rules vary with one’s social position. Ministers
of religion are considered to be best adjusted to
the environment if they are outwardly meek, save
when defending their creeds against heretics. But
politicians are best adjusted when they are aggressive
and merciless. A poet or artist is best adjusted
if he has a reputation for very ideal and impersonal
aims, and he can then even afford to leave his debts
unpaid; but a business man must be very concrete
in behavior, severely definite in his dealings with his
fellows. And so runs the world away. Find your
place, and farm it cleverly, for that is the whole
duty of man.
“Such would be,” say our idealists, “the consequences
of looking simply to reality for a definition
of the moral code. There would no longer be a
difference between morality and cleverness. Practical
skill in the art of living is what survives in this
world: and if it is survival, or tendency to survival,
that distinguishes a true from a false moral code,
then universal cleverness as a moral code would on
the whole tend to survive, with its adherents.”
But a realistic opponent is not thus silenced.
“Such caricatures,” he insists, “do not fairly
represent my doctrine.” He, too, has an ideal but it is
wholly dependent on reality. What he means by
conformity to reality as the foundation of a moral
code is properly expressed by the more thoughtful
advocates of the doctrine of evolution. “Adjustment
to one’s real surroundings is always,” they say,
“one very important element in morality. But
there are higher and lower forms of adjustment.
Cannibals, or conquerors, or bad politicians, may be
sufficiently adjusted to their environment to be
momentarily successful; but true philanthropists and
truly great statesmen are better than they, since the
statesmen and philanthropists have a higher form of
adjustment than have the others, and are thus higher
in the scale of progress. There is in the world a
constant evolution of higher out of lower forms of
life. This applies also to society. And on this fact
of evolution depends the true morality. The ideal
morality is that form of adjustment of the social
man to his environment towards which society in its
progress forever tends.” How then shall we define
our moral code? “Why, once more," says the
evolutionist, “by the facts. Do not make your code
first and then judge the world. You will do well
to accept the universe even if you did not make it.
But examine the world to see in what way it is tending.
Then conform yourself to that tendency; try
to hasten the realization of the coming ideal perfection.
Progress does not depend on you, but you will
do well to assist progress. So, by experience, we are to find the direction in which society is moving,
we are to discover the goal toward which this
movement tends, and this object of life, once formulated,
is to give us our moral code.”
Again, however, the idealist objects. This, he
admits, is a view higher, no doubt, than the
preceding; but is it a clear and consistent view? Will it
bear criticism? In one respect, as appears to him,
it fails badly. However certain and valuable the
facts about evolution may be, the theory that founds
morality wholly upon these facts of evolution is
defective, because it confuses the notion of evolution
with the notion of progress, the conception of growth
in complexity and definiteness with the conception
of growth in moral worth. The two ideas are not
necessarily identical. Yet their identity is assumed
in this theory. How does it follow that the state
toward which a physical progress, namely, evolution,
tends, must be the state that is to meet with moral
approval? This is not to be proved unless you have
already done the very thing that the doctrine of
evolution wishes to teach you to do, that is, unless you
have already formed a moral code, and that
independently of what you know of the facts of natural
evolution. Why is the last state in an evolution
better than the former states? Surely not because
it is the last stage, surely not because it is physically
more complex, more definite, or even more permanent;
but solely because it corresponds to some
ideal that we independently form. Why should my
ideal necessarily correspond with reality? Why
should what I approve turn out to be that which exists? And why, if any correspondence is to exist,
should that particular bit of reality that comes at the
end of a physical process called evolution be just
the one bit that is to answer my ideal demands? It
will be very satisfactory if such correspondence
between the real and the ideal is found to result; but
how can I know beforehand that it must result?
Evolution and progress: what do the terms respectively
mean? Evolution, we learn, is an increase
in the complexity, definiteness, individuality and
organic connection of phenomena. But progress is
any series of changes that meets with the constantly
increasing approval of somebody. The growth of a
tree or of a thistle is an evolution. The climbing of
a hill for some purpose may throughout be a
progress. Evolution may or may not meet with the
approval of anybody; and a pessimist might fully
accept some proposed law of evolution. But unless
there is some approval from some source, we have
no progress. How thoughtless then it is, our idealist
insists, to confound such different notions. But is
a case of evolution ever a process of degeneration?
Certainly. You want to eat asparagus before it is
full grown. Hence every moment of its evolution
after a certain point is for you distinctly a degeneration.
You want the potatoes in your cellar to keep
fresh. If they sprout, a process of evolution has
begun, but every moment of it is for you the reverse
of progress. The egg that begins to incubate is in
full course of evolution; but what if it is wanted
for market? Might not the evolution of the whole
world conceivably be for the moral consciousness what such cases of evolution are for the purposes of
ordinary life?
“But,” the realist may say, “in fact the world
does grow better. The course of evolution is on the
whole a progress.” “Be it so,” the idealist answers,
“but how can we know it? Only by first setting
up our moral ideal, and then comparing the facts
with this ideal. If we know what we mean by
better, we can judge whether the world is growing
better. But we may not pretend to determine what
is better by simply observing how the world grows.
Growth and improvement are not identical ideas.
One may grow while growing ever worse.”
And thus a moral code, according to our idealist,
does not, as a code, depend on physical facts; tells
us nothing of what does exist, but tells us solely
what ought to exist. If the ideal either does exist,
or some day will exist, so much the better; but
through all the changes of fate the terrible ought
remains, and judges fearlessly the world, whether it
be good or whether it be evil. But here the realist,
to whom the moral code that is not built on natural
fact is just a dream, interposes what shall just here
be his final objection. “Be it so,” he says, “judge
after your heart's desire; but remember this, that
some other idealist beside you will be judging the
world in his own way, after what will seem to you
the folly of his heart, and his judgment and yours
will differ, as the dreams of any two dreamers must
differ. Did Plato’s ideal agree with Paul’s? or did
Byron judge the world after the same fashion as
Wordsworth? Even so in the present day the ideals war their wars, shadowy struggles, such as one
would expect the tedious ghosts of Ossian’s heroes
to carry on in their cloudy cars; but reality will
never be one whit the wiser for all such deeds.
For when you forsake the real world you have no
basis left for your ideals but individual caprice,
and every idealist will be his own measure of all
things, and an elastic measure at that.”
To this, how can the idealist answer? Only, if at
all, by the fact of his success in establishing such a
criterion as shall be independent of his own caprice,
without being realistic.
We have let the contending doctrines fight some
part of their old battles over again. How shall we
decide between them? Alas! the decision is the
whole labor of founding a moral doctrine. We have
not yet seen deeply enough into their opposition.
They may both be one-sided. The truth may lie in
the middle. But as yet we have no right to
dogmatize. This capriciousness in the choice of ideals
seems a grave defect in a moral system; we cannot
submit to the objection that our boasted ideal is just
our whim. Yet how shall we escape this? Equally
unsatisfactory it seems to say: “I believe in such
and such ideal solely because I see it realized.”
That is too much like saying, “Might is right.”
And thus we should come to an equal capriciousness
on this side; for if might makes right, then another
and opposing might, if triumphant, would make
another and opposing right. And in this wise there
would be no true distinction at all between right and
wrong. There seems in fact so far only an accidental distinction. This ideal or that is the highest
because somebody chances to choose it for his, or
because the physical world chances to realize it. This
is a perfectly empty distinction.
But difficulties must not discourage us so early in
the day. The world has talked of these matters
before. Let us turn to the history of some of the
speculations about the ideal. They may suggest
something to us.
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Wisdom From Previous Realities
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