CHAPTER III.
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS.
Sure, if I find the Holy Grail itself,
It too will fade, and crumble into dust.
Tennyson, Holy Grail.
The spirits I have raised abandon me,
The spells which I have studied baffle me —
The remedy I recked of tortured me.
I lean no more on superhuman aid.
Byron, Manfred.
We are yet without an ideal, and as we come
nearer to our task, its difficulties increase. We have
described above the remarkable position in which
every moral idealist finds himself. He says that
his moral doctrine is to be more than a mere bit of
natural history. He wants to find out what ought
to be, even if that which ought to be is not. Yet when
some man says to him: “Thy ideal is thus but thy
personal caprice, thy private way of looking at
things,” he does not want to assent. He wants to
reply: “My ideal is the true one. No other rational
ideal is possible.” Yet to do this he seems to need
again some external support in reality. He seems to
require some authority based upon facts. He must
somewhere find his ideal in the world of truth,
external to his own private consciousness. He must
be able to say: “Lo, here is the ideal!” He must be able to show it to us, so that we shall see it to be
more than his whim. But thus he is in danger of
forsaking his idealism. His position so far has
therefore seemed to us an uncertain one. We have felt
the force of his needs; but we have not been able to
see as yet just how they are to be satisfied. The
satisfaction of them would in fact be a complete
ethical doctrine. And the foundation of such a
doctrine is just what we here are seeking.
It is incumbent upon us yet further to show how
the search for a moral ideal has in the past been
hindered by the weight of this doubt about the exact
relation of the real and the ideal. The controversy
that the last chapter considered is a controversy
endlessly repeated in the history of moral doctrines.
Everywhere we find a moral ideal maintained by some
devoted idealist as the one perfectly obvious aim for
human life. Everywhere there stands over against
this ideal some critic who says: “The choice of this
aim for life is an accident. I reject this boastful
ideal. For where in reality is found the firm basis
of fact on which the ideal is founded?” Then
possibly the idealist, relaxing the rigor of his idealism,
points out in the external world some real or
mythical support for his ideal. And thereupon either his
critics reject the creed about the external world thus
offered to them, or they deny the moral force of the
supposed realities, or, again, themselves assuming an
idealistic attitude, they reproach the idealist with his
unworthy desertion of his own high faith, in that he
has yielded to realistic demands, and has founded
the lofty Ought on the paltry Is. And thus the controversy continues. Often it seems to us that the
struggle must be endless. At all events we must
here look at some of its phases.
I.
In the days of the Sophists, Greek thought had
reached its first great era of ethical skepticism. This
skepticism was directed against the ideals of popular
morality. “They are not self-evident and necessary
ideals,” said in substance the Sophists. “They are
conventions. They are private judgments.” The
popular ideals were of course popularly defended
against such assaults by the use of the national
religion. “The gods made these distinctions,” it is
replied. “The gods are able to enforce them;
therefore, fear the gods.”
Skepticism had two answers to this defense. The
one answer was simple: “Who knows whether there
are any gods, or what the gods, if they exist, may
choose to do?” The other answer was more subtle,
because it really expressed in skeptical guise a new
form of moral idealism. It is best preserved to us
in a fine passage in the second book of Plato’s
Republic. Here the young men, Glaucon and
Adeimantos, confess that certain sophistic objections to
the reality of moral distinctions are deeply puzzling to
themselves. They ask Socrates to discuss the matter
in some such fashion as to remove these doubts.
They sum up the doubts in substance as follows:
Grant that the gods are of irresistible might, and
that they are disposed to enforce some moral law; still does that fact give any true distinction between
good and evil as such? For whoever urges us to do
right merely to get the favor of the gods, urges us
in reality just to do what is prudent. Such doctrines
make justice not desirable in itself, but desirable
solely for what it brings in its train. And thus there
would be no difference between good and evil as such,
but only between what brings reward and what
brings punishment. “Therefore, O Socrates,” they
in effect say, “do thou defend for us justice in itself,
and show us what it is worth in itself, and how it is
different from injustice. But put us not off with
stories about reward and punishment.” Such is a
brief summary of their two speeches.
No better could either the need or the difficulty
of the task of moral idealism be set forth than in
these eloquent statements. How does Plato lay the
ghosts that he has thus raised? How does he give
an independent foundation to the ideal of justice?
He surely felt how hard a problem he was
undertaking. He has, in fact, attempted several answers
to it. But the main answer, given in the
Republic itself is insufficient, though noble. This answer
is, in effect, that the properly balanced, fully and
harmoniously developed soul, absorbed in the
contemplation of eternal truth, cannot possibly desire
injustice; that only the tyrannical soul, in which
the desires have the upper hand, where nothing is
secure, whose life is like the life of an ill-governed
or even anarchic community, tumultuous, wretched,
helpless before passion, only such a soul can desire
injustice. Injustice, then, means desire for discord, it means the victory of the desires over the reason,
it is inconsistent with the life of the soul that is
given to blessed contemplation of the eternal ideas.
For such a blessed soul its blessedness is, in the fine
phrase that Spinoza long afterwards created, not the
reward of virtue, but virtue itself; so that such a
soul will not do the right as a means by which it
may procure the blessed contemplation of the
eternal, but, being engaged in this blessed
contemplation, it is thereby enabled to do right.
But to the wicked soul of the unjust man Plato
seemingly has no inducement to offer in order to
persuade it to become just, save the eloquent statement
of the pains that accompany injustice, the picture of
the warfare of desires, the proof of the wretched
instability and of the possibly eternal misery in which
the tyrannical soul must live. And thus Plato
himself would be in so far open to the objection that his
Glaucon and Adeimantos had made to all previous
moralists, namely, that they never gave a reason
why justice in itself was to be chosen, but always
made justice desirable by reason of the rewards that
result from it. For Plato’s view, as for that of less
ideal moralists, the unjust man should seek to
become just because, until he does become just, he will
be wretched. Can no other basis for the virtue of
justice be found save this one? If none can be
found save this, then whenever a soul exists that
prefers the tumult of desire, with average success in
injustice, to the solemn peace of the contemplation
of ideal good apart from the satisfaction of sensuous
desires, for that soul Plato’s argument will be worthless. Such a tyrannical man will delight to remain
a tyrant, and that will be the end of life for him.
The suggestiveness, the deeper significance of this
Platonic doctrine, we do not deny. But, as it stands,
the doctrine is not complete nor consistent. For
Plato himself has given us as the support for his
ideal, a fact, or a supposed fact, of human nature.
A moral skeptic will deal with it as Glaucon and
Adeimantos had dealt with the popular morality.
The supposed fact, they will say, may be doubted.
Perhaps some tyrant will actually feel happier than
some struggling and aspiring soul far higher up in
the heavens. But, leaving that doubt aside, there is
the other objection. The ideal justice has come to
be founded on a bare physical fact, namely, on the
constitution of the soul, which might, for all we can
see, have been different.
Important as he is in concrete ethical questions, Aristotle does nothing of importance to remove this fundamental difficulty, since his position as to this matter is too near to Plato’s. Still less do the Epicureans, for whom in fact just this difficulty does not exist. Plainly they declare that they merely state physical facts. Generosity, fidelity to friends, and other idealistic activities they indeed regard as the part of the wise man, but the end of all is very frankly declared to be his selfish advantage. As Cicero expresses their view: “Cum solitudo et vita sine amicis insidiarum et metus plena sit, ratio ipsa monet amicitias comparare, quibus partis confirmatur animus et a spe pariendarum voluptatum
sejungi non potest.”
The Stoics have a new thought to offer, one that
would have been as revolutionary as Christianity
itself, if they could but have grasped and taught its
full meaning. But that was for them impossible.
Their new thought, which gave foundation to their
moral ideals, was the thought of the perfect equality
of all men in the presence of the universal Reason,
to which all alike ought to conform. Everyone, they
said, ought to be rational; everyone ought to try to
extend the empire of reason. If one’s neighbor is
a rational being, one can and must try to realize the
rational in him almost as much as in one’s own self.
Hence one’s duty to do good to men. This duty, to
be sure, commonly did not for the Stoics extend to
the point of very great practical self-sacrifice. But
at any rate they gave a new foundation for justice.
One works not only to conform one’s self to the
ideal, but also to realize the ideal here in this world
in others as well as in himself. The ideal Reason
can be realized in yonder man through my efforts,
much as, through my acts, it can be realized in me.
All men are in so far brothers, members of one
family, children of one Father, and so all alike objects
of moral effort for every one of their number.
II.
This thought was indeed a deep one, and if the
Stoics gave but an imperfect practical realization of
it to the world, they prepared thereby the way for
the reception of the higher thought of Jesus, when
that thought appeared. We may therefore more
readily suggest the skeptical criticism of the Stoical
thought by first looking at the well known completion
of the notion of God’s fatherhood in the
doctrine of Jesus.
Jesus founded his morality in his theology, yet he
did not make moral distinctions dependent on the
mere fact of divine reward or vengeance. An act
is for him wrong, not because outside the kingdom
of heaven there is weeping and gnashing of teeth;
rather should we say that because the act is opposed
to the very nature of the relation of sonship to God,
as Jesus conceives this relation, therefore the doers
of such acts cannot be in the kingdom of heaven, all
whose citizens are sons of the King. And outside
the kingdom there is darkness and weeping, simply
because outside is outside. Therefore, if Jesus gives
us a theological view of the nature of morality, he
does not make morality dependent on the bare
despotic will of God, but on a peculiar and necessary
relation between God and his creatures. So long
as God is what he is, and they remain his
creatures, so long must this relation continue. Jesus in
fact, as we know, gives us a higher and universal
form of the morality of the prophets. They had
said, Jahveh has saved his people, has chosen them from all the earth, has fed them with his bounty,
has treated them as his well-beloved vineyard, has
taken the nation as it were to wife. And so, if the
people offend against the law of righteousness that
is written in their hearts and known through the
words of prophecy, they are guilty not alone of
dangerous revolt against irresistible might, but also of
something far worse, namely, of the basest
ingratitude. Their sin is unheard of in all the earth. The
heathen forsake not their wretched gods, that are
yet no gods, and shall Israel turn against the will
of its living, almighty lover? The waste
vineyard, the unfaithful wife, these are the types of the
iniquity of the people. Their sin is a miserable
state of utter corruption. What the very beasts do,
to know the masters that feed them, Israel forgets,
whose master is not only the maker of all things,
but also the loving spouse of his chosen nation.
This sanction for morality, not the might so much
as the tender love of God, is by Jesus extended in
range and deepened in meaning. Every man stands
before God as beloved son. If he wanders, the
Father would fain seek him as the shepherd would
a lost sheep; would fain, like the prodigal’s father,
fall upon his neck and kiss him, if he will but
return; would fain feed and clothe him with the best;
would not forget him amid all his sins. And the
Father’s rain and sunshine are for just and
unjust. Deeper and tenderer is this thought than the
prophetic idea, because the relation is no political
one, but a close personal one. To be conscious of it
means, according to Jesus, to wish to live in accordance with it, so as to return to the Father love for
love. Hence, in knowing this relation, one has the
highest sanction for all good acts. The ultimate
motive that Jesus gives to men for doing right is
therefore the wish to be in harmony with God’s
love. So the Father in his holiness wills for each of
us, and so each son, conscious of the love of the
Father, also desires, as soon as he is aware of the
Father’s will. One cannot know of this infinite love
without wishing to be in union with it. Even
without knowing of the love, the very consciousness of
the wretchedness of the lonely, separate life of selfish
wickedness must lead one to want to forsake the
husks and find the Father, even if he should be but
the angry Father. Much more then if one has
found the Father, has found him caring for the
sparrows, and for the lilies, and for the least and the
worst of his children, must one, thus knowing the
Father, desire to submit to him. One is lost in the
ocean of divine love. Separate existence there is no
more. One is anxious to lose his life, to hate all
selfish joys, to sell all that one has, to be despised
and rejected of all the world, if so be that thereby
one can come into accord with the universal life of
God’s love, in which everything of lesser worth
disappears.
Duty to one’s neighbor is but a corollary to all
this. In the first place one’s neighbor is no longer
a mere fact of experience, a rival, a helper, an
enemy; but he is, instead of all this, a child of God.
Every other aspect of his life is lost in this one. As
child then he represents the Father. The highest messenger of God will say in God’s name at the last:
Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my
brethren, ye did it unto me. And so each, brother
is the ambassador of God. When Job had spoken
of his duty towards the lowly, he had given the
sanction for it in the thought: Did not one fashion us?
Jesus gives a higher sanction: Does not one Father
love you all? In the presence of the Father the
children are to lose their separateness. They are to
feel the oneness of their life. There is no longer
any rival or enemy, any master or slave, any debtor
or creditor here, for all are in infinite debt to the
Infinite One, and all in his sight brethren.
The Stoics had conceived of a common Father.
But they regarded him as an impersonal, all-pervading
Reason. The thought of Jesus gave to his idea
of the fatherhood of God a warmth and life unknown
to any previous thought. And in this warmth and
life he intended the idea of Duty to grow. The
highest principle of the doctrine is: Act as one
receiving and trying to return an Infinite Love. To
thy neighbor act as it befits one so beloved to act
towards his brother in love. And thus is Duty
explained.
For our present skeptical inquiries this doctrine of
Jesus in its original form is no longer enough. For
one thing, Jesus himself did not intend it as a
philosophy, but always expresses it as an insight. And in
our time this insight is clouded by many doubts that
cannot be lightly brushed away. This idea of God
as a Father, — it is exactly the idea that our
philosophy finds most difficulty, nowadays, in establishing. For many in all the future history of our race this
idea will be harder to establish than will be the
moral doctrine that was deduced by Jesus from it.
For many who with steadfast faith accept the
doctrine of God’s fatherhood, their ultimate reason will
rather be that, first accepting the morality of Jesus,
they find it most natural to accept therewith what
they understand to be his theology. His moral
doctrine will be to them the insight, the theology will
be taken on trust. Many others will accept indeed
the morality, but be unable to accept the theology.
In ethical faith they will be Christians, in theology
Agnostics. And therefore, to the philosophic
student, who must prove all things, and hold fast only
what he finds sure, it is impossible to take the
theology of Jesus on simple faith, and not profitable to
postpone the discussion of the moral problems until
he first shall have established a theology. Morality
is for us the starting-point of our inquiry. Theology
comes later, if at all. And, as we shall presently
see, the theology, if accepted, would not satisfy all
the questions of the ethical inquirer.
Yet if the doctrine of Jesus does not belong
among the purely idealistic theories of duty, since it
gives duty the fact of God’s fatherhood as its
foundation, it has one aspect that would make the
recapitulation of it necessary even in the course of a study
of purely ideal ethics. For, while this doctrine
founds duty ultimately on the consciousness that
God is a Father, and so on a belief in a physical or
metaphysical truth, still the immediate ground of
the idea of duty to one’s neighbor is the consciousness in each man that his neighbor is his brother.
In the teachings of Jesus this latter insight follows
from the sense of common sonship that Jesus wants
to give to men. But, apart from the theology, the
belief in the brotherhood of men, in case it can be made
clear and definite, may have just the relation to the
idea of duty that Jesus, in his theological ethics,
wished the idea of the common sonship to have.
But it is our present purpose to see how doubt
follows the track of the moral idealists. And to
carry out even here this purpose, it is very important
to note that however much the morality of Jesus
seems to rest upon his theology, and did, for him, rest
upon that theology, for us that basis would be of
itself insufficient, even if we could unhesitatingly
accept the theology. For the skeptical question might
arise in the inquiries of the philosopher, to whom all
questions are allowed. Why is it evident that one
ought to return the Father’s love? Granting the
fact of this love, how does it establish the ideal?
And this question, easy as seems the answer of it
to a believer, is just the question that the “almost
persuaded” of all times have been disposed to ask.
Any particular individual may believe in the
theology of Jesus, and yet fail to feel the force of the
moral doctrine. Why does this love constrain me?
he may say. In fact the church has always found
it necessary to construct for itself a process, or even
a series of processes, through which the unbeliever
must go, in order to reach the point of development
where he could begin to feel the constraining force
of the divine love. It has been recognized as a fact that the unregenerate could believe and even tremble
and yet remain unregenerate. The saving faith
was seen to be not identical with the mere belief in
God as Father. For the saving faith, divine grace
was necessary, adding to the unregenerate recognition
of the bare truth the devotion of the loving
child of God. And therefore the church has never
been content with the doctrine of Jesus in its
undeveloped simplicity.
But if all this is so, then for us the morality of
Jesus, considered as morality, is founded, not on the
theological theory alone, but also on a peculiar insight
that each man is to have into the duty of returning
the divine love. That the divine love is real, gives a
basis for all duty in case and only in case one first
sees that it is one’s duty to return the divine love.
And wherein is this insight as such any clearer than
the direct insight into the duty of loving one’s
neighbor? If a man loves not his brother whom he has
seen, how shall he love God whom he has not seen?
Is not the duty of gratitude first evident, if at all, in
man’s relations to his fellows? Is not love given first
as a duty to one’s companions, and only secondarily
as a duty to God, and then only in case one believes
in God? In other words, are we not here, as in the
discussion with the realist at the outset, led to the
view that not a physical doctrine, nor yet even the
sublimest metaphysical doctrine, as such, but only an
ethical doctrine, can be at the base of a system of
ethics? The doctrine that God loves us is a
foundation for duty only by virtue of the recognition of
one yet more fundamental moral principle, the doctrine that unearned love ought to be gratefully
returned. And for this principle theology as such
gives no foundation. But on the other hand, upon
what should the ideal principle itself be founded?
Why is unearned love to be gratefully returned? Is
this principle founded once more on some doctrine
of the constitution of human nature? The same
objection would again appear. A physical fact is no
ideal. So, then, this insight is just an insight, the
acceptance of an ideal wholly for its own sake? But
then returns the old objection. What is such an
unfounded ideal but the individual caprice of
somebody? Let the faithful be never so devoted; still
there are the unregenerate, who are somehow to be
convinced of a truth that they do not recognize. And
how are they convinced, if at all? Not by showing
them the facts, which they have already known
without conviction; but by arousing in them a new
feeling, namely, gratitude. Thus the Christian ideal
seems to have for its sole theoretical foundation the
physical fact that man often feels gratitude. It is true
that no one can accuse Jesus of expressly giving this
or any other theoretical foundation to his doctrine.
He was necessarily wholly free from the theoretical
aim in his dealings with the people. But for us now
the point is the theoretical point. If the foundation
of Christian ethics as popularly understood be not
the physical fact of the Father’s love, then is it not
just the physical fact of the frequent existence of
gratitude? And is either of these a satisfactory
foundation for an ethical theory as such? Nay, if
Christian ethics be the highest from the practical point of view, still must we not dig much deeper to find the
theoretical foundation on which this glorious
structure rests?
III.
We have been seeking to illustrate our
fundamental difficulty in ethics, — one that is too
frequently concealed by rhetorical devices. The
uncertainty here illustrated results from the difficulty
of giving any reason for the choice of a moral ideal.
Single acts are judged by the ideal; but who shall
judge the judge himself? Some one, as Plato, or
some Stoic, or Jesus, gives us a moral ideal. If we
are of his followers, the personal influence of the
Master is enough. Then we say: “I take this to be
my guide,” and our moral doctrine is founded. But
if we are not of the faithful, then we ask for proof.
The doctrine says: “Behold the perfect Life, or the
eternal Ideas, or the course of Nature, or the will of
God, or the love of the Father. To look on those
realities is to understand our ideal. If you remember
those truths, you will hesitate not to do as we
say.” But still the doubter may be unwilling to
submit. He may say to Plato: “The tyrant is easy
to find who will laugh at you when you talk of the
peace of philosophic contemplation, who will insist
that his life of conflict and of danger is fuller and
sweeter in its lurid contrasts and in its ecstasies of
sensuous bliss, than are all your pale, stupid joys of
blank contemplation. And if the tyrant says so,
who shall decide against him? Has not many a
man turned with eagerness from the dull life of the thinker, once for a while endured, to the richer joys
and sorrows of the man of the world? Have not
such men actually held the pleasures of life, however
dearly bought, to be better than the superhuman
calm of your philosophic ideal?” Even so to the
Stoic, the objector may say: “Granted that your
eternal Reason does pervade all things and is our
common Father, why should that cause me, who am
one of his creatures, to do otherwise than I like?
Who can escape from his presence? Even if I live
irrationally, am I not still part of the Universal
Reason? The bare fact that there is an Eternal
Wisdom does not make clear to me that I must
needs be very wise. My destiny may be the destiny
of a being made solely to enjoy himself.” And, to
the Christian doctrine, the skeptic may oppose the
objection that if the truth does not at once
spiritually convert all who know it, the proof is still lacking
that the Christian Ideal actually appeals to all
possible natures. “If I feel not the love of God,” the
objector will say, “how prove to me that I ought to
feel it?” Or, as human nature so often questions:
“Why must I be loving and unselfish?”
Now, the simple, practical way of dealing with all
such objectors is to anathematize them at once. Of
course, from the point of view of any assumed ideal,
the anathema may be well founded. “If you do not
as I command,” so says any moral ideal, “I
condemn you as an evil-doer.” “He that believeth not
shall be damned.” But anathemas are not
arguments. To resort to them is to give up theoretic
ethics. We who are considering, not whom we shall practically condemn, but what we can say in favor
of any moral theory, must be unwilling to be put off
with mere oratorical persuasion, or to mistake
practical adhesion for theoretical conviction. We want
a code that shall seem not only admirable, but, if so
it may be, demonstrable.
Such objections, then, blocking the path of our
idealist, what is he to do with them? Is there any
direction in which he can successfully seek a
foundation for his ideals?
We have, indeed, much seeking yet to do ere we
can find the right direction. For, in the next place,
we shall have to show how just such objections as
we have applied to other ethical doctrines will apply
to all those doctrines that put the basis of morals in
the often-used mass of instincts called Conscience.
Conscience undoubtedly expresses the results of
civilized ancestry and training. It no doubt must
always prove an indispensable aid in making practical
moral decisions; but if it be used to give a
theoretical basis to ethics, one can say of it what has
been already said of other realities. Its universal
and uniform presence among men can be doubted,
and its value where it is present can be called in
question whenever it is employed to give a basis for
ethics; since as a mere physical fact of the constitution
of human nature, conscience is not yet an ideal,
nor an obvious foundation for an ideal. Both of
these objections have been frequently urged. Let
us venture to repeat the old story.
IV.
Instincts in general are useful, not because they
are infallible, much less because they are rational
(for they are neither), but because they work quickly
and are less capricious than are our less habitual
impulses, and so, in common life, are our substitutes
for reason. But, in theory, no act is good merely
because the instinct called conscience approves of
it; nor does conscience in any man always
instinctively approve of good acts. Therefore conscience
is, for the purpose of founding an ethical theory, as
useless as if it were a mere fiction. It gives no
foundation for moral distinctions.
To be sure, we must be understood as referring
here not to the moral consciousness of man in its
highest rational manifestations; for that there is a
rational and well-founded moral consciousness we
ourselves desire to show. The conscience that we
criticise is conscience as an instinct. When people
say that so and so is the right because the immediate
declaration of conscience shows it to be the right,
they generally mean that so and so is right because
it feels right. And when moralists found their
ethical doctrine on conscience, they are in great danger
of making their whole appeal to mere feeling. But
such mere feeling can only give us problems; it
cannot solve problems. To illustrate by a notable case:
When Butler, in analyzing the data of conscience,
in his “Dissertation of the Nature of Virtue,” comes
upon the fact that benevolence, or the effort to
increase the general happiness, is, for our common popular conscience, only a part of virtue, not in any sort
the whole of it, he really discovers nothing positive
about the nature of virtue, but only gives us a very
interesting problem about the nature of virtue. If
benevolence were the sole basis of virtue, then, says
Butler, for our conscience treachery and violence
would be “no otherwise vicious than as foreseen
likely to produce an overbalance of misery to society.”
Therefore, he continues, “if in any case a man could
procure to himself as great advantage by an act of
injustice as the whole foreseen inconvenience likely to
be brought upon others by it would amount to, such
a piece of injustice would not be faulty or vicious at
all.” Even so, it would not be wrong, he points
out, to take A’s property away and give it to B, if
B’s happiness in getting it overbalanced A’s
inconvenience and vexation in losing it. But since
conscience disapproves of such actions, therefore,
continues Butler, “the fact appears to be that we are
constituted so as to condemn falsehood, unprovoked
violence, injustice, and to approve of benevolence to
some preferably to others, abstracted from all
consideration, which conduct is likely to produce an
overbalance of happiness or misery.” Were God’s
“moral character merely that of benevolence, yet
ours is not so.” All this now shows how full of
problems our uncriticised conscience is. It is the
starting-point, not the guide, of moral controversies.
Conscience approves benevolence, and it also
approves the repression of benevolence in cases where
justice, distributive or retributive, seems to the
popular mind to be opposed to benevolence. And when some moralist tries to reduce justice in all its forms
to benevolence, the natural conscience is dissatisfied.
Retribution it approves, not because retribution may
ultimately increase happiness, but because
retribution seems good to it. And if the natural conscience
is again appealed to, and is at last brought to admit
that benevolence is, after all, really the highest end,
and punishment only a means, then this appeal is
simply a setting of conscience against itself. The
popular conscience is, as an instinct, once for all
confused and uncertain about the true relations of
justice and benevolence. It is useless to ask this
instinct to do what the natural conditions that made
it never prepared it to do, namely, to make a system
of morals. A thinker like Butler, with his
seriousness and depth of insight, defends the claims of
conscience only by analyses which bring home to us
that our conscience is a mystery, and that its
assertions about all the deepest ethical questions become
uncertain or confused as soon as we cross-question it.
An instinct is, in short, like any other habit. You
run fast down a familiar flight of stairs so long as
you do not think what your feet are doing. Reflect
upon your running, and ten chances to one you shall
stumble. Even so conscience is a perfectly confident
guide as long as you ask it no philosophical questions.
The objections here in question have been so
frequently urged that it is hardly worth while for
those who can feel their force to dwell on them very
long. It is enough for the present purpose to add
what all the moral skeptics from the time of the
Sophists have insisted upon, namely, that the consciences of various men, nations and races, are
conflicting in their judgments of acts. This objection,
worthless when urged against a well-founded theory
of the moral consciousness, is fatal to any theory that
makes morality dependent upon a particular
emotional or intellectual “constitution” of human nature,
that declares morality to be known by men through
one faculty or “sense” of a peculiar character. If
there are many consciences, each claiming rank as
the true conscience, and all conflicting, then the
choice among these can only be made on the ground
of something else than a conscience.
The caprices of moral instinct are not exhausted
when one has enumerated, as nowadays men often
do, as many practices as one can find approved
or demanded by the consciences of filthy savages.
Among civilized men, yes, in our own hearts, each
of us can find numberless conflicting and capricious
estimates of actions, and it has only a psychological
interest to study them in detail, or to try to reduce
them to any semblance of principle. Such
conscience as we have about common matters is too
easily quieted; and, as a mere feeling, the conscience
that can be called moral is not readily distinguishable
in this, or in any other respect, from a mere
sense of propriety, from a reverence for custom, or
from the fear of committing an offense against
etiquette. That certain blunders hurt us more than
our lesser crimes, and that our remorse for them is
like our remorse for venial immorality, only more
intense, is nowadays a matter of frequent remark.
You ride using another man’s season-ticket, or you tell a white lie, or speak an unkind word, and
conscience, if a little used to such things, never winces.
But you bow to the wrong man in the street, or you
mispronounce a word, or you tip over a glass of
water, and then you agonize about your shortcoming
all day long, yes, from time to time for weeks.
Such an impartial and independent judge is the
feeling of what you ought to have done. Shall
ethics be founded on feeling, which to-day is and
tomorrow is cast into the oven?
The traditional answer of the advocates of
conscience, when these facts are urged against them, is
well known. They say, various less dignified mental
tendencies may at times be mistaken for conscience;
but the moral sense is real and trustworthy
notwithstanding all these mistakes. Shame, or love of
praise, or sense of propriety may pass themselves off
as conscience; but the genuine conscience, when
you find it, is infallible. But we may still rejoin
that, if the difficulty is of this nature, the consequence
must be very much the same as what we are
insisting upon. For if the question can arise whether a
given impulse in me, which I take to be conscience,
really is the voice of the infallible conscience or not,
then this question cannot be decided by appeal to
conscience itself; since the very problem then is:
“Of two impulses, both pretending to represent
conscience, which is the genuine conscience?” And
questions of this sort must be appealed to some
higher tribunal than the conflicting impulses
themselves. It will not be enough to apply even
Antigone’s sublime test to the warring impulses, and to say: This impulse is not of to-day nor of yesterday,
and no man can tell whence it came, therefore it is
the voice of infallible conscience. For, fine as that
saying is, when applied to a genuine eternal truth,
the test is not a sufficient one for us in our weakness
to apply to the impulses that we find in our poor
selves. For we soon forget whence came our prejudices
and even our bad habits, and we can fancy that
to be of immemorial antiquity which has begun to
be in our own parish, and within the memory of the
old men. A child born in one of our far western
settlements grows up amid a community that is a
few years older than himself, and not as old as his
eldest brother. Yet he shall look upon all these
rickety, wooden houses, and half-graded streets, full
of rubbish, as the outcome of an immense past; he
shall hear of the settlement of the town as he hears
of ancient history, and he shall reverence the oldest
deserted, weather-beaten, rotting log-cabin of the
place, with its mud chimney crumbling to dust, quite
as much as a modern Athenian child may reverence
the ruins of the Parthenon. A time when all these
things were not, shall be beyond his conception.
Even so, if moral truth be eternal, we yet dare not
undertake to judge what it is by merely examining
ourselves to see what customs or tastes or moral
judgments feel to our present selves as if they must
have been eternal. Such absolute validity one might
possibly feel as belonging to his mother’s way of
making plum-pudding. Snow, to use a comparison of
Aristotle’s, is as white after one day as if it had
been lying untouched and unmelted for a thousand years. And high judicial authority lately expressed
the opinion, a propos of a change in standard time,
that usage may alter itself in a day as well as in a
century, and be as authoritative in one case as in the
other. Nothing feels older than a well-established
custom, however recent it may be.
Conscience then cannot be recognized as infallible
merely through the test of antiquity as judged by
our feeling. Conscience furthermore, or emotions
that pretend to the authority of conscience, may be
found counseling or approving contradictory ways
of action. Therefore conscience is no sufficient
moral guide.
But even if all this were waived, if conscience
were in actual agreement among all men, and if
there were no difficulty in distinguishing the voice
of conscience from the voice of passion, or from
other prejudices or sentiments, it would remain true
that no ultimate theory of the difference between
right and wrong could be founded on the assertions
of any instinct. Why an individual should obey his
conscience unless he wishes to do so, cannot be made
clear by conscience itself alone. Nor can the
necessity and real truth of a distinction be made clear by
the assertions of a faculty that, however dignified it
may be, appears in the individual as a personal
emotion, a prejudice or choice, determined by an
impulse in him. Even if other people actually have
this same impulse, that does not make their common
prejudice necessary or rational. Conscience, if
universal, would still be only a physical fact. If there
are actually no differences among various consciences, it is still impossible to see why there might not be.
And the possibility is as fatal to the authority of bare
conscience as the reality would be. In conscience
alone, without some higher rational test, there is no
ground evident wherefore its decisions might not
have been other than they are. But what the
moralist wants is such a distinction between right and
wrong as does not depend upon any mere accident of
reality, even upon the accidental existence of a moral
sense. He wants to find the eternal ethical truth.
We insist then that one of the first questions of the
moralist must be, why conscience in any given case
is right. Or, to put the case otherwise, ethical
doctrine must tell us why, if the devil’s conscience
approves of the devil’s acts, as it well may do, the
devil’s conscience is nevertheless in the wrong.
The discussion has, we imagine, after all, a
practical importance in a way not always sufficiently
remembered. In the name of conscience many crimes
have been done. In the name of conscience men
condemn whatever tends towards true moral
progress, so long as this new element is opposed to
popular prejudice. In the name of conscience they kill
the prophets, and stone every one that is sent unto
them. In the name of conscience wars are waged,
whole tribes are destroyed, whole peoples are
oppressed. If conscience is the great practical guide
in common life, conscience is also, in many great
crises, the enemy of the new light. It is the
sensitive and penetrating eye of the heart, but it is often
blind before the coming day, even because it has
been so useful to us in finding our way in the night. It ought to be a commonplace of morals that there
are certain times when the moral reason must cast
aside the moral instinct, when the lover of the right
must silence the voice of conscience. The more
dangerous such moments are, the more dreadful the
mistakes that people at such times are apt to make, the
more necessary it is that the moralist should
discover some criterion whereby to decide when instinct
fails. And this criterion cannot be conscience
itself. We must seek yet deeper.
V.
Our criticism of conscience is only another
example of the method before applied to the criticism of
the moral ideals. You make a distinction between
right and wrong, you give to this distinction the
dignity of a principle, you deduce special moral
judgments therefrom. But then some one asks you for
any foundation for the principle, beyond your own
caprice. You thereupon seek to produce an ultimate
reason for your faith. And your ultimate reason
— what is it but some fact external to your choice
and to your ideal judgments? But such dead
external facts were just what you wanted to avoid. You
had said that an ideal must have only an ideal
foundation. And now you say that the ideally right
thing depends on God’s nature, on the existence of
the universal Reason, or on the assertions of
Conscience. Say thus what you will, have you done
what you intended? Have you made evident the
necessity of your ideal? If, per impossibile, you suppose your present physical beliefs falsified, if the
All-Father changed his mind, and came to hate his
children, or if, per impossibile, the Devil triumphed,
or the eternal Ideas melted away like snow, or the
universal Reason became insane, or the Consciences
of all men grew corrupt, would that alter the ideal
for you? If the moral ideal assumes its desired
position as judge of all things, then what matters
it to the ideal if evil is triumphant in the world?
“Fiend, I defy thee with a calm, fixed mind,” the
idealist will say, after the manner of Shelley’s
Prometheus, and that however much the real world
may threaten him. Therefore how can the Is
predetermine the Ought to be? But if the Ought to be
be independent of the Is, how does discussion
about the power of God, or his goodness, about the
universality of conscience, or its inner strength as a
feeling, affect our judgment of the ideal distinction
between right and wrong?
Thus we are thrown back and forth between the
conflicting demands of criticism. “Give us a moral
system that is no caprice of thine,” say the critics
of one sort. That seems reasonable. Therefore we
affirm, “This system of ours is founded on a rock of
eternal truth,” namely, on God’s will, or on the
intuition of universal conscience, or on some like fact of
the world. But thereupon other critics say to us:
“Wherein do you differ from those who say that
might is right, or that success determines the right,
or that whatever exists ought to exist? For after
all you say, something that is, ought to be, merely
because it is.” And always still other critics are present, to doubt whether we are right about God
or conscience as physical facts. Such critics very
plausibly say, “Why found moral truth, which ought
to be so secure and clear, on physical or metaphysical
doctrines that are so often doubted and so hard
to establish?”
Such is the general difficulty illustrated in the
warfare of the moral ideals. They want some
highest judge to decide among them. If they seek this
judge in the real world, they seem to endanger their
idealism. If they seek their judge among themselves,
the warfare begins afresh. For what one of
them can be the sole judge, when they are all judges
one of another?
Notes
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