CHAPTER IV.
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM IN CERTAIN RECENT DISCUSSIONS.
But if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
Not even yet have we exhausted the perplexities
involved in this fundamental difficulty of moral
theory. Some one may say: “Let the ideals in
general take care of themselves. We are concerned
in this world with individual and concrete duties.
These at least are plain.” But these also involve
questions concerning the ideal. Let us see then how
the same difficulty that has beset the more general
moral doctrines, returns to plague us in case of the
theoretical treatment of one of these plain duties.
Our discussion will here gain in definiteness what it
loses in generality. Let us choose a concrete moral
question, namely, the problem of the true ground of
the moral distinctions and other moral relations
between what people nowadays like to call altruism
and what they like to call egoism.
Upon what, then, if upon anything, is founded the
moral precept: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself?
Or is there any foundation for it at all? To
be quite familiar in discussing this problem, let us
take it as it appears in recent discussion. The answers of some recent moralists will illustrate for
us afresh the great problem of ethics. We shall find
two classes of efforts made to solve the difficulty. On
the one hand moralists appear whose tendency is
mainly, although not always quite wholly realistic.
They say that, assuming the selfish aim as from the
beginning self-evident, the unselfish aim soon appears
as a necessary concomitant and assistant of the
selfish aim. Such writers, from Hobbes to the present
day, have insisted upon unselfishness as a more or
less refined selfishness, the product of enlightenment.
To this view one opposes very naturally the
objection that real unselfishness is thus in fact rendered
impossible. The moral ideal resulting is therefore,
whether right or wrong in itself, at all events at war
with other well-known ideals. And hence the
explanation satisfies nobody. One still lacks a judge to
end the warfare.
On the other hand, however, more idealistic
moralists have tried to make unselfishness dependent on
some impulse, such as pity or sympathy, whose
dictates shall be perfectly definite and self-evident, and
yet not, like the supposed dictates of conscience,
either abstract or mysterious. But to such a
foundation one opposes very naturally again the
objection that all such judgments of feeling are
capricious, that pity and sympathy are confused and
deceitful feelings, wholly unfit to give moral insight,
and that no ideal can be founded on the shifting sand
of such realities.
The results of such criticisms will once more be
skeptical, but the skepticism on which we are here insisting is so necessary a foundation for ethics, that
we make no apology for dwelling upon it yet farther,
devoting to the special problems suggested by these
recent discussions of selfishness and unselfishness a
separate chapter.
I.
In a collection of Servian popular tales may be
found one that runs somewhat as follows: Once there
lived two brothers, of whom the elder was very
incautious and wasteful, but always lucky, so that in
spite of himself he grew constantly richer, while the
younger, although very industrious and careful, was
invariably unfortunate, so that at last he lost
everything, and had to wander out into the wide world to
beg. The poor wretch, after much suffering, resolved
to go to no less a person than Fate himself, and to
inquire wherefore he had been thus tormented. Long
and dreadful wildernesses were passed, and finally
the wanderer reached the gloomy house. Now
visitors at Fate’s dwelling dare not begin to speak when
they come, but must wait until Fate shall address
them, and meanwhile must humbly do after Fate
whatever he does. So the wanderer had to live in
the house for several days, silent, and busily
imitating Fate’s behavior. He found that Fate lives not
always in the same way, but on some days enjoys
a golden bed, with a rich banquet and untold heaps
of treasure scattered about; on some days again is
surrounded with silver, and eats dainty but
somewhat plainer food; on some days has brazen and
copper wealth only, with coarse food; and on some days, penniless and ragged, sleeps on the floor, digs the ground, and gnaws a crust. Each night he is asked by a supernatural voice: "How shall those live who have this day been born?" Fate always replies: "As I have fared this day, so may they fare."
Thus our beggar found the secret of his own misfortunes; for he had been born on a day of poverty. But when at last Fate broke the silence, the visitor begged him to tell whether there could be any way whereby he might escape from the consequences of his unlucky birth. "I will tell thee," said Fate. "Get thee home again, and ask thy brother to let thee adopt his little daughter. For she was born on one of the golden days. Adopting her, thou shalt thenceforth call whatever thou receivest her own. But never call anything thine. And so shalt thou be rich." The beggar joyfully left Fate's dreary house, with its sad round of days, and went back to the world of labor and hope. There, by following the advice that he had received, he became in fact very wealthy; since all that he undertook prospered. But the wealth was his adopted daughter's. For always he called his gains hers. One day he grew however very weary of this, and said to himself: "These fields and flocks and houses and treasures are not really hers. In truth I have earned them. They are mine." No sooner had he spoken the fatal words than lightning fell from heaven and began to burn his grain-fields, and the floods rose to drown his flocks. So that terror-stricken the wretch fell on his face and cried: "Nay, nay, O Fate, I spoke no truth; they are not mine, but hers, hers alone.” And thereupon
flame and flood vanished, and the man dwelt
thenceforth in peace and plenty.
II.
The really deep thought that imperfectly expresses
itself in this little Servian tale may suggest many
sorts of reflections. Just now we shall busy
ourselves with only one of the questions that are brought
to mind by the story. Many who nowadays have
much to say about what they call altruism, actually
explain all altruism as a kind of selfish evasion of
the consequences of cruder selfishness, so that at
bottom they really counsel men much as Fate
counseled the wanderer. They say in effect: “To make
thyself happy, do certain things called duties to thy
neighbor. That we call altruism. Thou shalt have
thy reward. For what is more useful to a man than
a man? If therefore thou dost well to him, thou
shalt make him in many ways of great service to
thee. And so, to get happiness for thyself, see that
thou be not openly merely a seeker of thy
happiness; but call that which thou seekest his happiness.
Calling it his will help to make it thine. Be selfish
by casting aside grosser selfishness. Live for the
others as the means of living for thyself. In
coöperation is safety. Act therefore as a good
member of the community, and thou shalt prosper. But
such action requires altruism. As the man gave his
wealth to his adopted daughter, so that he might
own it himself and outwit his destiny, so must thou make thy interests into the interests of society, and
by so doing be true to thyself.” But now such
altruism, as one at once sees, has no right to parade
itself as genuine altruism at all, and if it be the end
of conduct, there is no moral conduct distinct from
cleverness. But if this be true, it is at least
incumbent upon the moralist to explain why the popular
ideal of unselfishness is thus so very far wrong.
More or less disguised, the doctrine here generally
stated appears in modern discussion since Hobbes.
Let us follow it into some of its hiding-places, and
to that end let us distinguish selfishness and
unselfishness as ideals or ends of conduct, from selfishness
and unselfishness as means, accidentally useful to
get an end.
III.
Altruism is the name of a tendency. Of what
tendency? Is it the result or the intent that makes
a deed altruistic? Was our hero an altruist when
he gave to his adopted daughter the name and the
enjoyment of a possessor of wealth? Or would he
have needed in addition to all this a particular
disposition of mind ere he could be called an altruist?
We need not dispute about mere names as such.
Let everybody apply the name Altruism as he will;
but possibly we shall do well to recall to the reader’s
mind what ought nowadays to be the merest
commonplace of ethics, namely, that we cannot regard
any quality as moral or the reverse, in so far as the
expression of it is an external accident, with which
the man himself and his deliberate aim have nothing to do. Ethical judgments deal with purposes. On
any theory of right and wrong the man himself, not
the accident of fortune, determines the moral
character of his act; and this view must be held equally
whether one believes the man’s will to be free or to
be bound. Hence the unforeseen or unintended
outcome, or any other accidental accompaniment of my
act, does not make me egoistic or altruistic in case
egoism and altruism are to be qualities that have
any moral character at all. If my property is accidentally
destroyed by fire, and if the loss causes great
damage to my creditors or to people dependent on
me, the loss makes me no less or more an altruist,
although I can no longer do good as before. If my
purely selfish plan chances to do others good, I am
no less an egoist, although I have made my fellows
happy. In short, he who means anything, and does
what he can to realize his intention, must be judged
according to his intent. Circumstances control the
outcome, and they make of the chance discoverer of
the first bit of gold in a California mill-race a
greater altruist, to judge solely by consequences,
than a hero would be who sacrificed himself in a good
cause, and lost the battle. But no moral system
could make genuine saintliness out of the deed of
the man who by chance has found what the world
needed. And to take one more example, the power
die stets das Böse will, und stets das Gute schafft,
is not altruistic in the moral sense, however vast its
creations may become.
All this we maintain, because, if you are morally
criticising a disposition, you must study what it is, not what are its accidental surroundings. Moral
distinctions must apply to aims as such. Unless
you are judging men exactly as you judge the north
wind or the value of rain, not as consciously good or
bad, but as mere forces that happen to produce such
and such results under such and such conditions,
you must study, not first the accidental
circumstances, but the men. And in fact all moralists,
however much they may condemn the weighing of
mere motives, however much they desire to take just
the consequences into account, as Bentham did, are
nevertheless forced to separate in their moral
judgments accidental from expected consequences. We
maintain that this abstraction of a disposition from
its accidental expressions must be rigidly carried
out in order to get a moral doctrine of any
significance. Let others study natural forces. We
here are studying men, and are considering what
ideal of a man we can form. Whatever the
accidents of the outer world give him in the way of
means, we want to know his real intent, and to judge
that. But if the intent of the man does alone make
him altruistic or the reverse, then what, for example,
is the position, in ethical controversy, of any system
that declares altruism to be morally good because the
individual needs the social order to assist him, and
must therefore in all prudence try to further the
social ends as a means to the furthering of his own?
Does such a system say anything whatever about
altruism as such? Does it not make enlightened
egoism the one rule of life? And if this is what is
meant, why not say so plainly? If the intent of the act makes it altruistic or the reverse, then a man who helps his friend, or his neighbor, or society, and who is honest, and kind, and public-spirited solely because he wants to get protection and help in return, is no altruist, but is as egoistic as a Judas or as a Thomassen. He is only clearer-headed than they were. On the other hand, if by any possibility any one makes the good of others his sole end, and with this as end takes care of his own health, or develops his mental powers, or amasses wealth, but all merely for the sake of being able to benefit others, then is such a man not egoistic, even while working for himself, but altruistic throughout. For such a man by hypothesis aims, not at his own personal good, but solely at the good of others.
All this is consequent upon the general doctrine that the distinction between altruism and egoism, as moral qualities, must depend on no external accident, but on the personal deed of the man himself. For, to make special mention of what many forget, the means that you take to get any end are for you merely physical accidents. If things were otherwise, you would with the same intent do other things to get what you seek. Not what you have to do in getting your ends, but what you actually aimed at, is morally significant. Hence the altruism of consequences as such is morally insignificant, and the altruism of intent is alone morally significant. But yet this obvious and seemingly very commonplace distinction is, by the views that we are combating, wholly lost sight of in its further application to human life. We may hear in modern controversy, for instance, of a “conflict between altruism and
egoism,” such as the one that Mr. Spencer discusses
in his “Data of Ethics,” and we may draw near to
learn how the conflict goes. We shall possibly find
the question put thus: If a man in trying to be
altruistic were so far to forget himself as to injure
his health, or to become so weak as to have no
healthy children; if he were to be careless of his
property, to let his mind go untrained, or to narrow
his own life too much, why then his own objects
would be defeated, he would be unable to help anybody,
he might do harm, and he could be no genuine
altruist. Therefore altruism must not oppose
egoism too much, else altruism will defeat itself. On
the other hand, we hear, if egoism is extravagant, it
will in its turn fail to get its own great end,
self-satisfaction. For it is useful to one to have his
fellow-members in the social organism well-contented,
efficient, and moral. One must try to make them so,
that he himself may enjoy the fruits of their
happiness. He pays more taxes, and also higher prices
for what he buys, if the community as a whole is
not contented and happy, as well as healthy and
moral. Enlightened selfishness therefore means for
him public spirit. His neighbor’s diseases are apt
to infect his own family; hence, if enlightened, he
will do what he conveniently can to keep his
neighbor well. His neighbor’s peace of mind tends to
make his own mind peaceful, hence he will help his
neighbor out of trouble. Otherwise he would have
to live in anxiety, loneliness, weakness, and danger.
His life would be hard, and probably his death would be early. So egoism must not be too extravagant.
Altruism is “equally imperative.” Thus, perhaps,
we should hear the so-called “conflict” discussed.
If such views were urged, what should we say about
them? We should have to say that they touch in
no wise at all the true moral distinction and warfare
between selfishness and altruism. They show only
that, whatever the opposition in aim, the two
principles have after all, in this world of limitation, to
use very much the same means. Surely it is no
new thing to learn that in warfare both parties have
to burn the same quality of gunpowder, and that
even the cats when they fight all have to scratch
with claws that are very much alike. Do such
remarks explain or tend to diminish or to end the
conflicts in question?
How insignificant is this way of studying the
conflict of egoism and altruism, we shall see if we take
yet other illustrations. In the sense of the
foregoing comparison of egoism and altruism, even a
pirate, in his treatment of merchant vessels, would
have to be moderately altruistic; namely, he had
better not try to do harm to a merchant vessel that
is too well armed for his force to overcome it. On
the contrary, his egoism will in this case counsel him
unselfishly to let it prosper in its own way. Nay,
he may even try to speed it on its course, if it
appears disposed to change roles and to attack him.
He may say that in just this case he thinks that this
merchantman ought to have peace, and to be
preserved from injury. The other alternative would
just here increase his own bill for repairs, or might make his own existence less happy, or might even
bring him to the gallows. The happiness of the
crew of the merchantman is therefore just now an
object of concern for him, as perhaps furthering his
own. So he may be willing to compromise the
difficulty, even if it should cost him a large sum to
persuade the belligerent captain of the armed
merchantman to let him alone. Thus he might even add
quite a fortune to what the merchantman’s captain
and crew already have of good things, and this
would surely be very marked altruism. Thus
egoism and altruism may oppose each other, and thus,
by careful calculation, their opposing claims may be
balanced! Or yet again, suppose that a robber
meets me in the highway, and egoistically demands
my purse. If now I should manage to disarm him,
to present a pistol to his head, and to ask him to
accompany me to the nearest town, evidently the
claims of altruism would for that man have a considerably
stronger emphasis than they had the moment
before. He would now be willing not merely to
live and let live in peace for the present; he would
not merely be delighted to recognize my rights of
property and to leave me free to enjoy them; but he
would undoubtedly be glad to increase my happiness
by giving me anything of value that he might have
about him, or any information of value to me that I
might desire, if by such means he could get me to
let him go free. A great altruist would my robber
now be, however great his egoism just before.
Now do such discussions of the claims of egoism
and altruism mean anything for the moralist? But if somebody tells us of the altruism that leads a man
to advocate good drainage lest he himself may have
a fever, of the altruism that pays one’s debts to the
sole end that one may get further credit, of the
sublime unselfishness that makes a man civil even to
his rivals, because civility in these days is a social
requirement, — what have all these wondrous virtues
to do in constituting the moral value of altruism as
a disposition, more than have the virtues just
illustrated? We have two dispositions in us: one
ordering us to respect our neighbor as such, to labor in
his behalf because he exists and needs help; the
other demanding that we regard him as a mere
instrument for our personal pleasure. Only the
dispositions as such concern the moralist. Surely in
fundamental ethics we are discussing what we ought
to aim at, not how we can get our aims, so long at
least as we confine ourselves to the general
principles. Applied morality may have much to say of
means. But of principles, this balancing of means
can tell us nothing. The means are the physical
accidents, nothing more. What we want to know is
whether egoism as an aim is morally the worthiest
aim, or whether altruism is a morally better aim.
And we ask not yet how, if one’s aim is egoistic, he
can most successfully be selfish, but only whether
one’s aim ought to be selfish, and in how far. To tell
us that if we are sensible and selfish we shall avoid
having too much trouble with our fellows, is not to tell
us that our aims ought to be altruistic, but only that
sensible selfish men are not fools. To tell us that
if we are wise and altruistic we shall avoid wasting our own powers profitlessly, and shall try to preserve
our own health, and to cultivate our own wits in
useful ways, all this is to tell us that unselfish wise men
are not fanatics. It may be useful to say this, but
it is not useful to the discussion of fundamental
moral doctrines. We want to know, for the first,
not how successfully to be altruistic, or selfish, but
why the effort to be altruistic or to be selfish is
morally right or wrong.
IV.
If now such comparisons of the claims of
altruism and egoism throw no light on the fundamental
moral questions, what shall we say of the chance that
the “conflict” may be explained or diminished by
any proof that the evolution of our race will tend in
time to diminish, or even to extinguish, the opposition?
If some one shows us that by and by the most
selfish being in the social order will find it his own
bliss to give as much bliss as he can to everybody
else, so that men shall all be even as the people at a
successful party, getting pleasure as freely as they
give it, and giving it because they get it: and if
such predictions seem to anybody to help us to know
what duty is, then what can we say in reply, save to
wonder at the insight that sees the connection
between all these facts and our present duty? If a
society ever does grow up in which there are no
moral conflicts, nothing but a tedious cooing of bliss
from everybody, then in that society there will be
no moral questions asked. But none the less we
ask such. If the people of that day no longer distinguish egoism from altruism, they may all be
blessed: but what is that to us? We ask, What
ought we to do? We learn in answer that the
people of the future will feel no need to ask that
question. We desire that duty be defined. We learn
in answer that if men ever get perfect, the sense of
obligation will vanish, so that nobody will question:
What is duty? at all. This may be magnificent, but
it is not ethics.
For what do we really learn by hearing about the
society of the future? Only that, in the time
coming, there will be such and such freedom from moral
problems? Do we then also learn that we ought
to do our best to bring about that reign of peace?
Not at all, for we are sure that we shall never live
to see that day; and we cannot know why we should
work for it so long as we are still in doubt about the
value of selfishness. Do we learn that we ought to
conform as nearly as is possible to the rules that will
govern men in that ideal state? But how then do
we learn that? Is it because the coming form of
conduct will be the “highest form of adjustment of
acts to ends,” as the modern apostles of evolution
teach that it will be? Nay, though we do accept
most confidently all that these apostles teach about
the future, since surely they must know about it, we
still miss anything of moral significance in these
physical facts. For why is this coming state the
highest? Does any one say: Because it will come at the end of the physical process of evolution?
Nay then, if every more advanced state is to be more
acceptable, by such reasoning the sprouting potato or the incubating egg would always be more acceptable
than the fresh potato or the fresh egg. Highest,
as last, or as most complex, or even as most permanent,
cannot be in meaning identical with the
morally highest that we want defined for us. We ought
to work for the realization of that far-off state, if at
all, then, because we see it to be, not merely the last
in point of time, but also actually the best, and that
for some other reason than this physical one. But
once more then, why is it best? And why ought we
to try to realize it? Because in that state, every individual will be happiest? But then we want to
know what we now are to do, and we see that this
future happiness will be at present for us unattainable.
If we were in that state we should be happy.
But it is not at all plain that, by trying to approach
it, we shall now be making ourselves any happier.
And why should we do anything unselfish?
Evolution then, as a mere prospect, throws no
light on the real and fundamental meaning of duty.
If we know what we are to try to do, then we can
judge whether we ought to help or to hinder
evolution as a means to that end. But unless we know
our duty otherwise, there is nothing in the mere
physical fact of evolution that indicates what is
morally higher or lower, better or worse. Why should
I work for future ages, if it is not already quite
plain, apart from any knowledge of evolution, that I
ought to do what I can just now for my brother
here?
After all, however, it is another aspect of evolution
upon which nowadays most stress is laid in ethics. It is said that, the future aside, evolution
has made us what we now are, and, in particular, has
formed our society, and us for society. Hence not
only is our welfare in fact best served by a wise
altruism, but this fact is plain to us in our very
organization and instincts. Therefore while throughout
our aim is our happiness, our nature has been so
organized by generations of social evolution as to make
pretty certain that our happiness is already
dependent on our good character as social beings.
Therefore the doctrine of evolution shows that selfishness
must itself become even in our day altruistic if it
would be successful.
Is this aspect of evolution any more ethical than
the other? That is, does it show us, not the means,
but the moral End? We must deny that it does. To
be sure, if we never actually felt any conflict between
egoism and altruism as dispositions, then indeed for
us just that ethical problem would not exist. But
we do feel a conflict. And since for us our
selfishness is not altruistic in aim, it is quite useless to try
to make the warring impulses one by declaring that
a perfectly enlightened selfishness, even in our own
society, would be altruistic, not indeed in aim, but in
consequences. For, in the first place, that would
actually be a false statement for our present social
condition; since it is still quite possible for a clever
selfish man to live very comfortably, by somehow
legally wronging and oppressing others. And, in the
second place, if the statement were true, it would be
ethically worthless. For if good treatment of others
is uniformly the behavior that is, selfishly viewed, the most advantageous, the man who acts upon that
principle is still selfish, not altruistic at all, and he has
not solved for himself the conflict between the two
principles, save by utterly disregarding the principle
of altruism. If altruism were the only goodness,
then altruism of aim would be goodness still,
whatever the selfish consequences. If altruism needs to
be limited in any way by selfishness, then the
limitation must still be a matter of aim, not of accidental
result. Altruism as a means to selfish ends would
however be no aim at all, but only an accidental
tool. If circumstances varied, it would be cast
aside, while the selfish aim itself remained constant.
J. S. Mill, following others, tried to distinguish
the motive from the intent of an act. According to
this distinction, a selfish act would be altruistic by
intent, if there was in it the deliberate purpose to make
somebody happy, however selfish the motive of the
act. So it would be altruism to be deliberately and
selfishly just. But this distinction, however useful
for some purposes, is for our purpose worthless.
The question is: What in the act belongs to the
man, and what is this part of the act worth? Now
whatever belongs not to the actor, but to the
conditions under which he works, is morally
insignificant. For it is what we have called the physical
accident of his surroundings. But intent, apart
from motive, seems to be just such a physical
accident; for intent, apart from motive, must relate, not
to the real aim as such, but only to the means. A
man aims to be selfish. If now he lives where his
selfishness requires him to feed and clothe his enemy, he will, if enlightened, do so, and deliberately too.
And he will show in the act just as much and just as
little charity as he would have shown had he lived
where selfishness was best served by killing his
enemy, and had he killed him. The intent, apart
from the motive of the man, can have reference only
to the means by which he seeks to get his ultimate
aim. And such intent relates to accidental matters.
If by a physical accident the selfish man grows up
where you must speak politely to your antagonist,
and treat him with great show of respect, then the
selfish man will deliberately, and with conscious
intent, do so; and if he grows up where you challenge
your antagonist to a duel, he will possibly try that
way of getting rid of an enemy; and if he lives
among the cannibals, the selfish man, no more or
less selfish than in the other cases, only by training
more brutal in tastes, will torture and eat his
antagonist. And if the doctrine of evolution shows that
one of these forms of “adaptation” is more complete
than another, or proves to us that we personally shall
be most prudent in adopting one only of the possible
courses, all this can in no wise tell us what aim in
conduct is morally best, but only what means most
exhaustively accomplish the selfish purposes of a
civilized man. So intent is morally valuable only
in connection with motive.
It is hardly worth while to dwell longer on the
curious devices by which certain defenders of the
application of the hypothesis of evolution to
questions of fundamental ethics have tried to establish
that the truths of evolution teach us that we ought to do right. The whole undertaking resembles that
of a man who should try to show us that the truth
of the law of gravitation clearly indicates that we
all ought to sit down. What is evident or doubtful
apart from the law of evolution, cannot, in this field,
be proved or disproved by the law. Shall we say:
“Do good to thy neighbor to-day, because evolution
tends to bring into existence a race of future beings
who will do good?” To say this is to say something
utterly irrelevant. What do we care about remote
posterity, unless we already care about our neighbors
as they are? Or shall we say: “Do good to
thy neighbor because evolution has made thee a
social being, whose instincts lead thee to desire thy
neighbor’s good?” To say this is to say what is
only very imperfectly true. One’s instincts often
lead him to take much selfish delight in thwarting
his neighbor. If it were true universally and
strictly, it would not show us why to do right, nor
yet what is right. For it is not obviously a
fundamental ethical doctrine that we ought to follow an
instinct as such. And if we follow an instinct
because we find it pleasing, our aim is still not to do
any right save what pleases us personally. And the
whole wisdom of the doctrine of evolution would be
reduced to the assurance that we ought to do as we
like, with due regard to prudence. Shall we then
say: “Do good, because the social order that has
evolved is too strong for thee, and will hurt thee
unless thou submittest to it?” Still one has the
selfish motive insisted upon, and morality is still
only prudence. And the doctrine will still have to admit that whenever one can outwit society
prudently, and can gain for himself his selfish aims by
anti-social but for him in this case safe means, then
and there the selfish man may do this anti-social
thing if he likes, the doctrine, with all its good
motives, being unable to show why not. For it will not
do to resort to some such subterfuge as this, and to
say: “A man’s advantage depends upon the
prosperity of the whole. But anti-social acts ultimately
tend to weaken society. Hence they ultimately tend
to diminish the prosperity of the whole, and
therefore tend to harm the selfish individual.” All this
is irrelevant, in case the social consequences cannot
return upon the selfish individual’s head during his
lifetime. The wasteful owners of great forests in
our western mountains, the great and oppressive
capitalists that crush rivals and outwit the public,
the successful speculators, the national leaders whose
possession of the biggest battalions enables them to
demand of weaker neighbors unjust sacrifices, all
these may listen in scorn to talk about their
prosperity as dependent upon that of society, their enemies
and victims included. “We eat the fruit,” they can
say. “To be sure we consume it by eating, and we
like to waste it so long as we ourselves profit by the
waste, and we could neither eat it nor waste it if
there were no fruit; but there is enough to last us
and our children for our lifetimes. After us the
social famine, but for others, not for us.” The now
famous reply ascribed to one of our great railroad
kings when, some time since, he was asked about the
“accommodation of the public” by a certain train, well illustrates our point. “Damn the public,” said
the great servant and master of the traveling world.
If he really did not say that, very likely there are
those who would have meant it. And may the
evolutionist condemn them solely on his own grounds?
Or finally, shall the doctrine retreat behind an
ancient maxim, and state itself thus: “Evolution
shows us what are the ultimate tendencies of acts;
but no act ought to be committed which belongs to
a class of acts whose general tendency is bad”?
Would not this be a lamentable surrender of the
whole position? Yet such a surrender is found in
one or two passages of the book that is nowadays
supposed best to represent the doctrine that we have
been criticising in the foregoing, namely, in Mr.
Spencer’s “Data of Ethics.” The physical facts of
evolution are to give us our ideal. How? By telling
us what in the long run, for the world at large,
produces happiness. But if my individual happiness in
the concrete case is hindered by what happens to be
known to help in the long run towards the production
of general happiness, how shall the general rule
be applicable to my case? Mr. Spencer replies, in
effect, that the concrete consequences for individuals
must not be judged, but only the general tendency
of the act. Happiness is the ultimate end; but in
practice the “general conditions of happiness” must
be the proximate end. But how is this clear? If I
know in a given case what will make me happy, and
if the means to my happiness are not the general
ones at all, but, in this concrete case, something
conflicting therewith, why should I not do as I please? Because, Mr. Spencer says, the concrete case must
be tested by the general law of Evolution. But once
more, why? The only answer is the principle, which
Mr. Spencer sometimes tacitly assumes, sometimes
very grudgingly acknowledges, sometimes seems to
claim as his peculiar property, namely, the
well-known Kantian principle, that nothing should be
done which we could not wish to see done universally,
or that the rule of the single act ought to he a rule
adapted to serve as an universal rule for all
rational beings. But if this maxim is essential to the
foundation of a moral system, then how poor the
pretense that the law of evolution gives us any
foundation for ethics at all. The facts of evolution
stand there, mere dead realities, wholly without
value as moral guides, until the individual assumes
his own moral principle, namely, his ideal determination
to do nothing that a person considering the
order of the world as a whole and desiring universal
happiness would condemn, from the point of view of
the general tendencies of acts. Grant that
principle, and you have an ideal aim for action. Then
a knowledge of the course of evolution will be
useful, just as a knowledge of astronomy is useful to a
navigator. But astronomy does not tell us why we
are to sail on the water, but only how to find our way.
With Kant’s principle assumed, we already have
attained, apart from any physical doctrine of evolution,
the essentials of an ethical doctrine to start with;
and we need no doctrine of evolution to found this
ethical doctrine, but need it only to tell us the means.
But if we have not already this Kantian principle, then it is hard indeed to see what the doctrine of
evolution can do to help us to get it. Mr. Spencer
seems to forget that a doctrine of Means is not a
doctrine of Ends.
In sum then, either the fundamental moral
distinctions are clear apart from the physical fact of
evolution, or the physical fact cannot illustrate for
us the distinctions that we do not previously know.
If there is a real moral conflict between egoism and
altruism, then this conflict must concern the aims of
these two dispositions, not the accidental outcome
that we reach, nor the more or less variable means
that we employ in following the dispositions. And
any effort to reconcile the two tendencies by showing
that through evolution, or otherwise, it has become
necessary for an altruistic aim to be reached by
seemingly selfish means, or for a selfish purpose to
be gained by seemingly altruistic devices, — any such
effort has no significance for ethics. If the question
were: “Shall we buy mutton or beef at the market
to-day?” it would surely be a strange answer to the
question, or “reconciliation” of the alternatives, if
one replied, “But whichever you do you must go
over the same road to get to the market.” How
then are we helped by knowing that, in our society,
altruism and egoism, these two so bitterly opposed
moral aims, have very often to hide their conflicts
under a use of very much the same outward show of
social conformity.
There is indeed no doubt that all the knowledge
we may get about the facts of evolution will help us
to judge of the means by which we can realize the moral ideals that we independently form. But the
ideals themselves we apply to the course of evolution
as tests of its worth, or hold as aims to be realized
through knowledge of nature. We do not get them
from studying the course of nature as a mere
process. There is no doubt of the reality and of the
vast importance of the physical fact of evolution.
Its ethical importance, however, has been, we hold,
misunderstood. Evolution is for ethics a doctrine
not of ends, but of the means that we can use. In
fact, there is an applied ethic of evolution, but no
fundamental ethical doctrine based upon evolution.
Those who investigate evolution are doing much to
further the realization of ethical ideals, but they
cannot make or find for us our ethical ideals. They
show us where lies the path to an already desired
goal. For them to try to define the goal merely by
means of their physical discoveries, is a great
mistake. It can lead only to such labored efforts as we
have here been criticising, efforts to prove some
such opinion as that altruism is a form of selfishness,
or that selfishness is the only possible altruism.
Whether we are just in fancying that these latter
efforts are really identical with the actual efforts of
any recent evolutionists, the reader must judge for
himself. Altruism we must, at all events, justify in
another way.
V.
But now let us turn from those who define unselfishness
as a useful means to a selfish end, and let us
consider the effort to make pure unselfishness a self-evident goal of conduct, by founding unselfishness
on the direct revelation of the emotion of Pity.
Here, as before, we shall meet with the skeptical
criticism that the mere physical fact of the existence
of certain conditions is no proof of the validity of an
ideal moral demand. Just as the physical fact that
a clever self-seeker must pretend to be unselfish, and
must outwardly produce effects that benefit others,
is no foundation for a genuinely unselfish ideal,
just so the presence of a pitiful impulse, a mere fact
of human nature, is no foundation for an ideal rule
of conduct. The feeling is capricious, just as the
social conditions that render public spirit and
generosity the best selfish policy are capricious. As
the selfish man would behave with open selfishness
in case he were where unselfishness in outward
conduct no longer was worth to him the trouble, even so
the pitiful man would, merely as pitiful, be cruelly
selfish if cruel selfishness, instead of generous deeds,
could satisfy his impulse. In fact, he often is
cruelly selfish; and if sympathy were always unselfish,
still, as a feeling, it is a mere accidental fact of
human nature. So again, the effort to found a moral
ideal on a natural fact will fail. But let us look
closer.
Schopenhauer is the best modern representative of the view that Pity or sympathetic emotion is the foundation of right conduct. In pity he finds the only unselfish principle in man, and he insists that pity is a tendency not reducible to any other more selfish emotion of our nature. He finds it necessary to refute as an error the oft repeated opinion that “pity springs from a momentary illusion of
imagination, so that we first put ourselves in the sufferer’s
place, and now, in imagination, fancy that we suffer
his pangs in our person.” This, replies
Schopenhauer, is a blunder. “It remains to us all the time
clear and immediately certain, that he is the
sufferer, not we; and it is in his person, not in ours,
that we feel the pain, and are troubled. We suffer
with him, so in him; we feel his pain as his, and do
not fancy that it is ours; yes, the happier our own
state is, and the more the consciousness of it
contrasts in consequence with the situation of our
neighbor, so much the more sensitive are we to pity.”
And of this wondrous feeling no complete psychological
explanation can be given; the true explanation,
thinks Schopenhauer, must be metaphysical. In
pity a man comes to a sense of the real oneness in
essence of himself and his neighbor.
This pity is, therefore, for Schopenhauer, the only
moral motive, first, because it is the only non-egoistic
motive, and secondly, because it is the expression
of a higher insight. The first character of pity is
illustrated by Schopenhauer in an ingenious passage,
by means of a comparison of pity and other motives
as exhibited in a supposed concrete instance. We
shall find it well to quote the most of the passage in
full: —
“I will take at pleasure a case as an example to furnish
for this investigation an experimentum crucis. To make
the matter the harder for me, I will take no case of
charity, but an injustice, and one, too, of the most flagrant
sort. Suppose two young people, Caius and Titus, both passionately in love, and each with a different maiden. Let each one find in his way a rival, to whom external circumstances have given a very decided advantage. Both shall have made up their minds to put each his own rival out of the world; and both shall be secure against any discovery, or even suspicion. But when each for himself sets about the preparations for the murder, both of them, after some inner conflict, shall give up the attempt. They shall render account to us, plainly and truthfully, of why they have thus decided. Now what account Caius shall render, the reader shall decide as he pleases. Let Caius be prevented by religious scruples, by the will of God, by the future punishment, by the coming judgment, or by anything of that sort. Or let him [with Kant] say: 'I reflected that the maxim of my procedure in this case would not have been fit to serve as an universal rule for all possible rational beings, since I should have used my rival as means and not at the same time as End in himself.' Or let him say with Fichte: 'Every human life is Means or instrument for the realization of the Moral Law; therefore I cannot, without being indifferent to the moral law, destroy one who is destined to contribute to that end.' Or let him say, after Wollaston: 'I have considered that the deed would be the expression of an untrue proposition.' Or let him say, after Hutcheson: 'The moral sense, whose sensations, like those of every other sense, are not further to be explained, has determined me to refrain.' Or let him say, after Adam Smith: 'I foresaw that my deed, if I did it, would arouse no sympathy with me in the spectators of the act.' Or, after Christian Wolff: 'I recognized that I should thereby hinder my own growth towards perfection without helping the growth of anybody else.' Or let him say, after Spinoza: 'Homini nihil utilius homine; ergo, hominem interimere nolui.' In short, let him say what he will. But Titus, whose account of himself I reserve for my choice, let him say: ‘When I began to prepare, and so for the moment was busy no longer with my passion, but with my rival, then it became for the first time quite clear to me what now was really to be his fate. But just here pity and compassion overcame me. I grieved for him; my heart would not be put down; I could not do it.’ I ask now every honest and unprejudiced reader, which of the two is the better man? To which of the two would he rather intrust his fate? Which of them was restrained by the purer motive? Where, therefore, lies the principle of moral action?”
What shall we say of this foundation for altruism? Are pity and unselfishness thus shown to be, for the purposes of ethics, identical? Schopenhauer’s suggestion seems attractive, but from the outset doubtful. Let us examine it more carefully.
VI.
This Pity is, at all events, for the first just an impulse, no more; so at least, as we learn, it appears in the unreflective man. “Nature,” Schopenhauer tells us, has “planted in the human heart that wondrous disposition through which the sorrows of one are felt by the other, and from which comes the voice that, according to the emergency, calls to one ‘Spare,’ to another, ‘Help,’ and calls urgently and with authority. Surely there was to be expected from the aid thus originating more for the prosperity of all than could have been expected from a strict maxim of duty, general, abstract, and deduced from certain rational considerations and logical combinations of ideas. For from the latter source one might the less expect success, because the mass of men must remain what they always have been, rude men, unable, by reason of their inevitable bodily tasks, to get time to cultivate their minds, and therefore, being rude men, must find general principles and abstract truths unintelligible, so that only the concrete has meaning for them. But for the arousing of this pity, which we have shown to be the only source of unselfish actions, and so the true basis of morality, one needs no abstract, but only perceptive knowledge (bedarf es keiner abstrakten, sondern nur der anschauenden Erkenntniss), only the mere understanding of the concrete case, to which pity at once lays claim, without further reflective mediation.” And, to make his view clearer, Schopenhauer further appeals to passages quoted by him with approval from Rousseau: “II est done bien certain, que la pitié est un sentiment naturel, qui, modérant dans chaque individu I’amour de soi-même, concourt a la conservation mutuelle de toute I’espèce. . . . C’est, en un mot, dans ce sentiment naturel plutôt, que dans les argumens subtils, qu’il faut chercher la cause de la répugnance qu’éprouverait tout homme à mal faire.” Pity, then, is no abstract principle, but a tendency to do so and so in a concrete case. For the natural and unlearned man it is a mere sentiment, a feeling with his fellow, no more. But then does this sentiment exhaust for Schopenhauer
the whole meaning of pity? In no wise. Not
for this sole reason is pity the whole basis of morality,
namely, because it is the only non-egoistic impulse in
us; but besides this reason, there is the second
reason used by Schopenhauer to give special dignity to
pity. This other reason is in fact the deeper basis
for him of pity as the principle of conduct. Pity is
namely a revelation in concrete form of a great
fundamental truth, the one above referred to, the great
fact of the ultimate and metaphysical Oneness of all
sentient beings. Because pity reveals this, therefore
has this sentiment an authority, a depth and a
significance that a sentiment, merely as such, could
never have.
About this aspect of the matter, Schopenhauer
instructs us more than once in his writings. A few
quotations from one discussion will serve for present
illustration.
“The difference between my own and another’s person seems for experience an absolute difference. The difference of space that separates me from my neighbor, separates me also from his joy and pain. But on the other hand, it must still be remarked, that the knowledge that we have of ourselves is no complete and clear knowledge.” . . . “Whereon is founded all variety and all multiplicity of beings? On space and time; through these alone is variety or multiplicity possible, since what is many can only be conceived as coexistent or as successive. Because the many like things are called individuals, I therefore call space and time, as making possible the existence of a multitude of individuals, the principium individuationis.” . . . “If anything is undoubtedly true in the explanations that Kant’s wonderful insight has given to the world, then surely it is the Transcendental Æsthetics.” . . . “According to this doctrine, space and time . . . belong only to the phenomena. . . . But if the world in itself knows not space or time, then of necessity the world in itself knows nothing of multitude.” . . . “Hence only one identical Being manifests itself in all the numberless phenomena of this world of sense. And conversely, what appears as a multitude, in space or in time, is not a real thing in itself, but only a phenomenon.” . . . “Consequently that view is not false that abolishes the distinction between Self and Not-self; rather is the opposed view the false one.” . . . “But the former is the view that we have found as the real basis of the phenomenon of pity, so that in fact pity is the expression of it. This view then is the metaphysical basis of ethics, and consists in this: that one individual directly recognizes in another his own very self, his own true essence.”
These passages from Schopenhauer are, as one sees, interesting not only because they defend the emotion of pity as the foundation of morals, but also because they offer an interesting suggestion of an aspect of the matter not before noticed in our study. Like so many of Schopenhauer’s suggestions, this one is neither wholly original, nor very complete in itself. But it is so expressed as to attract attention; it is helpful to us by its very incompleteness. It is stimulating, although it proves nothing. This modern Buddhism brings to our minds the query (which goes beyond the present scope of this chapter), whether
the altruistic motives, whatever they are, might not
somehow be made of evident and general validity as
ethical principles, if we could show that in the
moment of pity or in some other altruistic moment
there is expressed the nascent discovery of an Illusion,
namely, the Illusion of Selfishness. That is
what Schopenhauer supposed himself to have found
out. In pity he found an unselfish impulse. But this
unselfish impulse was, for the first, just an impulse,
a sentiment, beloved of Rousseau, remote from the
abstract principles that the philosophers had been
seeking. Here was unselfishness, but still seeming
to need reflective development and deeper foundation.
Schopenhauer thought that he had found such
a deeper basis for pity when he suggested that it was
an imperfect metaphysical insight. In effect one
might sum up his views thus: In deeper truth, he
says, you and I are one Being, namely, the One great
Being, the Absolute Will, which works in us both.
But because we both perceive in time and space,
therefore you and I seem to ourselves to be different
and perhaps warring individuals, like the two halves
of a divided worm. Only the sentiment of pity sees
through the temporal veil of illusion, and so seeing,
in its own intuitive, unreflective way, it whispers to
us that the pain of each is in truth the other’s pain.
And when we really feel thus, we forget the illusion
of sense, and act as if we were one. So acting we
follow the higher insight, and when metaphysic comes,
it will justify us in our view. Such, in our own
words, are Schopenhauer’s ideas. We are still not concerned for Schopenhauer’s
metaphysic, which, God knows, was a rotten enough
tub for a wise man to go down to the sea in. But
in his character as keeper of beautiful curiosities,
Schopenhauer shows us in his literary museum, that
is built on the dry land, many very useful thoughts;
and we need not follow him out onto the great deep
at present. But we note with interest this
suggestion that he adds to his theory of pity. Is that
suggestion worth anything? Is pity in fact a detection
of an illusion? And does this illusion constitute the
basis of selfishness? Perhaps that suggestion will
be needed in a future chapter. Meanwhile,
however, we have at present to do only with pity as a
mere emotion. Surely if pity does discover for us
any illusion in selfishness, then it must be a
particular form of pity to which this function belongs. For
much of pity simply illustrates this illusion. We
cannot then do better than first to distinguish the
selfish from the altruistic forms of what we
popularly include under the one name Pity, or, to use the
more general word, Sympathy. We shall have to go
over old and commonplace ground, but we need to;
for the illusion of selfishness, to be detected, needs
also to be illustrated.
VII.
When one sees his neighbor in pain, does one of
necessity come to know that pain as such, to realize
its true nature as it is in his neighbor? Or does
one often fall into an illusion about that pain, regarding it as somehow not quite real? Schopenhauer
would reply: The heartless man, who has no
compassion, falls into a sort of illusion about his neighbor.
He thinks more or less clearly that that pain of his
neighbor’s is a sort of unreal pain, not as living as
would be his own pain. But the pitiful man, the
only quite unselfish man, — he perceives the reality
of his neighbor’s suffering. He knows that that is
no phantom suffering, but even such pain as his own
would be.
We want to test this idea in a practical way. So
we say: Let us judge of this sympathy by its fruits?
Are we in fact certain to be led to unselfish acts
if in all cases we obey the dictates of sympathy?
Schopenhauer thinks that he has secured altruism
for his sympathetic or pitiful man by remarking that,
in true pity, one feels the pain, not as his own, but
as the other’s pain. To follow the dictates of this
sympathy would of necessity lead, one might say,
to the effort unselfishly to relieve the other. But
then does not this depend very much upon the way
in which pity comes to be an object of reflection for
the man that feels it? Pity is often of itself an
indeterminate impulse, that may be capable of very
various interpretation by the subsequent reflection
of the pitiful mind. One may through pity come to
reflect that this feeling stands for a real pain in the
other man, and may act accordingly; or one may
have very different reflections. One may fail to
realize the other’s pain as such, and may be driven
back upon himself. For most people the first
reflection that follows upon strong pity is no unselfish one at all. It is very simply the precept: “Get rid
of the pain that your neighbor causes you to feel.”
Sympathy with pain may make you tremble, grow
faint, feel choked, weep; and all these sudden
emotions are followed perhaps by long-enduring
melancholy. All this causes you to forget the reality of
the other’s pain. This personal trouble of yours,
felt in stronger cases in your body as a physical
disturbance, as something unnerving, prostrating,
overwhelming, turns your reflection upon yourself, and
you are very apt to ask; What am I to do to be free
from it? So to ask is already to begin to forget
your neighbor. The pain that his pain caused has
simply become your pain. You are, even through
your pity, bound fast in an illusion. For there are
three ways of removing this pain, and of satisfying
for you the sympathy that caused it. One way, and
often a very hard one, puzzling to follow, full of
responsibility and of blunders, would be taken if you
did your best, perseveringly and calmly, to get your
neighbor out of his trouble. That would doubtless
take a long time, you would never be adequately
thanked for your trouble, and you might very easily
blunder and do harm instead of good to him, thus
causing in the end yet more sympathetic pain for
you, coupled this time with remorse. The second
way is to get used to the sight of pain, so that you
no longer feel any sympathetic suffering. The third
way is generally the easiest of all. That is to go
away from the place, and forget all about the sad
business as soon as possible. That is the way that
most sensitive people take in dealing with most of the suffering that they meet. The first way gives
you the most of hard work to do. The second way,
by dulling your sensibilities, makes you less alive to
the pleasures that are to be gained in the company
of happy men. The stern man, who has seen so
much suffering as to be indifferent to it, may be less
alive to the bliss of sympathy that gentler natures
come to know, in refined and peaceful society. By
far the most inviting way is the third. It prevents
you from growing callous, cold, and harsh. It leaves
you sensitive, appreciative, tender-hearted, freshly
sympathetic, an admirable and humane being. But
it also saves you from the pangs that to refined
natures must be the most atrocious, the pangs of
contemplating a world of sorrow which your best efforts
can but very imperfectly help. People with a
delicate sense of the beautiful surely cannot endure to
go about seeing all sorts of filthy and ugly miseries,
and if they can endure it, will they not be much
happier, as well as more refined, more delicate in
taste, much higher in the scale of beautiful
cultivation, if they do not try to endure it, but keep
themselves well surrounded by happy and ennobling
companions? For the sight of pain is apt to make
you coarse; it might degrade you even to the level
of the peevish sufferer himself. Does a refined soul
desire that? No one is a duller, a less stimulating,
a less ennobling companion, than the average man
when he is suffering atrociously. Pain brings out
his native brutishness. He is abject, he curses, he
behaves perhaps like a wild beast. Or he lies mute
and helpless, showing no interest in what you do for him, hating you possibly, just because you are the
nearest creature to him. His gratitude is apt to be
a myth. So long as he yet suffers, he does not
appreciate what you are doing for him, for why should
he thank you while you make him no better? And
if you can cure him, what then? Nobody can
remember very clearly a very sharp pain once over.
Hence he will underrate your services. You can
much better appreciate your moderate trouble in
helping him than he can afterwards appreciate the
very great and agonizing trouble from which you
saved him. One forgets in part one’s greatest
anguish, one’s most dangerous diseases. The worst
troubles are not favorable to clear memory. Above
all, however, his memory will be weak for what you
did in his case. He will shock you afterwards by
having failed to notice that you took any serious
trouble in his behalf at all. But, if he was sick and
you nursed him, he will remember very well how
you harassed him as you nursed him. He will
remember a creaking door or an ill-cooked steak, when
he forgets your cups of cold water, your sleepless
nights, your toil to secure silence when he needed it,
your patience when he complained, your sacrifice of
all other present aims in life on his account. All
that he will forget, not because he is a bad man, but
because he is an ordinary creature whom pain
debased and corrupted, so that he became hardly a fit
companion for an elevated and refined soul like
yours. He is only human. If you were an average
man yourself, you would treat your friends that
aided you in your worst suffering after much the same fashion. It is well if the sufferer and his
helper do not begin a quarrel that will last a
lifetime, all because of the meddlesome self-sacrifice of
the officious helper. For to the wretched any help
is apt to seem officious, because no help is
immediately and unconditionally successful.
So then, if you are tender-hearted, does
tender-heartedness dictate all this waste of sympathy?
Plainly not. Tender-heartedness need not say: My
neighbor must be relieved. Tender-heartedness, as
a personal affection of yours, says only: Satisfy me.
And you can satisfy this affection if you forget about
all those degraded wretches that are doomed to
suffer, and associate with those blessed ones whose
innocent joy shall make your tender heart glad of its
own tenderness. Let us rejoice with those that do
rejoice, and those that weep, let them take care of
themselves in everlasting oblivion. Such is the
dictate of tender-hearted selfishness; and our present
point is the not at all novel thought, so often
elaborated in George Eliot’s novels, the thought that,
the tenderer the heart, the more exclusively selfish
becomes this dictate of tender-heartedness. Very
sensitive people, who cannot overcome their
sensitiveness, are perforce selfish in this world of pain.
They must forget that there is suffering. Their
pity makes them cruel. They cannot bear the sight
of suffering; they must shut the door upon it. If
he is a Dives, such a man must first of all insist that
the police shall prevent people like Lazarus, covered
with sores, from lying in plain sight at the gate.
Such men must treat pain as, in these days of plumbing, we treat filth. We get the plumber and
the carpenter to hide it so well that even our
civilized nostrils shall not be offended. That we call
modern improvement in house-building. Even so
we get the police to hide suffering from us; and,
when that help fails, or is inapplicable, we appeal
to the natural sense of decency in the sufferers, and
demand, on the ground of common courtesy, that
they shall not intrude their miseries upon us. Thus
we cultivate a tender sympathy for the most delicate
emotions of the human heart, as we never could do
if we let suffering, as our forefathers used to let filth,
lie about in plain sight. Ignore another’s suffering,
and then it practically becomes non-existent. So
says selfishness.
VIII.
If we ourselves are very happy, our lack of
willingness to consider suffering may become greater and
greater as we get happier. Nobody is colder in
shutting out the thought of misery than a joyous
man in a joyous company. “If there be anywhere
any wretched people (which we doubt) let them keep
well away from this place.” That is the voice of
the spirit of overflowing sympathetic joy, as Schiller
so finely expresses it in the hymn an die Freude: —
“He who, proving, hath discovered,
What it is a friend to own.
O’er whom woman’s love hath hovered.
Let him here his bliss make known:
Yea, if but one living being,
On the earth is his to-day, —
And who ne’er has known such, fleeing,
Let him weep his grief away.”
“Joy,” says the enthusiastic young Schiller in
this rhapsody, “Joy was bestowed on the worm.”
“All beings drink joy at Mother Nature’s breast.”
Delightful generosity of the happy man! But what
do the crushed worms think about it? “Whoso hath
a friend,” — but what of the poor wretches in the
slums of great cities, beaten, starved, imprisoned,
cheated, and cheating, starved and imprisoned again,
all through their lifetimes? How many souls do
these poor Ishmaelites call their own? But of whom
shall the joyful man think, of whom does he or can he
think? Of these? No, it is the tendency of selfish
joy to build up its own pretty world of fancy.
Everything in that world, from cherub to worm, has joy’s
sympathy, but only in so far as it is also joyous.
Seid umschlungen Millionen! dieser Kuss der
ganzen Welt! But in fact dieser Kuss is intended
only for the happy world, which in the illusion,
beautiful, but yet cruel, of the innocently joyous man,
seems to be the whole world. Much good will such
kisses do to the Millionen that groan and writhe!
Joy ignores them, cannot believe them real.
Such then are some of the dictates of sympathy, which often bear to our conduct such relation as, in
a saying of Emerson’s, the desire to go to Boston
bears to the possible ways of getting there. “When
I want to get to Boston,” says in substance Emerson,
“I do not swim the Charles River, but prefer
crossing the bridge.” Emerson’s saying was intended to
illustrate his own preference for reading translations
of foreign authors rather than the originals. It
does illustrate very well the preference that we all
have for the shortest way out of our sympathetic
troubles. To help your suffering neighbor is hard
swimming, perhaps amid ice-blocks; to go on and
find elsewhere merry company is to take the bridge
direct to Boston. Sympathy leads therefore often
to the ignoring of another man’s state as real. And
this is the very Illusion of Selfishness itself.
Pity may then turn to selfish hatred of the sight
of suffering. It is hardly necessary to dwell at length
upon the disheartening reverse aspect of the picture,
namely, on the fact that, when pity does not lead us
to dread the suffering of others, it may lead us to
take such credit for our very power to sympathize
with pain, that we come to feel an actual delight in
the existence of the events that mean suffering to
others. Our hearts may so swell with pride at our
own importance as pitiful persons, that we may even
long to have somebody of our acquaintance in
trouble, so that we can go and pose, in the presence of
the sufferers, as humane commentators on the
occurrence, as heroic endurers of sorrows that we do not
really share. This is the second stage of selfish pity.
It is even more enduring and incurable than the first. The dread of the sight of pain may be made
to pass away by enough of inevitable experience.
But the selfish love of the office of comforter grows
with the sense of our personal importance, and with
the number of times when we are called upon to
exercise our powers. There are people who are always
fretful and disconsolate unless they know of
somebody who very badly needs consoling. Then they
are calm and happy, for they are sure that they are
admirable as comforters, they feel themselves the
centre of an admiring neighborhood, they are plying
their noble avocation in a graceful fashion. This
type is surely no very uncommon one. Such people
are apt to be intolerable companions for you unless
you have a broken leg, or a fever, or a great bereavement.
Then they find you interesting, because you
are wretched. They nurse you like saints; they
speak comfortably to you like angels. They hate to
give the little comfort that can be given from day
to day to those who are enduring the ordinary
vexations of healthy and prosaic life. They rejoice to
find some one overwhelmed with woe. The happy
man is to them a worthless fellow. High temperature
is needed to soften their hearts. They would
be miserable in Paradise, at the sight of so much
tedious contentment; but they would leap for joy if
they could but hear of a lost soul to whom a drop of
water could be carried. To them the most blessed
truth of Scripture is found in the passage: “For
the poor ye have always with you.” Yea, blessed
are the merciful, for they shall never lack work.
They shall be like the sculptor, delighting in the rough blocks of marble that contain his beloved
statues. For them the world will doubtless have
always a plenty of blocks.
These are not the vulgarly malevolent. Yet they
would be disconsolate altogether if evil were to
cease. They regard misery as their special
property; hence they would be very much disappointed
to hear that Paradise had come again, and that
misery had been abolished. And we are speaking now,
not of the professional enthusiasm that must make
the physician interested in the diseases that he
studies, but of the pure delight in pity that distinguishes
certain unprofessional people whose lives would be
almost utterly empty of all joy were their neighbors
not subject to serious calamities. Surely it is not
this sort of pity that overcomes the illusion of
selfishness. Rather does such pity well illustrate that
illusion.
IX.
Sympathy then, as an emotion, is not always
altruistic, but frequently very selfish. It does not always
overthrow, but often strengthens, selfishness. And
so deceitful an emotion cannot be trusted with the
office of giving moral insight. In so far as pity ever
does involve the detection of an illusion of selfishness,
we may have occasion to speak of it hereafter. For
on that side, Schopenhauer’s thought still looks
attractive. But if we view pity with reference not to
insight but to emotion, if we ask whether a given act
was unselfish because it was pitiful, then we can
already answer that, in so far as unselfishness constitutes morality, the pitiful character of an act does
not insure its unselfishness, and hence not its morality.
Schopenhauer’s own typical example, quoted above,
is indeed interesting, but not conclusive as to this
question. “I pitied him,” says the lover who has
refrained from slaying his rival. “Had he not
resembled my father as he slept, I had done it,” says
Lady Macbeth. Possibly Lady Macbeth’s pity was
good in itself, but not quite sufficient in quantity.
But her words remind us of what the lover might do,
if only pity stood in the way of the murder that he
desired to commit. He might get somebody else to
take care of the whole business, preparations and all,
and so save his own tender emotions. In fact,
however, Schopenhauer’s young lover has something
more than a mere emotion of pity in him.
But so far as we have considered sympathy, we
have had but another illustration of the difficulty
with which we are dealing. Even if sympathy were
always unselfish, never capricious, perfectly clear in
its dictates, there would remain the other objection.
Sympathy is a mere fact of a man’s emotional nature.
To an unsympathetic man, how shall you demonstrate
the ideals that you found upon the feeling of
sympathy? And so one returns to the old difficulty. You
have an ideal whereby you desire to judge the world.
But this ideal you found in its turn on the fact that
somebody has a certain sort of emotion. Any one
who has not this emotion you declare to be an
incompetent judge. And so your last foundation for
the ideal is something whose worth is to be
demonstrated solely by the fact that it exists. Thus in this and in the last chapter, in general
and in particular discussions, we have found the one
problem recurring. The ideal is to have an ideal
foundation, yet we seem always to give it a foundation
in some reality. And if we then look about us,
we always find some skeptic saying, either that he
does not feel sure of the existence of any such
reality, or that he doubts whether it means what we
say that it means, or, again, that in any case there are
other people, who have found other realities, and
whose moral principles, founded on these other
realities, are in deadly opposition to ours. The idealist
of our preliminary discussion on the methods of
ethical inquiry has so far met with numerous
misfortunes. He has continually been enticed over to a
sort of realistic position, and then just the same
arguments that he used against the realist are used
against him. If, however, true to himself, he
assaults the realism of the modern descendants of
Hobbes with the argument that all their physical
hypotheses are worthless without ideals, then he
hears the challenge to show an ideal that is not
his whim, and that is not founded on a physical
doctrine. There seems no refuge for him as yet but to
turn skeptic himself.
Notes
Uncharted Knowledge
Wisdom From Previous Realities
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