01.01 - Part 1, Chapter 1

PART I SOME CONSEQUENCES OF BELIEF

CHAPTER I NATURALISM AND ETHICS THE two subjects on which the professors of every creed, theological and anti-theological, seem least anxious to differ, are the general substance of the Moral Law, and the character of the sentiments with which it should be regarded. That it is worthy of all reverence; that it demands our ungrudging submission; and that we owe it not merely obedience, but love these are commonplaces which the preachers of all schools vie with each other in proclaiming. And they are certainly right. Morality is more than a bare code of laws, than a catalogue raisonnt of things to be done or left undone. Were it otherwise, we must change something more important than the mere customary language of exhortation. The old ideals of the world would have to be uprooted, and no new ones could spring up and flourish in their stead; the very soil on which they grew would be sterilised, and the phrases in which all that has hitherto been regarded as best and noblest in human life has been expressed, nay, the words ’ best ’ and ’ noblest ’ themselves, would become as foolish and unmeaning as the incantation of a forgotten superstition. This unanimity, familiar though it be, is surely very remarkable. And it is the more remarkable because the unanimity prevails only as to conclusions, and is accompanied by the widest divergence of opinion with regard to the premises on which these conclusions are supposed to be founded. Nothing but habit could blind us to the strangeness of the fact that the man who believes that morality is based on a priori principles, and the man who believes it to be based on the commands of God, the transcendentalist, the theologian, the mystic, and the evolutionist, should be pretty well at one both as to what morality teaches, and as to the sentiments with which its teaching should be regarded.

It is not my business in this place to examine the Philosophy of Morals, or to find an answer to the charge which this suspicious harmony of opinion among various schools of moralists appears to suggest, namely, that in their speculations they have taken current morality for granted, and have squared their proofs to their conclusions, and not their conclusions to their proofs. I desire now rather to direct the reader’s attention to certain questions relating to the origin of ethical systems, not to their justification; to the natural history of morals, not to its philosophy; to the place which the moral law occupies in the general chain of causes and effects, not to the nature of its claim on the unquestioning obedience of mankind. I am aware, of course, that many persons have been, and are, of opinion that these two. sets of questions are not merely related, but identical; that the validity of a command depends only on the source from which it springs; and that in the investigation into the character and authority of this source consists the principal business of the moral philosopher. I am not concerned here to controvert this theory, though, as thus stated, I do not agree with it. It will be sufficient if I lay down two propositions of a much less dubious character: (i) That, practically, human beings being what they are, no moral code can be effective which does not inspire, in those who are asked to obey it, emotions of reverence; and (2) that, practically, the capacity of any code to excite this or any other elevated emotion cannot be wholly independent of the origin from which those who accept that code suppose it to emanate. 1

Now what, according to the naturalistic creed, is the origin of the generally accepted, or, indeed, of any other possible, moral law? What position does it occupy in the great web of interdependent phenomena by which the knowable ’ Whole ’ is on this hypothesis constituted? The answer is plain: as

1 These are statements, it will be noted, not relating to ethics proper. They have nothing to do either with the contents of the moral law or with its validity; and if we are to class them as belonging to any special department of knowledge at all, it is to psychology or anthropology that they should in strictness be assigned. life is but a petty episode in the history of the universe; as feeling is an attribute of only a fraction of things that live, so moral sentiments and the apprehension of moral rules are found in but an insignificant minority of things that feel. They are not, so to speak, among the necessities of Nature; no great spaces are marked out for their accommodation; were they to vanish to-morrow, the great machine would move on with no noticeable variation; the sum of realities would not suffer sensible diminution; the organic world itself would scarcely mark the change. A few highly developed mammals, and chiefest among these man, would lose instincts and beliefs which have proved of considerable value in the struggle for existence, if not between individuals, at least between tribes and species. But put it at the highest, we can say no more than that there would be a great diminution of human happiness, that civilisation would become difficult or impossible, and that the ’ higher ’ races might even succumb and disappear.

These are considerations which to the ’ higher ’ races themselves may seem not unimportant, however trifling to the universe at large. But let it be noted that every one of these propositions can be asserted with equal or greater assurance of all the bodily appetites, and of many of the vulgarest forms of desire and ambition. On most of the processes, indeed, by which consciousness and life are maintained in the individual and perpetuated in the race we are never consulted; of their intimate character we are for the most part totally ignorant, and no one is in any case asked to consider them with any other emotion than that of enlightened curiosity. But in the few and simple instances in which our co-operation is required, it is obtained through the stimulus supplied by appetite and disgust, pleasure and pain, instinct, reason, and morality; and it is hard to see, on the naturalistic hypothesis, whence any one of these various natural agents is to derive a dignity or a consideration not shared by all the others, why morality should be put above appetite, or reason above pleasure.

It may, perhaps, be replied that the sentiments with which we choose to regard any set of actions or motives do not require special justification, that there is no disputing about this any more than about other questions of ’ taste,’ and that, as a matter of fact, the persons who take a strictly naturalistic view of man and of the universe are often the loudest and not the least sincere in the homage they pay to the ’ majesty of the moral law.’ This is, no doubt, perfectly true; but it does not meet the real difficulty. I am not contending that sentiments of the kind referred to may not be, and are not, frequently entertained by persons of all shades of philosophical or theological opinion. My point is, that in the case of those holding the naturalistic creed the sentiments and the creed are antagonistic; and that the more clearly the creed is grasped, the more thoroughly the intellect is saturated with its essential teaching, the more certain are the sentiments thus violently and unnaturally associated with it to languish or to die. For not only does there seem to be no ground, from the point of view of biology, for drawing a distinction in favour of any of the processes, physiological or psychological, by which the individual or the race is benefited; not only are we bound to consider the coarsest appetites, the most calculating selfishness, and the most devoted heroism, as all sprung from analogous causes and all evolved for similar objects, but we can hardly doubt that the august sentiments which cling to the ideas of duty and sacrifice are nothing better than a device of Nature to trick us into the performance of altruistic actions. 1 The working ant expends its life in labouring, with more than maternal devotion, for a progeny not its own, and, so far as the race of ants is concerned, doubtless it does well. Instinct, the inherited impulse to follow a certain course with no developed consciousness of its final goal, is here the instrument selected by Nature to attain her ends. But in the case of man, more flexible if less certain methods have to be employed. Does conscience, in bidding us to do or to refrain, speak with an authority from which there seems no appeal? Does

1 It is scarcely necessary to state that by this phrase I do not wish to suggest that Biology necessarily is ideological. Naturalism of course cannot be. our blood tingle at the narrative of some great deed? Do courage and self-surrender extort our passionate sympathy, and invite, however vainly, our halting imitation? Does that which is noble attract even the least noble, and that which is base repel even the basest? Nay, have the words ’ noble ’ and ’ base ’ a meaning for us at all? If so, it is from no essential and immutable quality in the deeds themselves. It is because, in the struggle for existence, the altruistic virtues are an advantage to the family, the tribe, or the nation, but not always an advantage to the individual; it is because man comes into the world richly endowed with the inheritance of self-regarding instincts and appetites required by his animal progenitors, but poor indeed in any inbred inclination to the unselfishness necessary to the well-being of the society in which he lives; it is because in no other way can the original impulses be displaced by those of late growth to the degree required by public utility, that Nature, indifferent to our happiness, indifferent to our morals, but sedulous of our survival, commends disinterested virtue to our practice by decking it out in all the splendour which the specifically ethical sentiments alone are capable of supplying. Could we imagine the chronological order of the evolutionary process reversed: if courage and abnegation had been the qualities first needed, earliest developed, and therefore most deeply rooted in the ancestral organism; while selfishness, cowardice, greediness, and lust represented impulses required only at a later stage of physical and intellectual development, doubtless we should find the ’ elevated ’ emotions which now crystallise round the first set of attributes transferred without alteration or amendment to the second; the preacher would expend his eloquence in warning us against excessive indulgence in deeds of self immolation, to which, like the ’ worker ’ ant, we should be driven by inherited instinct, and in exhorting us to the performance of actions and the cultivation of habits from which we now, unfortunately, find it only too difficult to abstain.

Kant, as we all know, compared the Moral Law to the starry heavens, and found them both sublime. It would, on the naturalistic hypothesis, be more appropriate to compare it to the protective blotches on the beetle’s back, and to find them both ingenious. But how on this view is the ’ beauty of holiness ’ to retain its lustre in the minds of those who know so much of its pedigree? In despite of theories, mankind even instructed mankind may, indeed, long preserve uninjured sentiments which they have learned in their most impressionable years from those they love best; but if, while they are being taught the supremacy of conscience and the austere majesty of duty, they are also to be taught that these sentiments and beliefs are merely samples of the complicated contrivances, many of them mean and many of them disgusting, wrought into the physical or into the social organism by the shaping forces of selection and elimination, assuredly much of the efficacy of these moral lessons will be destroyed, and the contradiction between ethical sentiment and naturalistic theory will remain intrusive and perplexing, a constant stumbling-block to those who endeavour to combine in one harmonious creed the bare explanations of Biology and the lofty claims of Ethics. 1

II

Unfortunately for my reader, it is not possible wholly to omit from this section some references to the questionings which cluster round the time-worn debate on Determinism and Free Will; but my remarks will be brief, and as little tedious as may be.

1 It may perhaps be thought that in this section I have too confidently assumed that morality, or, more strictly, the moral sentiments (including among these the feeling of authority which attaches to ethical imperatives), are due to the working of natural selection. I have no desire to dogmatise on a subject on which it is the business of the biologist and anthropologist to pronounce. But it seems difficult to believe that natural selection should not have had the most important share in producing and making permanent things so obviously useful. If the reader prefers to take the opposite view, and to regard moral sentiments as ’ accidental,’ he may do so, without on that account being obliged to differ from my general argument. He will then, of course, class moral sentiments with the aesthetic emotions dealt with in the next chapter. Of course I make no attempt to trace the causes of the variations on which selective action has worked, nor to distinguish between the moral sentiments, an inclination to or an aptitude for which has been bred into the physical organism of man or some races of men, and those which have been wrought only into the social organism of the family, the tribe, or the State.

I have nothing here to do with the truth or untruth of either of the contending theories. It is sufficient to remind the reader that on the naturalistic view, at least, free will is an absurdity, and that those who hold that view are bound to believe that every decision at which mankind have arrived, and every consequent action which they have performed, was implicitly determined by the quantity and distribution of the various forms of matter and energy which preceded the birth of the solar system. The fact, no doubt, remains 1 that every individual, while balancing between two courses, is under the inevitable impression that he is at liberty to pursue either, and that it depends upon ’himself and himself alone, ’ himself ’ as distinguished from his character, his desires, his surroundings, and his antecedents, which of the offered alternatives he will elect to pursue. I do not know that any explanation has been proposed of what, on the naturalistic hypothesis, we must regard as a singular illusion. I venture with some diffidence to suggest, as a theory provisionally adequate, perhaps, for scientific purposes, that the phenomenon is due to the same cause as so many other beneficent oddities in the organic world, namely, to natural selection. To an animal with no self-consciousness a sense of freedom would evidently be unnecessary, if not, indeed, absolutely unmeaning. But as soon as self-consciousness is developed, as ’At least, so it seems to me. There are, however, eminent psychologists who differ. soon as man begins to reflect, however crudely and imperfectly, upon himself and the world in which he lives, then deliberation, volition, and the sense of responsibility become wheels in the ordinary machinery by which species-preserving actions are produced; and as these psychological states would be weakened or neutralised if they were accompanied by the immediate consciousness that they were as rigidly determined by their antecedents as any other effects by any other causes, benevolent Nature steps in, and by a process of selective slaughter makes the consciousness in such circumstances practically impossible. The spectacle of all mankind suffering under the delusion that in their decision they are free, when, as a matter of fact, they are nothing of the kind, must certainly appear extremely ludicrous to any superior observer, were it possible to conceive, on the naturalistic hypothesis, that such observers should exist; and the comedy could not be otherwise than greatly relieved and heightened by the performances of the small sect of philosophers who, knowing perfectly as an abstract truth that freedom is an absurdity, yet in moments of balance and deliberation invariably conceive themselves to possess it, just as if they were savages or idealists. The roots of a superstition so ineradicable must lie deep in the groundwork of our inherited organism, and must, if not now, at least in the first beginning of self-consciousness, have been essential to the welfare of the race which entertained it. Yet it may, perhaps, be thought that this requires us to attribute to the dawn of intelligence ideas which are notoriously of late development; and that as the primitive man knew nothing of ’ invariable sequences ’ or ’ universal causation,’ he could in nowise be embarrassed in the struggle for existence by recognising that he and his proceedings were as absolutely determined by their antecedents as sticks and stones. It is, of course, true that in any formal or philosophical shape such ideas would be as remote from the intelligence of the savage as the differential calculus. But it can, nevertheless, hardly be denied that, in some shape or other, there must be implicitly present to his consciousness the sense of freedom, since his fetichism largely consists in attributing to inanimate objects the spontaneity which he finds in himself; and it seems equally certain that the sense, I will not say of constraint, but of inevitableness, would be as embarrassing to a savage in the act of choice as it would to his more cultivated descendant, and would be not less productive of that moral impoverishment which, as I proceed briefly to point out, Determinism is calculated to produce. 1

1 It seems to be regarded as quite simple and natural that this attribution of human spontaneity to inanimate objects should be the first stage in the interpretation of the external world, and that it should be only after the uniformity of material Nature had been conclusively established by long and laborious experience that the same principles were applied to the inner experience of man himself. But, in truth, unless man in the very earliest stages of his development had believed himself to be free, precisely the opposite order of discovery might have been anticipated. Even now our means of external And here I am anxious to avoid any appearance of the exaggeration which, as I think, has sometimes characterised discussions upon this subject. I admit that there is nothing in the theory of determinism which need modify the substance of the moral law. That which duty prescribes, or the ’ Practical Reason ’ recommends, is equally prescribed and recommended whether our actual decisions are or are not irrevocably bound by a causal chain which reaches back in unbroken retrogression through a limitless past. It may also be admitted that no argument investigation are so imperfect that it is rather a stretch of language to say that the theory of uniformity is in accordance with experience, much less that it is established by it. On the contrary, the more refined are our experiments, the more elaborate are our precautions, the more difficult it is to obtain results absolutely identical with each other, qualitatively as well as quantitatively. So far, therefore, as mere observation goes, Nature seems to be always aiming at a uniformity which she never quite succeeds in attaining; and though it is no doubt true that the differences are due to errors in the observations and not to errors in Nature, this manifestly cannot be proved by the observations themselves, but only by a theory established independently of the observations, and by which these may be corrected and interpreted. But a man’s own motives for acting in a particular way at a particular time are simple compared with the complexities of the material world, and to himself at least might be known (one would suppose) with reasonable certainty. Here, then (were it not for the inveterate illusion, old as self consciousness itself, that at the moment of choice no uniformity of antecedents need insure a uniformity of consequences) would have been the natural starting-point and suggestion of a theory of causation which, as experience ripened and knowledge grew, might have gradually extended itself to the universe at large. Man would, in fact, have had nothing more to do than to apply to the chaotic complex of the macrocosm the principles of rigid and unchanging law by which he had discovered the microcosm to be governed. against good resolutions or virtuous endeavours can fairly be founded upon necessitarian doctrines. No doubt he who makes either good resolutions or virtuous endeavours does so (on the determinist theory) because he could not do otherwise; but none the less may these play an important part among the antecedents by which moral actions are ultimately produced. An even stronger admission may, I think, be properly made. There is a fatalistic temper of mind found in some of the greatest men of action, religious and irreligious, in which the sense that all that happens is fore-ordained does in no way weaken the energy of volition, but only adds a finer temper to the courage. It nevertheless remains the fact that the persistent realisation of the doctrine that voluntary decisions are as completely determined by external and (if you go far enough back) by material conditions as involuntary ones, does really conflict with the sense of personal responsibility, and that with the sense of personal responsibility is bound up the moral will. Nor is this all. It may be a small matter that determinism should render it thoroughly irrational to feel righteous indignation at the misconduct of other people. It cannot be wholly without importance that it should render it equally irrational to feel righteous indignation at our own. Self-condemnation, repentance, remorse, and the whole train of cognate emotions, are really so useful for the promotion of virtue that it is a pity to find them at a stroke thus deprived of all reasonable foundation, and reduced, if they are to survive at all, to the position of amiable but unintelligent weaknesses. It is clear, moreover, that these emotions, if they are to fall, will not fall alone. What is to become of moral admiration? The virtuous man will, indeed, continue to deserve and to receive admiration of a certain kind the admiration, namely, which we justly accord to a well-made machine; but this is a very different sentiment from that at present evoked by the heroic or the saintly; and it is, therefore, much to be feared that, at least in the region of the higher feelings, the world will be no great gainer by the effective spread of sound naturalistic doctrine. No doubt this conflict between a creed which claims intellectual assent and emotions which have their root and justification in beliefs which are deliberately rejected, is greatly mitigated by the precious faculty which the human race enjoys of quietly ignoring the logical consequences of its own accepted theories. If the abstract reason by which such theories are contrived always ended in producing a practice corresponding to them, natural selection would long ago have killed off all those who possessed abstract reason. If a complete accord between practice and speculation were required of us, philosophers would long ago have been eliminated. Nevertheless, the persistent conflict between that which is thought to be true, and that which is felt to be noble and of good report, not only produces a sense of moral unrest in the individual, but makes it impossible for us to avoid the conclusion that the creed which leads to such results is, somehow, unsuited for ’ such beings as we are in such a world as ours.’

There is thus an incongruity between the sentiments subservient to morality, and the naturalistic account of their origin. It remains to inquire whether any better harmony prevails between the demands of the ethical imagination and what Naturalism tells us concerning the final goal of all human endeavour. This is plainly not a question of small or subsidiary importance, though it is one which I shall make no attempt to treat with anything like completeness. Two only of these ethical demands is it necessary, indeed, that I should here refer to: that which requires the ends prescribed by morality to be consistent; and that which requires them to be adequate. Can we say that either one or the other is of a kind which the naturalistic theory is able to satisfy? The first of these questions that relating to consistency will no doubt be dealt with in different ways by various schools of moralists; but by whatever path they travel, all should arrive at a negative conclusion. Those who hold as I do. that ’ reasonable self-love’ has a legitimate position among ethical ends; that as a matter of fact it is a virtue wholly incompatible with what is commonly called selfishness; and that society suffers not from having too much of it, but from having too little, will probably take the view that, until the world undergoes a very remarkable transformation, a complete harmony between ’ egoism ’ and ’ altruism,’ between the pursuit of the highest happiness for one’s self and the highest happiness for other people, can never be provided by a creed which refuses to admit that the deeds done and the character formed in this life can flow over into another, and there permit a reconciliation and an adjustment between the conflicting principles which are not always possible here. To those, again, who hold (as I think, erroneously), both that the ’greatest happiness of the greatest number ’is the right end of action, and also that, as a matter of fact, every agent invariably pursues his own, a heaven and a hell, which should make it certain that principle and interest were always in agreement, would seem almost a necessity. Not otherwise, neither by education, public opinion, nor positive law, can there be any assured harmony produced between that which man must do by the constitution of his will, and that which he ought to do according to the promptings of his conscience. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that those moralists who are of opinion that ’ altruistic ’ ends alone are worthy of being described as moral, and that man is not incapable of pursuing them without any self regarding motives, require no future life to eke out their practical system. But even they would probably not be unwilling to admit, with the rest of the world, that there is something jarring to the moral sense in a comparison between the distribution of happiness and the distribution of virtue, and that no better mitigation of the difficulty has yet been suggested than that which is provided by a system of ’ rewards and punishments,’ impossible in any universe constructed on strictly naturalistic principles. With this bare indication of some of the points which naturally suggest themselves in connection with the first question suggested above, I pass on to the more interesting problem raised by the second: that which is concerned with the emotional adequacy of the ends prescribed by Naturalistic Ethics. And in order to consider this to the best advantage I will assume that we are dealing with an ethical system which puts these ends at their highest; which charges them, as it were, to the full with all that, on the naturalistic theory, they are capable of containing. Taking, then, as my text no narrow or egoistic scheme, I will suppose that in the perfection and felicity of the sentient creation we may find the all-inclusive object prescribed by morality for human endeavour. Does this, then, or does it not, supply us with all that is needed to satisfy our ethical imagination? Does it, or does it not, provide us with an ideal end, not merely big enough to exhaust our energies, but great enough to satisfy our aspirations? At first sight the question may seem absurd. The object is admittedly worthy; it is admittedly beyond our reach. The unwearied efforts of countless generations, the slow accumulation of inherited experience, may, to those who find themselves able to read optimism into evolution, promise some faint approximation to the millennium at some far distant epoch. How, then, can we, whose own contribution to the great result must be at the best insignificant, at the worst nothing or worse than nothing, presume to think that the prescribed object is less than adequate to our highest emotional requirements? The reason is plain: our ideals are framed, not according to the measure of our performances, but according to the measure of our thoughts; and our thoughts about the world in which we live tend, under the influence of increasing knowledge, constantly to dwarf our estimate of the importance of man, if man be indeed, as Naturalism would have us believe, no more than a phenomenon among phenomena, a natural object among other natural objects. For what is man looked at from this point of view? Time was when his tribe and its fortunes were enough to exhaust the energies and to bound the imagination of the primitive sage. 1 The gods’

1 The line of thought here is identical with that which I pursued in an already published essay on the Religion of Humanity. I peculiar care, the central object of an attendant universe, that for which the sun shone and the dew fell, to which the stars in their courses ministered, it drew its origin in the past from divine ancestors, and might by divine favour be destined to an indefinite existence of success and triumph in the future. These ideas represent no early or rudimentary stage in the human thought, yet have we left them far behind. The family, the tribe, the nation, are no longer enough to absorb our interests. Man past, present, and future lays claim to our devotion. What, then, can we say of him? Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the Heaven descended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets. Of the combination of causes which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science, indeed, as yet knows nothing. It is enough that from such beginnings famine, disease, and mutual slaughter, fit nurses of the future lords of creation, have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to feel that it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is insignificant. We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid ac- have not hesitated to borrow the phraseology of that essay wherever it seemed convenient. quiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. ‘Imperishable monuments ’ and ’ immortal deeds,’ death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that is be better or be worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless generations to effect.

It is no reply to say that the substance of the Moral Law need suffer no change through any modification of our views of man’s place in the universe. This may be true, but it is irrelevant. We desire, and desire most passionately when we are most ourselves, to give our service to that which is Universal, and to that which is Abiding. Of what moment is it, then (from this point of view), to be assured of the fixity of the moral law when it and the sentient world, where alone it has any significance, are alike destined to vanish utterly away within periods trifling beside those with which the geologist and the astronomer lightly deal in the course of their habitual speculations? No doubt to us ordinary men in our ordinary moments considerations like these may seem far off and of little meaning. In the hurry and bustle of every-day life death itself the death of the individual seems shadowy and unreal; how much more shadowy, how much less real, that remoter but not less certain death which must some day overtake the race! Yet, after all, it is in moments of reflection that the worth of creeds may best be tested; it is through moments of reflection that they come into living and effectual contact with our active life. It cannot, therefore, be a matter to us of small moment that, as we learn to survey the material world with a wider vision, as we more clearly measure the true proportions which man and his performances bear to the ordered Whole, our practical ideal gets relatively dwarfed and beggared, till we may well feel inclined to ask whether so transitory and so unimportant an accident in the general scheme of things as the fortunes of the human race can any longer satisfy aspirations and emotions nourished upon beliefs in the Everlasting and the Divine.