CORiSrgLL UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES ITHACA. N. Y. 14853 URIS UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924005446475 HERBERT SPENCER. THE DATA ^ ^ s ^ OFETHIGS By HERBERT SPENCER oe Author of " FIRST PRINCIPLES," " EDUCATION." etc. A. L. BURT COMPANY, ^ ^ ^ JB ^ jt jt PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK URIS UBRARX APK U 1935 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. A EBFEEENCE to the programme of the " System of Synthetic Philosophy " will show that the chapters herewith issued constitute the first division of the work on the Prvnevples of MoraUly, with which the System ends. As the second and third volumes of the Principles of Sociology are as yet unpublished, this installment of the succeeding work appears out of its place. I have been led thus to deviate from the order originally set down by the fear that persistence in con- forming to it might result in leaving the final work of the series unexecuted. Hints, repeated of late years with increasing frequency and distinctness, have shown me that health may permanently fail, even if fife does not end, before I reach the last part of the task I have marked out for myself. This last part of the task it is to which I regard all the preceding parts as sub- sidiary. "Written as far back as 1842, my first essay, consisting of letters on The Proper Sphere of Govern- ment, vaguely indicated what I conceived to be certain general principles of right and wrong in political con- duct, and from that time onward my ultimate purpose, lying behind all proximate purposes, h-as been that o:f finding for the principles of right and wrong, in con- duct at large, a scientific basis. To leave this purpogQ 1 V A UTHOE'S PREfA CE. unfulfilled, after making so extensive a preparation for fulfilling it, would be a failure the probability of which I do not like to contemplate, and I am anxious to pre- clude it, if not wholly, still partially. Hence the step I now take. Though this first division of the work terminating the Synthetic Philosophy, cannot, of course, contain the specific conclusions to be set forth in the entire work, yet it implies them in such wise that, definitely to formulate them requires nothing beyond logical deduction. I am the more anxious to indicate in outline, if I cannot complete, this final work, because the establish- ment of rules of right conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need. Now, that moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin, the secularization of morals is becoming impera- tive. Few things can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has grown up to replace it. Most of those who reject the current creed appear to assume that the controlling agency furnished by it may safely be thrown aside, and the vacancy left unfilled by any other controlling agency. Meanwhile, those who defend the current creed allege that in the absence of the guidance it yields, no guid- ance can exist : divine commandments they think the only possible guides. Thus, between these extreme opponents, there is a certain community. The one holds that the gap left by disappearance of the code of supernatural ethics need not be filled by a code of natural ethics, and the other holds that it cannot be so filled. Both contemplate a vacuum, which the one wishes and the other fears. As the change which AVTMOR'a PREFACE. V promises or threatens to bring about this state, desired or dreaded, is rapidly progressing, those who believe that the vacuum can be filled, and that it must be filled, are called on to do something in pursuance of their belief. To this more special reason I may add a more general reason. Great mischief has been done by the repellent aspect habitually given to moral rule by its expositors, and immense benefits are to be anticipated from presenting moral rule under that attractive aspect which it has when undistorted by superstition and asceticism. If a father, sternly enforcing numer- ous commands, some needful and some needless, adds to his severe control a behavior wholly unsympathetic ; if his children have to take their pleasures by stealth, or, when timidly looking up from their pla}'^, ever meet a cold glance or more frequently a frown, his govern- ment will inevitably be disliked, if not hated, and the aim will be to evade it as much as possible. Contrari- wise, a father who, equally firm in maintaining restraints needful for the well-being of his children or the well-being of other persons, not only avoids need- less restraints, but, giving his sanction to all legitimate gratifications and providing the means for them, looks on at their gambols with an approving smile, can scarcely fail to gain an influence which, no less efiicient for the time being, will also be permanently efiicient. The controls of such two fathers symbolize the controls of Morality as it is and Morality as it should be. Nor does mischief result only from this undue severity of the ethical doctrine bequeathed us by the harsh past. Further mischief results from the imprac- vi AUTHOR'S PREFACE. ticability of its ideal. In violent reaction against the utter selfishness of life as carried on in barbarous societies, it has insisted on a life utterly unselfish. But just as the rampant egoism of a brutal militancy was not to be remedied by attempts at the absolute sub- jection of the ego in convents and monasteries, so neither is the misconduct of ordinary humanity, as now existing, to be remedied by upholding a standard of abnegation beyond human achievement. Eather the effect is to produce a despairing abandonment of all attempts at a higher life. And not only does an effort to achieve the impossible end in this way, but it simul- taneously discredits the possible. By association with rules that cannot be obeyed, rules that can be obeyed lose their authority. Much adverse comment will, I doubt not, be passed on the theory of right conduct which the following pages shadow forth. Critics of a certain class, far from rejoicing that ethical principles otherwise derived by them, coincide with ethical principles scientifically de- rived, are offended by the coincidence. Instead of rec- ognizing essential likeness they enlarge on superficial difference. Since the days of persecution, a curious change has taken place in the behavior of so-called orthodoxy toward so-called heterodoxy. The time was when a heretic, forced by torture to recant, satis- fied authority by external conformity : apparent agree- ment sufficed, however profound continued to be the real disagreement. But now that the heretic can no longer be coerced into professing the ordinary belief, his belief is made to appear as much opposed to the ordinary as possible. Does he diverge from established theological dogma ? Then he shall be an atheist ; how- AUTHOR'S PREFACE. vii ever inadmissible he considers the term. Does he think spiritualistic interpretations of phenomena not valid? Then he shaU be classed as a materialist ; indignantly though he repudiates the name. And in like manner, what differences exist between natural morality and supernatural morality, it has become the policy to ex- aggerate into fundamental antagonisms. In pursuance of this pohcy, there will probably be singled out for reprobation from. this volume, doctrines which, taken by themselves, may readily be made to seem utterly wrong. "With a view to clearness, I have treated sep- arately some correlative aspects of conduct, drawing conclusions either of which becomes untrue if divorced from the other; and have thus given abundant oppor- tunity for misrepresentation. The relations of this work to works preceding it in the series are such as to involve frequent reference. Containing, as it does, the outcome of principles set forth in each of them, I have found it impracticable to dispense with re-statements of those principles. Fur- ther, the presentation of them in their relations to dif- ferent ethical theories, has made it needful, in every case, briefly to remind the reader what they are, and ■ how they are derived. Hence an amount of repetition which to some will probably appear tedious. I do not, however, much regret this almost unavoidable result ; for only by varied iteration can alien conceptions be forced on reluctant minds. Jvne, 1879. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Page. Conduct in Qeneral 1 CHAPTER II. The Evolution of Conduct 7 CHAPTER III. Good and Bad Conduct 33 CHAPTER IV. Ways of Judging Conduct 54 CHAPTER V. The Physical View 75 CHAPTER VI. The Biological View 88 CHAPTER VIL The Psychological View 131 CHAPTER Vni. Thtf Sociological View 157 CHAPTER IX. Criticisms and Explanations 178 CHAPTER X. j The Relativity of Pains and Pleasures 306 CHAPTER XI. Egoism versus Altruism 321 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER XII. PAGK Altruism versus Egoism 231 CHAPTER XIII. Trial and Compromise 258 CHAPTER XIV. Couciliation 285 CHAPTKS IV Absolute and Relative Ethics ,.. 304 CHAPTER XVI. The Scope of Ethics 833 THE DATA OF ETHICS. CHAPTEE I. CONDUCT IN GENEEAL. § 1. The doctrine that correlatives imply one an- other — that a father cannot be thought of witiiout tninking. of a child, and that there can be no con- sciousness of superior without a consciousness of in- ferior — has for one of its common examples the necessary connection between the conceptions of whole and part. Beyond the primary truth that no idea of a whole can be framed without a nascent idea of parts constituting it, and that no idea of a part can be framed without a nascent idea of some whole to which it belongs, there is the secondary truth that there can be no correct idea of a part without a correct idea of the correlative whole. There are several ways in which inadequate knowledge of the one involves inadequate knowledge of the other. If the part is conceived without any reference to the whole, it becomes itself a whole — an independent entity ; and its relations to existence in general are misapprehended. Further, the size of the part as compared with the size of the whole must be misap- prehended unless the whole is not only recognized as including it, but is figured in its total extent. And 2 THE DATA OF ETHICS. again, the position which the part occupies in relation to other parts, cannot be rightly conceived unless there is some conception of the whole in its distribu- tion as well as in its amount. Still more when part and whole, instead of being statically related only, are dynamically related, must there be a general understanding of the whole before the part can be understood. By a savage who has never seen a vehicle, no idea can be formed of the use and action of a wheel. To the unsymmetrically- pierced disk of an eccentric, no place or purpose can be ascribed by a rustic unacquainted with machinery. Even a mechanician, if he has never looked into a piano, will, if shown a damper, be unable to conceive its function or relative value. Most of all, however, where the whole is organic, does complete comprehension of a part imply exten- sive comprehension of the whole. Suppose a being ignorant of the human body to find a detached arm. If not misconceived by him as a supposed whole, in- stead of being conceived as a part, still its relations to other parts, and its structure, would be wholly inexplicable. Admitting that the co-operation of its bones and muscles might be divined, yet no thought could be framed of the share taken by the arm in the ' actions of the unknown whole it belonged to; nor could any interpretation be put upon the nerves and vessels ramifying through it, which severally refer to certain central organs. A theory of the structure of the arm implies a theory of the structure of the body at large. And this truth holds not of material aggregates only, but of immaterial aggregates— aggregated mo- CONB UCT m GENERAL. 3 tions, deeds, thoughts, words. The moon's movements cannot be fully interpreted without taking into ac- count the movements of the Solar System at large. The process of loading a gun is meaningless until the subsequent actions performed with the gun are known. A fragment of a sentence, it not unintelligible, is wrongly interpreted in the absence of the remainder. Cut off its beginning and end, and the rest of a demon- stration proves nothing. Evidence given by a plaintiff often misleads until the evidence which the defendant produces is joined with it. § 2. Conduct is a whole ; and, in a sense, it is an organic whole — an aggregate of inter-dependent actions performed by an organism. That division or aspect of conduct with which Ethics deals, is a part of this organic whole — a part having its components inextri- cably bound up with the rest. As currently conceived, stirring the fire, or reading a newspaper, or eating a meal, are acts with which Morality has no concern. Opening tJie window to air the room, putting on an overcoat when the weather is cold, are thought of as having no ethical significance. These, however, are all portions of conduct. The behavior we call good and the behavior we call bad, are included, along with the behavior we call indifferent, under the conception of behavior at large. The whole of which Ethics forms a part, is the whole constituted by the theory of conduct in general ; and this whole must be. under- stood before the part can be understood. Let us con- sider this proposition more closely. And first, how shall we define, conduct ? It is not co-extensive with the aggregate of actions, though it is 4 THE DATA OF ETHICS. nearly so. Such actions as those of an epileptic in a fit are not included in our conception of conduct : the conception excludes purposeless actions. And in recog- nizing this exclusion, we simultaneously recognize all that is included. The definition of conduct which emerges is either acts adjusted to ends, or else the adjustment of acts to ends, according as we contem- plate the formed body of acts, or think of the form alone. And conduct in its full acceptation must be taken as comprehending all adjustments of acts to ends, from the simplest to the most complex, whatever their special natures and whether considered separately or in their totality. Conduct in general being thus distinguished from the somewhat larger whole constituted by actions in gen- eral, let us next ask what distinction is habitually made between the conduct on which ethical judgments are passed and the remainder of conduct. As already said, a large part of ordinary conduct is indifferent. Shall I walk to the waterfall to-day ? or shall I ramble along the sea-shore ? Here the ends are ethically in- different. If I go to the waterfall, shall I go over the moor or take the path through the wood ? Here the means are ethically indifferent. And from hour to hour most of the things we do are not to be judged as either good or bad in respect of either ends or means. ISo less clear is it that the transition from indifferent acts to acts which are good or bad is gradual. If a friend who is with me has explored the sea-shore, but has not seen the waterfall, the choice of one or other end is no longer ethically indifferent. And if, the waterfall being fixed on as our goal, the way over the jnoor is too long for his strength, while the shorter COND UGT IN OENEBAL. 5 way through the wood is not, the choice of means is no longer ethically indifferent. Again, if a probable result of making the one excursion rather than the other, is that I shall not be back in time to keep an appointment, or if taking the longer route entails this risk while taking the shorter does not, the decision in favor of one or other end or means acquires in another way an ethical character ; and if the appointment is ^ one of some importance, or one of great importance, or one of lif e-and-death importance, to self or others, the ethical character becomes pronounced. These instances win sufficiently suggest the truth that conduct with which Morality is not concerned, passes into conduct which is moral or immoral, by small degrees and in countless ways. But the conduct that has to be conceived scientific- ally before we can scientifically conceive those modes of conduct which are the objects of ethical judgments, is a conduct immensely wider in range than that just indicated. Complete comprehension of conduct is not to be obtained by contemplating the conduct of human beings only ; we have to regard this as a part of uni- versal conduct — conduct as exhibited by all living creatures. For evidently this comes within our defini- tion — acts adjusted to ends. The conduct of the higher animals as compared with that of man, and the conduct of the lower animals as compared with that of the higher, mainly dififer in this, that the adjust- ments of acts to ends are relatively simple and rela- tively incomplete. And as in other cases, so in this case, we must interpret the more developed by the less developed. Just as, fully to understand the part of conduct which Ethics deals with, we must study 6 THE DATA OF ETHIGS. human conduct as a whole ; so, fully to understand human conduct as a whole, we must study it as a part of that larger whole constituted by the conduct of ani- mate beings in general. E^or is even this whole conceived with the needful fullness, so long as we think only of the conduct at present displayed around us. "We have to include in our conception the less-developed conduct out of which this has arisen in course of time. "We have to regard the conduct now shown us by creatures of all orders, as an outcome of the conduct which has brought life of every kind to its present height And this is tanta- mount to saying that our preparatory step must be to study the evolution of conduct. TEE EVOLUTION OF CONDUCT. CHAPTEE II. THE EVOLUTION OF COITDUCT. § 3. "We have become quite familiar with the idea of HA evolution of structures throughout the ascending types of animals. To a considerable degree we have become familiar with the thought that an evolution of functions has gone on pa/ri passu with the evolution of structures. Now, aavancing a step, we have to frame a conception of the evolution of conduct, as correlated with this evolution of structures and functions. These three subjects are to be definitely distinguished. Obviously the facts comparative morphology sets forth, form a whole which, though it cannot be treated in general or in detail without taking into account facts belonging to comparative physiology, is essentially independent. No less clear is it that we may devote our attention exclusively to that progressive differentiation of functions, and combination of functions, which accompanies the development of structures — may say no more about the characters and connections of organs than is implied in describing their separate and joint actions. And the subject of conduct lies outside the subject of functions, if not as far as this lies outside the subject of structures, still, far enough to make it sub- stantially separate. Tor those functions which are already variously compounded to achieve what we regard as single bodily acts, are endlessly recompounded S THE DATA OF ETHICS. to achieve that co-ordination of bodily acts which is known as conduct. We are concerned with functions in the true sense, while we think of them as processes carried on within the body ; and, without exceeding the limits of physi- ology, we may treat of their adjusted combinations, so long as these are regarded as parts of the vital consensus. If we observe how the lungs aerate the ^ blood which the heart sends to them ; how heart and lungs together supply aerated blood to the stomach, and so enable it to do its work ; how these co-operate with sundry secreting and excreting glands to further digestion and to remove waste matter ; and how all of them join to keep the brain in a fit condition for carry- ing o:a those actions which indirectly conduce to main- tenance of the life at large ; we are dealing with func- tions. Even wlien considering how parts that acts directly on the environment — legs, arms, wings — per- form their duties, we are still concerned with functions in that aspect of them, constituting physiology, so long as we restrict our attention to internal processes, and to internal combinations of them. But we enter on the subject of conduct when we begih . to study such combinations among the actions of sensory and motor organs as are externally mani- fested. Suppose that instead of observing those con- tractions of muscles by which the optic axes are converged and the foci of the eyes adjusted (which is a portion of physiology), and that instead of observing the co-operation of other nerves, muscles and bones, by which a hand is moved to a particular place and the fingers closed (which is also a portion of physi- ology), we observe a weapon being seized by a hand THE EVOL UTION OF CONB TJGT. 9 under guidance of the eyes. We now pass from the thought of combined internal functions, to the thought of combined external motions. Doubtless, if we could trace the cerebral processes which accompany these, we should find an inner physiological co-ordination corresponding with the outer co-ordination of actions. But this admission is consistent with the assertion, that when we ignore the internal combination and attend only, to the external combination, we pass from a portion of physiology to a portion of conduct. For though it may be objected that the external combina- tion instanced is too simple to be rightly included under the name conduct, yet a moment's thought shows that it is joined with what we call conduct by insensible gradations. Suppose the weapon seized is used to ward off a blow. Suppose a counter-blow is given. Suppose the aggressor runs and is chased. Suppose there comes a struggle and a handing him over to the police. Suppose there follow the many and varied acts constituting a prosecution. Obviously the initial adjustment of an act to an end, inseparable from the rest, must be included with them under the same general head; and obviously from this initial simple adjustment, having intrinsically no moral character, we pass by degrees to the most complex adjustments and to those on which moral judgments are passed. Hence, excluding all internal co-ordinations, our subject here is the aggregate of all external co-ordina- tions ; and this aggregate includes not only the sim- plest as well as the most complex performed by human beings, but also those performed by aU inferior beings considered as less or more evolved. 10 TEE DATA OF ETEICS. §4. Already the question: "What constitutes ad- vance in the evolution of conduct, as we trace it up from the lowest types of living creatures to the highest? has been answered by implication. A few examples will now bring the answer into conspicuous relief. We saw that conduct is distinguished from the totality of actions by excluding purposeless actions; but during evolution this distinction arises by degrees. In the very lowest creatures most of the movements from moment to moment made, have not more recog- nizable aims than have the struggles of an epileptic. An infusorium swims randomly about, determined in its course not by a perceived object to be pursued or escaped, but, apparently, by varying stimuli in its medium ; and its acts, unadjusted in any appreciable way to ends, lead it now into contact with some nutritive substance which it absorbs, and now into the neighborhood of some creature by which it is swal- lowed and digested. Lacking those developed senses and motor powers which higher animals possess, ninety- nine in the hundred of these minute animals, severally living for but a few hours, disappear either by in- nutrition or by destruction. The conduct is constituted of actions so little adjusted to ends, that life continues only as long as the accidents of the environment are favorable. But when, among aquatic creatures, we observe one which, though still low in type, is much higher than the infusorium — say a rotifer — we see how, along with larger size, more developed structures, and greater power of combining functions, there goes an advance in conduct. "We see how by its whirling cilia it swpks iu ^s food these small E^nimals moving^ around j ms MvoL mioir op oom vut. n tow bj its prehensile tail it fixes itself to some fit objeot ; how by withdrawing its outer organs and con- traeting its body, it preserves itself from this or that injury from time to time threatened ; and how thus, by better adjusting its own actions, it becomes less depend- ent on the actions going on around, and so preserves itself for a longer period. A superior sub-kingdom, as the Mollusca, still better exemplifies this contrast. When we compare a low mollusc, such as a floating ascidian, with a high moUusc, such as a cephalopod, we are again shown that greater organic evolution is accompanied by more evolved conduct. At the mercy of every marine creature large enough to swallow it, and drifted about by currents which may chance to keep it at sea, or may chance to leave it fatally stranded, the ascidian displays but little adjustment of acts to ends in comparison with the cephalopod ; which, now crawl- ing over the beach, now exploring the rocky crevices, now swimming through the open water, now darting after a fish, now hiding itself from some larger animal in a cloud of ink, and using its suckered arms at one time for anchoring itself and at another for holding fast its prey ; selects and combines and proportions its movements from minute to minute, so as to evade dangers which threaten, while utilizing chances of food which offer : so showing us varied activities which, in achieving special ends, achieve the general end of securing continuance of the activities. Among vertebrate animals we similarly trace up, along with advance in structures and functions, this advance in conduct. A fish roaming abouv at hazard in search of something to eat, able to detect it by smell 13 THE DATA OF ETHICS. or sight only within short distances, and now and again rushing away in alarm on the approach of a bigger fish, makes adjustments of acts to ends that are relatively few and simple in their kinds ; and shows us, as a con- sequence, how small is the average duration of life. So few survive to maturity that, to make up for destruction of unhatohed young and small fry and half- grown individuals, a million ova have to be spawned by a cod-fish that two may reach the spawning age. Conversely, by a highly-evolved mammal, such as an elephant, those general actions performed in common with the fish are far better adjusted to their ends. By sight as well, probably, as by odor, it detects food at relatively great distances ; and when, at intervals, there arises a need for escape, relatively great speed is attained. But the chief difference arises from the addition of new sets of adjustments. We have com- bined actions which facilitate nutrition — the breaking off of succulent and fruit-bearing branches, the selecting of edible growths throughout a comparatively wide reach ; and, in case of danger, safety can be achieved not by flight only, but, if necessary, by defence or attack : bringing into combined use tusks, trunk and ponderous feet. Further, we see various subsidiary acts adjusted to subsidiary ends — now the going into a river for cool- ness, and using the trunk as a means of projecting water over the body ; now the employment of a bough for sweeping away flies from the back ; now the making of signal sounds to alarm the herd, and adapting the actions to such sounds when made by others. Evidently, the effect of this more highly-evolved conduct is to secure the balance of the organic actions throughout far longer periods. THE EVOL UTION OF CONB UOT. U And now, on studying the doings of the highest of mammals, mankind, we not only find that the adjust- ments of acts to ends are both more numerous and better than among lower mammals, but we find the same thing on comparing the doings of higher races of men with those of lower races. If we take any one of the major ends achieved, we see greater completeness of achievement by civilized than by savage ; and we also see an achievement of relatively numerous minor ends subserving major ends. Is it in nutrition? The food is obtained more regularly in reponse to appetite ; it is far higher in quality ; it is free from dirt; it is greater in variety; it is better prepared. Is it in warmth? The characters of the fabrics and forms of the articles used for clothing, and the adaptations of them to requirements from day to day and hour to hour, are much superior. Is it in dwellings ? Between the shelter of boughs and grass which the lowest savage builds, and the mansion of the civilized man, the contrast in aspect is not more extreme than is the contrast in number and efficiency of the adjustments of acts to ends betrayed in their respective constructions. And when w-ith the ordinary activities of the savage we compare the ordinary civilized activities — as the business of the trader, which involves multiplied and complex transactions extend- ing over long periods, or as professional avocations, prepared for by elaborate studies, and daily carried on in endlessly varied forms, or as political discussions and agitations, directed now to the carrying of this measure and now to the defeating of that— we see sets of adjustments of acts to ends, not only im- mensely exceeding those seen among lower races of 14 THE DATA OF ETHIOB. men in variety and intricacy, but sets to which lower races of men present nothing analogous. And along with this greater elaboration of life produced by the pursuit of more numerous ends, there goes that in- creased duration of life which constitutes the supreme end. And here is suggested the need for supplementing this conception ot\ evolving conduct. For besides being an improving adjustment of acts to ends, such as furthers prolongation of life, it is such as furthers increased amount of life. Reconsideration of the examples above given will show that length of life is not by itself a measure of evolution of conduct ; but that quantity of life must be taken into account. An oyster, adapted by its structure to the diffused food contained in the water it draws in, and shielded by its shell from nearly all dangers, may live longer than a cuttle-fish, which has such superior powers of dealing with numerous contingencies ; but then, the sum of vital activities during any given interval is far less in the oyster than in the cuttle-fish. So a worm, ordi- narily sheltered from most enemies by the earth it burrows through, which also supplies a sufficiency of its poor food, may have greater longevity than many of its annulose relatives, the insects ; but one of these during its existence as larva and imago, may experi- ence a greater quantity of the changes which consti- tute life. Nor is it otherwise when we compare the more evolved with the less evolved among mankind. The difference between the average lengths of the lives of savage and civilized is no true measure of the difference between the totalities of their two lives, considered as aggregates of thought, feeling and THE EVOL UTION OF COND UCT. 15 action. Hence, estimating life by multiplying its length into its breadth, we must say that the augmenta- tion of it which accompanies evolution of conduct, results from increase of both factors. The more mul- tiplied and varied adjustments of acts to ends, by which the more developed creature from hour to hour fulfills more numerous requirements, severally add to the activities that are carried on abreast, and severally help to make greater the period through which such simultaneous activities endure. Each further evolu- tion of conduct widens the aggregate of actions while conducing to elongation of it. § 5. Turn we now to a further aspect of the phenom- ena, separate from, but necessarily associated with, the last. Thus far we have considered only those adjustments of acts to ends which have for their final purpose complete individual life. Now we have to consider those adjustments which have to their final purpose the life of the species. Self-preservation in each generation has all along depended on the preservation of offspring by preceding generations. And in proportion as evolution of the conduct subserving individual life is high, implying high organization, there must previously have been a highly-evolved conduct subserving nurture of the young. Throughout the ascending grades of the animal kmgdom, this second kind of conduct presents stages of advance like those which we have observed in the first. Low down, where structures and func- tions are little developed, and the power of adjusting acts to ends but slight, there is no conduct, properly so named, furthering salvation of the species. Eace- 16 THM DATA OF ETHICS. maintaining conduct, like self-maintaining conduct, arises gradually out of that which cannot be called conduct : adjusted actions are preceded by unadjusted ones. Protozoa spontaneously divide and sub-divide, in consequence of physical changes over which they have no control ; or, at other times, after a period of quies- cence, break up into minute portions which severally grow into new individuals. In neither case can con- duct be alleged. Higher up, the process is that of ripening, at intervals, germ-cells and sperm-cells, which, on occasion, are sent fofth into the surrounding water and left to their fate : perhaps one in ten thousand sur- viving to maturity. Here, again, we see only develop- ment and dispersion going on apart from parental care. Types above these, as fish which choose fit places in which to deposit their ova, or as the higher crustaceans which carry masses of ova about until they are hatched, exhibit adjustments of acts to ends which we may properly call conduct, though it is of the simplest Mnd. "Where, as among certain fish, the male keeps guard over the eggs, driving away intruders, there is an additional adjustment of acts to ends; and the applicability of the name conduct is more decided. Passing at once to creatures far superior, such as birds, which, building nests and sitting on their eggs, feed their broods for considerable periods, and give them aid after they can fly; or such as mammals which, suckling their young for a time, continue after- ward to bring them food or protect them while they feed, until they reach ages at which they can provide for themselves ; we are shown how this conduct which furthers race-maintenance evolves hand-in-hand with THE EVOL UTION OF COND UOT. 17 the conduct whicli furthers self-maintenance. That better organization which makes possible the last, makes possible the first also. Mankind exhibit a great progress of like nature. Compared with brutes, the savage, higher in his seK- maintaining conduct, is higher too in his race-main- taining conduct. A larger number of the wants of off- spring are provided for ; and parental care, enduring longer, extends to the disciphning of offspring in arts and habits which fit them for their conditions of exist- ence. Conduct of this order, equally with conduct of the first order, we see becoming evolved in a still greater degree as we ascend from savage to civilized. The adjustments of acts to ends in the rearing of chil- dren become far more elaborate, alike in number of ends met, variety of means used, and efBciency of their adaptations ; and the aid and oversight are continued throughout a much greater part of early life. In tracing up the evolution of conduct, so that we may frame a true conception of conduct in general, we have thus to recognize these two kinds as mutually de- pendent. Speaking generally, neither can evolve with- out evolution of the other ; and the highest evolutions of the two must be reached simultaneously. § 6. To conclude, however, that on reaching a per- fect adjustment of acts to ends subserving individual life and the rearing of offspring, the evolution of con- duct becomes complete, is to conclude erroneously. Or rather, I should say, it is an error to suppose that either of these kinds of conduct can assume its highest form, without its highest form being assumed by a third kind of conduct yet to be named. 18 TBB DATA OF ETSICS. The multitudinous creatures of all kinds which fill the earth, cannot live wholly apart from one another, but are more or less in presence of one another — are interfered with by one another. In large measure the adjustments of acts to ends which we have been con- sidering, are components of that " struggle for exist- ence " carried on both between members of the same species and between members of different species ; and, very generally, a successful adjustment made by one creature involves an unsuccessful adjustment made by another creature, either of the same kind or of a different kind. That the carnivore may live herbivores must die ; and that its young may be reared the young of weaker creatures must be orphaned. Maintenance of the hawk and its brood involves the deaths of many small birds ; and that small birds may multiply, their progeny must be fed with innumerable sacrificed worms and larvae. Competition among members of the same species has allied, though less conspicuous, results. The stronger often carries off by force the prey which the weaker has caught. Monopolizing certain hunting grounds, the more ferocious drive others of their kind into less favorable places. With plant-eating animals, too, the like holds : the better food is secured by the more vigorous individuals, while the less vigorous and worse fed, succumb either directly from innutrition or indirectly from resulting inability to escape enemies. That is to say, among creatures whose lives are carried on antagonistically, each of the two kinds of conduct delineated above, must remain imperfectly evolved. Even in such few kinds of them as have little to fear from enemies or competitors, as lions or tigers, there is still iaevitabl* TEE EVOL UTION OF CONB UCT. 19 failure in the adjustments of acts to ends toward the close of life. Death by starvation from inability to catch prey, shows a falling short of conduct from its ideal. This imperfectly-evolved conduct introduces us by antithesis to conduct that is perfectly evolved. Con- templating these adjustments of acts to ends which miss completeness because they cannot be made by one creature without other creatures being prevented from making them, raises the thought of adjustments such that each creature may make them without pre- venting them from being made by other creatures. That the highest form of conduct must be so distin- guished, is an inevitable implication; for, while the form of conduct is such that adjustments of acts to ends by some necessitate non-adjustments by others, there remains room for modifications which bring con- duct into a form avoiding this, and so making the totality of hfe greater. From the abstract let us pass to the concrete. Rec- ognizing men as the beings whose conduct is most evolved, let us ask under what conditions their conduct, in aU three aspects of its evolution, reaches its limit. Clearlj' while the lives led are entirely predatory, as those of savages, the adjustments of acts to ends fall short of this highest form of conduct in every way. Individual life, ill carried on from hour to hour, is prematurely cut short ; the fostering of offspring often fails, and is incomplete when it does not fail ; and in so far as the ends of self-maintenance and race-main- tenance are met, they are met by destruction of other beings of different kind or of like kind. In social groups formed by compounding and re-compouuding 30 THB DATA OF ETHICS. primitive hordes, conduct remains imperfectly evolved in proportion as there continue antagonisms between the groups and antagonisms between members of the same group — two traits necessarily associated; since the nature which prompts international aggression prompts aggression of individuals on one another. Hence the limit of evolution can be reached by con- duct only in permanently peaceful societies. That perfect adjustment of acts to ends in maintaining individual life and rearing new individuals, which is effected by each without hindering others from effect- ing like perfect adjustments, is, in its very definition, shown to constitute a kind of conduct that can be approached only as war decreases and dies out. A gap in this outline must now be filled up. There remains a further advance not yet even hinted. For beyond so behaving that each achieves his ends without preventing others from achieving their ends, the mem- bers of a society may give mutual help in the achieve- ment of ends. And if, either indirectly by industrial co-operation, or directly by volunteered aid, fellow- citizens can make easier for one another the adjust- ments of acts to ends, then their conduct assumes a stiU higher phase of evolution ; since whatever facili- tates the making of adjustments by each, increases the totality of the adjustments made, and serves to render the lives of all more complete. § 7. The reader who recalls certain passages in First Principles, in the Principles of Biology, and in the Principles of Psychology, will perceive above a re- statement, in another form, of generalizations set forth in those works. Especially will he be reminded TEE EVOL TJTION OF COND UOT. 21 of the proposition that Life is " the definite combina- tion of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-exist- ences and sequences ;" and still more of that abridged and less specific formula, in which Life is said to be "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." The presentation of the facts here made differs from the presentations before made, mainly by ignor- ing the inner part of the correspondence and attend- ing exclusively to that outer part constituted of visible actions. But the two are in harmony ; and the reader who wishes further to prepare himself for dealing with our present topic from the evolution point of view, may advantageously join to the foregoing more special aspect of the phenomena, the more general aspects before delineated. After this passing remark, I recur to the main proposition set forth in these two chapters, which has, I think, been fuUy justified. Guided by the truth that as the conduct with which Ethics deals is part of conduct at large, conduct at large must be generally understood before this part can be specially under- stood ; and guided by the further truth that to under- stand conduct at large we must understand the evolution of conduct, we have been led to see that Ethics has for its subject-matter that form which universal conduct; assumes during the last stages of its evolution. "We have also concluded that these last stages in the evolution of conduct are those displayed by the highest type of being, when he is forced, by increase of numbers, to live more and more in pres- ence of bis fellows. And there has followed the 22 THE DATA OF ETHICS. corollary that conduct gains ethical sanction in pro- portion as the activities, becoming less and less mili- tant and more and more industrial, are such as do not necessitate mutual injury or hinderance, but consist with, and are furthered by, co operation and mutual aid. These implications of the Evolution-Hypothesis, -we J shall now see harmonize with the leading moral ideas men have otherwise reached. QOOB AND BAD GONDUGT. CHAPTEE III. GOOD AND BAD CONDUCT. § 8. By comparing its meanings in different connec- tions and observing what they have in common, we learn the essential meaning of a word ; and the essen- tial meaning of a word that is variously applied, may best be learned by comparing with one another those applications of it which diverge most widely. Let us thus ascertain what good and bad mean. In which cases do we distinguish as good, a knife, a gun, a house ? And what trait leads us to speak of a bad umbrella or a bad pair of boots ? The characters here predicted by the words good and bad, are not intrinsic characters ; for apart from human wants, such things have neither merits nor demerits. We call these articles good or bad according as they are well or ill adapted to achieve prescribed ends. The good knife is one which will cut ; the good gun is one which carries far and true ; the good house is one which duly yields the shelter, comfort, and accommodation sought for. Converselj'^, the badness alleged of the umbrella or the pair of boots, refers to their failures in fulfilling the ends of keeping off the ram and comfortably protecting the feet, with due regard to appearances. So is it when we pass from inanimate objects to in- animate actions. We call a day bad in which storms prevent us from satisfying certain of our desires. A 24 THE DATA OF ETEKI& good season is the expression used when the weather has favored the production of valuable crops. If from lifeless things and actions we pass to living ones, we similarly find that these words in their cur- rent applications refer to efficient subservience. The goodness or badness of a pointer or a hunter, of a sheep or an ox, ignoring all other attributes of these creatures, refer in the one case to the fitness of their actions for effecting the ends men use them for, and in the other case to the qualities of their fiesh as adapting it to sup- port human life. And those doings of men which, morally considered, are indifferent, we class as good or bad according to their success or failure. A good jump is a jump which, remoter ends ignored, well achieves the immediate purpose of a jump ; and a stroke at billiards is called good when the movements are skillfully adjusted to the requirements. Oppositely, the badness of a walk that is shuffling and an utterance that is indistinct, is alleged because of the relative non-adaptations of the acts to the ends. Thus recognizing the meanings of good and bad as otherwise used, we shall understand better their mean- ings as used in characterizing conduct under its ethical aspects. Here, too, observation shows that we apply them according as the adjustments of acts to ends are, or are not, efficient. This truth is somewhat disguised. The entanglement of social relations is such that men's actions often simultaneously affect the welfares of self, of offspring, and of fellow-citizens. Hence results con- fusion in judging of actions as good or bad; since actions well fitted to achieve ends of one order, may prevent ends of the other orders from being achieved aOOD AND BAD CONDUCT. 25 Nevertheless, when we disentangle the three orders of ends, and consider each separately, it becomes clear that the conduct which achieves each kind of end is regarded as relatively good ; and is regarded as rela- tively bad if it fails to achieve it. Take first the primary set of adjustments — those subserving individual life. Apart from approval or disapproval of his ulterior aims, a man who fights is said to make a good defense, if his defense is well adapted for self-preservation; and, the judgments on other aspects of his conduct remaining the same, he brings down on himself an unfavorable verdict, in so far as his immediate acts are concerned, if these are futile. The goodness ascribed to a man of business, as such, is measured by the activity and ability with which he buys and sells to advantage ; and may co-exist with a hard treatment of dependents which is reprobated. Though, in repeatedly lending money to a friend who sinks one loan after another, a man is doing that which, considered in itself is held praiseworthy ; yet, if he does it to the extent of bringing on his own ruin, he is held blameworthy for a self-sacrifice carried too far. And thus is it with the opinions we express from hour to hour on those acts of people around which bear on their health and personal welfare. "You should not have done that ;" is the reproof given to one who crosses the street amid a dangerous rush of vehicles. " You ought to have changed your clothes ;" is said to another who has taken cold after getting wet. " You were right to take a receipt ;" ""you were wrong to invest without advice ;" are common criti- cisms. All such approving and disapproving utterances make the tacit assertion that, other things equal, con,-. 26 TEE DATA OF ETHICS. duct is right or wrong according as its special acts, well or ill adjusted to special ends, do or do not further the general end -of self-preservation. These ethical judgments we pass on self-regarding acts are ordinarily little emphasized ; partly because the promptings of the self-regarding desires, generally strong enough, do not need moral enforcement, and partly because the promptings of the other-regarding desires, less strong, and often overridden, do need moral enforcement. Hence results a contrast. On turning to that second class of adjustments of acts to ends which subserve the rearing of offspring, we no longer find any obscurity in the application of the words good and bad to them, according as they are eflBcient or inefficient. The expressions good nursing and bad nursing, whether they refer to the supply of food, the quantity and amount of clothing, or the due ministration to infantine wants from hour to hour, tacitl}"" recognize as special ends which ought to be fulfilled, the furthering of the vital functions, with a view to the general end of continued life and growth. A mother is called good who, ministering to all the physical needs of her children, also adjusts her behavior in ways conducive to their mental health ; and a bad father is one who either does not provide the necessaries of life for his family or otherwise acts in a manner injurious to their bodies or minds. Simi- larly of the education given to them, or provided for them. Goodness or badness is affirmed of it (often with little consistency, however) according as its methods are so adapted to physical and psychical requirements, as to further the children's lives for the time being, while prepiu'ing them for carrving on com- plete and prolonged adult life. GOOD AND BAD CONDUCT. 2? Most emphatic, however, are the applications of the words good and bad to conduct throughout that third division of it comprising the deeds by which men affect one another. In maintaining their own Mves and fos- tering their offspring, men's adjustments of acts to ends are so apt to hinder the kindred adjustments of other men, that insistance on the needful limitations has to be perpetual ; and the mischiefs caused by men's interferences with one another's life-subserving actions are so great that the interdicts have to be peremptory. Hence, the fact that the words good and bad have come to be specially associated with acts which further the complete living of others and acts which obstruct their complete living. Goodness, standing by itself, suggests, above all other things, the conduct of one who aids the sick in re-acquiring normal vitality, assists the unfortunate to recover the means of main- taining themselves, defends those who are threatened with harm in person, property, or reputation, and aids whatever promises to improve the living of all his fellows. Contrarywise, badness brings to mind, as its leading correlative, the conduct of one who, in carry- ing on his own life, damages the lives of others by injuring their bodies, destroying their possessions, defrauding them, calumniating them. Always, then, acts are called good or bad accord- ing as they are well or ill adjusted to ends; and whaitever inconsistency there is in our uses of the words arises from inconsistency of the ends. Here, however, the study of conduct in general, and of the evolution of conduct, have prepared us to harmonize these interpretations. ' The foregoing exposition shows that the conduct to which we apply the name good, is 38 THE DATA OF ETHICS. the relatively more evolved conduct ; and that bad is the name we apply to conduct which is relatively less evolved. We saw that evolution, tending ever toward self-preservation, reaches its limit when individual life is the greatest, both in length and breadth ; and now we see that, leaving other ends aside, we regard as good the conduct furthering self-preservation, and as bad the conduct tending to self-destruction. It was shown that along with increasing power or maintain- ing individual life, which evolution brings, there goes increasing power of perpetuating the species by fos- tering progeny, and that in this direction evolution reaches its limit when the needful number of young, preserved to maturity, are then fit for a life that is complete in fullness and duration ; and here it turns out that parental conduct is called good or bad as it approaches or falls short of this ideal result. Lastly, we inferred that establishment of an associated state, both makes possible and requires a form of conduct such that life may be completed in each and in his offspring, not only without preventing completion of it in others, but with furtherance of it in others ; and > we have found above, that this is the form of conduct most emphatically termed good. Moreover, just as we there saw that evolution becomes the highest possible when the conduct simultaneously achieves the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow men ; so here we see that the conduct called good rises to the conduct conceived as best, when it fulfills all three classes of ends at the same time. § 9. Is there any postulate involved in these judg- ments on conduct ? Is there any assumption made in GOOD AND BAD CONDUCT. 29 calling good the acts conduciYe to life, in self or others, and bad those which directly or indirectly tend toward death, special or general ? Yes ; an assumption of extreme significance has been made — an assumption underlying all moral estimates. The question to be definitely raised and answered before entering on any ethical discussion, is the ques- tion of late much agitated: Is life worth living? Shall we take the pessimist view ? or shall we take the optimist view ? or shall we, after weighing pessi- mistic and optimistic arguments, conclude that the balance is in favor of a qualified bptimism ? On the answer to this question depends entirely every decision concerning the goodness or badness of conduct. By those who think life is not a benefit but a misfortune, conduct which prolongs it is to be blamed rather than praised ; the ending of an unde- sirable existence being the thing to be wished, that which causes the ending of it must be applauded; while actions furthering its continuance, either in self or others, must be reprobated. Those who, on the other hand, take an optimistic view, or who, if not pure optimists, yet hold that in hfe the good exceeds the evil, are committed to opposite estimates; and must regard as conduct to be approved that which fosters life in self and others, and as conduct to be disapproved that which injures or endangers life in self or others. The ultimate question, therefore, is : Has evolution been a mistake; and especially that evolution which improves the adjustment of acts to ends in ascending stages of organization ? If it is held that there had better not have been any animate existence at all, and 30 THE DATA OF ETHICS. that the sooner it comes to an end the better ; then one set of conclusions with respect to conduct emerges. If, contrariwise, it is held that there is a balance in favor of animate existence, and if, still further, it is held that in the future this balance may be increased ; then the opposite set of conclusions emerges. Even should it be alleged that the worth of life is not to be judged by its intrinsic character, but rather by its extrinsic se- quences—by certain results to be anticipated when life has passed — the ultimate issue reappears in a new shape. For though the accompanying creed may neg- ative a deliberate shortening of life that is miserable, it cannot justify a gratuitous lengthening of such life. Legislation conducive to increased longevity would, on the pessimistic view, remain blameable, while it would be praiseworthy on the optimistic view. But now, have these irreconcilable opinions anything in common ? Men being divisible into two schools dif- fering on this ultimate question, the inquiry arises — Is there anything which their radically opposed views alike take for granted ? In the optimistic proposition, tacitly made when using the words good and bad after the ordinary manner ; and in the pessimistic proposi- tion overtly made, which implies that the words good and bad should be used in the reverse senses ; does ex- amination disclose any joint proposition — any proposi- tion which, contained in both of them, may be held more certain than either — any universally asserted pro- position ? § 10. Yes, there is one postulate in which pessimists and optimists agree. Both their arguments assume it to be self-evident that life is good or bad, according as GOOD AND BAD CONDUCT. 31 it does, or does not, bring a surplus of agreeable feel- ing. The pessimist says he condemns hfe because it results in more pain than pleasure. The optimist de- fends life in the belief that it brings more pleasure than pain. Each makes the kind of sentiency which accom- panies life the test. They agree that the justification for life as a state of being, turns on this issue — whether the average consciousness rises above indifference-point into pleasurable feeling or falls below it into painful feeling. The implication common to their antagonist views is, that conduct should conduce to preservation of the individual, of the family, and of the society, only supposing that life brings more happiness than misery. Changing the venue cannot alter the verdict. If either the pessimist, while saying that the pains of life predominate, or the optimist, while saying that the pleas- ures predominate, urges that the pains borne here are to be compensated by pleasures received hereafter ; and that so life, whether or not justified in its immediate results, is justifiled in its ultimate results; the implica- tion remains the same. The decision is still reached by balancing pleasures against pains. Animate exist- ence would be judged by both a curse, if to a surplus of misery borne here were added a surplus of misery to be borne hereafter. And for either to regard animate existence as a blessing, if here its pains were held to exceed its pleasures, he must hold that hereafter its pleasures will exceed its pains. Thus there is no escape from the admission that in calling good the conduct which subserves life, and bad the conduct which hin- ders or destroys it, and in so implying that life is a blessing and not a curse, we are inevitably asserting 32 THE DATA OF ETEIOS. that conduct is good or bad according as its total effects are pleasurable or painful. One theory only is imaginable in pursuance of which other interpretations of good and bad can be given. This theory is that men were created with the inten- tion that they should be sources of misery to them- selves; and that they are bound to continue living that their creator may have the satisfaction of contem- plating their misery. Though this is not a theory avow- edly entertained by many— though it is not formulated by any in this distinct way ; yet not a few do accept it under a disguised form. Inferior creeds are per- vaded by the belief that the sight of suffering is pleas- ^ ing to the gods. Derived from bloodthirsty ancestors, such gods are naturally conceived as gratiJSed by the infliction of pain : when living they dehghted in tor- turing other beings; and witnessing torture is sup- posed still to give them delight. The implied concep- tions long survive. It needs but to name Indian fakirs who hang on hooks, and Eastern dervishes who gash themselves, to show that in societies considerably ad- vanced are still to be found many who think that sub- mission to anguish brings divine favor. And without enlarging on facts and penances, it will be clear that there has existed, and still exists, among Christian peo- ples, the belief that the Deity whom Jephthah thought to propitiate b}' sacrificing his daughter, may be pro- pitiated by self-inflicted pains. Further, the concep- tion accompanying this, that acts pleasing to self are offensive to God, has survived along with it, and still widely prevails ; if not in formulated dogmas, yet in beliefs that are manifestly operative. Doubtless, in modern days such beliefs have assumed GOOD AND BAD CONDUCT. 33 qualified forms. The satisfactions which ferocious gods were supposed to feel in contemplating tortures, has been, in large measure, transformed into the satis- faction felt by a deity in contemplating that self- infliction of pain which is held to further eventual happmess. But clearly those who entertain this modi- fied view, are excluded from the class whose position we are here considering. Restricting ourselves to this class — supposing that from the savage who immolates victims to a cannibal god, there are descendants among the civilized, who hold that mankind were made for suffering, and that it is their duty to continue living in misery for the delight of their maker, we can only recognize the fact that devil-worshipers are not yet extinct. Omitting people of this class, if there are any, as beyond or beneath argument, we find that all others avowedly or tacitly hold that the final justification for maintaining life can only be the reception from it of a surplus of pleasurable feeling over painful feeling ; and that goodness or badness can be ascribed to acts which subserve life or hinder life only on this sup- position. And here we are brought round to those primary meanings of the words good and bad, which we passed over when considering their secondary meanings. For on remembering that we call good and bad the things which immediately produce agreeable and disagree- able sensations, and also the sensations themselves — a good wine, a good appetite, a bad smell, a bad head- ache — we see that by referring directly to pleasures and pains, these meanings harmonize with those which indirectly refer to pleasures and pains. If we call 34 FEM DATA OF ETHICS. good the enjoyable state itself, as a good laugh — if we call good the proximate cause of an enjoyable state, as good music — if we call good any agent which con- duces immediately or remotely to an enjoyable state, as a good shop, a good teacher — if we call good con- sidered intrinsically, each act so adjusted to its end as to further self-preservation and that surplus of enjoy- ment which makes self-preservation desirable — if wo call good every kind of conduct which aids the lives of others, and do this under the belief that life brings more happiness than misery ; then it becomes unde- . niable that, taking into account immediate and remote effects on all persons, the good is universally the pleasurable. §11. Sundry influences — moral, theological, and political — conspire to make people disguise from them- selves this truth. As in narrower cases so in this widest case, they become so pre-occupied with the tneans by which an end is achieved, as eventually to mistake it for the end. Just as money, which is the means of satisfying wants, comes to be regarded by a miser as the sole thing to be worked for, leaving the wants unsatisfied; so the conduct men have found preferable because most conducive to happiness has ' come to be thought of as intrinsically preferable, not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be), but to be made an ultimate end, to the exclusion of the true ultimate end. And yet cro^Ss-examina- tion quickly compels every one to confess the true ultimate end. Just as the miser, asked to justify him- self, is obliged to allege the power of money to pur- chase desirable things, as his reason for prizing it ; so QOOD AND BAD OONDUCT. 35 the moralist who thinks this conduct intrinsically good and that intrinsically bad, if pushed home, has no choice but to faU back on their pleasure-giving and pain-giving effects. To prove this it needs but to observe how impossible it would be to think of them as we do, if their effects were reversed. Suppose that gashes and bruises caused agreeable sensations, and brought in their train increased power of doing work and receiving enjoyment ; should we regard assault in the same manner as at present ? Or suppose that self-mutilation, say by cutting off a hand, was both intrinsically pleasant and furthered performance ■ of the processes by which personal welfare and the welfare of dependents is achieved ; should we hold as now, that deliberate injury to one's own body is to be reprobated ? Or again, suppose that picking a man's pocket excited in him joyful emotions, by brightening his prospects ; would theft be counted among crimes, as in existing law-books and moral codes ? In these extreme cases, no one can deny that what we call the badness of actions is ascribed to them solely for the reason that they entail pain, immediate or remote, and would not be so ascribed did they entail pleasure. If we examine our conceptions on their obverse side, tbis general fact forces itself on our attention with equal distinctness. Imagine that ministering to a sick person always increased the pains of iUness. Imagine that an orphan's relatives who took charge of it, thereby necessarily brought miseries upon it. Im- agine that liquidating another man's pecuniary claims on you redounded to his disadvantage. Imagine that crediting a man with noble behavior hindered his social welfare and consequent gratification. What should 36 THE DATA OF ETHICS. we say to these acts which now fall into the class we call praiseworthy ? Should we not contrariwise class them as blameworthy ? Using, then, as our tests, these most pronounced forms of good and bad conduct, we find it unquestion- able that our ideas of their goodness and badness really originate from our consciousness of the certainty or probability that they will produce pleasures or pains somewhere. And this truth is brought out with equal clearness by examining the standards of different moral schools; for analysis shows that every one of them derives its authority from this ultimate standard. Ethical systems are roughly distinguishable according as they take for their cardinal ideas (1) the character of the agent ; (2) the nature of his motive ; (3) the quality of his deeds ; and (4) the results. Each of these may be characterized as good or bad; and those who do not estimate a mode of life by its effects on happiness, estimate it by the implied goodness or badness in the agent, in his motive, or in his deeds. We have per- fection in the agent set up as a test by which conduct is to be judged. Apart from the agent we have his feeling considered as moral. And apart from the feel- ing we have his action considered as virtuous. Though the distinctions thus indicated have so little definiteness that the words marking them are used in- terchangeably, yet there correspond to them doctrines partially unlike one another ; which we may here con- veniently examine separately, with the view of showing that all their tests of goodness are derivative. § 12. It is strange that a notion so abstract as that of perfection, or a certain ideal completeness of nature, &00D AND BAD GONDUGT. 37 should ever have been thought one from which a system of guidance can be evolved ; as it was in a general way by Plato and more distinctly by Jonathan Edwardes. Perfection is synonymous with goodness in the highest degree ; and, hence, to define good conduct in terms of perfection, is indirectly to define good conduct in terms of itself. Naturally, therefore, it happens that the notion of perfection like the notion of goodness can be framed only in relation to ends. We allege imperfection of any inanimate thing, as a tool, if it lacks some part needful for effectual action, or if some part is so shaped as not to fulfill its purpose in the best manner. Perfection is alleged of a watch if it keeps exact time, however plain its case; and imperfection is alleged of it because of inaccurate time- keeping, however beautifully it is ornamented. Though we call things imperfect if we detect in them any injuries or flaw^s, even when these do not detract from efficiency; yet we do this because they imply that inferior workmanship, or that wear and tear, with which inefficiency is commonly joined in experience : absence of minor imperfections being habitually asso- ciated with absence of major imperfections. As , applied to living things, the word perfection has the same meaning. The idea of per.fect shape in a race-horse is derived by generalization from those observed traits of race-horses which have usually gone along with attainment of the highest speed ; and the idea of perfect constitution in a race-horse similarly refers to the endurance which enables him to continue that speed for the longest time. "With men, physically considered, it is the same : we are able to furnish no other test of perfection than that of complete power 38 THE BAT A OF ETHICS. in all the organs to fulfill their respective functions. That our conception of perfect balance among the internal parts, and of perfect proportion among the external parts, originates thus, is made clear by observ- ing that imperfection of any viscus, as lungs, heart, or liver, is ascribed for no other reason than inability to meet in full the demands w^hich the activities of the organism make on it ; and on observing that the con- ception of insufficient size, or of too great size, in a limb, is derived from accumulated experiences respect- ing that ratio among the limbs which furthers in the highest degree the performance of all needful actions. And of perfection in mental nature we have no other measure. If imperfection of memory, of judg- ment, of temper, is alleged, it is alleged because of inadequacy to the requirements of life ; and to imagine a perfect balance of the intellectual powers and of the emotions, is to imagine that proportion among them which ensures an entire discharge of each and every obligation as the occasion calls for it. So that the perfection of man considered as an agent, means the being constituted for effecting com- plete adjustment of acts to ends of every kind. And since, as shown above, the complete adjustment of acts to ends is that which both secures and constitutes the life that is most evolved, alike in breadth and length ; while, as also shown, the justification for whatever mcreases life is the reception from life of more happi- ness than misery; it follows that conduciveness to happiness is the ultimate test of perfection in a man's nature. To be fully convinced of this it needs but to observe how the proposition looks when inverted. It needs but to suppose that every approach toward per- OOOB AND BAD CONDUCT. 39 fection involved greater misery to self, or others, or both, to show by opposition that approach to perfec- tion reaUy means approach to that which secures greater happiness. § 13. Pass we now from the view of those who make excellence of being the standard to the view of those who make virtuousness of action the standard. I do not here refer to moralists who, having decided empirically or rationally, inductively or deductively, that acts of certain kinds have the character we call virtuous, argue that such acts are to be performed without regard to proximate consequences : these have ample justification. But I refer to moralists who sup- pose themselves to have conceptions of virtue as an end, underived from any other end, who think that the idea of virtue is not resolvable into simpler ideas. • This is the doctrine which appears to have been entertained by Aristotle. I say, appears to have been, because his statements are far from consistent with one another. Kecognizing happiness as the supreme end of human endeavor, it would at first sight seem that he cannot be taken as typical of those who make virtue the supreme end. Yet he puts himself in this category by seeking to define happiness in terms of virtue, instead of defining virtue in terms of happi- ness. The imperfect separation of words from things, which characterizes Greek speculation in general, seems to have been the cause of this. Ii^ primitive thought the name and the object named are associated in such wise that the one is regarded as a part of the other — so much so, that knowing a savage's name is considered by him as having some of his being, and a 40 TEE DATA OF ETHICS. consequent power to work evil on him. This belief in a real connection between word and thing, continuing through lower stages of progress, and long surviving in the tacit assumption tiiat the meanings of words are intrinsic, pervades the dialogues of Plato, and is traceable even in Aristotle. For otherwise it is not easy to see why he should have so incompletely dis- associated the abstract idea of happiness from partic- ^ ular forms of happiness. Naturally where the divorcing of words as symbols, from things as symbolized, is imperfect, there must be difficulty in giving to abstract words a sufficiently abstract meaning. If in the first stages of language the concrete name cannot be separated in thought from the concrete object it belongs to, it is inferable that in the course of forming successively higher grades of abstract names, there will have to be re- sisted the tendency to interpret each more abstract name in terms of some one class of the less abstract names it covers. Hence, I think, the fact that Aris- totle supposes happiness to be associated with some one order of human activities, rather than with all orders of human activities. Instead of including in it the pleasurable feelings accompanying actions that constitute mere living, which actions he says man has in common with vegetables ; and instead of making it include the mental states which the life of external perception yields, which he says man has in common with animals at large, he excludes these from his idea of happiness, and includes in it only the modes of consciousness accompanying rational life. Asserting that the proper work of man " consists in the active exercise of the mental capacities conformably to aOOD AND BAD CONDUOT. 41 reason," he concludes that "the supreme good of man will consist in performing this work with excel- lence or virtue: herein he will obtain happiness." And he finds confirmation for his view in its corres- pondence with views previously enunciated; sajying, "our notion nearly agrees with theirs who place happiness in virtue ; for we say that it consists in the action of virtue ; that is, not merely in the possession, but in the use." Now the implied belief that virtue can be defined otherwise than in terms of happiness (for else the proposition is that happiness is to be obtained by actions conducive to happiness) is allied to the Platonic belief that there is an ideal or absolute good, which gives to particular and relative goods their property of goodness; and an argument analogous to that which Aristotle uses against Plato's conception of good, may be used against his own conception of virtue. As with good so with virtue — it is not sin- gular but plural : in Aristotle's own classification, virtue, when treated of at large, is transformed into virtues. Those which he calls virtues must be so called in con- sequence of some common character that is either intrinsic or extrinsic. "We may class things together either because they are made alike by all having in themselves some peculiarity, as we do vertebrate animals because they all have vertebral columns ; or we may class them together because of some commu- nity in their outer relations, as when we group saws, knives, mallets, harrows, under the head of tools. Are the virtues classed as such because of some intrinsic community of nature? Then there must be identifi- able a common trait in all the cardinal virtues which 42 THE LATA OF ETHICS. Aristotle specifies, " Courage, Temperance, Liberality, Magnanimity, Magnificence, Meekness, Amiability or Friendliness, Truthfulness, Justice." What now is the trait possessed in common by Magnificence and Meek- ness? and if any such common trait can be disen- tangled, is it that which also constitutes the essential trait in Truthfulness? The answer must be. No. The virtues, then, not being classed as such because of an intrinsic community of character, must be classed as such because of something extrinsic ; and this something can be nothing else than the happiness which Aristotle says consists in the practice of them. They are united by their common relation to this result ; while they are not united by their inner natures. Perhaps still more clearly may the inference be drawn thfts : If virtue is primordial and independent, no reason can be given why there should be any cor- respondence between virtuous conduct and conduct that is pleasure-giving in its total effects on self, or others, or both ; and if there is not a necessary corres- pondence, it is conceivable that the conduct classed as virtuous should be pain-giving in its total effects. That we may see the consequence of so conceiving it, let us take the two virtues considered as tjrpically such in an- cient times and in modern times — courage and chas- tity. By the hypothesis, then, courage, displayed alike in self-defence and in defence of country, is to be con- ceived as not only entailing pains incidentally, but as being necessarily a cause of misery to the individual and to the state ; while, by implication, the absence of it redounds to personal and general well-being. Similarly, by the hypothesis,we have tQ cou(?eiv§ that irregular sex- OOOD AND BAD CONDUOT. 43 ual relations are directly and indirectly beneficial — that adultery is conducive to domestic harmony and the care- ful rearing of children ; while marital relations, in pro- portion as they are persistent, generate discord be- tween husband and wife and entail on their offspring, suffering, disease and death. Unless it is asserted that courage and chastity could still be thought of as vir- tues though thus productive of misery, it must be ad- mitted that the conception of virtue cannot be sepa- rated from the conception of happiness-producing con- duct ; and that as this holds of all the virtues, however otherwise unlike, it is from their conduciveness to hap- piness that they come to be classed as virtues. § 14. When from those ethical estimates which take perfection of nature, or virtuousness of action, as tests, we pass to those which take for test rectitude of motive, we approach the intuitional theory of morals ; and we may conveniently deal with such estimates by a criti- cism on this theory. By the intuitional theory I here mean, not that which recognizes as produced by the inherited effects of con- tinued experiences, the feelings of liking and aversion we have to acts of certain kinds ; but I mean the the- ory which regards such feelings as divinely given, and as independent of results experienced by self or ances- tors. " There is, therefore," says Hutcheson, " as each one by close attention and reflection may convince himself, a natural and inunediate determination to ap- prove certain affections and actions consequent upon them;" and since, in common with others of his time, he believes in the special creation of man, and all other beings, this "natural sense of immediate excellence" 44 THE DATA Off ETHICS. he considers as a supernaturally derived guide. Though he says that the feelings and acts thus intuitively recognized as good, " all agree in one general charac- ter, of tending to the happiness of others ;" yet he is obliged to conceive this as a pre-ordained correspond- ence. Nevertheless, it may be shown that conducive- ness to happiness, here represented as an incidental trait of the acts vs^hich receive these innate moral ap- provals, is really the test by vrhich these approvals are recognized as moral. The intuitionists place confidence in these verdicts of conscience simply because they vaguely, if not distinctly, perceive them to be con- sonant with the disclosures of that ultimate test. Observe the proof. By the hypothesis, the wrongness of murder is known by a moral intuition which the human mind was originally constituted to yield ; and the hypothesis, therefore, negatives the admission that this sense of its wrongness arises, immediately or remotely, from the consciousness that murder involves deduction from happiness, directly and indirectly. But if you ask an adherent of this doctrine to contrast his intuition with that of the Fijian, who, considering murder an honor- able action, is restless until he has distinguished him- self by killing some one ; and if you inquire of him in what way the civilized intuition is to be justified in opposition to the intuition of the savage, no course is open save that of showing how conformity to the one conduces to well-being, while conformity to the other entails suffering, individual and general. When asked why the moral sense which tells him that it is wrong to take another man's goods, should be obeyed rather than the moral sense of a Turcoman, who proves how GOOD AND BAD CONBUOT. 45 meritorious he considers theft to be by making pil- grimages to the tombs of noted robbers to make offer- ings, the intuitionist can do nothing but urge that, certainly under conditions like ours, if not also under conditions like those of the Turcomans, disregard of men's claims to their property not only inflicts imme- diate misery, but involves a social state inconsistent with happiness. Or if, again, there is required from him a justification for his feeling of repugnance to lying, in contrast with the feeling of an Egyptian, who prides himself on skill in lying (even thinking it praise- worthy to deceive without any further end than that of practicing deception), he can do no more than point to the social prosperity furthered by entire trust between man and man, and the social disorganization that follows universal untruthfulness, consequences that are necessarily conducive to agreeable feelings and disagreeable feelings respectively. The unavoidable conclusion is, then, that the intui- tionist does not, and cannot, ignore the ultimate deri- vations of right and wrong from pleasure and pain. However much he may be guided, and rightly guided, by the decisions of conscience respecting the charac- ters of acts, he has come to have confidence in thes& decisions because he perceives, vaguely but positively, that conformity to them furthers the welfare of him- self and others, and that disregard of them entails in the long run suffering on aU. Require him to name any moral-sense judgment by which he knows as right some kind of act that wUl bring a surplus of pain, taking into account the totals in this life and in any assumed other life, and you find him unable to name one : a fact proving that underneath all these intuitions 46 THE DATA OF ETHICS. respecting the goodness or badness of acts there lies the fundamental assumption that acts are good or bad according as their aggregate effects increase men's happiness or increase their misery. § 14. It is curious to see how the devil-worship of the savage, survivmg in various disguises among the civilized, and leaving as one of its products that asceticism which in many forms and degrees still pre- vails widely, is to be found influencing in marked ways men who have apparently emancipated them- selves, not only from primitive superstitions but from more developed superstitions. Views of life and con- duct which originated with those who propitiated deified ancestors by self-tortures enter even still into the ethical theories of many persons who have years since cast away the theology of the past, and suppose themselves to be no longer influenced by it. In the writings of one who rejects dogmatic Chris- tianity, together with the Hebrew cult which preceded it, a career of conquest costing tens of thousands of lives is narrated with a sympathy comparable to that rejoicing which the Hebrew traditions show us over destruction of enemies in the name of God. You may find, too, a delight in contemplating the exercise of despotic power, joined with insistance on the salutari- ness of a state in which the wills of slaves and citizens are humbly subject to the wills of masters and rulers — a sentiment also reminding us of that ancient Oriental life which biblical narratives portray. Along with this worship of the strong man — along with this justifica- tion of whatever force may be needed, for carrying out his ambition — along with this yearning for a form of GOOD AND BAD CONDUCT. 4? society in which supremacy of the few is unrestrained and the virtue of the many consists in obedience to them, we not unnaturally find repudiation of the ethical theory which takes, in some shape or other, the greatest happiness as the end of conduct; we not un- naturally find this utilitarian philosophy designated by the contemptuous title of " pig-philosophy." And then, serving to show what comprehension there has been of the philosophy so nicknamed, we are told that not hap- piness but blessedness must be the end. Obviously, the implication is that blessedness is not a kind of happiness; and this implication at once suggests the question — What mode of feeling is it ? If it is a state of consciousness at all, it is necessarily one of three states — painful, indifferent, or pleasurable. Does it leave the possessor at the zero point of sen- tienc}' ? Then it leaves him just as he would be if he had not got it. Does it not leave him at the zero point 1 Then it must leave him below zero or above zero. Each of these possibilities may be conceived under two forms. That to which the term blessedness is applied may be a particular state of consciousness — one among the many states that occur; and on this supposition we have to recognize it as a pleasurable state, an indifferent state, or a painful state. Other- wise, blessedness is a word not applicable to a particular state of consciousness, but characterizes the aggregate of its states ; and in this case the average of the aggre- gate is to be conceived as one in which the pleasurable predominates, or one in which the painful predomi- nates, or one in which pleasures and pains exactly cancel one another. Let us take in turn these two imaginable applications of the word. 48 TEE DATA OF ETRIOS. " Blessed are the merciful ;" "Elessed are the peace- makers ;" " Blessed is he that considereth the poor ;" are sayings which we may fairly take as conveying the accepted meaning of blessedness. What now shall we say of one who is, for the time being, blessed in per- forming an act of mercy ? Is his mental state pleasur- able ? If so the hypothesis is abandoned : blessedness is a particular form of happiness. Is the state indif- ferent or painful ? In that case the blessed man is so devoid of sympathy that relieving another from pain, or the fear of pain, leaves him either wholly unmoved, or gives him an unpleasant emotion. Again, if one who is blessed in making peace receives no gratification from the act, then seeing men injure each other does not affect him at all, or gives him a pleasure which is changed into a pain when he prevents the injury. Once more, to say that the blessedness of one who "considereth the poor^' implies no agreeable feeling, is to say that his consideration for the poor leaves him without feeling or entails on him a disagreeable feeling. So that if blessedness is a particular mode of conscious- ness temporarily existing as a concomitant of each kind of beneficent action, those who deny that it is a pleasure, or constituent of happiness, confess them- selves either not pleased by the welfare of others or displeased by it. Otherwise understood, blessedness must, as we have seen, refer to the totality of feelings experienced during the life of one who occupies himself with the actions the word connotes. This also presents the three pos- sibilities — surplus of pleasures, surplus of pains, equality of the two. If the pleasurable states are in excess, then the blessed life can be distinguished from any GOOB AND BAD CONDUCT. 49 other pleasurable life only by the relative amount, or the quality, of its pleasures : it is a life which makes happiness of a certain kind and degree its end ; and the assumption that blessedness is not a form of happiness, lapses. If the blessed life is one in which the pleasures and the pains received balance one an- other, so producing an average that is indifferent ; or if it is one in which the pleasures are outbalanced by the pains, then the blessed life has the character which ■Jhe pessimist alleges of life at large, and therefore re- gards it as cursed. Annihilation is best, he will argue, since if an average that is indifferent is the outcome of the blessed life, annihilation at once achieves it ; and if a surplus of suffering is the outcome of this highest kind of life called blessed, still more should life in gen- eral be ended. A possible rejoinder must be named and disposed of. "While it is admitted that the particular kind of con- sciousness accompanying conduct that is blessed, is pleas- urable, it may be contended that pursuance of this con- duct and receipt of the pleasure, brings by the implied self-denial, and persistent effort, and perhaps bodily in- jury, a suffering that exceeds it in amount. And it may then be urged that blessedness, characterized by this ex- cess of aggregate pains over aggregate pleasures, should nevertheless be pursued as an end, rather than the hap- piness constituted by excess of pleasures over pains. But now, defensible though this conception of blessed- ness may be when hmited to one individual, or some individuals, it becomes indefensible when extended to all individuals ; as it must be if blessedness is taken for the end of conduct. To see this we need but ask for what purpose are these pains in excess of pleasures to 50 THB DATA OF BTB108. be borne. Blessedness being the ideal state for aU per- sons, and the self-sacrifioes made by each person in pur- suance of this ideal state, having for their end to help all other persons in achieving the like ideal state, it re- sults that the blessed though painful state of each, is to be acquired by furthering the like blessed though painful states of others : the blessed consciousness is to be constituted by the contemplation of their con- sciousnesses in a condition of average suffering. Does any one accept this inference ? If not, his rejection of it involves the admission that the motive for bearing pains in performing acts called blessed, is not the ob- taining for others like pains of blessedness, but the ob- taining of pleasures for others, and that thus pleasure somewhere is the tacitly implied ultimate end. In brief, then, blessedness has for its necessary con- dition of existence, increased happiness, positive or neg- ative, in some consciousness or other, and disappears utterly if we assume that the actions called blessed are known to cause decrease of happiness in others as well as in the actor. § 15. To make clear the meaning of the general ar- gument set forth in this chapter, its successive parts must be briefly summarized. That which in the last chapter we found to be highly evolved conduct, is that which, in this chapter, we find to be what is called good conduct ; and the ideal goal to the natural evolution of conduct there recognized we here recognize as the ideal standard of conduct eth- ically considered. The acts adjusted to ends which, while constituting the outer visible life from moment to moment further GOOD AND BAD CONDUCT. 51 the continuance of life, we saw become, as evolution progresses, better adjusted, until finally they make the life of each individual entire in length and breadth, at the same time that they efficiently subserve the rear- ing of young, and do both these, not only without hin- dering- other individuals from doing the like, but while giving aid to them in doing the like. And here we see that goodness is asserted of such conduct under each of these three aspects. Other things equal, well- adjusted, self -conserving acts we call good; other things equal, we call good the acts that are well adjusted for bringing up progeny capable of complete living ; and other things equal,we ascribe goodness to acts which further the complete living of others. This judging as good, conduct which conduces to life in each and all, we found to involve the assumption that animate existence is desirable. By the pessimist, conduct which subserves life cannot consistently be called good: to call it good implies some form of optimism. "We saw, however, that pessimists and optimists both start with the postulate that life is a blessing or a curse, according as the average conscious- ness accompanying it is pleasurable or painful. And since avowed or implied pessimists, and optimists of one or other shade, taken together constitute all men, it results that this postulate is universally accepted. "Whence it follows that if we call good the conduct conducive to life, we can do so only with the impli- cation that it is conducive to a surplus of pleasures over pains. The truth that conduct is considered by us as good or bad, according as its aggregate results, to self or gther§ or both, are pleasurable or painful, we found oa 52 THE DATA OF ETEIOS. examination to be involved in all the current judg- ments on conduct : the proof being that reversing the applications of the words creates absurdities. And we found that every other proposed standard of conduct derives its authority from this standard. "Whether perfection of nature is the assigned proper aim, or vir- tuousness of action, or rectitude of motive, we saw that definition of the perfection, the virtue, the recti- tude, inevitably brings us down to happiness experi- enced in some form, at some time, by some person, as the fundamental idea. Nor could we discover any intelligible conception of blessedness, save one which implies a raising of consciousness, individual or general, to a happier state; either by mitigating pains or increasing pleasures. Even with those who judge of conduct from the religious point of view, rather than from the ethical point of view, it is the same. Men who seek to pro- pitiate God by inflicting pains on themselves, or refrain from pleasures to avoid offending him, do so to escape greater ultimate pains or to get greater ultimate pleasures. If by positive or negative suffering here, they expected to achieve more suffer- ing hereafter, they would not do as they do. That which they now think duty they would not think duty if it promised eternal misery instead of eternal happiness. l!fay, if there be any who believe that human beings were created to be unhappy, and that they ought to continue living to display their unhappiness for the satisfaction of their creator, such believers are obliged to use this standard of judgment ; for the pleasure of their diabolical god is the end to be achieved. GOOD AND BAD CONDUCT. 53 So that no school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable state of feeling called by whatever name — gratification, enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an inexpugnable element of the conception. It is as much a necessary form of moral intuition as space is a necessary form of intellectual intuition. 54 TEE DATA OF ETHI08. CHAPTEE IV. "WA.TS OF JUDGING CONDUCT. § 17. Intellectual progress is by no one trait so adequately characterized as by development of "the idea of causation, since development of this idea involves development of so many other ideas. Before any way can be made, thought and language must have advanced far enough to render properties or attri- butes thinkable as such, apart from objects ; which, in low stages of human intelligence, they are not. Again, even the simplest notion of cause, as we understand it, can be reached only after many like instances have been grouped into a simple generalization ; and through all ascending steps, higher notions of causation imply wider notions of generality. Further, as there must be clustered in the mind concrete causes of many kinds before there can emerge the conception of cause, apart from particular causes, it follows that progress in abstractness of thought is implied. Concomitantly, there is implied the recognition of constant relations among phenomena, generating ideas of uniformity of sequence and of co-existence — the idea of natural law. These advances can go on only as fast as per- ceptions and resulting thoughts are made definite by the use of measures, serving to familiarize the mind with exact correspondence, truth, certainty. And only when growing science accumulates examples of WA TS OF JUDGING COND UCT. 55 quantitative relations, foreseen and verified, through- out a widening range of phenomena, does causation come to be conceived as necessary and universal. So that though all these cardinal conceptions aid one another in developing, we may properly say that the conception of causation especially depends for its development on the development of the rest ; and therefore is the best measure of intellectual develop- ment at large. How slowly, as a consequence of its dependence, the conception of causation evolves, a glance at the evi- dence shows. We hear with surprise of the savage who, falling down a precipice, ascribes the failure of his foothold to a malicious demon ; and we smile at the kindred notion of the ancient Greek, that his death was prevented by a goddess who unfastened for him the thong of the helmet by which his enemy was dragging him. But daily, without surprise, we hear men who describe themselves as saved from shipwreck hj " divine interposition," who speak of having " provi- dentially" missed a train which met with a fatal disaster, and who called it a "mercy " to have escaped injury from a falling chimney-pot — men who, in such cases, recognize physical causation no more than do the uncivilized or semi-civihzed. The Veddah who thinks that failure to hit an animal with his arrow resulted from inadequate invocation of an ancestral spirit, and the Christian priest who says prayers over a sick man in the expectation that the course of his disease wiU. so be stayed, differ only in respect of the agent from whom they expect supernatural aid and the phenomena to be altered by him : the necessary relations among causes and effects are tacitly ignored 56 THE DATA OF ETHICS. by the last as much as by the first. Deficient belief in causation is, indeed, exemplified even in those whose discipline has been specially fitted to generate this belief — even in men of science. For a generation after geologists had become uniformitarians in Geol- ogy, they remained catastrophists in Biology : while recognizing none but natural agencies in the genesis of the earth's crust, they ascribed to supernatural agency the genesis of the organisms on its surface. Nay more — among those who are convinced that living things in general have been evolved by the continued interaction of forces everywhere operating, there are some who make an exception of man ; or who, if they admit that his body has been evolved in the same manner as the bodies of other creatures, allege that his mind has been not evolved but specially created. If, then, universal and necessary causation is only now approaching full recognition, even by those whose investigations are daily re - illustrating it, we may expect to find it very little recognized among men at large, whose culture has not been calculated to impress them with it ; and we may expect to find it least rec- ognized by them in respect of those classes of phe- nomena amid which, in consequence of their complex- ity, causation is most difficult to trace — the psychical, the social, the moral. Why do I here make these reflections on what seems an irrelevant subject ? I do it because on studying the various ethical theories I am struck with the fact that they are all characterized either by entire absence of the idea of causation, or by inadequate presence of it. Whether theological, political, intuitional, or utili- tarian, they all display, if not in the same degree,, still, WA TS OF JUDGING COND UCT. 57 each in a large degree, the defects which result from this lack. We wiU consider them in the order named. § 18. The school of morals properly to be considered as the still extant representative of the most ancient school, is that which recognizes no other rule of con- duct than the alleged will of God. It originates with the savage whose only restraint beyond fear of his fellow man, is fear of an ancestral spirit ; and whose notion of moral duty as distinguished from his notion of social prudence, arises from this fear. Here the ethical doctrine and the religious doctrine are identical — ^have in no degree differentiated. This primitive form of ethical doctrine, changed only by the gradual dying out of multitudinous minor supernatural agents and accompanying development of one universal supernatural agent, survives in great strength down to our own day. Religious creeds, established and dissenting, all embody the belief that right and wrong are right and wrong simply in virtue of divine enactment. And this tacit assumption has passed from systems of theology into systems of morality ; or rather let us say that moral systems in early stages of development, Mttle differentiated from the accompanying theological systems, have partici- pated in this assumption. "We see this in the works of the Stoics, as well as in the works of certain Christian moralists. Among recent ones I may instance the Essays on the Prmxiiples of MoraUi/y, by Jonathan Dymond, a Quaker, which makes " the authority of the Deity the sole ground of duty, and His communi- cated wUl the only ultimate standard of right an4 68 TEE DATA OF ETHIGS. wrong." Nor is it by writers belonging to so relatively unphilosophical a sect only that this view is held ; it is held with a difference by writers belonging to sects contrariwise distinguished. For these assert that in the absence of behef in a deity, there would be no moral guidance; and this amounts to asserting that moral truths have no other origin than the will of God, which, if not considered as revealed in sacred writings, must be considered as revealed in conscience. This assumption, when examined, proves to be suicidal. If there are no other origins for right and wrong than this enunciated or intuited divine will, then, as alleged, were there no knowledge of the divine will, the acts now known as wrong would not be known as wrong. But if men did not know such acts to be wrong because contrary to the divine will, and so, in committing them, did not offend by dis- obedience; and, if they could not otherwise know them to be wrong, then they might commit them indifferently with the acts now classed as right : the results, practically considered, would be the same. In so far as secular matters are concerned, there would be no difference between the two ; for to say that in the affairs of life any evils would arise from con- tinuing to do the acts called wrong, and ceasing to do the acts called right, is to say that these produce in themselves certain mischievous consequences and certain beneficial consequences ; which is to say there is another source for moral rules than the revealed or inferred divine will : they may be established by induc- tion from these observed consequences. From this implication I see no escape. It must be WAYS OF JUDGING CONDUCT. 59 either admitted or denied that the acts called good and the acts called bad, naturally conduce, the one to hu- man well-being and the other to human ill-being. Is it admitted ? Then the admission amounts to an asser- tion that the conduciveness is shown by experience ; and this involves abandonment of the doctrine that there is no origin for morals apart from divine injunc- tions. Is it denied that acts classed as good and bad differ in their effect ? Then it is tacitly affirmed that human affairs would go on just as well in ignorance of the distinction; and the alleged need for command- ments from God disappears. And here we see how entirely wanting is the con- ception of cause. This notion that such and such ac- tions are made respectively good and bad simply by divine injunction, is tantamount to the notion that such and such actions have not in the nature of things such and such kinds of effects. If there is not an uncon- sciousness of causation there is an ignoring of it. § 19. Following Plato and Aristotle, who make State enactments the sources of right and wrong ; and fol- lowing Hobbes, who holds that there can be neither justice nor injustice till a regularly constituted coercive poAver exists to issue and enforce commands ; not a few modern thinkers hold that there is no other origin for good and bad in conduct than law. And this im- plies the belief that moral obligation originates with acts of parliament, and can be changed this way or that way by majorities. They ridicule the idea that men have any natural rights, and allege that rights are wholly results of convention : the necessary implica- tion being that duties are so too. Before consid- 60 TEE DATA OF ETSIGS. ering whether this theory coheres with outside truths, let us observe how far it is coherent within itself. In pursuance of his argument that rights and duties originate with established social arrangements, Hobbes says: "Where no covenant hatli proceded, there hath no right been transferred, and every man has a right to everything ; and conse- quently, no action can be unjust. But when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust; and the definitionsof injustice is no other than the not performance of covenant. And whatsoever is not unjust, is just. Therefore, before the names of just and unjust can have place, there must be some coercive power to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants, by the terror of some pun- ishment greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their covenant."* In this paragraph the essential propositions are: justice is fulfillment of covenant ; fulfillment of cove- nant implies a power of enforcing it : " just and unjust ccm have no place " unless men are compelled to per- form their covenants. But this is to say that men cwn not perform their covenants without compulsion. Grant that justice is performance of covenant. Now suppose it to be performed voluntarily : there is' justice. In such case, however, there is justice in the absence of coercion ; which is contrary to the hypothesis. The only conceivable rejoinder is an absurd one — volun- tary performance of covenant is impossible. Assert this, and the doctrine that right and wrong come into existence with the establishment of sovereignty is defensible. Decline to assert it, and the doctrine vanishes. From inner incongruities pass now to outer ones. The justification for his doctrine of absolute civil au- * Leviathan, ch. xv. WATS OF JUDGING CONDUCT. 61 thority as the source of rules of conduct, Hobbes seeks in the miseries entailed by the chronic war between man and man which must exist in the absence of soci- ety; holding that under any kind of government a better life is possible than in the state of nature. Now whether we accept the gratuitous and baseless theory that men surrendered their liberties to a sovereign power of some kind, with a view to the promised in- crease of satisfactions ; or whether we accept the rational theory, inductively based, that a state of politi- cal subordination gradually became established through experience of the increased satisfactions derived under it ; it equally remains obvious that the acts of the sov- ereign power have no other warrant than their sub- servience to the purpose for which it came into exist- ence. The necessities which initiate government, them- selves prescribe the actions of government. If its actions do not respond to the necessities, they are un- warranted. The authority of law is, then, by the hypothesis, derived ; and can never transcend the author- ity of that from which it is derived. If general good, or welfare, or utility, is the supreme end, and if State enactments are justified as means to this supreme end, then. State enactments have such authority only as arises from conduciveness to this supreme end. "When they are right, it is only because the original authority endorses them ; and they are wrong if they do not bear its endorsement. That is to say, conduct cannot be made good or bad by law ; but its goodness or badness is to the last determined by its effects as naturally fur- thering, or not furthering, the lives of citizens. Still more when considered in the concrete, than when considered in the abstract, do the views of 63 THE DATA OF ETHICS. Ilobbes and Ms disciples prove to be inconsistent Joining in the general belief that without such security for life as enables men to go fearlessly about their business, there can be neither happiness nor prosperity, individual or general, they agree that measures for preventing murder, manslaughter, assault, etc., are requisite; and they advocate this or tliat penal system as furnishing the best deterrents : so arguing, both in respect of the evils and the remedies, that such and such causes wUl, by the nature of things, produce such and such effects. They recognize as inferable a priori, the truth that men will not lay by property unless they can count with great probability on reaping advan- tages from it; that consequently where robbery is un- checked, or where a rapacious ruler appropriates what- ever earnings his subjects do not eifectually hide, pro- duction will scarcely exceed immediate consumption ; and that necessarily there will be none of that accumu- lation of capital required for social development, with all its aids to welfare. In neither case, however, do they perceive that they are tacitly asserting the need for certain restraints on conduct as deducible from the necessary conditions to complete life in the social state ; and are so making the authority of law derivative and not original. If it be said by any belonging to this school that certain moral obligations, to be distinguished as cardi- nal, must be admitted to have a basis deeper than legislation, and that it is for legislation not to create but merely to enforce them — if, I say, admitting this, they go on to allege a legislative origin for minor claims and duties ; then we have the implication that whereas some kinds of conduct do, in the nature of WA 7S OF JUDGING CONDUCT. 63 things, tend to work out certain kinds of results, other kinds of conduct do not, in the nature of things, tend to work out certain kinds of results. While of these acts the naturally good or bad consequences must be allowed, it may be denied of those acts that they have naturally good or bad consequences. Only after asserting this can it be consistently asserted that acts of the last class are made right or wrong by law. For if such acts have any intrinsic tendencies to prod»uce beneficial or mischievous effects, then these intrinsic tendencies furnish the warrant for legislative require- ments or interdicts ; and to say that the requirements or interdicts make them right or wrong is to say that they have no intrinsic tendencies to produce beneficial or mischievous effects. Here, then, we have another theory betraying defi- cient consciousness of causation. An adequate con- sciousness of causation yields the irresistible belief that from the most serious to the most trivial actions of men in society, there must flow consequences which, quite apart from legal agency, conduce to well being or ill-being in greater or smaller degrees. If murders are socially injurious whether forbidden by law or not> — if one man's appropriation of another's gains by force brings special and general evils, whether it is or is not contrary to a ruler's edicts — if non-fulfillment of contract, if cheating, if adulteration, work mischiefs on a community in proportion as they are common, quite irrespective of prohibitions ; then, is it not mani- fest that the like holds throughout all the details of men's behavior ? Is it not clear that when legislation insists on certain acts which have naturally beneficial effects, and forbids others that tave naturally injuri- 64 THE DATA OF ETHI08. ous effects, the acts are not made good or bad by legislation; but the legislation derives its authority from the natural effects of the acts? Non-recognition of this implies non-recognition of natural causation. § 20. ISTor is it otherwise with the pure intuitionists, who hold that moral perceptions are innate in the original sense — thinkers whose view is that men have been divinely endowed with moral faculties ; not that these have resulted from inherited modifications caused by accumulated experiences. To affirm that we know some things to be right and other things to be wrong, by virtue of a supernaturally given conscience ; and thus tacitly to affirm that we do not otherwise know right from wrong ; is tacitly to deny any natural relations between acts and results. For if there exist any such relations, then we may ascertain by induction, or deduction, or both, what these are. And if it be admitted that because of such natural relations, happiness is produced by this kind of conduct, which is therefore to be approved, while misery is produced by that kind of conduct, which is therefore to be condemned ; then it is admitted that the rightness or wrongness of actions are determinable, and must finally be determined, by the goodness or badness of the effects that flow from them ; which is contrary to the hypothesis. It may, indeed, be rejoined that effects are deliber- ately ignored by this school ; which teaches that courses recognized by moral intuition as right, must be pursued without regard to consequences. But on inquiry it turns out that the consequences to be disre- garded are particular consequences, and not general WA rS OF JUDOINQ COND UOT. G." consequences. When, for example, it is said that property lost by another ought to be restored, irre- spective of evil to the finder, who possibly may, by restoring it, lose that which would have preserved him from starvation, it is meant that in pursuance of the principle, the immediate and special consequences must be disregarded, not the diffused and remote con- sequences. By which we are shown that though the theory forbids overt recognition of causation, there is an unavowed recognition of it. And this implies the trait to which I am drawing attention. The conception of natural causation is so imperfectly developed that there is only an indistinct consciousness that throughout the whole of human conduct necessary relations of causes and efifects pre- vail, and that from them are ultimately derived all moral rules, however much these may be proximately derived from moral intuitions. § 21. Strange to say, even the utilitarian school, which, at first sight, appears to be distingushed from the rest by recognizing natural causation, is, if not so far from complete recognition of it, yet very far. Conduct, according to its theory, is to be estimated by observation of results. When, in sufficiently numerous cases, it has been found that behavior of this kind works evil while behavior of that kind works good^ these kinds of behavior are to be judged as wrong and right respectively. Now though it seems that the origin of moral rules in natural causes, is thus asserted by implication, it is but partially asserted. The implica,tion is simply that we are to ascertain by induction that such and such mischiefs or benefits da 66 THE DATA OF BTHIOS. go along with such and such acts ; and are then to infer that the like relations will hold in future. But acceptance of these generalizations and the inferences from them does not amount to recognition of causation in the full sense of the word. So long as only some relation between cause and effect in conduct is recog- nized, and not the relation, a completely scientific form of knowledge has not been reached. At present, utilitarians pay no attention to this distinction. Even when it is pointed out they disregard the fact that empirical utilitarianism is but a transitional form to be passed through on the way to rational utilita- rianism. In a letter to Mr. Mill, written some sixteen years ago, repudiating the title anti-utilitarian, which he had applied to me (a letter subsequently published in Mr. Bain's work on Mental and Moral Science), I endeav- ored to make clear tiie difference above indicated; and I must here quote certain passages from that letter. Tlie view for whicli I contend is, that Morality, properly so-called — ■ the science of right conduct — has for its object to determine Tww and why certain modes of conduct are detrimental, and certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things ; and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness; and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct ; and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery. Perhaps an analogy will most clearly show my meaning. During its early stages, planetary Astronomy consisted of nothing more than accumulated observations respecting the positions and motions of ^he sun and planets ; from which accumulated obseiTationB it came WA Y8 OF JUDGING CONS UCT. 67 by-and-by to be empirically predicted, -with an approach to truth, that certain of the heavenly bodies would have certain positions at certain times. But the modern science of planetary Astronomy con- sists of deductions from the law of gravitation — deductions showing why the celestial bodies necessarily occupy certain places at certain times. Now, the kind of relation which thus exists between ancient and modern Astronomy is analogous to the kind of relation which, I conceive, exists between the Expediency-Morality and Moral Science, properly so called. And the objection which I have to the current Utilitarianism is, that it recognizes no more developed form of Morality — does not see that it has reached but the initial stage of Moral Science. Doubtless if utilitarians are asked whether it can be by mere chance that this kind of action works evil and that works good, they will answer — No : they will admit that such sequences are parts of a necessary order among phenomena. But though this truth is beyond qiiestion ; and though if there are causal rela- tions between acts and their results, rules of conduct can become scientific only when they are deduced from these causal relations ; there continues to be entire satisfaction with that form of utilitarianism in which these causal relations are practically ignored. It is supposed that in future, as now, utility is to be determined only by observation of results : and that there is no possibility of knowing, by deduction from fundamental principles, what conduct must be detri- ' mental and what conduct must be beneficial. § 22. To make more specific that conception of ethical science here indicated, let me present it under a concrete aspect, beginning with a simple illus- tration and comphcating this illustration by successive steps. If, by tying its main artery, we stop most of the 68 THB DATA OF ETHICS. blood going to a limb, then, for as long as the limb performs its function, those parts which are called into play must be wasted faster than they are repaired : whence eventual disablement. The relation between due receipt of nutritive matters through its arteries, and due discharge of its duties by the limb is a part of the physical order. If, instead of cutting oflE the supply to a particular limb, we bleed the patient largely, so drafting away the materials needed for repairing not one limb but all limbs, and not limbs only but viscera, there results both a muscular debihty and an enfeeblement of the vital functions. Here, again, cause and effect are necessarily related. The mischief that results from great depletion, results apart from any divine command, or political enactment, or moral intuition. Now advance a step. Suppose the man to be prevented from taking in enough of the solid and liquid food containing those substances con- tinually abstracted from his blood in repairing his tissues : suppose he has cancer of the esophagus and cannot swallow — what happens? By this indirect depletion, as by direct depletion, he is inevitably made incapable of performing the actions of one in health. In this case, as in the other cases, the connection between cause and effect is one that cannot be estab- lished, or altered, by any authority external to the phenomena themselves. Again, let us say that instead of being stopped after passing his mouth, that which he would swallow is stopped before reaching his mouth ; so that day after day the man is required to waste his tissues in getting food, and day after day the food he has got to meet this waste, he is forcibly pre- vented from eating. As before, the progress toward WA T8 OF JUDGING COND JJOT. 69 death by Btarvation is inevitable — the connection between acts and effects is independent of any alleged theological or political authority. And similarly if, being forced by the whip to labor, no adequate return in food is supplied to him, there are equally certain evils, equally independent of sacred or secular enact- ment. Pass now to those actions more commonly thought of as the occasions for rules of conduct. Let us assume the man to be continually robbed of that which was given him in exchange for his labor, and by which he was to make up for nervo-muscular expenditure and renew his powers. No less than before is the con- nection between conduct and consequence rooted in the constitution of things; unchangeable by State- made law, and not needing establishment by empirical generalization. If the action by which the man is affected is a stage further away from the results, or produces results of a less decisive kind, still we see the same basis for morality in the physical order. Imagine that payment for his services is made partly in bad coin ; or that it is delayed beyond the date agreed upon ; or that what he buys to eat is adulterated with innutritive matter. Manifestly, by any of these deeds which we condemn as unjust, and which are punished by law, there is, as before, an interference with the normal adjustment of physiogical repair to physiolog- ical waste. Nor is it otherwise when we pass to kinds of conduct still more remotely operative. If he is hindered from enforcing his claim, if class-predomi- nance prevents him from proceeding, or if a bribed judge gives a verdict contrary to evidence, or if a wit- ness swears falsely, ha^e not these deeds, though they 70 THE DATA OF ETHICS, affect him more indirectly, the same original cause for their wrongness? Even with actions which work diffused and indefinite mischiefs it is the same. Suppose that the man, instead of being dealt with fraudulently, is calumniated. There is, as before, a hinderance to the carrying on of life- sustaining activities; for the loss of character detri- mentally affects his business. Nor is this all. The mental depression caused partially incapacitates him for energetic activity, and perhaps brings on ill-health. So that malicioush'' or carelessly propagating false statements tends both to diminish his life and to diminish his ability to maintain life. Hence its flagitiousness. Moreover, if we trace to their ultimate ramifications the effects wrought by any of these acts which morality called intuitive reprobates — if we ask what results not to the individual himself only, but also to his belong- ings — if we observe how impoverishment hinders the rearing of his children, by entailing under-feeding or inadequate clothing, resulting perhaps in the death of some and the constitutional injury of others ; we see that by the necessary connections of things these acts, besides tending primarily to lower the life of the indi- vidual aggressed upon, tend, secondarily, to lower the lives of all his family, and thirdly, to lower the life of society at large; which is damaged by whatever damages its unite. A more distinct meaning will now be seen in the statement that the utilitarianism which recognizes only the prinoiples of conduct reached by induction, is but preparatory to the utilitarianism which deduces these principles from the processes of life as carried on under established conditions of existence WA T8 OF JUDGING COND UCT. 71 § 22. Thus, then, is justified the allegation made at the outset, that, irrespective of their distinctive char- acters and their special tendencies, all the current methods of ethics have one general defect — they neglect ultimate causal connections. Of course I do not mean that they wholly ignore the natural conse- quences of actions ; but I mean that they recognize them only incidentally. They do not erect into a method the ascertaining of necessary relations be- tween causes and effects, and deducing rules of conduct from formulated statement of them. Every science begins by accumulating observations, and presently generalizes these empirically ; but only when it reaches the stage at which its empirical gen- erahzations are included in a rational generalization, does it become developed science. Astronomy has already passed through its successive stages: first collections of facts ; then inductions from them ; and lastly deductive interpretations of these, as corollaries from a universal principle of action among masses in space. Accounts of structures and tabulations of strata, grouped and compared, have led gradually to the assigning of various classes of geological changes to igneous and aqueous actions ; and it is now tacitly admitted that Geology becomes a science proper, only as fast as such changes are explained in terms of those natural processes which have arisen in the cooling and solidifying earth, exposed to the sun's heat and the action of the moon upon its ocean. The science of life has been, and is still, exhibiting a like series of steps; the evolution of organic forms at large is being affiliated on physical actions in operations from the beginning; and the vital phenomena each organism 72 TEE DATA OF ETEIC3. presfefits are coining to be understood as connected sets of changes, in parts formed of matters that are affected by certain forces and disengage other forces. So is it with mind. Early ideas concerning thought and feeling ignored everything like cause, save in rec- ognizing those effects of habits which were forced on men's attention and expressed in proverbs ; but there are growing up interpretations of thought and feeling as correlates of the actions and reactions of a nervous structure, that is influenced by outer changes and works in the body adapted changes : the implication being that Psj^chology becomes a science as fast as these relations of phenomena are explained as consequences of ultimate principles. Sociology, too, represented down to recent times only by stray ideas about social organization, scattered through the masses of worthless gossip furnished us by historians, is coming to be recognized by some as also a science ; and such adumbrations of it as have from time to time appeared in the shape of empirical generaliza- tions, are now beginning to assume the character of generalizations made coherent by derivation from causes lying in human nature placed under given con- ditions. Clearly then. Ethics, which is a science deal- ing with the conduct of associated human beings, regarded under one of its aspects, has to undergo a like transformation ; and, at present undeveloped, can be considered a developed science only when it has undergone this transformation. A preparation in the simpler sciences is pre-supposed. Ethics has a physical aspect ; since it treats of human activities which, in common with all expenditures or energy, conform to the law of the persistence of WA TS OF JUD&m& CONS UOT. 73 energy : moral principles must conform to physical necessities. It has a biological aspect; since it con- cerns certain effects, inner and outer, individual and social, of the vital changes going on in the highest type of animal. It has a psychological aspect ; for its subject matter is an aggregate of actions that are prompted by feelings and guided by intelligence. And it has a sociological aspect: for these actions, some of them directly and all of them indirectly, affect associated beings. What is the implication? Belonging under one aspect to each of these sciences — physical, biological, psychological, sociological — it can find its ultimate interpretations only in those fundamental truths which are common to all of them. Already we have con- cluded in a general way that conduct at large, includ- ing the conduct Ethics deals with, is to be fully under- stood only as an aspect of evolving life ; and now we are brought to this conclusion in a more special way. § 23. Here, then, we have to enter on the considera- tion of moral phenomena as phenomena of evolution; being forced to do this by finding that they form a part of the aggregate of phenomena which evolution has wrought out. If the entire visible universe has been evolved — if the solar system as a whole, the earth as a part of it, the life in general which the earth bears, as well as that of each individual organism — ^if the mental phenomena displayed by all creatures, up to the highest, in common with the phenomena pre- sented by aggregates of these highest — if one and aU conform to the laws of evolution ; then the necessary implication is that those ohenomena of conduct in these 74 THE DATA OF ETHICS. highest creatures with which Morality is concerned, also conform. The preceding volumes have prepared the way for dealing with morals as thus conceived. Utilizing the conclusions they contain, let us now observe what data are furnished by these. "We will take in succession — the physical view, the biological view, the psycho- logical view, and the sociological view. THBPE78ICAL TWW. 15 CHAPTEE Y. THE PHYSICAL VIEW. § 24. EvEET moment we pass instantly from men's perceived actions to the motives implied by them ; and so are led to formulate these actions in mental terms rather than in bodily terms. Thoughts and feelings are referred to when we speak of any one's deeds with praise or blame ; not those outer manifestations which reveal the thoughts and feelings. Hence we become oblivious of the truth that conduct as actually ex- perienced consists of changes recognized by touch, sight and hearing. This habit of contemplating only the psychical face of conduct, is so confirmed that an effort is required to contemplate only the physical face. Undeniable as it is that another's behavior to us is made up of move- ments of his body and limbs, of his facial muscles, and of his vocal apparatus, it yet seems paradoxical to say that these are the only elements of conduct really known by us, while the elements of conduct which we exclusively think of as constituting it, are not known but inferred. Here, however, ignoring for the time being the inferred elements in conduct, we have to deal with the perceived elements — we have to observe its traits con- sidered as a set of combined motions. Taking the evolution point of view, and remembering that while % THE DATA OF ETHICS. an aggregate evolves, not only the matter composing it, but also the motion of that matter, passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, we have now to ask whether conduct as it rises to its higher forms, displays in increasing degrees these characters ; and whether it does not dis- play them in the greatest degree when it reaches that highest form which we call moral. § 25. It will be convenient to deal first with the trait of increasing coherence. The conduct of lowly- organized creatures is broadly contrasted with the conduct of highly-organized creatures in having its successive portions feebly connected. The random movements which animalcule makes have severally no reference to movements made a moment before ; nor do they aflfect in specific ways the movements made immediately after. To-day's wanderings of a fish in search of food, though perhaps showing by their adjustments to catching different kinds of prey at dif- ferent hours, a slightly-determined order, are unrelated to the wanderings of yesterday and to-morrow. But such more developed creatures as birds, show us in the building of nests, the sitting on eggs, the rearing of chicks, and the aiding of them after they fly, sets of motions which form a dependent series, extending over a considerable period. And on observing the complex- ity of the acts performed in fetching and fixing the fibres of the nest or in catching and bringing to the young each portion of food, we discover in the com- bined motions, lateral cohesion as well as- longitudinal cohesion. Man, even in his lowest state, displays in his conduct THE PHYSICAL VIEW. t1 far more coherent combinations of motions. By the elaborate manipulations gone through in making weapons that are to serve for the chase next year, or in building canoes and wigwams for permanent uses — by acts of aggression and defense which are connected with injuries long since received or committed, the savage exhibits an aggregate of motions which, in some of its parts, holds together over great periods. Moreover, if we consider the many movements implied by the transactions of each day, in the wood, on the water, in the camp, in the family, we see that this coherent aggregate of movements is composed of many minor aggregates that are severally coherent within themselves and with one another. In civilized man this trait of developed conduct becomes more conspicuous still. Be his business what it may, its processes involve relatively numerous dependent motions ; and day by day it is so carried on as to show connections between present motions and motions long gone by, as well as motions anticipated in the distant future. Besides the many doings, related to one another, which the farmer goes through in looking after his cattle, directing his laborers, keep- ing an eye on his dairy, buying his implements, selling his produce, etc., the business of getting his lease involves numerous combined movements on which the movements of subsequent years depend ; and in manur- ing his fields with a view to larger returns, or putting down drains with the hke motive, he is performing acts which are parts of a coherent combination relai- tively extensive. That the like holds of the shop- keeper, manufacturer, banker, is manifest; and this increased coherence of conduct among the civilized 18 THE DATA OF ETEIGS. will strike us even more when we remember how its parts are often continued in a connected arrangement through life, for the purpose of making a fortune, founding a family, gaining a seat in Parliament. Now mark that a greater coherence among its com- ponent motions broadly distinguishes the conduct we call moral from the conduct we call immoral. The application of the word dissolute to the last, and of the word self-restrained to the first, implies this — implies that conduct of the lower kind, constituted of disor- derly acts, has its parts relatively loose in their rela- tions with one another ; while conduct of the higher kind, habitually following a fixed order, so gains a characteristic unity and coherence. In proportion as the conduct is what we call moral, it exhibits com- paratively settled connections between antecedents and consequents ; for the doing right implies that under given conditions the combined motions constitut- ing conduct will follow in a way that can be specified. Contrariwise, in the conduct of one whose principles are not high, the sequences of motions are doubtful. He may pay the money or he may not ; he may keep his appointment or he may fail ; he may tell the truth or he may lie. The words trustworthiness and untrust- worthiness, as used to characterize the two respectively, sufficiently imply that the actions of the one can be foreknown while those of the other cannot ; and this implies that the successive movements composing the one bear more constant relations to one another than do those composing the other — are more coherent. § 26. Ijidefiniteness accompanies incoherence in con- THE PHTSIGAL VIEW. 79 duct that is little evolved ; and throughout the ascend- ing stages of evolving conduct there is an increasingly definite co-ordination of the motions constituting it. Such changes of form as the rudest protozoa show us, are utterly vague — admit of no precise description ; and though in higher kinds the movements of the parts are more definable, yet the movement of the Avhole in respect of direction is indeterminate : there is no adjustment of it to this or the other point in space. In such coelenterate animals as polypes we see the parts moving in ways which lack precision ; and in one of the locomotive forms, as a medusa, the courae taken, otherwise at random, can be described only as one which carries it toward the light, where degrees of light and darkness are present. Among annulose creatures the contrast between the track of a worm, turning this way or that at hazard, and the definite course taken by a bee in its flight from flower to flower or back to the hive, sliovvs us the same thing ; the bee's acts in building cells and feeding larvae further exhibiting precision in the sim- ultaneous movements as well as in the successive movements. Though the motions made by a fish in pursuing its prey have considerable definiteness, yet they are of a simple kind, and are in this respect con- trasted with the many definite motions of bodj', head, and limbs gone through by a carnivorous mammal in the course of waylaying, running down, and seizing a herbivore ; and further, the fish shows us none of those definitely adjusted sets of motions which in the mammal subserve the rearing of young. Much greater definiteness, if not in the combined movements forming single acts, still in the adjustments 80 THE DATA OF ETHIC8. of many combined acts to various purposes, charac- terizes human conduct, even in its lowest stages. In making and using weapons and in the maneuverings of savage warfare, numerous movements, all precise in their adaptations to proximate ends, are arranged for the achievement of remote ends, with a precision not paralleled among lower creatures. The lives of civ- ilized men exhibit this trait far more conspicuously. Each industrial art exemplifies the effects of move- ments which are severally definite; and which are definitely arranged in simultaneous and successive order. Business transactions of every kind are char- acterized by exact relations between the' sets of motions constituting acts, and the purposes fulfilled, in time, place, and quantity. Further, the daily rou- tine of each person shows us in its periods and amounts of activity, of rest, of relaxation, a meas- ured arrangement which is not shown us by the doings of the wandering savage, who has no fixed times for hunting, sleeping, feeding, or any one kind of action. Moral conduct differs from immoral conduct in the same manner and in a like degree. The conscientious man is exact in 'all his transactions. He supplies a precise weight for a specified sum ; he gives a definite quality in fulfillment of understanding; he pays the full amount he bargained to do. In times as well as in quantities, his acts answer completely to anticipa- tions. If he has made a business contract he is to the day ; if an appointment he is to the minute. Similarly in respect of truth : his statements correspond accu- rately with the facts. It is thus too in his family life. He maintains marital relations that are definite in contrast wit]i the relations that result from breach of THE PHYSICAL VIEW. 81 the marriage contract ; and as a father, fitting his be- havior with care to the nature of each child and to the occasion ; he avoids the too much and the too little of praise or blame, reward or penalty. Nor is it otherwise in his miscellaneous acts. To say that he deals equitably with those he employs, whether they behave well or ill, is to say that he adjusts his acts to their deserts ; and to say that he is judicious in his charities, is to say that he portions out his aid with discrimination instead of distributing it indis- criminately to good and bad, as do those who have no adequate sense of their social responsibilities. That progress toward rectitude of conduct is pro- gress toward duly-proportioned conduct, and that duly- proportioned conduct is relatively definite, we may see from another point of view. One of the traits of con- duct we call immoral, is excess; while moderation habitually characterizes moral conduct. Now excesses imply extreme divergences of actions from some medium, while maintenance of the medium is implied by moderation ; whence it follows that actions of the last kind can be defined more nearly than those of the first. Clearly conduct which, being unrestrained, runs into great and incalculable oscillations, therein differs from restrained conduct of which, by implication, the oscillations fall within narrower limits. And falling within narrower limits necessitates relative definiteness of movements. § 27. That throughout the ascending forms of life, along with increasing heterogeneity of structure and function, there goes increasing heterogeneity of con- duct — increasing diversity in the sets of external 82 THB DATA OF ETHICS. motions and combined sets of such motions — needs not be shown in detail. Nor need it be shown that be- coming relatively great in the motions constituting the conduct of the uncivihzed man, this heterogeneity has become still greater in those which the civilized man goes through. "We may pass at once to that further degree of the like contrast which we see on ascending from the conduct of the immoral to that of the moral. Instead of recognizing this contrast, most readers will be inclined to identify a moral life with a life little varied in its activities. But here we come upon a defect in the current conception of morality. This comparative uniformity in the aggregate of motions, which goes along with morahty as commonly con- ceived, is not only not moral but is the reverse of moral. The better a man fulfills every requirement of life, alike as regards his own body and mind, as regards the bodies and minds of those dependent on him, and as regards the bodies and minds of his fellow citizens, the more varied do his activities become. The more fully he does all these things, the more heterogeneous must be his movements. One who satisfies personal needs only, goes through, other things equal, less multiform processes than one who also administers to the needs of wife and children. Supposing there are no other differences, the addition of family relations necessarily renders the actions of the man who fulfills the duties of husband and parent, more heterogeneous than those of the man who has no such duties to fulfill, or, having them, does not fulfill them ; and to say that his actions are more heteroge- neous is to say that there is a greater heterogeneity in the combined motions he goes through. The like holds TEEPS7SI0AL VIEW. 83 of social obligations^ These, in proportion as a citizen duly performs them, complicate his movements con- siderably. If he is helpful to inferiors dependent on him, if he takes a part in political agitation, if he aids in diffusing knowledge, he, in each of these ways, adds to his kinds of activity — makes his sets of movements more multiform ; so differing from the man who is the slave of one desire or group of desires. Though it is unusual to consider as having a moral aspect, those activities which culture involves, yet to the few who hold that due exercise of all the higher faculties, intellectual and aesthetic, must be included in the conception of complete life, here identified with the ideally moral life, it will be manifest that a further heterogeneity is implied by them. For each of such activities, constituted by that play of these faculties which is eventually added to their life-subserving uses, adds to the multiformity of the aggregated motions. Briefly, then, if the conduct is the best possible on every occasion, it follows that as the occasions are end- lessly varied the acts will be endlessly varied to suit — the heterogeneity in the combinations of motions will be extreme. § 2,3. Evolution in conduct considered under its moral aspect, is, like all other evolution, toward equilibrium. I do not mean that it is toward the equilibrium reached at death, though this is, of course, the final state which the evolution of the highest man has in common with all lower evolution ; but I mean that it is toward a moving equilibrium. We have seen that maintaining life, expressed in physical terms, is maintaiuing a bal{iiiQ§d gombiu^tiQii 84 THE DATA OF ETHIOB. of internal actions in face of external forces tending to overthrow it ; and we have seen that advance toward a higher life, has been an acquirement of ability to maintain the balance for a longer period, by the suc- cessive additions of organic appliances vrhich by their actions counteract, more and more fully, the disturbing forces. Here, then, we are led to the conclusion that the life called moral is one in which this maintenance of the moving equilibrium reaches completeness, or approaches most nearly to completeness. This truth is clearly disclosed on observing how those physiological rhythms which vaguely show them- selves when organization begins, become more regular, as well as more various in their kinds, as organization advances. Periodicity is but feebly marked in the actions, inner and outer, of the rudest types. • Where life is low there is passive dependence on the accidents of the environment ; and this entails great irregulari- ties in the vital processes. The taking in of food by a polype is at intervals now short, now very long, as cir- cumstances determine ; and the utilization of it is by a slow dispersion of the absorbed part through the tissues, aided only by the irregular movements of the creature's body ; while, such aeration as is effected is similarly without a trace of rhythm. Much higher up vfe still find very imperfect periodicities; as in the inferior molluscs which, though possessed of vascular systems, have no proper circulation, but merely a slow movement of the crude blood, now in one direction through the vessels and then, after a pause, in the opposite direction. Only with well-developed struct- ures do there come a rhythmical pulse and a rhythm of the respiratory actions. And then in birds and THE PHYSICAL VIEW. 85 mammals, along with great rapidity and regularity in these essential rhythms, and along with a consequently great vital activity and therefore great expenditure, comparative regularity in the rhythm of the alimentary actions is established, as well as in the rhythm of iiotivity and rest ; since the rapid waste to which rapid pulsation and respiration are instrumental, necessitates tolerably regular supplies of nutriment, as well as recurring intervals of sleep during which repair may overtake waste. And from these stages the moving equilibrium characterized by such interdependent rhythms, is continually made better by the counter- acting of more and more of those actions which tend to perturb it. So is it as we ascend from savage to civilized and from the lowest among the civilized to the highest. The rhythm of external actions required to maintain the rhythm of internal actions becomes at once more complicated and more complete, making them into a better moving equilibrium. The irregularities which their conditions of existence entail on primitive men, continually cause wide deviations from the mean state of the moving equilibrium — wide oscillations; which imply imperfection of it for the time being, and bring about its premature overthrow. In such civilized men as we call ill conducted, frequent perturbations of the moving equilibrium are caused by those excesses char- acterizing a career in which the periodicities are much broken ; and a common result is that the rhythm of the internal actions being often deranged, the moving equilibrium, rendered by so much imperfect, is gener- ally shortened in duration. While one in whom the internal rhythms are best maintained is one by whom 86 THS! DATA OF ETHICS. the external actions required to fulfill all needs and duties, severally performed on the recurring occasions, conduce to a moving equilibrium that is at once involved and prolonged. Of course the implication is that the man who thus reaches the limit of evolution, exists in a society con- gruous with his nature, is a man among men similarly constituted, who are severally in harmony with that social environment which they have formed. This is, indeed, the only possibility. For the production of the highest type of man can go on on\j pari passu with the production of the highest type of society. The implied conditions are those before described as accom- panying the most evolved conduct — conditions under which each can fuUfil all his needs and rear the due number of progeny, not only without hindering others from doing the like, but while aiding them in doing the like. And evidently, considered under its physical aspect, the conduct of the individual so constituted, and associated with like individuals, is one in which all the actions, that is the combined motions of all kinds, have become such as duly to meet every daily process, every ordinary occurrence, and every contingency in his environment. Complete life in a complete society is but another name for complete equilibrium between the co-ordinated activities of each social unit and those of the aggregate of units. I § 29. Even to readers of preceding volumes, and still more to other readers, there will seem a strange- ness, or even an absurdity, in this presentation of moral conduct in physical terms. It has been needful to make it, however. If that re-distribution of matter THE PEY8ICAL VIEW. 8? and motion constituting evolution goes on in all aggre- gates, its laws must be fulfilled in the most developed being as in every other thing ; and his actions, vfhen decomposed into motions, must exemplify its laws. This we find that they do. There is an entire corre- spondence between moral evolution and evolution as physically defined. Conduct, as actually known to us in perception, and not as interpreted into the accompanying feelings and ideas, consists of combined motions. On ascending through the various grades of animate creatures, we find these combined motions characterized by increas- ing coherence, increasing definiteness considered singly and in their co-ordinated groups, and increasing heterogeneity ; and in advancing from lower to higher types of man, as well as in advancing from the less moral to the more moral type of man, these traits of evolving conduct become more marked still. Further, we see that the increasing coherence, definiteness, and heterogeneity, of the combined motions, are instru- mental to the better maintenance of a moving equilib- rium. Where the evolution is sraaU this is very imper- fect and soon cut short ; with advancing evolution, bringing greater power and intelligence, it becomes more steady and longer continued in face of adverse actions ; in the human race at large it is comparatively regular and enduring ; and its regularity and enduring- ness are greatest in the highest. }S6 TBE DATA OF MTHIC8. CHAPTEE VI. THE BIOLOGICAL YIEW. § 30. The truth that the ideally moral man is one in whom the moving equilibrium is perfect, or approaches nearest to perfection, becomeS;, when translated into physiological language, the truth that he is one in whom the functions of all kinds are duly fulfilled. Each function has some relation, direct or indirect, to the needs of life : the fact of its existence as a result of evolution, being itself a proof that it has been en- tailed, immediately or remotely, by the adjustment of inner actions to outer actions. Consequently, non- fulfillment of it in normal proportion is non-fulfillment of a requisite to complete life. If there is defective discharge of the function, the organism experiences some detrimental result caused by the inadequacy. If the discharge is in excess, there is entailed a reaction upon the other functions, which in some way dimin- ishes their efficiencies. It is true that during full vigor, while the momentum of the organic actions is great, the disorder caused by moderate excess or defect of any one function, soon disappears — the balance is re-established. But it is none the less true that always some disorder results from excess or defect, that it influences every function, bodily and mental, and that it constitutes a lowering of the life for the time being. THE BIOLOaiCAL VIEW. 89 Beyond the temporary falling short of complete life implied by undue or inadequate discharge of a function there is entailed, as an ultimate result, decreased length of life. If some function is habitually per- formed in excess of the requirement, or in defect of the requirement ; and if, as a consequence, there is an often repeated perturbation of the functions at large, there results some chronic derangement in the balance of the functions. Necessarily reacting on the struct- ures, and registering in them its accumulated effects, this derangement works a general deterioration ; and when the vital energies begin to decline, the moving equilibrium, further from perfection than it would else have been, is sooner overthrown : death is more or less premature. Hence the moral man is one whose functions — many and varied in their kinds, as we have seen — are aU discharged in degrees duly adjusted to the conditions of existence. § 31. Strange as the conclusion looks, it is never- theless a conclusion to be here drawn, that the per- formance of every function is, in a sense, a moral obligation. It is usually thought that morality requires us only to restrain such vital activities as, in our present state, are often pushed to excess, or such as conflict with average welfare, special or general; but it also requires us to carry on these vital activities up to their normal limits. AU the animal functions, in common with all the higher functions, have, as thus understood, their imperativeness. While recognizing the fact that in our state of transition, characterized by very imperfect 90 THE DATA OF ETSIGS. adaptation of constitution of conditions, moral obliga- tions of supreme kinds often necessitate conduct which is physically injurious ; we must also recognize the fact that, considered apart from other effects, it is immoral so to treat the body as in any way to diminish the fullness or vigor of its vitality. Hence results one test of actions. There may in every case be put the questions — Does the action tend to maintenance of complete life for the time being? and does it tend to prolongation of life to its full extent ? To answer yes or no to either of these ques- tions, is implicitly to class the action as right or wrong in respect of its immediate bearings, whatever it may be in respect of its remote bearings. The seeming paradoxicalness 'of this statement re- sults from the tendency, so difficult of avoidance, to judge a conclusion which presupposes an ideal human- ity, by its applicability to humanity as now existing. The foregoing conclusion refers to that highest conduct in which, as we have seen, the evolution of conduct terminates — that conduct in which the making of all adjustments of acts to ends subserving complete indi- vidual life, together with all those subserving main- tenance of offspring and preparation of them for maturity, not only consist with the making of like ad- justments by others, but furthers it. And this concep- tion of conduct in its ultimate form implies the con- ception of a nature having such conduct for its spon- taneous outcome — the product of its normal activities. So understanding the matter, it becomes manifest that under such conditions any falling short of function, as well as any excess of function, implies deviation from the best conduct or from perfectly moral conduct. TEE BIOLOGIGAL VIEW. 91 § 32. Thus far in treating of conduct from the biologi- cal point of view, we have considered its constituent actions under their physiological aspects only ; leaving out of sight their psychological aspects. We have recognized the bodily changes and have ignored the accompanying mental changes. And at first sight it seems needful for us here to do this ; since taking ac- count of states of consciousness apparently implies an inclusion of the psychological view in the biological view. This is not so however. As was pointed out in the Prmciples of Psychology, §§ 52, 53, we enter upon psychology proper only when we begin to treat of mental states and their relations considered as referring to external agents and their relations. "While we con- cern ourselves exclusively with modes of mind as cor- relatives of nervous changes, we are treating of what was there distinguished as Eestho-physiology. We pass to psychology only w hen we consider the correspond- ence between the connections among subjective states and the connections among objective actions. Here, then, without transgressing the limits of our immediate topic, we may deal with feelings and functions in their mutual dependencies. We cannot omit doing this; because the psychical changes which accompany many of the physical changes in the organism are biological factors in two ways. Those feelings, classed as sensations, which, directly initiated in the bodily framework, go along with certain sfates of the vital organs and more con- spicuously with certain states of the external organs, now serve mainly as guides to the performance of functions, but partly as stimuli, and now serve mainly 92 THE DATA OF ETHICS. as stimuli, but in a smaller degree as guides. Visual sensations which, as co-ordinated, enable us to direct our movements, also, if vivid, raise the rate of respira- tion^ while sensations of cold and heat, greatly depress- ing or raising the vital actions, serve also for purposes of discrimination. So, too, the feelings classed as emotions, which are not localizable in the bodily frame- work, act in more general ways, alike as guides and stimuli — having influences over the performance of functions more potent even than have most sensations. Fear, at the same time that it urges flight and evolves the forces spent in it, also affects the heart and the alimentary canal ; while joy, prompting persistence in the actions bringing it, simultaneously exalts the visceral processes. Hence, in treating qf conduct under its biological aspect, we are compelled to consider that interaction of feelings and functions which is essential to animal life in all its more developed forms. § 33. In the Prmciples of Psychology, % 124, it was shown that necessarily, throughout the animate world at large, "pains are the correlatives of actions in- jurious to the organism, while pleasures are the cor- relatives of actions conducive to its welfare ;" since " it is an inevitable deduction from the hypothesis of Evolution, that races of sentient creatures could have come into existence under no other conditions." The argument was as follows : If we substitute for the word Pleasure the equivalent phrase — a feeling which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there, and if we substitute for the word Pain the equivalent phrase — a feel- ing which we seel? to get out of consciousness and to keep out ; we TEE BIOLOGICAL VIEW. 93 see at once that if the states of consciousness which a creature en- deavors to maintain are the correlatives of injurious actions, and if the states of consciousness which it endeavors to expel are the cor- relatives of beneficial actions, it must quickly disappear through persistence in the injurious, and avoidance of the heneficial. In other words, those races of beings only can have survived in which, on the average, agreeable or desired feelings went along with activities conducive to the maintenance of life, while disagreeable and habitu- ally avoided feelings went along with activities directly or indirectly destructive of life ; and there must ever have been, other things equal, the most numerous and long-continued survivals among races in which these adjustments of feelings to actions were the best, tending ever to bring about perfect adjustment. Fit connections between acts and results must estab- lish themselves in living things, even before conscious- ness arises ; and after the rise of consciousness these connections can change in no other way than to become better established. At the very outset, life is main- tained by persistence in acts which conduce to it, and desistance from acts which impede it ; and whenever sentiency make its appearance as an accompaniment, its forms must be such that in the one case the pro- duced feeling is of a kind that will be sought — pleasure, and in the other case is of a kind that will be shunned — • pain. Observe the necessity of these relations as ex- hibited in the concrete. A plant which envelops a buried bone with a plexus of rootlets, or a potato which directs its blanched shoots toward a grating through which light comes into the cellar, shows us that the changes which outer agents themselves set up in its tissues are changes which aid the utilization of these agents. If we ask what would happen if a plant's roots grew not to- ward the place where there was moisture, but away from it, or if its leaves, enabled by light to assimilate. 94 THE DATA OF ETHiaS. nevertheless bent themselves toward the darkness, w^e see that death would result in the absence of the exist- ing adjustments. This general relation is still better shown in an insectivorous plant, such as the Dionma muscvpula, which keeps its trap closed round animal matter, but not round other matter. Here it is mani- fest that the stimulus arising from the first part of the absorbed substance itself sets up those actions by which the mass of the substance is utilized for the plant's benefit. When we pass from vegetal organisms to unconscious animal organisms, we see a like connection between proclivity and advantage. On observing how the ten- tacles of a polype attach themselves to, and begin to close round, a living creature, or some animal sub- stance, while they are indifferent to the touch of other substance, we are similarly shown that dififusion of some of the nutritive juices into the tentacles, which is an incipient assimilation, causes the motions effecting pre- hension. And it is obvious that life would cease were these relations reversed. Nor is it otherwise with this fundamental connection between contact with food and taking in of food, among conscious creatures, up to the very highest. Tasting a substance implies the passage of its mole- cules through the mucous membrane of the tongue and palate; and this absorption, when it occurs with a substance serving for food, is but a commencement of the absorption carried on throughout the alimentary canal. Moreover, the sensation accompanying this absorption, when it is of the kind produced by food, initiates at the place where it is strongest, in front of the pharnyx, an automatic act of swallowing, in a THE BIOLOaiCAL VIEW. 95 manner rudely analogous to that in which the stimu- lus of absorption in a polype's tentacles initiates prehension. If from these processes and relations that imply contact between a creature's surface and the substance it takes in, we turn to those set up by diffused particles of the substance, constituting to conscious creatures its odor, we meet a kindred general truth. Just as, after contact, some molecules of a mass of food are absorbed by the part touched, and excite the act of prehension, so are absorbed such of its molecules as, spreading through the water, reach the organism ; and, being absorbed by it, excite those actions by which contact with the mass is effected. If the physical stimulation caused by the dispersed particles is not accompanied by consciousness, still the motor changes set up must conduce to survival of the organism, if they are such as end in contact ; and there must be relative innutri- tion and mortality of organisms in which the produced contractions do not bring about this result. Nor can it be questioned that whenever and wherever the physical stimulation has a concomitant sentiency, this must be such as consists with, and conduces to, move- ment toward the nutritive matter : it must be not a repulsive but. an attractive sentiency. And this which holds with the lowest consciousness, must hold through- out ; as we see it do in all such superior creatures as are drawn to their food by odor. Besides those movements which cause locomotion those which effect seizure must no less certainly become thus adjusted. The molecular changes caused by absorption of nutritive matter from organic substance in contact, or from adjacent organic substance, initiate 96 THE DATA OF ETEIC8. motions which are indefinite where the organization is low, and which become more definite with the advance of organization. At the outset, while the undifferenti- ated protoplasm is everywhere absorbent and every- where contractile, the changes of form initiated by the physical stimulation of adjacent nutritive matter are vague, and ineffectually adapted to utilization of it; but gradually, along with the specialization into parts that are contractile and parts that are absorbent, these motions become better adapted ; for necessarily indi- viduals in which they are least adapted disappear faster than those in which they are most adapted. Kecognizing this necessity we have here especially to recognize a further necessity. The relation between these stimulations and adjusted contractions must be such that increase of the one causes increase of the other; since the directions of the discharges being once established, greater stimulation causes greater contraction, and the greater contraction causing closer contact with the stimulating agent, causes increase of stimulus and is thereby itself further increased. And now we reach the corollary which more particularly concerns us. Clearly as fast as an accompanying sentiency arises, this cannot be one that is disagreea- ble, prompting desistance, but must be one that is agreeable, prompting persistence. The pleasurable sensation must be itself the stimulus to the contraction by which the pleasurable sensation is maintained and increased ; or must be so bound up with the stimulus that the two increase together. And this relation which we see is directly established in the case of a fundamental function, must be indirectly established with all other functions ; since non-establishment of it THE BIOLOGICAL VIEW. 97 m any particular case implies, in so far, unfitness to the conditions of existence. Ill two ways then, it is demonstrable that there exists a primordial connection between pleasure-giving acts and continuance or increase of life, and, by impli- cation, between pain-giving acts and decrease or loss of life. On the one hand, setting out with the lowest living things, we see that the beneficial act and the act which there is a tendency to perform, are originally two sides of the same; and cannot be disconnected without fatal results. On the other hand, if we con- template developed creatures as now existing, we see that each individual and species is from day to day kept alive by pursuit of the agreeable and avoidance of the disagreeable. Thus approaching the facts from a different side, anal- ysis brings us down to another face of that ultimate truth disclosed by analysis in a preceding chapter. We found it was no more possible to frame ethical conceptions from which the consciousness of pleasure, of some kind, at some time, to some being, is absent, than it is pos- sible to franie the conception of an object from whicli the consciousness of space is absent. And now we see that this necessity of thought originates in the very nature of sentient existence. Sentient existence can evolve only on condition that pleasure-giving acts are life-sustaining acts. § 34. Notwithstanding explanations already made, the naked enunciation of this as an ultimate truth, un- derlying all estimations of right and wrong, will in many, if not in most, cause astonishment. Having in view certain beneficial results that are preceded by 38 THE DATA OF BTEIG8. disagreeable states of consciousness, such as those com- monly accompanying labor ; and having in view the injurious results that follow the receipt of certain grati- fications, such as those which excfess in drinking pro- duces; the majority tacitly or -avowedly believe that the bearing of pains is on the whole beneficial, and that the receipt of pleasures is on the whole detrimental. The exceptions so fill their minds as to exclude the rule. When asked, they are obliged to admit that the pains accompanying wounds, bruises, sprains, are the concomitants of evils, alike to the sufferer and to those around him; and that the anticipations of such pains serve as deterrents from careless or dangerous acts. They cannot deny that the tortures of burning or scalding, and the miseries which intense cold, starva- tion, and thirst produce, are indissolubly connected with permanent or temporary mischiefs, tending to in- capacitate one who bears them for doing things that should be done, either for his own welfare or the welfare of others. The agony of incipient suffocation they are compelled to recognize as a safeguard to life, and must allow that avoidance of it is conducive to all that life can bring or achieve. JSTor will they refuse to own that one who is chained in a cold, damp dungeon, in dark- ness and silence, is injured in health and efficiency, alike ' by the positive pains thus inflicted on him and by the accompanying negative pains due to absence of light, of freedom, of companionship. Conversely, they do not doubt that notwithstanding occasional excesses the pleasure which accompanies the taking of food goes along with physicial benefit ; and that the benefit is the greater the keener the satis- faction of appetite. They have no choice but to THE BIOLOGICAL VIEW. 99 acknowledge that the instincts and sentiments which so overpoweringly prompt marriage, and those which find their gratification in the fostering of oifspring, work out an immense surplus of benefit after deduct- ing all evils. Nor dare they question that the pleasure taken in accumulating property, leaves a large balance of advantage, private and public, after making all drawbacks. Yet many and conspicuous as are the cases in which pleasures and pains, sensational and emotional, serve as incentives to proper acts and deter- rents from improper acts, these pass unnoticed ; and notice is taken only of those cases in which men are directly or indirectly misled by them. The well-work- ing in essential matters is ignored ; and the ill-working in unessential matters is alone recognized. Is it replied that the more intense pains and pleas- ures, which have immediate reference to bodily needs, guide us rightly; while the weaker pains and pleasures, not immediately connected with the maintenance ot life, g aide us wrongly? Then the implication is that the system of guidance by pleasures and pains, which has answered with all types of creatures below the human, fails with the human. Or rather, the admis- sion being that with mankind it succeeds in so far as fulfillment of certain imperative wants goes, it fails in respect of wants that are not imperative. Those who think this are required, in the first place, to show us how the line is to be drawn between the two; and then to show us why the system which succeeds in the lower will not succeed in the higher. § 35. Doubtless, however, after aU that has been said, there will be raised afresh the same difficulty — 100 THE DATA OF ETHICS. there will be instanced the mischievous pleasures and the beneficent pains. The drunkard, the gambler, the thief, who severally pursue gratifications, will be named in proof that the pursuit of gratifications mis- leads; while the self-sacrificing relative, the worker who perseveres through weariness, the honest man who stints himself to pay his way, will be named in proof that disagreeable modes of consciousness accompany acts that are really beneficial. But after recalling the fact pointed out in § 20, that this objection does not tell against guidance by pleasures and pains at large, since it merely implies that special and proximate pleasures and pains must be disregarded out of consid- eration for remote and diffused pleasures and pains ; and, after admitting that in mankind, as at present constituted, guidance by proximate pleasures and pains fails throughout a wide range of cases ; I go on to set forth the interpretation Biology gives of these anomalies, as being not necessary and permanent, but incidental and temporary. Already, while showing that among inferior creat- ures, pleasures and pains have aU along guided the conduct by which life has been evolved and main- tained, I have pointed out that since the conditions of existence for each species have been occasionally changing, there have been occasionally arising partial misadjustments of the feelings to the requirements, necessitating readjustments. This general cause of derangement, operating on all sentient beings, has been operating on human beings in a manner unusually decided, persistent, and involved. It needs but to con- trast the mode of life followed by primitive men, wan- dering in the forests and living on wild food, with the THE BIOLOGICAL VIEW. 101 mode of life followed by rustics, artisans, traders, and professional men in a civilized community, to see that the constitution, bodily and mental, well-adjusted to the one, is iU-adjusted to the other. It needs but to observe the emotions kept awake in each savage tribe, chronically hostile to neighboring tribes, and then to observe the emotions which peaceful production and exchange bring into play, to see that the two are not only unlike, but opposed. And it needs but to note how, during social evolution, the ideas and sentiments appropriate to the militant activities carried on by co- ercive co-operation have been at variance with the ideas and sentiments appropriate to the industrial ac- tivities, carried on by voluntary co-operation, to see that there has ever been within each society, and still continues, a conflict between the two moral natures adjusted to these two unlike modes of life. Mani- festly, then, this readjustment of constitution to con- ditions, involving readjustment of pleasures and pains for guidance, which all creatures from time to time un- dergo, has been in the human race during civilizar tion especially difficult, not only because of the great- ness of the change from small nomadic groups to vast settled societies, and from predatory habits to peaceful habits, but also because the old life of enmity between societies has been maintained along with the new life of amity within each society. While there co-exist two ways of life so radically opposed as the militant and the industrial, human nature cannot become properly adapted to either. That hence results such failure of guidance by pleasures and pains as is daily exhibited, we discover on observing in what parts of conduct the failure is 102 THE DATA OF ETHICS. most conspicuous. As above shown, the pleasurable and painful sensations are fairly well adjusted to the peremptory physical requirements: the benefits of conforming to the sensations which prompt us in re- spect of nutrition, respiration, maintenance of temper- ature, etc., immensely exceed the incidental evils, and such misadjustments as occur may be ascribed to the change from the outdoor life of the primitive man to the indoor life which the civihzed man is often com- pelled to lead. It is the emotional pleasures and pains which are in so considerable a degree out of adjust- ment to the needs of life as carried on in society, and it is of these that the readjustment is made in the way above shown, so tardy because so difficult. From the biological point of view, then, we see that the connections between pleasure and beneficial action and between pain and detrimental action, which arose when sentient existence began, and have continues. among animate creatures up to man, are generally dis- played in him also throughout the lower and more completely organized part of his nature ; and must be more and irlore fully displayed throughout the higher part of his nature, as fast as his adaptation to the con- ditions of social life increases. § 36. Biology has a further judgment to pass on the relations of pleasures and pains to welfare. Beyond the connections between acts beneficial to the organism and the pleasures accorapan5'ing performance of them, and between acts detrimental to the organism and the pains causing desistance from them, there are connec- tions between pleasure in general and physiological exaltation, and between pain in general and physiologi ■■ THE BIOLOGICAL VIEW. 103 cal depression. Every pleasure increases vitality ; every pain decreases vitality. Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life. Let us consider, first, the pains. By the general mischiefs that result from submission to pains, I do not mean those arising from the diffused effects of local organic lesions, such as follow an aneur- ism caused by intense effort spite of protesting sensa- tions, or such as follow the varicose veins brought on by continued disregard of fatigue in the legs, or such as follow the atrophy set up in muscles that are per- sistently exerted when extremely weary ; but I mean the general mischiefs caused by that constitutional dis- turbance which pain forthwith sets up. These are conspicuous when the pains are acute, whether they be sensational or emotional. Bodily agony long borne produces death by exhaus- tion. More frequently, arresting the action of the heart for a time, it causes that temporary death we call fainting. On other occasions vomiting is a conse- quence. And where such manifest derangements do not result, we still, in the pallor and trembling, trace the general prostration. Beyond the actual loss of life caused by subjection to intense cold there are depres- sions of vitality less marked caused by cold less extreme — temporary enfeeblement following too long an immersion in icy water; enervation and pining away consequent on inadequate clothing. Similarly is it with submission to great heat : we have lassitude reaching occasionally to exhaustion ; we have, in weak persons, fainting, succeeded by temporary debilitation ; and in steaming tropical jungles Europeans contract fevers which, when not fatal, often entail life-long Oi THE DATA OF ETHICS. incapacities. Consider, again, the evils that follow violent exertion continued in spite of painful feelings — flow a fatigue \vhich destroys appetite or arrests diges- tion if food is taken, implying failure of the reparative processes when they are most needed ; and now a pros- tration of the heart, here lasting for a time and there, "Afhere the transgression has been repeated day after day, made permanent : reducing the rest of life to a \ lower level. No less conspicuous are the depressing effects of emotional pains. There are occasional cases of death from grief; and in other cases the mental suffering which a calamit}' causes, like bodily suffering, shows its effects by syncope. Often a piece of bad news is succeeded by sickness ; and continued anxiety will pro- duce loss of appetite, perpetual indigestion and dimin- ished strength. Excessive fear, whether aroused by physical or moral danger, will, in like manner, arrest for a time the processes of nutrition ; and, not unfre- quently, in pregnant women brings on miscarriage ; while, in less extreme cases, the cold perspiration and unsteady hands indicate a general lowering of the vital activities, entailing partial incapacity of body or mind or both. How greatly emotional pain deranges the visceral actions is shown us by the fact that incessant worry is not unfrequently followed by jaundice. And here, indeed, the relation between cause and effect happens to have been proved by direct experiment. Making such arrangements that the bile-duct of a dog delivered its product outside the body, Claude Bernard observed that so long as he petted the dog and kept him in good spirits, secretion went on at its normal rate ; but on speaking angrily, and for a time so treat- THE BIOLOGICAL VIEW. 105 ing him as to produce depression, the flow of bile was arrested. Should it be said that evil results of such kinds are proved to occur only when the pains, bodily or mental, are great, the reply is that in healthy persons the injurious perturbations caused by small pains, though . not easily traced, are still produced ; and that in those whose vital powers are much reduced by illness, slight physical irritations and trifling moral annoyances, often cause relapses. Quite opposite are the constitutional effects of pleasure. It sometimes, though rarely, happens that in feeble persons intense pleasure — pleasure that is almost pain — gives a nervous shook that is mischievous ; but it does not do this in those who are undebilitated by voluntary or enforced submission to actions injuri- ous to the organism. In the normal order, pleasures, great and smaU, are stimulants to the processes by which life is maintained. Among the sensations may be instanced those pro- duced by bright light. Sunshine is enlivening in com- parison with gloom — even a gleam excites a wave of pleasure ; and experiments have shown that sunshine raises the rate of respiration : raised respiration being an index of raised vital activities in general. A warmth that is agreeable in degree favors the heart's action, '■ and furthers the various functions to which this is instrumental. Though those who are in full vigor and fitly clothed can maintain their temperature in winter, and can digest additional food to make up for the loss of heat, it is otherwise with the feeble ; and, as vigor declines, the beneficence of warmth becomes con- spicuous. That benefits accompany the agreeable sen' 106 THE DATA OF ETUICS. sations produced by fresh air, and the agreeable sensa- tions that accompany muscular action after due rest, and the agreeable sensations caused by rest after exer- .tion cannot be questioned. Eeceipt of these pleasures conduces to the maintenance of the body in fit condi- tion for all the purposes of life. More manifest still are the physiological benefits of emotional pleasures. Every power, bodily and mental, is increased by " good spirits," which is our name for a general eniotional satisfaction. The truth that the fundamental vital actions — those of nutrition — are furthered by laughter-moving conversation, or rather by the pleasurable feeling causing laughter, is one of old standing; and every dyspeptic knows that in exhilarating company, a large and varied dinner, includ- ing not very digestible things, may be eaten Avith impunity, and, indeed, with benefit, while a small, carefully chosen dinner of simple things, eaten in soli- tude, will be followed by indigestion. This striking effect on the ahmentary system is accompanied by effects,' equally certain though less manifest, on the circulation and the respiration. Again, one who, released from daily labors and anxieties, receives delights from fine scenery or is enlivened by the novel- ties he sees abroad, comes back showing by toned-up face and vivacious manner, the greater energy with which he is prepared to pursue his avocation. Invalids especially, on whose narrowed margin of vitality the influence of conditions is most visible, habitually show the benefits derived from agreeable states of feeling. A lively social circle, the call of an old friend, or even removal to a brighter room, will, by the induced cheer- fulness, much improve the physical state, In. brief, a§ TBS BIOLOGICAL riEW. 10'? every medical man knows, there is no such tonic as happiness. These diffused physiological effects of pleasures and pains, which are joined with the local or special physi- ological effects, are, indeed, obviously inevitable. We have seen {Princvples of Psychology, §§ 123-125) that while craving, or negative pain, accompanies the under- activity of an organ, and while positive pain accompanies its over-activity, pleasure accompanies its normal ac- tivity. "We have seen that by evolution no other rela- tions could be established ; since, through all inferior types of creatures, if defect or excess of function pro- duced no disagreeable. sentiency, and medium function no agreeable sentiency, there would be nothing to insure a proportioned performance of function. And as it is one of the laws of nervous action that each stimulus, beyond a direct discharge to the particular organ acted on, indirectly causes a general discharge throughout the nervous system {Prvn. of Psy., §§ 21, 39), it results that the rest of the organs, all influenced as they are by the nervous system, participate in the stimulation. So that beyond the aid, more slowly shown, which the organs yield to one another through the physiological division of labor, there is the aid, more quickly shown, which mutual excitation gives. "While there is a ben- efit to be presently :^elt by the whole organism from the due performance of each function, there is an im- mediate benefit from the exaltation of its functions at large caused by the accompanying pleasure ; and from pains, whether of excess or defect, there also come these double effects, immediate and remote. I 37. Non-recognition of these general truths vitiatei 108 THE DATA OF ETHICS. moral speculation at large. From the estimates of right and wrong habitually framed, these physiological effects wrought on the actor by his feelings are entirely omitted. It is tacitly assumed that pleasures and pains have no reactions on the body of the recipient, affecting his fitness for the duties of life. The only reactions recog- nized are those on character ; respecting which the cur- rent supposition is, that acceptance of pleasures is det- rimental and submission to pains beneficial. The notion, remotely descended from the ghost-theory of the savage, that mind and body are independent, has, among its various implications, this behef that states of consciousness are in no wise related to bodily states. " You have had your gratification — it is past ; and you are as you were before," says the moralist to one. And to another he says, " You have borne the suffer- ing — ^it is over; and there the matter ends." Both statements are false. Leaving out of view indirect results, the direct results are that the one has moved a step away from death and the other has moved a step toward death. Leaving out of view, I say, the indirect results. It is these indirect results, here for the moment left out of view, which the moralist has exclusively in view, being so occupied by them that he ignores the direct results. The gratification, perhaps purchased at undue cost, perhaps enjoyed when work should have been done, perhaps snatched from the rightful claimant, is considered only in relation to remote injurious effects, and no set-off is made for immediate beneficial effects. Conversely, from positive and negative pains, borne now in the pursuit of some future advantage, now in discharge of responsibilities, now in performing a gen- THE BIOLOGICAL VIEW. 109 erous act, the distant good is alone dwelt on and the proximate evil ignored. Consequences, pleasurable and painful, experienced by the actor forthwith, are of no importance ; and they become of importance only when anticipated as occurring hereafter to the actor or to other persons. And further, future evils borne by the actor are considered of no account if they result from self- denial, and are emphasized only when they result from self-gratification. Obviously, estimates so framed are vcrroneous ; and obviously, the pervading judgments of conduct based on such estimates must be distorted. Mark the anomalies of opinion produced. If, as the sequence of a malady contracted in pur- suit of illegitimate gratification, an attack of iritis injures vision, the mischief is to be counted among those entailed by immoral conduct ; but if, regardless of protesting sensations, the eyes are used in study too soon after ophthalmia, and there follows blindness for years or for life, entailing not only personal unhappi- ness, but a burden on others, moralists are silent. The broken leg which a drunkard's accident causes counts among those miseries brought on self and family by intemperance, which form the ground for reprobating it; but if anxiety to fulfill duties prompts the con- tinued use of a sprained knee spite of the pain, and brings on a chronic lameness involving lack of exer- cise, consequent ill-health, inefficiency, anxiety, and unhappiness, it is supposed that ethics has no verdict to give in the matter. A student who is plucked be- cause he has spent in amusement the time and money that should have gone in study, is blamed for thus making parents unhappy and preparing for himself a miserable future; but another who, thinking exclu- 110 THE DATA OF ETHICS. sively of claims on him, reads night after night with hot or aching head, and, breaking down, cannot take his degree, but returns home shattered in health and unable to support himself, is named with pity only, as not subject to any moral judgment; or rather, the moral judgment passed is wholly favorable. Thus recognizing the evils caused by some kinds of conduct only, men at large, and moralists as exponents of their beliefs, ignore the suffering and death daily caused around them by disregard of that guidance which has established itself in the course of evolution. Led by the tacit assumption common to Pagan stoics and Christian ascetics, that we are so diabolically or- ganized that pleasures are injurious and pains benefi- cial, people on all sides yield examples of lives blasted by persisting in actions against which their sensations rebel. Here is one who, drenched to the skin and sit- ting in a cold wind, pooh-hoohs his shiverings and gets rheumatic fever, with subsequent heart-disease, which makes worthless the short life remaining to him. Here is another who, disregarding painful feelings, works too soon after a debilitating illness, and establishes dis- ordered health that lasts for the rest of his days, and makes him useless to himself and others. Now the account is of a youth who, persisting in gymnastic feats spite of scarcely bearable straining, bursts a blood-vessel, and, long laid on the shelf, is permanently damaged ; while now it is of a man in middle life who, pushing muscular effort to painful excess, suddenly brings on hernia. In this family is a case of aphasia, spreading paralysis and death, caused by eating too little and doing too much; in that, softening of the brain has been brought on by ceaseless mental efforts TEE BIOLOGICAL VIEW. Ill against which the feelings hourly protested ; and in others, less serious brain affections have been con- tracted by over-study continued regardless of discom- fort and the cravings for fresh air and exercise.* Even without accumulating special examples, the truth is forced on us by the visible traits of classes. The care- worn man of business too long at his office, the cadav- erous barrister pouring half the night over his briefs, the feeble factory hands and unhealthy seamstresses passing long hours in bad air, the anaemic, flat-chested school-girls, bending over many lessons and forbidden boisterous play, no less than Sheffield grinders who die of suffocating dust, and peasants crippled with rheu- matism due to exposure, show us the wide spread mis- eries caused by persevering in actions repugnant to the sensations and neglecting actions which the sensations prompt. Nay, the evidence is still more extensive and conspicuous. What are the puny malformed childreji, seen in poverty-stricken districts, but children whose appetites for food and desires for warmth have not been adequately satisfied? What are populations stinted in growth and prematurely aged, such as parts of France show us, but populations injured by work in excess and food in defect : the one implying positive pain, the other negative pain? What is the implica- tion of that greater mortality which occurs among people who are weakened by privations, unless it is that bodily miseries conduce to fatal illnesses? Or once more, what must we infer from the frightful amount of disease and death suffered by armies in the field, fed on scanty and bad provisions, lying on damp * I can count up more than a dozen sucli cases among those per- sonally weU known to me. Ha THE DATA OF ETHIGS. ground, exposed to extremes of heat and cold, inade- quately sheltered from rain, and subject to exhausting efforts; unless it be the terrible mischiefs caused by continuously subjecting the body to treatment which the feelings protest against ? It matters not to the argument Avhether the actions entailing such effects are voluntary or involuntary. It matters not from the biological point of view whether the motives prompting them are high or low. The vital functions accept no apologies on the ground that neglect of them was unavoidable, or that the reason for neglect was noble. The direct and indirect suffer- ings caused by non-conformity to the laws of life are the same whatever induces the non-conformity ; and cannot be omitted in any rational estimate of conduct. If the purpose of ethical inquiry is to establish rules of right living; and if the rules of rights living are those of which the total results, individual and general, direct and indirect, are most conducive to human happiness; then it is absurd to ignore the immediate results and recognize only the remote results. § 38. Here might be urged the necessity for prelud- ing the study of moral science by the study of biologi- cal science. Here might be dwelt on the error men make in thinking they can understand those special phenomena of human life with which Ethics deals, while paying little or no attention to the general phe- nomena of human life, and while utterly ignoring the phenomena of life at large. And, doubtless, there would be truth in the inference that such acquaintancfc with the world of living things, as discloses the part THE BIOLOGICAL VIEW. 113 which pleasures and pains have played in organic evolution, would help to rectify these one-sided concep- tions of moralists. It cannot be held, however, that lack of this knowledge is the sole cause, or the main cause, of their one-sidedness. For facts of the kind above instanced, which, duly attended to, would pre- vent such distortions of moral theory, are facts which it needs no biological inquiries to learn, but which are daily thrust before the eyes of all. The truth is, rather, that the general consciousness is so possessed by sentiments and ideas at variance with the conclu- sions necessitated by familiar evidence that the evi- dence gets no attention. These adverse sentiments and ideas have several roots. There is the theological root. As before shown, from the worship of cannibal ancestors who.dehghted in witnessing tortures, there resulted the primitive conception of deities who were propitiated by the bearing of pains, and, consequently, angered by the receipt of pleasures. Through the religions of the semi-civilized, in which this conception of the divine nature remains conspicuous, it has persisted, in pro- gressively modified forms, down to our own times; and still colors the beliefs, both of those who adhere to the current creed and of those who nominally reject it. There is another root in the primitive and still- surviving militancy. While social antagonisms con- tinue to generate war, which consists in endeavors to inflict pain and death while submitting to the risks of pain and death, and which necessarily involves great privations, it is needful that physical suffering, whether considered in itself or in the evils it bequeaths. 114 THE! DATA OP ETMIOS. should be thought little of, and that among pleasures recognized as most worthy should be those which victory brings. 'Eov does partially developed industrialism fail to furnish a root. "With social evolution, which implies transition from the life of wandering hunters to the life of settled peoples engaged in labor, and which therefore entails activities widely unlike those to which the aboriginal constitution is adapted, there comes an under-exercise of faculties for which the social state affords no scope, and an overtaxing of faculties re- quired for the social state ; the one implying denial of certain pleasures and the other submission to certain pains. Hence, along with that growth of population which makes the struggle for existence intense, bear- ing of pains and sacrifice of pleasures is daily neces- sitated. Now always and everywhere, there arises among men a theory conforming to their practice. The savage nature, originating the conception of a savage deit^y, evolves a theory of supernatural control suflBl- ciently stringent and cruel to influence his conduct. With submission to despotic government severe enough in its restraints to keep in order barbarous natures, there grows up a theory of divine right to rule, and the duty of absolute submission. Where war is made the business of life by the existence of warlike neigh- bors, virtues which are required for war come to be regarded as supreme virtues ; while, contrariwise, when industrialism has grown predominant, the vio- lence and the deception which warriors glory in come to be held criminal. In like manner, then, there arises a tolerable adjustment of thf ^-'jtually accepted k THE BIOLOGICAL VIEW. 115 j him ; Tvbi?li js, in- THE BIOLOGICAL VIEW. 119 deed, put beyond dispute by general experience as well as by the more special experience of medical men. When, however, from the invigorating and relaxing efEects of pleasure and pain respectively. Dr. Bain derives the original tenden- cies to persist in acts which give pleasure and to desist from those which give pain, 1 find myself unable to go with him. He says : " We suppose movements spontaneously begun, and accidentally ca^ASing pleasure ; we then assume that with the pleasure there will be an increase of vital energy, in which increase the fortunate move- ments will share, and thereby increase the pleasure. Or, on the other hand, we suppose the spontaneous movements to give pain, and assume that, with the pain, there will be a decrease of energy, extending to the movements that cause the evil, and thereby provid- ing a remedy" (3d Ed. p. 315). This interpretation, implying that "the fortunate movements" merely sJiwre in the efEects of aug- mented vital energy caused by the pleasure, does not seem to me con- gruous with observation. The truth appears rather to be that though there is a concomitant general increase of muscular tone, the muscles specially excited are those which, by their increased contraction, con- duce to increased pleasure. Conversely, the implication that desist- ance from spontaneous movements which cause pain, is due to a gen- eral muscular relaxation shared in by the muscles causing these par- ticular movements, seems to me at variance with the fact that the retractation commonly takes the form not of a passive lapse but of an active withdrawal. Further, it may be remarked that depressing as pain eventually is to the system at large, we cannot say that it at once depresses the muscular energies. Not simply, as Dr. Bain ad- mits, does an acute smart produce spasmodic movements, but pains of all kinds, both sensational and emotional, stimulate the muscles {Essays, 1st series, p. 360, 1, or 2d ed. Vol. I. p. 211, 13). Pain, how- ever (and also pleasure when very intense), simultaneously has an inhibitory effect on all the reflex actions ; and as the vital functions in general are carried on by reflex actions, this inhibition, increasing with the intensity of the pain, proportionately depresses the vital functions. Arrest of the heart's action and fainting is an extreme result of this inhibition ; and the viscera at large feel its efEects in degrees proportioned to the degrees of pain. Pain, therefore, while directly causing a discharge of muscular energy as pleasure does, eventually lowers muscular power by lowering those vital processes on which the supply of energy depends. Hence we cannot, I think. 120 TEE DATA OF ETHICS. ascribe the prompt desistance from muscular movements causing pain, to decrease in the flow of energy ; for tMs decrease is felt only after an interval. Conversely, we cannot ascribe tbe persistence in a muscular act wMch yields pleasure to tbe resulting exaltation of energy ; but must, as indicated in § 33, ascribe it to the establish- ment of lines of discharge between the place of pleasurable stimula- tion and those contractile structures which maintain and increase the act causing the stimulation — connections allied with the reflex, into which they pass by insensible gradations. TEE PaTCHOLOQIGAL VIEW. 131 CHAPTEE YII. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW. § 40. The last chapter, in so far as it dealt with feel- ings in their relations to conduct, recognized only their physiological aspects : their psychological aspects were passed over. In this chapter, conversely, we are not concerned with the constitutional connections between feelings, as incentives or deterrents, and physical benefits to be gained, or mischiefs to be avoided ; nor with the reactive effects of feelings on the state of the organism, as fitting or unfitting it for future action. Here we have to consider represented pleasures and pains, sen- sational and emotional, as constituting deliberate motives — as forming factors in the conscious adjust- ments of acts to ends. § 41. The rudimentary psychical act, not yet differ- entiated from a physical act, implies an 'excitation and a motion. In a creature of low type the touch of food excites prehension. In a somewhat higher creature the odor from nutritive matter sets up motion of the body toward the matter. And where rudimentary vision exists, sudden obscuration of light, implying the passage of something large, causes convulsive muscular movements which mostly carry the body away from the source of danger. In each of these cases we may 132 ~ TEE HAT A OF ETHICS. distinguish four factors. There is {a) that property of the external object which primarily affects the organ- ism — ^the taste, smell, or opacity; and connected with such property there is in the external object that charac- ter (6) which renders seizure of it, or escape from it, beneficial. Within the organism there is (c) the im- pression or sensation which the property {a) produces, serving as stimulus ; and there is connected with it, the motor change {cl) by which seizure or escape is effected. Now Psychology is chiefly concerned with the con- nection between the relation a i, and the relation c d, under all those forms which they assume in the course of evolution. Each of the factors, and each of the relations, grows more involved as organization ad- vances. Instead of being single, the identifying attri- bute a, often becomes, in the environment of a superior animal, a cluster of attributes ; such as the size, form, colors, motions, displayed by a distant creature that is dangerous.- The factor h, with which this combina- tion of attributes is associated, becomes the congeries of characters, powers, habits, which constitutfe it an enemy. Of the subjective factors, c becomes a com- plicated set of visual sensations co-ordinated with one another and with the ideas and feelings established by experience of such enemies, and constituting the motive to escape ; while d becomes the intricate and often prolonged series of runs, leaps, doubles, dives, etc., made in eluding the enemy. In human life we find the same four outer and inner factors, still more multiform and entangled in their compositions and connections. The entire assem- blage of physical attributes a, presented by an estate that is advertised for sale, passes enumeration; and TEB PSTGHOLOGICAL VIEW. 123 the assemblage of various utilities, h, going along wiUi these attributes, is also beyond brief specification. The perceptions and ideas, likes and dislikes, c, set up by the aspect of the estate, and which, compounded and recompounded, eventually form the motive for buymg it, make a whole too large and complex for description ; and the transactions, legal, pecuniary, and other, gone through in making the purchase and taking possession, are scarcely less numerous and elaborate. Nor must we overlook the fact that as evolution progresses, not only do the factors increase in com- plexity, but also the relations among them. Originally, a is directly and simply connected with h, while e is di- rectly and simply connected with d. But eventually, the connections between a and 6, and between c and d, become very indirect and involved. On the one hand, as the first illustration shows us, sapidity and nutritive- ness are closely bound together ; as are als'o the stimu- lation caused by the one and the contraction which utilizes the other. But, as we see in the last illustra- tion, the connection between the visible traits of an estate and those characters which constitute its value, is at once remote and complicated ; while the transi- tion from the purchaser's highly composite motive to the numerous actions of sensory and motor organs, severally intricate, which effect the purchase, is though an entangled plexus of thoughts and feelings constituting his decision. After this explanation will be apprehended a truth otherwise set forth in the Principles of Psychology. Mind consists of feelings and the relations among feelings. I^y composition of the relations, and ideas 124 ' THE I) ATA OF ETHICS. of relations, intelligence arises. By composition of the feelings, and ideas of feelings, emotion arises. And, other things equal, the evolution of either is great in proportion as the composition is great. One of the necessary imphcations is that cognition be- comes higher in proportion as it is remoter from reflex action ; while emotion becomes higher in proportion as it is remoter from sensation. And now of the various corollaries froin this broad view of psychological evolution, let us observe those which concern the motives and actions that are classed as moral and immoral. § 42. The meiital process by which, in any case, the adjustment of acts to ends is effected, and which, under its higher forms, becomes the subject-matter of ethical judgments, is, as above implied, divisible into the rise of a feeling or feelings constituting the motive, and the thought or thoughts through which the motive is shaped and finally issues in action. The first of these elements, originally an excitement, becomes a simple sensation; then a compound sensation ; then a cluster of partially presentative and partially representative sensations, forming an incipient emotion ; then a clus- ter of exclusively ideal or representative sensations, forming an emotion proper ; then a cluster of such clus- ters, forming a compound emotion ; and eventually be- comes a still more involved emotion composed of the ideal forms of such compound emotions. The other ele- ment, beginning, with that immediate passage of a single stimulus into a single motion, called reflex action, presently comes to be a set of associated dis- charges of stimuli producing associated motions, con- TME PSTGEOLOGICAL VIEW. 125 stituting instinct. Step by step arise more entangled combinations of stimuli, somewhat variable in their modes of union, leading to complex motions similarly variable in their adjustments ; whence occasional hesi- tations in the sensori-motor processes. Presently is reached a stage at which the combined clusters of im- pressions, not all present together, issue in actions not all simultaneous; implying representation of results, or thought. Afterward follow stages in which vari- ous thoughts have time to pass before the composite motives produce the appropriate actions. Until at last arise those long deliberations during which the probabilities of various consequences are estimated, and the promptings of the correlative feelings bal- anced, constituting calm judgment. That under either of its aspects the later forms of this mental process are the higher, ethically considered as well as otherwise considered, will be readily seen. For from the first, complication of sentiency has ac- companied better and more numerous adjustments of acts to ends; as also has complication of movement, and complication of the co-ordinating or intellectual process uniting the two. Whence it follows that the acts characterized by the more complex motives and the more involved thoughts, have all along been of higher authority for guidance. Some examples will make this clear. Here is an aquatic creature guided by the odor of organic matter toward things serving for food ; but a creature which, lacking any other guidance, is at the mercy of larger creatures coming near. Here is another which, also guided to food by odor, possesses rudimentary vision ; and so is made to start spasmod- 126 THE DATA OF ETEICa. icallj away from a moving body which diffuses this odor, ia those oases where it is large enough to pro- duce sudden obscuration of light — usually an enemy. Evidently life will frequently be saved by conforming to the iater and higher stimulus, instead of to the earlier and lower. Observe at a more advanced stage a parallel conflict. This is a beast which pursues others for prey, and, either lacking experience or prompted by raging hun- ger, attacks one more powerful than itself, and gets destroyed. Conversely, that is a beast which, prompted by a hunger equally keen, but either by individual ex- perience or effects of inherited experience, made con- scious of evil by the aspect of one more powerful than itself, is deterred from attacking, and saves its life by subordinating the primary motive, consisting of crav- ing sensations, to the secondary motive, consisting of ideal feelings, distinct or vague. Ascending at once from these examples of conduct in animals to examples of human conduct, we shall see that the contrasts between inferior and superior have habitually the same traits. The savage of lowest type devours all the food captured by to-day's chase, and, hungry on the morrow, has perhaps for days to bear the pangs of starvation. The superior savage, con- ceiving more vividly the entailed sufferings if no game is to be found, is deterred by his complex feeling from giving way entirely to his simple feeling. Similarly are the two contrasted in the inertness which goes along with lack of forethought, and the activity which due forethought produces. The primitive man, idly inclined, and ruled by the sensations of the moment, will not exert himself until actual pains have to be TEE ParcnOLOGICAL VIEW. Ill escaped ; but the man somewhat advanced, able more distinctly to imagine future gratifications and su£fer- ings, is prompted by the thought of these to overcome his love of ease : decrease of misery and mortality re- sulting from this predominance of the representative feelings over the presentative feelings. "Without dwelhng on the fact that among the civil- ized, those who lead the life of the senses are con- trasted in the same way with those whose lives are largely occupied with pleasures not of a sensual kind, let me point out that there are analogous contrasts between guidance by the less complex representative feelings, or lower emotions, and guidance by the more complex representative feelings, or higher emotions. When led by his acquisitiveness — a re-representative feeling which, acting under due control, conduces to wel- fare — the thief takes another man's property ; his act is determined by certain imagined proximate pleasures of relatively simple kinds, rather than b}^ less clearly imagined possible pains that are more remote and of relatively involved kinds. But in the conscientious man, there is an adequate restraining motive, still more re-representative in its nature, including not only ideas of punishment, and not only ideas of lost repu- tation and ruin, but including ideas of the claims of the person owning the property, and of the pains which loss of it will entail on him : all joined with a general aversion to acts injurious to others, which arises from the inherited effects of experience. And here at the end we see, as we saw at the beginning, that guid- ance by the more complex feeling, on the average, con- duces to welfare more than does guidance by the simpler feeling. 128 TEE DATA OF ETHICS. The like holds with the intellectual co-ordinations through which stimuli issue in motions. The lowest actions, called reflex, in which an iijipression made on an afferent nerve causes by discharge through an . efferent nerve a contraction, shows us a very limited adjustment of acts to ends : the impression being simple, and the resulting motion simple, the internal co-ordination is also simple. Evidently when there are several senses which can be together affected by an outer object ; and when, according as such object is discriminated as of one or other kind, the movements made in response are combined in one or other way ; the intermediate co-ordinations are necessarily more involved. And evidently each further step in the evo- lution of intelligence, always instrumental to better self-preservation, exhibits this same general trait. The adjustments by which the more involved actions are made appropriate to the more involved circumstances, imply more intricate, and, consequently, more deliber- ate and conscious co-ordinations ; until, when we come to civilized men, who in their daily business, taking into account many data and conditions, adjust their proceedings to various consequences, we see that the intellectual actions, becoming of the kind we call judicial, are at once very elaborate and very deliberate. Observe, then, what follows respecting the relative authorities of motives. Throughout the ascent from low creatures up to man, and from the lowest types of man up to the highest, self-preservation has been increased by the subordination of simple excitations to compound excitations — the subjection of immediate sensations to the ideas of sensations to come — the over^ TEE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW. 139 ruling of presentative feelings by representative feel- ings, and of representative feelings by re-representa- tive feelings. As life bas advanced, the accompanying sentiency bas become increasingly ideal ; and among feelings produced by the compounding of ideas, the highest, and those which have evolved latest, are the re-compounded or doubly ideal. Hence it follows that as guides, the feelings have authorities proportion- ate to the degrees in which they are removed by their complexity and their ideality from simple sensations and appetites. A further implication is made clear by studying the intellectual sides of these mental processes by which acts are adjusted to ends. Where they are low and simple, these comprehend the guiding only of imme- diate acts by immediate stimuli — the entire transaction in each case, lasting but a moment, refers only to a proximate result. But with the development of intel- ligence, and the growing ideality of the motives, the ends to which the acts are adjusted cease to be exclu- sively immediate. The more ideal motives concern ends that are more distant ; and with approach to the highest types, present ends become increasingly sub- ordinate to those future ends which the ideal motives have for their objects. Hence there arises a certain presumption in favor of a motive which refers to a remote good, in comparison with one which refers to a proximate good. § 43. In the last chapter I hinted that besides the several influences there named as fostering the ascetic belief that doing things which are agreeable is detri- mental while bearing disagreeable things is beneficial. 130 TEt) DATA OF BTBI08. there remained to be named an influence of deeper origin. This is shadowed forth in the foregoing paragraphs. For the general truth that guidance by such simple pleasures and pains as result from fulfilling or denying bodily desires, is, under one aspect, inferior to guidance by those pleasures and pains which the complex ideal feelings yield, has led to the belief that the prompt- ings of bodily desires should be disregarded. Further, the general truth that pursuit of proximate satisfactions is, under one aspect, inferior to pursuit of ultimate sa^t- isfactions, has led to the belief that proximate satisfac- tions must not be valued. In the early stages of every science, the generaliza- tions reached are not qualified enough. The discrimi- nating statements of the truths formulated, rise afterward, by limitation of the undiscriminating statements. As with bodily vision, which at first appreciates only the broadest traits of objects, and so leads to rude classings, which developed vision, im- pressible by minor differences, has to correct, so with mental vision in relation to general truths, it happens that at first the inductions, wrongly made all-embracing, have to wait for scepticism and critical observation to restrict them, by taking account of unnoticed differ- ences. Hence, we may expect to find the current ethical conclusions too sweeping. Let us note how, in three ways, these dominant beliefs, alike of professed moralists and of people at large, are made erroneous by lack of qualifications. In the first place, the authority of the lower feelings as guides is by no means always inferior to the authority of the higher feelings, but is oftea superior. Daily THE PS7CH0L0QI0AL VIEW. 131 occur occasions on which sensations must be obeyed rather than sentiments. Let any one think of sitting all night naked in a snow-storm, or going a week with- out food, or letting his head be held under water for ten minutes, and he wiU see that the pleasures and pains directly related to maintenance of life may not be wholly subordinated to the pleasures and pains in- directly related to maintenance of life. Though in many cases guidance by the simple feelings rather than by the complex feelings is injurious, in other cases guidance by the complex feelings rather than by the simple feelings is fatal; and throughout a wide range of cases their relative authorities as guides are indeter- minate. Grant that in a man pursued, the protesting feelings accompanying intense and prolonged effort, must, to preserve life, be overruled by the fear of hia pursuers ; it may yet happen that, persisting till he drops, the resulting exhaustion causes death, though, the pursuit having been abandoned, death would not otherwise have resulted. Grant that a widow left in poverty must deny her appetite that she may give enough food to her children to keep them alive ; yet the denial of her appetite pushed too far may leave them not only entirely without food but without guardianship. Grant that, working his brain unceas- ingly from dawn till dark, the man in pecuniary diffi- culties must disregard rebellious bodily sensations in obedience to the conscientious desire to liquidate the claims on him ; yet he may carry this subjection of simple feelings to complex feelings to the extent of shattering his health, and failing in that end which, with less of this subjection, he might have achieved. Clearly, then, the subordination of lower feelings must 132 TEE DATA OF ETSI08. be a conditional subordination. The supremacy of higher feelings must be a qualified supremacy. In another way does the generalization ordinarily made err by excess. With the truth that life is high in proportion as the simple presentative feelings are under the control of the compound representative feelings, it joins, as though they were corollaries, cer- tain propositions which are not corollaries. The cur- rent conception is, not that the lower must yield to the higher when the two conflict, but that the lower must be disregarded even when there is no conflict. This tendency which the growth of moral ideas has generated, to condemn obedience to inferior feelings when superior feelings protest, has begotten a tendency to condemn inferior feelings considered intrinsically. " I really think she does things because she likes to do them," once said to me one lady concerning another : the form of expression and the manner both implying the belief not only that such behavior is wrong, but also that every one must recognize it as wrong. And there prevails widely a notion of this kind. In prac- tice, indeed, the notion is very generally inoperative. Though it prompts various incidental asceticisms, as of those who think it alike manly and salutary to go without a great-coat in cold weather, or to persevere through the winter in taking an out-of-door plunge, yet, generally, the pleasurable feelings accompanying due f ulflUment of bodily needs, are accepted : accept- ance being, indeed, sufficiently peremptory. Eut oblivious of these contradictions in their practice, men commonly betray a vague idea that there is some- thing degrading, or injurious, or both, in doing that ivhich is agreeable and avoiding that which is dis- THS PSTGEQLOaiCAL VIEW. 133 agreeable. "Pleasant but wrong," is a phrase fre- quently used in a way implying that the two are naturally connected. As above hinted, however, such beliefs result from a confused apprehension of the general truth that the more compound and representa- tive feelings are, on the average, of higher authority than the simple and presentative feelings. Appre- hended with discrimination, this truth imphes that the authority of the simple, ordinarily less than that of ' the compound but occasionally greater, is habitually to be accepted when the compound do not oppose. In yet a third way is this principle of subordination misconceived. One of the contrasts between the earlier evolved feelings and the later evolved feelings, is that they refer respectively to the more immediate effects of actions and to the more remote effects ; and speaking generally, guidance by that which is near is inferior to guidance by that which is distant. Eence has resulted the belief that, irrespective of their kinds, the pleasures of the present must be sacrificed to the pleasures of the future. We see this in the maxim often impressed on children when eating their meals, that they should reserve the nicest morsel till the last : the check on improvident yielding to immediate im- pulse, being here joined with the tacit teaching that the same gratification becomes more valuable as it be- comes more distant. Such thinking is traceable ' throughout daily conduct ; by no means indeed in all, but in those who are distinguished as prudent and well regulated in their conduct. Hurrying over his breakfast that he may catch the train, snatching a sandwich in the middle of the day, and eating a late dinner when he is so worn out that he is incapacitated 134 THE DATA OF ETHICS. for evening recreation, the man of business pursues a life in which not only the satisfactions of bodily desires, but also those of higher tastes and feelings, are, as far as may be, disregarded, that distant ends may be achieved ; and j&t if you ask what are these distant ends, you find (in cases where there are no parental responsibilities) that they are included under the conception of moro comfortable living in time to come. So ingrained is this belief that it is wrong to seek immediate enjoyments and right to seek remote ones only, that you may hear from a busy man who has been on a pleasure excursion a kind of apology for his conduct. He deprecates the unfavorable judg- ments of his friends by explaining that the state of his health had compelled him to take a holiday. Nevertheless, if you sound him with respect to his future, you find that his ambition is by-and-by to retire and devote himself wholly to the relaxations which he is now somewhat ashamed of taking. The general truth disclosed by the study of evolving conduct, sub-human and human, that for the better preservation of life the primitive, simple, presentative feelings must be controlled by the later-evolved, com- pound, and representative feelings, has thus come, in the course of civilization, to be recognized by men ; but necessarily at first in too indiscriminate a way. The current conception, while it errs by implying that the authority of the higher over the lower is unlimited, errs also by implying that the rule of the lower must be resisted even when it does not conflict with the rule of the higher, and further errs by implying that a gratification which forms a proper aim if it is remote, forms an improper aim if it is proximate. THE PSTCHOLOGIGAL VIEW. 135 § 44. Without explicitly saying so, we have been here tracing the genesis of the moral consciousness. For unquestionably the essential trait in the moral consciousness is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings. Among the higher animals we may see, distinctly enough, the conflict of feelings and the subjection of simpler to more compound ; as when a dog is restrained from snatching food by fear of the penalties which may come if he yields to his appetite ; or as when he desists from scratching at a hole lest he should lose his master, who has walked on. Here, however, though there is subordination, there is not conscious subordina- tion — there is no introspection revealing the fact that one feeling has yielded to another. So is it even with human beings when little developed mentally. The pre-social man, wandering about in families and ruled by such sensations and emotions as are caused by the circumstances of the moment, though occasionally sub- ject to conflicts of motives, meets with comparatively few cases in which the advantage of postponing the immediate to the remote is forced on his attention ; nor has he the intelligence requisite for analyzing and generalizing such of these cases as occur. Only as social evolution renders the life more complex, the restraints many and strong, the evils of impulsive con- duct marked, and the comforts to be gained by provid- ing for the future tolerably certain, can there come experiences numerous enough to make familiar the benefit of subordinating the simpler feelings to the more complex ones. Only then, too, does there arise a suflBcient intellectual power to make an induction from these experiences, followed by a sufficient mass- 136 THE DATA OF ETEI08. ing of individual inductions into a public and tradi- tional induction impressed on each generation as it grows up. And here we are introduced to certain facts of pro- found significance. This conscious relinquishment of immediate and special good to gain distant and general good, while it is a cardinal trait of the self-restraint called moral, is also a cardinal trait of self-restraints other than those called morale — the restraints that originata from fear of the visible ruler, of the invisible ruler, and of society at large. "Whenever the indi- vidual refrains from doing that which the passing desire prompts, lest he should afterward suffer legal punishment, or divine vengeance, or public reproba- tion, or all of them, he surrenders the near and definite pleasure rather than risk the remote and greater, though less definite, pains, which taking it may bring on him ; and, conversely, when he undergoes some present pain, that he may reap some probable future pleasure, political, religious, or social. But though all these four kinds of internal control have the common character that the simpler and less ideal feelings are consciously overruled by the more complex and ideal feelings ; and though, at first, they are practically co-extensive and undistinguished, yet, in the course of social evolution, they differentiate; and, eventually, the moral control, with its accompanying conceptions and sentiments, emerges as independent. Let us glance at the leading aspects of the process. While, as in the rudest groups, neither political nor religious rule exists, the leading check to the imme- diate satisfaction of each desire as it arises, is con- sciousness pf the evils which the anger of fellow- THE P8TCH0L0GICAL VIEW. 137 savages may entail, if satisfaction of the desire is obtained at their cost. In this early stage the imag- ined pains which constitute the governing motive are those apt to be inflicted by beings of hke nature, un- distinguished in power: the political, religious, and social restraints are as yet represented only by this mutual dread of vengeance. > When special strength, skill, or courage, makes one of them a leader in battle, he necessarily inspires greater fear than any other, and there comes to be a more decided check on such satisfactions of the desires as will injure or offend him. G-radually as, by habitual warfare, chieftainship is estabhshed, the evils thought of as likely to arise from angering the chief, not only by aggression upon him, but by disobedience to him, become distinguishable both from the smaller evils which other personal antagonisms cause, and from the more diffused evils thought of as arising from social reprobation. That is, political control begins to differentiate from the more indefinite control of mutual dread. Meanwhile there has been developing the ghost theory. In all but the rudest groups the double of a deceased man, propitiated at death and afterward, is conceived as able to injure the survivors. Conse- quently, as fast as the ghost theory becomes estab- lished and definite, there grows up another kind of check on immediate satisfaction of the desires — a check constituted by ideas of the evils which ghosts may inflict if offended ; and when political headship gets settled, and the ghosts of dead chiefs, thought of as more powerful and relentless than other ghosts, are especially dreaded, there begins to take shape the form of restraint distinguished as religious. 138 TEE DATA OF ETHICS. For a long time these three sets of restraints, which their correlative sanctions, though becoming separate in consciousness, remain co-extensive, and do so because they mostly refer to one end — success in war. The duty of blood-revenge is insisted on even while j'et nothing to be called social organization exists. As the chief gains predominance, the killing of enemies becomes a political duty ; and as the anger of the dead chief comes to be dreaded, the killing of enemies becomes a religious duty. Loyalty to the ruler while he lives and after he dies is increasingly shown by holding life at his disposal for purposes of war. The earliest enacted punishments are those for insubordi- nation and for breaches of observances which express subordination — all of them militant in origin. While the divine injunctions, originally traditions of the dead king's will, mainly refer to the destruction of peoples with whom he was at enmity, and divine anger or approval are conceived as determined by ihe degrees in which subjection to him is shown, directly by wor- ship and indirectly by fulfilling these injunctions. The Fijian, who is said on entering the other world to commend himself by narrating his successes in battle, and who, when alive, is described as sometimes greatly distressed if he thinks he has not killed enemies enough to please his gods, shows us the resulting ideas and feelings, and reminds us of kindred ideas and feel- ings betrayed by ancient races. To all which add that the control of social opinion, besides being directly exercised, as in the earliest stage, by praise of the bravd and blame of the cow- ardly, comes to be indirectly exercised with a kindred general effect b^ applause of lo^'alt^ to the ruler ^a4 TffB PsrcMOLOGiCAL VISW. 139 piety to the god. So that the three differentiated forms of control which grow up along with militant organization and action, while enforcing kindred re- straints and incentives, also enforce one another ; and their separate and joint disciplines have the common character that they involve the sacrifice of immediate special benefits to obtain more distant and general benefits. At the same time there have been developing under the same three sanctions, restraints and incentives of another order, similarly characterized by subordina- tion of the proximate to the remote. Joint aggres- sions upon men outside the society cannot prosper if there are many aggressions of man on man within the society. War implies co-operation; and co-operation is prevented by antagonisms among those vs^ho are to co-operate!. "We saw that in the primitive ungoverned group, the main check on immediate satisfaction of his desires by each man, is the fear of other men's venge- ance if they are injured by taking the satisfaction ; and through early stages of social development this dread of retaliation continues to be the chief motive to such forbearance as exists. But though long after political authority has become established the taking of personal satisfaction for injuries persists, the growth of political authority gradually checks it. The fact that success in war is endangered if his followers fight among themselves, forces itself on the attention of the ruler. He has a strong motive for restraining quarrels, and therefore for preventing the aggressions which cause quarrels; and as his power becomes greater he forbids the aggressions and inflicts punish- ments for disobedience. Presently, political restraints 140 THE DATA OF ETEIOS. of this class, like those of the preceding class, are enforced by religious restraints. The sagacious chief, succeeding in war partly because he thus enforces order among his followers, leaves behind him a tradi- tion of the commands he habitually gave. Dread of his ghost tends to produce regard for these com- mands ; and they eventually acquire sacredness. With further social evolution come, in like manner, further interdicts, checking aggressions of less serious kinds ; until eventually there grows up a body of civil laws. And then, in the way shown, arise beliefs concerning the divine disapproval of these minor, as well as of the major, civil ofifences : ending, occasionally, in a set of religious injunctions harmonizing with, and enforc- ing, the political injunctions; while simultaneously there develops, as before, a social sanction for these rules of internal conduct, strengthening the political and religious sanctions. But now observe that while these three controls, political, religious, and social, severally lead men to subordinate proximate satisfactions to remote satisfac- tions ; and while they are in this respect like the moral control, which habitually requires the subjection of simple presentative feelings to complex representa- tive feelings and postponement of present to future ; yet they do not constitute the moral control, but are only preparatory to it — are controls within which the moral control evolves. The command of the political ruler is at first obeyed, not because of its perceived rectitude, but simply because it is his command, which there will be a penalty for disobeying. The check is not a mental representation of the evil consequences which the forbidden act will, in the nature of things, TEE P8TCH0L0GI0AL VIEW. 141 cause : but it is a mental representation of the facti- tious evil consequences. Down to our own time we trace in legal phrases, the original doctrine that the aggression of one citizen on another is wrong, and wiU be punished, not so much because of the injury done him, as because of the implied disregard of the king's will. Similarly, the sinfulness of breaking a divine injunction was universally at one time, and is still by many, held to consist in the disobedience to God, rather than in the deliberate entailing of injury ; and even now it is a common belief that acts are right only if performed in conscious fulfillment of the divine will: nay, are even wrong if otherwise performed. The like holds, too, with that further control exercised by public opinion. On listening to the remarks made respecting conformity to social rules, it is noticeable that breach of them is condemned not so much be- cause of any essential impropriety as because the world's authority is ignored. How imperfectly the truly moral control is even now differentiated from these controls within which it has been evolving, we see in the fact that the systems of morality criticized at the outset, severally identify moral control with one or other of them. For moralists of one class derive moral rules from the commands of a supreme political power. Those of another class recognize no other origin for them than the revealed divine will. And though men who take social prescription for their guide do not formulate their doctrine, yet the belief, frequently betrayed, that conduct which society per- mits is not blameworthy, implies that there are those who think right and wrong can be made such by public opinion. 143 THE DATA OF ETHICS. Before taking a further step we must put together the results of this analysis. The essential truths to be carried with us, respecting these three forms of exter- nal control to which the social unit is subject, are these : First, that they have evolved with the evolu- tion of society, as means to social self-preservation, necessary under the conditions ; and that, by implica- tion, they are in the main congruous with one another. Second, that the correlative internal restraints gener- ated in the social unit are representations of remote results which are incidental rather than necessary — a legal penalty, a supernatural punishment, a social reprobation. Third, that these results, simpler and more directly wrought by personal agencies, can be more vividly conceived than can the results which, in the course of things, actions naturally entail ; and the conceptions of them are, therefore, more potent over undeveloped minds. Fourth, that as with the restraints thus generated is always joined- the thought of external coercion, there arises the notion of obligation ; which so becomes habitually associated with the surrender of immediate special benefits for the sake of distant and general benefits. Fifth, that the moral control corre- sponds in large measure with the three controls thus originating, in respect of its injunctions; and corre- sponds, too, in the general nature of the mental pro- cesses producing conformity to those injunctions ; but differs in their special nature. § 46. For now we are prepared to see that the restraints, properly distinguished as moral, are unlike these restraints out of which they evolve, and with which they are long confounded, in this — they refer THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW. 143 not to the extrinsic effects of actions but to their intrinsic effects. The truly moral deterrent from murder is not constituted by a representation of hang- ing as a consequence, or by a representation of tortures in hell as a consequence, or by a representation of the horror and hatred excited in fellow men ; but by a representation of the necessary natural results, the infliction of death-agony on the victim, the destruction of all his possibilities of happiness, the entailed suffer- ings to his belongings. Neither the thought of impris- onment, nor of divine anger, nor of social disgrace, is that which constitutes the moral check on theft ; but the thought of injury to the person robbed, joined with a vague consciousness of the general evils caused by disregard of proprietary rights. Those who repro- bate the adulterer on moral grounds have their minds fiUed, not with ideas of an action for damages, or of future punishment following the breach of a command- ment, or of loss of reputation; but they are occupied with ideas of unhappiness entailed on the aggrieved wife or husband, the damaged lives of children, and the diffused mischiefs which go along with disregard of the marriage tie. Conversely, the man who is moved by a moral feeling to help another in difficulty, does not picture to himself any reward here or here- after ; but pictures only the better condition he is trying to bring about. One who is morally prompted to fight against a social evil has neither material benefit nor popular applause before his mind, but only the mischiefs he seeks to remove and the increased well- being which will follow their removal. Throughout, then, the moral motive differs from the motives it is associated with in this, that instead of being consti- 144 TEE DATA OF ETHICS. tuted by representations of incidental, collateral, non- necessary consequences of acts, it is constituted by representations of consequences which the acts natu- rally produce. These representations are not all dis- tinct, though some of such are usually present ; but they form an assemblage of indistinct representa- tions accumulated by experience of the results of like acts in the life of the individual, superposed on a stiU more indistinct but voluminous consciousness due to the inherited effects of such experiences in progen- itors, forming a feeling that is at once massive and vague. And now we see why the moral feelings and cor- relative restraints have arisen later than the feelings and restraints that originate from political, religious, and social authorities, and have so slowly, and even yet so incompletely, disentangled themselves. For only by these lower feelings and restraints could be main- tained the conditions under which the higher feelings and restraints evolve. It is thus alike vrith the self- regarding feelings and with the other-regarding feel- ings. The pains which improvidence will bring, and the pleasures to be gained by storing up things for future use, and by laboring to get such things, can be habitually contrasted in thought, only as fast as settled social arrangements make accumulation possible ; and that there may arise such settled arrangements, fear of the seen ruler, of the unseen ruler, and of public opinion, must come into play. Only after political, religious and social restraints have produced a stable community can there be sufBcient experience of the pains, positive and negative, sensational and emotional, which crimes of aggression cause, as to THS P8TCR0L0GICAL VIEW. 145 generate that moral aversion to them constituted by consciousness of their intrinsically evil results. And more manifest still is it that such a moral sentiment as that of abstract equity, which is offended not only by material injuries done to men, but also by political arrangements that place them at a disadvantage, can evolve only after the social stage reached gives familiar expedience, both of the pains flowing directly from in- justices, and also of those flowing indirectly from the class privileges which make injustices easy. That the feelings called moral have the nature and origin alleged is further shown by the fact that we associate the name with them in proportion to the degree in which they have these characters — firstly, of being re representative ; secondly, of being concerned with indirect rather than with direct effects, and generally with remote rather than immediate; and thirdly, of referring to effects that are mostly general rather than special. Thus, though we condemn one man for extravagance and approve the economy shown by another man, we do not class their acts as respect- ively vicious and virtuous. These words are too strong ; the present and future results here differ too little in concreteness and ideality to make the words fully applicable. Suppose, however, that the extravagance necessarily brings distress on wife and children — brings pains diffused over the lives of others as well as of self, and the viciousness of the extravagance be- comes clear. Suppose, further, that prompted by the wish to relieve his family from the misery he has brought on them, the spendthrift forges a bill or com- mits some other fraud. Though, estimated apart, we characterize his overruling emotion as moral, and 14(5 TSM DATA Of BTBtOS. make allowance for him in consideration of it, yet his action, taken as a whole, we condemn as immoral : we regard as of superior authority the feelings which respond to men's proprietary claims — feelings which are re-representative in a higher degree and refer to more remote diffused consequences. The difference, habitually recognized, between the relative elevations of justice and generosity, well illustrates this truth. The motive causing a generous act has reference to effects of a more concrete, special, and proximate kind than has the motive to do justice, which, beyond the proximate effects, usually themselves less concrete than those that generosity contemplates, includes a consciousness of the distant, involved, diffused effects of maintaining equitable relations. And justice we hold to be higher generosity. Comprehension of this long argument will be aided by here quoting a further passage from the before- named letter to Mr. Mill, following the passage already quoted from it. "To make any position fully understood, it seems needful to add that, corresponding to tlie fundamental propositions of a developed Moral Science, there have been, and still are, developing in the race, certain fundamental moral intuitions; and that, though these moral intuitions are the results of accumulated experiences of Utility, gradually organized and inherited, they have come to be quite inde- pendent of conscious experience. Just in the same way that I be- lieve the intuition of space, possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from organized and consolidated experiences of all ante- cedent individuals who bequeathed to him their slowly developed nerv- ous organizations — just as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and complete by personal experiences, has prac- tically become a form of thought, apparently quite independent of experience ; so do I believe that the experiences of utility organized and consolidated through all pa&t generations of the human race, THE P87CH0L0GICAL VIEW. 147 have teen producing corresponding nervous modifications, vfUoli, by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition — certain emotions responding to rigbt and wrong conduct, whicli have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility. I also hold that just as the space intuition responds to the exact demonstrations of Geometry, and has its rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them ; so will moral intuitions respond to the demonstrations of Moral Science, and will have their rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them." To this, in passing, I will add only that the evolution- hypothesis thus enables us to reconcile opposed moral theories, as it enables us to reconcile opposed theories of knowledge. For as the doctrine of innate forms of intellectual intuition falls into harmony with the experi- ential doctrine, when we recognize the production of intellectual faculties by inheritance of effects wrought by experience; so the doctrine of innate powers of moral perception becomes congruous with the utilita- rian doctrine, when it is seen that preferences and aversions are rendered organic by inheritance of the effects of pleasurable and painful experiences in progenitors. § 46. One further question has to be answered — How does there arise the feeling of moral obligation in gen- eral ? "Whence comes the sentiment of duty, considered as distinct from the several sentiments which prompt temperance, providence, kindness, justice, truthfulness, etc.1 The answer is that it is an abstract sentiment generated in a manner analogous to that in which abstract ideas are generated. The idea of each color had originally entire conorete- ness given to it by an object possessing the color; as gopxe pf the unmodified namesj such as grange au4 148 THE DATA OF ETHICS. violet, show us. The dissooiatioa of each color from the object specially associated with it in thought at the outset, went on as fast as the color came to be associated in thought with objects unlike the first, and unlike one another. The idea of orange was conceived in the abstract more fully in proportion as the various orange- colored objects remembered, cancelled one another's diverse attributes, and left outstanding their common attribute. So is it if we ascend a stage and note how there arises the abstract idea of color apart from particular colors. Were all things red the conception of color in the abstract could not exist. Imagine that every object was either red or green, and it is manifest that the mental habit would be to think of one or other of these two colors in connection with anj'^thing named. But multiply the colors so that thought rambles unde- cidedly among the ideas of them that occur along with any object named, and there results the notion of inde- terminate color — the common property which objects possess of affecting us by light from their surfaces, as well as by their forms. For evidently the notion of this common property is that which remains constant while imagination is picturing every possible variety of color. It is the uniform trait in all colored things ; that is — color in the abstract. "Words referring to quantity furnish cases of more marked dissociation of abstract from concrete. Group- ing various things as small in comparison either with those of their kind or with those of other kinds, and similarly grouping some objects as comparatively great, we get the opposite abstract notions of sraallness and greatness. Applied as these are to innumerable THE PaYGHOLOQIOAL VIEW. 149 very diverse things — not objects only, but forces, times, numbers, values — they have become so little connected with concretes, that their abstract meanings are very vague. Further, we must note that an abstract idea thus formed often acquires an illusive independence ; as we may perceive in the case of motion, which, dissociated in thought from all particular bodies and velocities and directions, is sometimes referred to as though it could be conceived apart from something moving. Now all this holds of the subjective as well as of the objective; and among other states of conscious- ness, holds of the emotions as known by introspection. By the grouping of those re-representative feelings above described, which, dififering among themselves in other respects, have a component in common, and by the consequent mutual cancelling of their diverse com- ponents, this common component is made relatively appreciable, and becomes an abstract feeling. Thus is produced the sentiment of moral obligation or duty. Let us observe its genesis. We have seen that during the progress of animate existence, the later evolved, more compound and more representative feelings, serving to adjust the conduct to more distant and general needs, have all along had an authority as guides superior to that of the earlier and simpler feelings — excluding cases in which these last are intense. This superior authority, unrecogniza- ble by lower types of creatures which cannot general- ize, and little recognizable by primitive men who have but feeble powers of generalization, has become dis- tinctly recognized as civilization and accompanying mental development have gone on. Accumulated 150 TEE DATA OF ETHICS. experiences have produced the consciousness that guidance by feelings which refer to remote 'and general results is usually more conducive to welfare than guidance by feelings to be immediately gratified. For what is the common character of the feelings that prompt honesty, truthfulness, diligence, providence, etc., which men habitually find to be better prompters than the appetites and simple impulses ? They are all complex, re-representative feelings, occupied with the future rather than the present. The idea of authorita- tiveness has, therefore, come to be connected with feel-' ings having these traijts : the implication being that the lower and simpler feelings are without authority. And this idea of authoritativeness is one element in the abstract consciousness of duty. But there is another element — the element of coer- civeness. This originates from experience of those several forms of restraint that have, as above described, established themselves in the course of civilization — the political, religious, and social. To the effects of punishments infiicted by law and public opinion on conduct of certain kinds, Dr. Bain ascribes the feeling of moral obligation. And I agree with him to the extent of thinking that by them is generated the sense of compulsion which the consciousness of duty includes, and which the word obligation indicates. The exist- ence of an earlier and deeper element, generated as above described, is, however, I think, implied by the fact that certain of the higher self-regarding feelings, instigating prudence and economy, have a moral au- thority in opposition to the simpler self-regarding feel- ings : showing that apart from any thought of factitious penalties on improvidence, the feeling constituted b^ THE PSYGHOLOGIGAL VIEW. 151 representation of the natural penalties has acquired an acknowledged superiority. But accepting in the main the view that fears of the political and social penalties (to which, I think, the religious must be added) have generated that sense of coerciveness which goes along with the thought of postponing present to future and personal desires to the claims of others, it here chiefly concerns us to note that this sense of coerciveness be- comes indirectly connected with the feelings distin- guished as moral. For since the political, religious and social restraining motives, are mainly formed of represented future results ; and since the moral restrain- ing motive is mainly fcrmed of represented future re- sults ; it happens that the representations, having much in common, and being often aroused at the same time, the fear joined with three sets of them becomes, by association, joined with the fourth. Thinking of the extrinsic effects of a forbidden act, excites a dread which continues present while the intrinsic effects of the act are thought of ; and being thus linked with these intrinsic effects causes a vague sense of moral compulsion. Emerging as the moral motive does but slowly from amidst the political, religious and social motives it long participates in that consciousness of subordination to some external agency which is joined with them ; and only as it becomes distinct and pre- dominant does it lose this associated consciousness — onl.y then does the feeling of obligation fade. This remark implies the tacit conclusion, which wiU be to most very startling, that the sense of duty or moral obligation is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moralization increases. Startling though it is, this conclusion may be satisfactorily defended. Even now 152 THE DATA OF ETHiaS. progress toward the implied ultimate state is traceable. The observation is not infrequ'ept that persistence in performing a duty ends in making it a pleasure ; and this amounts to the admission that while at first the motive contains an element of coercion, at last this element of coercion dies out, and the act is per- formed without any consciousness of being obliged to perform it. The contrast between the youth on whom diligence is enjoined, and the man of business so absorbed in affairs that he cannot be induced to relax, shows us how the doing of work, originally under the consciousness that it ought to be done, may event- ually cease to have any such accompanying conscious- ness. Sometimes, indeed, the relation comes to be reversed; and the man of business persists in work from pure love of it when told that he ought not. Nor is it thus with self-regarding feelings only. That the maintaining and protecting of wife by husband often result solely from feelings directly gratified by these actions, without any thought of must; and that the fostering of children by parents is in many cases made an absorbing occupation without any coercive feeling of ought; are obvious truths which show us that even now, with some of the fundamental other-regarding duties, the sense of obligation has retreated into the background of the mind. And it is in some degree so with other-regarding duties of a higher kind. Conscien- tiousness has in many outgrown that stage in which the sense of a compelling power is joined with rectitude of action. The truly honest man, here and there to be found, is not only without thought of legal, religious, or social compulsion, when he discharges an equitable claim on him, but he is without thought of self -com- TEE PaTGHOLOQIGAL VIEW. 153 pulsion. He does the right thing with a simple feeling of satisfaction in doing it ; and is, indeed, impatient if anything prevents him from having the satisfaction of doing it. Evidently, then, with complete adaptation to the social state, that element in the moral consciousness which is expressed by the word obligation, will disap- pear. The higher actions required for the harmonious carrying on of life will be as much matters of course as are those lower actions which the simple desires prompt. In their proper times and places and propor- tions, the moral sentiments will guide men just as spon- taneously and adequately as now do the sensations. And though, joined with their regulating influence when this is called for, will exist latent ideas of the evils which nonconformity would bring; these will occupy the mind no more than do ideas of the evils of starvation at the time when a healthy appetite is being satisfied by a meal. § 47. This elaborate exposition, which the extreme complexity of the subject has necessitated, may have its leading ideas restated thus : Symbolizing by a and h, related phenomena in the environment, which in some way concern the weKare of the organism ; and symbolizing by c and d, the im- pressions, simple or compound, which the organism receives from the one, and the motions, single or com- bined, by which its acts are adapted to meet the other ; we saw that psychology in general is concerned with the connection between the relation a h and the rela- tion c d. Further, we saw that by implication the psychological aspect of Ethics, is that aspect unde^ 154 THE DATA OF ETHICS. which the adjustment oic dto ah, appears, not as an intellectual co-ordination simply, but as a co-ordina- tion in which pleasures and pains are alike factors and results. It was shown that throughout Evolution, motive and act become more complex, as the adaptation of inner related actions to outer related actions extends in range and variety. Whence followed the corollary that the later evolved feelings, more representative and re-representative in their constitution, and refer- ring to remoter and wider needs, have, on the average, an authority as guides greater than have the earlier and simpler feelings. After thus observing that even an inferior creature is ruled by a hierarchy of feelings so constituted that general welfare depends on a certain subordination of lower to higher, we saw that in man, as he passes into the social state, there arises the need for sundry addi- tional subordinations of lower to higher : co-operation being made possible only by them. To the restraints constituted by mental representations of the intrinsic effects of actions, which, in their simpler forms, have been evolving from the beginning, are added the re- straints caused by mental representations of extrinsic effects, in the shape of political, religious, and social penalties. "With the evolution of society, made possible by institutions maintaining order, and associating in men's minds the sense of obligation with prescribed acts and with desistances from forbidden acts, there arose opportunities for seeing the bad consequences natu- rally flowing from the conduct interdicted and the good consequences from the conduct required. Hence THE PSTCBOLOOIGAL VIEW. 155 eventually grew up moral aversions and approvals : experience of the intrinsic effects necessarily here coming later than experience of the extrinsic eifects, and therefore producing its results later. The thoughts and feelings constituting these moral aversions and approvals, being all along closely con- nected with the thoughts and feelings constituting fears of political, religious, and social penalties, neces- sarily came to participate in the accompanying sense of obligation. The coercive element in the conscious- ness of duties at large, evolved by converse with ex- ternal agencies which enforce duties, diffused itself -by association through that consciousness of duty, prop- erly called moral, which is occupied with intrinsic results instead of extrinsic results. But this self -compulsion, which at a relatively high stage becomes more and more a substitute for com- pulsion from without, must itself, at a still higher stage, practically disappear. If some action to which the special motive is insufficient, is performed in obedience to the feeling of moral obligation, the fact proves that the special faculty concerned is not yet equal to its function — has not acquired such strength that the required activity has become its normal activ- ity, yielding its due amount of pleasure. With com- plete evolution then, the sense of obligation, not ordinarily present in consciousness, will be awakened only on those extraordinary occasions that prompt breach of the laws otherwise spontaneously con- formed to. And this brings us to the psychological aspect of that conclusion which, in the last chapter, was reached 156 TEES DATA OF ETHICS. under its biological aspect. The pleasures and pains which the moral sentiments originate will, like bodily pleasures and pains, become incentives and deterrents so adjusted in their strengths to the needs that the moral conduct will be the natural conduct. THE SOCIOLOQIGAL VIEW. 157 CHAPTER YIII. THE SOCIOLOGICAL TIEW. § 48. Not for the human race only, "but for every race, there are laws of right living. Given its environ- ment and its structure, and there is for each kind of creature a set of actions adapted in their kinds, amounts, and combinations, to secure the highest con- servation its nature permits. The animal, like the- man, has needs for food, warmth, activity, rest, and so forth, which must be fulfilled in certain relative de- grees to make its life whole. Maintenance of its race implies satisfaction of special desires, sexual and philo- progenitive, in due proportions. Hence there is a sup- posable formula for the activities of each species, which, could it be drawn out, would constitute a system of morality for that species. But such a system of morality would have little or no reference to the welfare of others than self and offspring. Indifferent to individuals of its own kind, as an inferior creature is, and habitually hostile to individuals of other kinds, the formula for its life could take no cognizance of the lives of those with which it came in contact; or rather, such formula would imply that maintenance of its life was at variance with maintenance of their lives. But on ascending ffom beings of lower kinds to the highest kind of being, man ; or, more strictly, on ascend- 158 TEE DATA OF ETHICS. ing from man in his pre-sooial stage to man in his social stage, the formula has to include an additional factor. Though not peculiar to human life under its developed form, the presence of this factor is still, in the highest degree, characteristic of it. Though there are inferior species displaying considerable degrees of sociality, and, though, the formulas for their complete lives would have to take account of the relations aris- ing from union, yet our own species is, on the whole, to be distinguished as having a formula for complete life which specially recognizes the relations of each individual to others, in presence of whom, and in co-operation with whom, he has to live. This additional factor in the problem of complete living is, indeed, so important that the necessitated modifications of conduct have come to form a chief part of the code of conduct. Because the inherited desires which directly refer to the maintenance of indi- vidual life are fairly adjusted to the requirements, there has been no need to insist on that conformity to them which furthers self -conversation. Conversely, because these desires prompt activities that often con- flict with the activities of others ; and because the sen- timents responding to other's claims are relatively weak, moral codes emphasize those restraints on con- duct which the presence of fellow men entails. From the sociological point of view, then. Ethics becomes nothing else than a definite account of the forms of conduct that are fitted to the associated state, in such wise that the lives of each and all may be the greatest possible, alike in length and breadth. § 49. But here we are met by a fact which forbids THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW. 159 US thus to put in the foreground the welfares of citi- zens, individually considered, and requires us to put in the foreground the welfare of the society as a whole. The life of the social organism must, as an end, rank above the lives of its units. These two ends are not harmonious at the outset; and, though the tendency is toward harmonization of them, they are still partially conflicting. As fast as the social state establishes itself, the preservation of the society becomes a means of pre- serving its units. Living together arose because, on the average, it proved more advantageous to each than living apart; and this implies that maintenance of combination is maintenance of the conditions to more satisfactory living than the combined persons would otherwise have. Hence, social self-preservation becomes a proximate aim taking precedence of the ultimate aim, individual self-preservation. This subordination of personal to social welfare is, however, contingent: it depends on the presence of antagonistic societies. So long as the existence of a community is endangered by the actions of communi- ties around, it must remain true that the interests of individuals must be sacrificed to the interests of the community, as far as is needful for the community's salvation. But if this is manifest, it is, by implication, manifest, that when social antagonisms cease, this need for sacrifice of private claims to public claims ceases also ; or rather, there cease to be any public claims at variance with private claims. All along, furtherance of individual lives has been the ultimate end; and, if this ultimate end has been postponed to the proximate end of preserving the community's life, it has been so 160 THE DATA OF ETHICS. only because this proximate end was instrumental to the ultimate end. When the aggregate is no longer in danger, the final object of pursuit, the welfare of the units, no longer needing to be postponed, becomes the immediate object of pursuit. Consequently, unlike sets of conclusions respecting human conduct emerge, according as we are concerned with a state of habitual or occasional war, or are con- cerned with a state of permanent and general peace. Let us glance at these alternative states and the alternative implications. § 50. At present the individual man has to carry on his life with due regard to the lives of others belong- ing to the same society ; while he is sometimes called on to be regardless of the lives of those belonging to other societies. The same mental constitution, having to fulfill both these requirements, is necessarily incon- gruous ; and the correlative conduct, adjusted first to the one need and then to the other, cannot be brought within any consistent ethical system. Hate and destroy your fellow-man is now the com- mand ; and then the command is, love and aid your fellow-man. Use every means to deceive, says the one code of conduct ; while the other code says, be truth- ful in word and deed. Seize what property you can and burn all you cannot take away, are injunctions which the religion of enmity countenances ; while by the religion of amity, theft and arson are condemned as crimes. And as conduct has to be made up of parts thus at variance with one another, the theory of con- duct remains confused. There co-exists a kindred irrecohcilabihty between THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW. 161 the sentiments answering to the forms of co-operation required for militancy and industrialism respectively. While social antagonisms are habitual, and while, for efficient action against other societies, there needs great subordination to men who command, the virtue of loyalty and the duty of implicit obedience have to be insisted on ; disregard of the ruler's will is punished with death. But when war ceases to be chronic, and growing industrialism habituates men to maintaining their own claims while respecting the claims of others, loyalty becomes less profound, the authority of the ruler is questioned or denied in respect of various private actions and beliefs. State dictation is in many directions successfully defied, and the political inde- pendence of the citizen comes to be regarded as a claim which it is virtuous to maintain and vicious to yield up. Necessarily during the transition, these op- posite sentiments are incongruously mingled. So is it, too, with domestic institutions under the two regimes. While the first is dominant, ownership of a slave is honorable, and in the slave submission is praiseworthy ; but as the last grows dominant, slave- owning becomes a crime and servile obedience excites contempt. Nor is it otherwise in the family. The subjection of women to men, complete while war is habitual but qualified as fast as peaceful occupations replace it, comes eventually to be thought wrong, and equality before the law is asserted. At the same time the opinion concerning paternal power changes. The once unquestioned right of the father to take his children's lives is denied, and the duty of absolute sub- mission to him, long insisted on, is changed into the duty of obedience within reasonable limits. 162 THE DATA OF BTHIOa. Were the ratio between the life of antagonism with aUen societies, and the life of peaceful co-operation within each society, a constant ratio, some permanent compromise between the conflicting rules of conduct appropriate to the two lives might be reached. But since this ratio is a variable one, the compromise can never be more than temporary. Ever the tendency is toward congruity between beliefs and requirements. Either the social arrangements are gradually changed until they come into harmony with prevailing ideas and sentiments; or, if surrounding conditions prevent change in the social arrangements, the necessitated habits of life modify the prevailing ideas and senti- ments to the requisite extent. Hence, for each kind and degree of social evolution determined by external conflict and internal friendship, there is an appropriate compromise between the moral code of enmity and the moral code of amity : not, indeed, a definable, con- sistent compromise, but a compromise fairly well understood. This compromise, vague, ambiguous, illogical, though it may be, is nevertheless for the time being authori- tative. For if, as above shown, the welfare of the society must take precedence of the welfares of its component individuals, during those stages in which the individuals have to preserve themselves by pre- serving their society, then such temporary compro- mise between the two codes of conduct as duly regards external defense, while favoring internal co- operation to the greatest extent practicable, subserves the maintenance of life in the highest degree ; and thus gains the ultimate sanction. So that the per- plexed and inconsistent moralities of which each THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW. 163 society and each age shows us a more or less different one, are severally justified as being approximately the best under the circumstances. But such moralities are, by their definitions, shown to belong to incomplete conduct ; not to conduct that is fully evolved. We saw that the adjustments of acts to ends which, while constituting the external manifestations of life, conduce to the continuance of life, have been rising to a certain ideal form now approached by the civilized man. But this form is not reached so long as there continue aggressions of one society upon another. Whether the hinderances to complete living result from the trespasses of fellow- citizens, or from the trespasses of aliens, matters not ; if they occur there does not yet exist the state defined. The limit to the evolution of conduct is arrived at by members of each society only when, being arrived at by members of other societies also, the causes of inter- national antagonism end simultaneously with the causes of antagonism between individuals. And now having from the sociological point of view recognized the need for, and authority of, these chang- ing systems of ethics, proper to changing ratios be- tween warlike activities and peaceful activities, we have, from the same point of view, to consider the system of ethics proper to the state in which peaceful activities are undisturbed. § 51. If, excluding all thought of danger or hinder- ances from causes external to a society, we set our- selves to specify those conditions .under which the life of each person, and therefore of the aggregate, may be the greatest possible, we come upon certain 164 THE DATA OF ETHICS. simple ones which, as here stated, assume the form of truisms. For, as we have seen, the definition of that highest life accompanying completely evolved conduct, itself excludes all acts of aggression — not only murder, assault, robbery, and the major offences generally, but minor offences, such as libel, injury to property and so forth. "While directly deducting from individual life, these indirectly cause perturbations of social life. Trespasses against others rouse antagonisms in them ; and if these are numerous the group loses coherence. Hence, whether the integrity of the group itself is considered as the end, or whether the end considered is the benefit ultimately secured to its units by main- taining its integrity, or whether the immediate benefit of its units taken separately is considered the end, the implication is the same : such acts are at variance with achievement of the end. That these inferences are self-evident and trite (as indeed the first inferences drawn from the data of every science that reaches the deductive stage naturally are) must not make us pass lightly over the all-important fact that, from the sociological point of view, the leading moral laws are seen to follow as corollaries from the definition of complete life carried on under social conditions. Eespect for these primary moral laws is not enough, however. Associated men pursuing their several lives without injuring one another but without helping one another, reap no advantages from association beyond those of companionship. If, while there is no co- operation for (Jefensive purposes (which is here ex- cluded by the hypothesis) there is also no co-operation for satisfying wants, the social state loses its rcmmi, THE aOGIOLOOICAL VIEW. 165 d'etre — almost, if not entirely. There are, indeed, people who live in a condition little removed from this : as the Esquimaux. But though these, exhibit- ing none of the co-operation necessitated by war, which is unknown to them, lead lives such that each family is substantially independent of others, occa- sional co-operation occurs. And, indeed, that families should live in company without ever yielding mutual aid, is scarcely conceivable. Nevertheless, whether actually existing or only approached, we must here recognize as hypothetically possible a state in which these primary moral la\vs are conformed to; for the purpose of observing, in their uncomplicated forms, what are the negative con- ditions to harmonious social life. Whether the mem- bers of a social group do or do not co-operate, certain limitations to their individual activities are necessitated by their association ; and, after recognizing these as arising in the absence of co-operation, we shall be the better prepared to understand how conformity to them is effected when co-operation begins. § 52. For whether men live together in quite inde- pendent ways, careful only to avoid aggressing ; or whether, advancing from passive association to active association, they co-operate, their conduct must be such that the achievement of ends by each shall at least not be hindered. And it becomes obvious that when they co-operate there must not only be no result- ing hinderance but there must be facilitation ; since, in the absence of facilitation, there can be no motive to co-operate. What shape, then, must the mutual restraints take when co-operation begins ? or rather — 16(5 THE DATA OF ETHICS. What, in addition to the primary mutual restraints already specified, are those secondary mutual restraints required to make co-operation possible ? One who, living in an isolated way, expends effort in pursuit of an end, gets compensation for the effort by securing the end, and so achieves satisfaction. If he expends the effort without achieving the end there results dissatisfaction. The satisfaction and the dis- satisfaction are measures of success and failure in life- sustaining acts ; since that which is achieved by effort is something which directly or indirectly furthers life, and so pays for the cost of the effort ; while if the effort fails there is nothing to pay for the cost of it, and so much life is wasted. What must result from this when men's efforts are joined ? The reply will be made clearer if we take the successive forms of co-operation in the order of ascending complexity. We may distinguish as homogeneous cooperation (1) that in which like efforts are joined for like ends that are simultaneously enjoyed. As co-operation that is not completely homogeneous we may distinguish (2) that in which like efforts are joined for like ends that are not simultaneously enjoyed. A co-operation of which the heterogeneity is more distinct is (3) that in which unlike efforts are joined for like ends. And lastly comes the decidedly heterogeneous co-opera- tion (4) that in which unlike efforts are joined for unlike ends. The simplest and earliest of these in which men's powers, similar in kind and degree, are united in pur- suit of a benefit which, when obtained, they all par- ticipate in, is most familiarly exemplified in the catch- ing of game by primitive men : this simplest and THE SOCIOLOaiGAL VIEW. 167 earliest form of industrial co-operation being also that which is least differentiated from militant co-operation ; for the co-operators are the same, and the processes, both destructive of Ufe, are carried on in analogous ways. The condition under which such co-operation may be successfully carried on is that the co-operators shall share alike in the produce. Each thus being enabled to repay himself in food for the expended effort, and being further enabled to achieve other such desired ends as maintenance of family, obtains satisfac- tion : there is no aggression of one on another, and the CO - operation is harmonious. Of course the divided produce can be but roughly proportioned to the several efforts joined in obtaining it, but there is actually among savages, as we see that for harmonious co-operation there must be, a recognition of the princi- ple that efforts when combined shall severally bring equivalent benefits, as they would do if they were separate. Moreover, beyond the taking equal shares in return for labors that are approximately equal, there is generally an attempt at proportioning benefit to achievement, by assigning something extra, in the shape of the best part or the trophy, to the actual slayer of the game. And obviously, if there is a wide departure from this system of sharing benefits when there has been a sharing of efforts, the co-operation will cease. Individual hunters will prefer to do the best they can for themselves separately. Passing from this simplest case of co-operation to a case not quite so simple — a case in which the homo- geneity is incomplete — let us ask how a member of the group may be led without dissatisfaction to expend effort in achieving a benefit which, when achieved, is 168 THE DATA OF ETHIGS. enjoyed exclusively by another ? Clearly he may do this on condition that the other shall afterward expend a lilte effort, the beneficial result of which shall be similarly rendered up by him in return. This ex- change of equivalents of effort is the form which social co-operation takes while yet there is little or no division of labor, save that between the sexes. For example, the Bodo and Dhimals " mutually assist each other for the nonce, as well in constructing their houses as in clearing their plots for cultivation." And this principle — I will help you if you will help me — common in simple communities where the occupations are alike in kind, and occasionally acted upon in more advanced communities, is one under which the relation between effort and benefit, no longer directly main- tained, is maintained indirectly. For whereas when men's activities are carried on separately, or are joined in the way exemplified above, effort is immediately paid for by benefit, in this form of co-operation the benefit achieved by effort is exchanged for a like benefit to be afterward received when asked for. And in this case as in the preceding case, co-operation can be maintained only by fulfillment of the tacit agree- ments. For if they are habitually not fulfilled, there will commonly be refusal to give aid when asked ; and each man will be left to do the best he can by himself. All those advantages to be gained bj'' union of efforts in doing things that are beyond the powers of the single individual, will be unachievable. At the outset, then, fulfillment of contracts that are implied if not expressed, becomes a condition to social co-operation, and therefore to social development. From these simple forms of co-operation in which THB SOCIOLOGICAL VIBW. 169 the labors men carry on are of like kinds, let us turn to the more complex forms in which they carry on labors of unlike kinds. "Where men mutually aid in building huts or felling trees, the number of days' work now given by one to another is readily balanced by an equal number of days' work afterward given by the other to him. And no estimation of the relative values of the labors being required, a definite under- standing is little needed. But when division of labor arises— when there come transactions between one who makes weapons and another who dresses skins for clothing, or between a grower of roots and a catcher of fish — neither the relative amounts nor the relative qualities of their labors admit of easy meas- ure ; and with the multiplication of businesses, imply- ing numerous kinds of skill and power, there ceases to be anything like manifest equivalence between either the bodily and mental efforts set against one another, or between their products. Hence the arrangement cannot now be taken for granted, as while the things exchanged are like in kind : it has to be stated. If A allows B to appropriate a product of his special skill, on condition that he is allowed to appropriate a differ- ent product of B's special skill, it results that as equivalence of the two products cannot be determined by direct comparison of their quantities and qualities, there must be a distinct understanding as to how much of the one may be taken in consideration of so much of the other. Only under voluntary agreement, then, no longer tacit and vague, but overt and definite, can co opera- tion be harmoniously carried on when division of labor becomes established. And as in the simplest co-opera- irO TEE DATA OF ETHICS. tion, where like efforts are joined to secure a common good, the dissatisfaction caused in those who, having expended their labors do not get their shares of the good, prompts them to cease co-operating; as in the more advanced co-operation, achieved by exchanging equal labors of like kind expended at different times, aversion to co-operate is generated if the expected equivalent of labor is not rendered ; so in this devel- oped co-operation, the failure of either to surrender to the other that v?hich was avowedly recognized as of like value with the labor or product given, tends to prevent co-operation by exciting discontent with its results. And evidently, while antagonisms thus caused impede the lives of the units, the life of the aggregate is endangered by diminished cohesion. § 53. Beyond these comparatively direct mischiefs, special and general, there have to be noted indirect mischiefs. As already implied by the reasoning m the last paragraph, not only social integration but also social differentiation, is hindered by breach of contract. In Part II of the Principles of Sociology, it was shown that the fundamental principles of organization are the same for an individual organism and for a social organism ; because both consist of mutually de- pendent parts. In the one case as in the other, the assumption of unlike activities by the component mem- bers, is possible only on condition that they severally benefit in due degrees by one another's activities. That we may the better see what are the implications in respect of social structures, let us first note the impli- cations in respect of individual structures. The welfare of a, living bodj implies an approximate TBE aocioLootcAt tmw. I'j't equilibrium between waste and repair. If the activities involve an expenditure not made good by nutrition, dwindling follows. If the tissues are enabled to take up from the blood enriched by food, fit substances enough to replace those used up in efforts made, the weight may be maintained. And if the gain exceeds the loss, growth results. That which is true of the whole in its relations to the external world, is no less true of the parts in their relations to one another. Each organ, like the entire organism, is wasted by performing its function, and has to restore itself from the materials brought to it. If the quantity of materials furnished by the joint agency of the other organs is deficient, the particular organ dwindles. If they are sufficient, it can maintain its integrity. If they are in excess, it is enabled to increase. To say that this arrangement constitutes the physiological contract, is to use a metaphor which, though not true in aspect is true in essence. For the relations of structures are actually such that, by the help of a central regulative system, each organ is sup- plied with blood in proportion to the work it does. As was pointed out {Principles o/" Sociology, § 254) well-developed animals are so constituted that each muscle or viscus, when called into action, sends to the vaso-motor centers through certain nerve-fibers, an impulse caused by its action ; whereupon, through other nerve-fibers, there comes an impulse causing dilatation of its blood-vessels. That is to say, aU other parts of the organism, when they jointly require it to labor, forthwith begin to pay it in blood. During the ordi- nary state of physiological equilibrium, the loss and the gain balance, and the organ does not sensibly change. 172 THE DATA OF ETHICS. If the amount of its function is increased within such moderate limits that the local blood-vessels can bring adequately-increased supplies, the organ grows : beyond replacing its losses by its gains, it makes a profit on its extra transactions ; so being enabled by extra structures to meet extra demands. But if the demands made on it become so great that the supply of materials cannot keep pace with the expenditure, either because the local blood-vessels are not large enough, or for any other reason, then the organ begins to decrease from excess of waste over repair : there sets in what is known as atrophy. Now, since each of the organs has thus to be paid in nutriment for its services by the rest, it fol- lows that the due balancing of their respective claims and payments is requisite, directly for the welfare of each organ, and indirectly for the welfare of the organ- ism. For in a whole formed of mutually dependent parts, anything which prevents due performance of its duty by one part reacts injuriously on all the parts. ^ "With change of terms these statements and in- ferences hold of a society. That social division of labor which parallels in so many other respects the physiological division of labor, parallels it in this respect also. As was shown at large in the Princvples of Sociology, Part II, each order of functionaries and each group of producers, severally performing some action or making some article not for direct satisfac- tion of their own needs but for satisfaction of the needs of fellow-citizens in general, otherwise occupied, can continue to do this only so long as the expendi- tures of effort and returns of profit are approximately equivalent. Social organs, like individual organs, remain stationary if there come to them normal pro- THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW. 173 portions of the comniodities produced by the society as a whole. If because the demands made on an industry or profession are unusually great, those en- gaged in it make excessive profits, more citizens flock to it and the social structure constituted by its mem- bers grows ; while decrease of the demands and there- fore of the profits, either leads its members to choose other careers or stops the accessions needful to replace those who die, and the structure dwindles. Thus is maintained that proportion among the powers of the component parts which is most conducive to the wel- fare of the whole. And now mark that the primary condition to achievement of this result is fulfillment of contract. If from the members of any part payment is fre- quently withheld, or falls short of the promised amount, then, through ruin of some and abandonment of the occupation by others, the part diminishes ; and if it was before not more than competent to its duty, it now becomes incompetent, and the society suffers. Or if social needs throw on some part great increase of function, and the members of it are enabled to get for their services unusually high prices ; fulfillment of the agreements to give them these high prices, is the only way of drawing to the part such additional num- ber of members as will make it equal to the aug- mented demands. For citizens will not come to it if they find the high prices agreed upon are not paid. Briefly, then, the universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered. "Without this there can be no physiological division of labor ; without this there can be no socio- logical divison of labor. And since division of labor, 174 THE DATA OF ETHICS. physiological or sociological, profits the whole and each part; it results that on maiatenance of the arrangements necessary to it, depend both special and general welfare. In a society such arrangements are maintained only if bargains, overt or tacit, are carried out. So that beyond the primary requirement to har- monious co-existence in a society, that its units shall not directly aggress on one another ; there comes this secondary requirement, that they shall not indirectly aggress by breaking agreements. § 54 But now we have to recognize the fact that complete fulfillment of these conditions, original and derived, is not enough. Social co-operation may be such that no one is impeded in the obtainment of the normal return for effort, but contrariwise is aided by equitable exchange of services ; and yet much may remain to be achieved. There is a theoretically possi- ble form of society, purely industrial in its activities, which, though approaching nearer to the moral ideal in its code of conduct than any society not purely industrial, does not fully reach it. For while industriahsm requires the life of each citizen to be such that it may be carried on without direct or indirect aggressions on other citizens, it does not require his life to be such that it shall directly further the lives of other citizens. It is not a neces- sary implication of industrialism, as thus far defined, that each, beyond the benefits given and received by exchange of services, shall give and receive other benefits. A society is conceivable formed of men leading perfectly inoffensive lives, scrupulously fulfill- ing their contracts, and efficiently rearing their off- THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW. 175 spring, who yet, yielding to one another no advantages beyond those agreed upon, fall short of that highest degree of life which the gratuitous rendering of serv- ices makes possible. Daily experiences prove that every one would suffer many evils and lose many goods did none give him unpaid assistance. The life of each would be more or less damaged had he to meet all contingencies single-handed. Further, if no one did for his fellows anything more than was required by strict performance of contract, private interests would suffer from the absence of attention to public inter- ests. The limit of evolution of conduct is consequently not reached, until, beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to others, there are spontaneous efforts to further the welfare of others. It may be shown that the form of nature which thus to justice adds beneficence, is one which adaption to the social state produces. The social man has not reached that tarmonization of constitution with condi- tions forming the limit of evolution, so long as there remains space for the growth of faculties which, by their exercise, bring positive benefit to others and sat- isfaction to self. If the presence of fellow-men, while putting certain limits to each man's sphere of activity, opens certain other spheres of activity in which feel- ings, while achieving their gratifications, do not diminish, but add to the gratifications of others, then such spheres will inevitably be occupied. Recognition of this truth does not, however, call on us to qualify greatly that conception of the industrial state above set forth, since sympathy is the root of both justice and beneficence. 176 THE DATA OF ETHICS. § 55. Thus the sociological view of Ethics supple- ments the physical, the biological, and the psycho- logical views, by disclosing those conditions under which only associated activities can be so carried on, that the complete Mving of each consists with, and conduces to, the complete living of all. At first the welfare of social groups, habitually in antagonism with other such groups, takes precedence of individual welfare ; and the rules of conduct which are authoritative for the time being, involve incomplete- ness of individual life that the general life may be maintained. At the same time the rules have to enforce the claims of individual life as far as may be, since on the welfare of the units the welfare of the aggregate largely depends. In proportion as societies endanger one another less, the need for subordinating individual lives to the gen- eral life, decreases ; aind with approach to a peaceful state, the general life, having from the beginning had furtherance of individual lives as its ultimate purpose, comes to have this as its proximate purpose. During the transitional stages there are necessitated successive compromises between the moral code which asserts the claims of the society versus those of the individual, and the moral code which asserts the claims of the individual versus those of the society. And evidently each such compromise, though for the time being authoritative, admits of no consistent or definite expression. But gradually as war declines — gradually as the compulsory co-operation needful in dealing with ex- ternal enemies becomes unnecessary, and leaves behind the voluntary co-operation which effectually achieves THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW. 177 internal sustentation, there grows increasingly clear the code of conduct which voluntary co-operation implies. And this final permanent code alone admits of being definitely formulated, and so constituting ethics as a science in contrast with empirical ethics. The leading traits of a code, under which complete living through voluntary co-operation is secured, may be simply stated. The fundamental requirement is that the life-sustaining actions of each shall severally bring him the amounts and kinds of advantage natu- rally achieved by them, and this implies firstly that he shall suffer no direct aggressions on his person or property, and, secondly, that he shall suffer no indirect aggressions by breach of contract. Observance of these negative conditions to voluntary co-operation having facilitated life to the greatest extent by exchange of services under agreement, life is to be further facilitated by exchange of services beyond agreement : the highest life being reached only when, besides helping to complete one another's lives by speci- fied reciprocities of aid, men otherwise help to com- plete one another's lives. 178 TBB LATA OF BTEIG8. CHAPTEE IX. CEITICISMS AND EXPLANATIONS. § 66. Comparisons of the foregoing chapters, with one another, suggest sundry questions which must be answered partially, if not completely, before anything can be done toward reducing ethical principles from abstract forms to concrete forms. We have seen that to admit the desirableness of conscious existence is to admit that conduct should be such as will produce a consciousness which is desira- ble — a consciousness which is as much pleasurable and as little painful as may be. We have also seen that this necessary implication corresponds with the a priori inference, that the evolution of life has been, made possible only by the establishment of connections between pleasures and beneficial actions, and between pains and detrimental actions. But the general conclusion reached in both of these ways, though it covers the area within which our special conclusions must fall, does not help us to reach those special conclusions. Were pleasures all of one kind, difPering only in degree ; were pains all of one kind, differing only in degree ; and could pleasures be measured against pains with definite results, the problems of conduct would be greatly simplified. Were the pleasures and pains serving as incentives and deterrents, simultaneously CRITICISMS AND EXPLANATIONS. 179 present to consciousness with like vividness, or were they all immediately impending, or were they all equi- distant in time ; the problems would be further sim- plified. And they would be still further simplified if the pleasures and pains were exclusively those of the actor. But both the desirable and the undesirable feelings are of various kinds, making quantitative comparisons difiicult; some are present and some are future, increasing the diflBculty of quantitative comparison; some are entailed on self and some are entailed on others ; again increasing the difficulty. So that the guidance yielded by the primary principle reached is of little service unless supplemented by the guidance of secondary principles. Already, in recognizing the needful subordination of presentative feelings to representative feelings, and the implied postponement of present to future through- out a wide range of cases, some approach toward a secondary principle of guidance has been made. Already, too, in recognizing the limitations which men's associated state puts to their actions, with the implied need for restraining feelings of some kinds by feelings of other kinds, we have come in sight of another secondary principle of guidance. Still, there remains much to be decided respecting the relative claims of these guiding principles, general and special. Some elucidation of the questions involved will be obtained by here discussing certain views and argu- ments set forth by past and present moralists. § 57. Using the name hedonism for that ethical theory which makes happiness the end of action, and distinguishing hedonism j»tQ the two kiuds, egoistio an4 180 TBE DATA OF ETHICS. universalistic, according as the happiness sought is that of the actor himself, or is that of all, Mr. Sidgwick alleges its implied belief to be that pleasures and pains are commensurable. In his criticism on (empirical) egoistic hedonism he says : ' ' The fundamental assumption of Hedonism, clearly stated, is that all feelings considered merely as feelings can be arranged in a certain scale of desirability, so that the desirability or pleasantness of each bears a definite ratio to that of all the others." — Methods of Ethics, 2d ed., p. 115. And asserting this to be its assumption he proceeds to point out difficulties in the way of the hedonistic calculation; apparently for the purpose of implying that these difficulties teU against the hedonistic theory. Now, though it may be shown that by naming the intensity, the duration, the certainty, and the proxim- ity, of a pleasure or a pain, as traits entering into the estimation of its relative value, Bentham has com- mitted himself to the specified assumption; and, though, it is, perhaps, reasonably taken for granted that hedonism, as represented by him, is identical with hedonism at large ; yet it seems to me that the hedon- ist, empirical or other, is not necessarily committed to this assumption. That the greatest surplus of pleasures over pains ought to be the end of action is a belief which he may still consistently hold after admitting that the valuations of pleasures and pains are com- monly vague and often erroneous. He may say that though indefinite things do not admit of definite measurements, yet approximately true estimates of their relative values may be made when they differ considerably, and he may further say, that even when CBITICI8M8 AND EXPLANATIONS. 181 their relative values are not determinable, it remains true that the most valuable should be chosen. Let us listen to him. "A debtor who cannot pay me offers to compound for his debt by making over one of sundry things he possesses — a diamond ornament, a silver vase, a picture, a carriage. Other questions being set aside I assert it to be my pecuniary interest to choose the most valua- ble of these, but I cannot say which is the most valua- ble. Does the proposition that it is my pecuniary interest to choose the most valuable, therefore, become doubtful ? Must I not choose as well as I can, and if I choose wrongly must I give up my ground of choice ? Must I infer that in matters of business I may not act on the principle that, other things equal, the more profitable transaction is to be preferred, because, in many cases, I cannot sa3' which is the more profitable, and have often chosen the less profitable ? Because I believe that of many dangerous courses I ought to take the least dangerous, do I make ' the fundamental assumption ' that courses can be arranged according to a scale of dangerousness, and must I abandon my belief if I cannot so arrange them ? If I am not by consistency bound to do this, then I am no more by consistency bound to give up the principle that the greatest surplus of pleasures over pains should be the end of action, because the ' commensurability of pleasures and pains ' cannot be asserted." At the close of his chapters on empirical hedonism, Mr. Sidgwick himself says he does " not think that the common experience of mankind, impartially examined, really sustains the view that Egoistic Hedonism is neces- sarily suicidal;" adding, however, that the "uncertainty 183 TEE DATA OF BTHI08. of hedonistic calculation cannot be denied to have great weight." But here the fundamental assumption of hedonism, that happiness is the end of action, is still supposed to involve the assumption that "feelings can be arranged in a certain scale of desirability." This we have seen it does not: its fundamental assumption is in no degree invalidated by proof that such arrange- ment of them is impracticable. To Mr. Sidgwick's argument there is the further objection, no less serious, that to whatever degree it tells against egoistic hedonism, it tells in a greater degree against universalistic hedonism, or utilitari- anism. He admits that it tells as much ; saying " what- ever weight is to be attached to the objections brought against this assumption [the commensurability of pleas- ures and pains] must of course tell against the present method." Not only does it tell, but it tells in a double way. I do not mean merely that, as he points out, the assumption becomes greatly complicated if we ta-ke all sentient beings into account, and if we include pos- terity along with existing individuals. I mean that, taking asthe end to be achieved the greatest happiness of the existing individuals forming a single community, the set of difficulties standing in the way of egoistic hedonism, is compounded with another set of difficul- ties no less great, when we pass from it to universal- istic hedonism. For if the dictates of universalistic hedonism are to be fulfilled, it must be under the guidance of individual judgments, or of corporate judgments, or of both. Now any one of such judg- ments issuing from a single mind, or from any aggre- gate of minds, necessarily embodies conclusions respect- ing the happiness of other persons j few of them koown, CRITICISMS AND EXPLANATIONS. 183 and the great mass never seen. All these persons have natures differing in countless ways and degrees from the natures of those who form the judgments ; and the happiness of which they are severally capable dififer from one another, and differ from the happinesses of those who form the judgments. Consequently, if against the method of egoistic hedonism there is the objection that a man's own pleasures and pains, unlike in their kinds, intensities, and times of occurrence, are incommensurable ; then against the method of univer- sal] stic hedonism it may be urged that to the incom- mensurability of each judge's own pleasures and pains (which he must use as standards) has now to be added the much more decided incommensurability of the pleasures and pains which he conceives to be expe- rienced by innumerable other persons, aU differently constituted from himself and from one another. Nay more — there is a triple set of difficulties in the way of universalistic hedonism. To the double inde- terminateness of the end has to be added the indeter- minateness of the means. If hedonism, egoistic or uni- versalistic, is to pass from dead theory into living practice, acts of one or other kind must be decided on to achieve proposed objects ; and in estimating the two methods we have to consider how far the fitness of the acts respectively required can be judged. If, in pur- suing his own ends, the individual is liable to be led by erroneous opinions to adjust his acts wrongly, much more liable is he to be led by erroneous opinions to adjust wrongly more complex acts to the more complex ends constituted by other men's welfares. It is so if he operates singly to benefit a few others ; and it is stiU more so if he co-operates with many to benefit all. 184 THE DATA OF ETHICS. Making general happiness the immediate object of pur- suit, implies numerous and complicated instrumentali- ties officered by thousands of unseen and unlike per- sons, and working on millions of other persons unseen and unlike. Even the few factors in this immense aggregate of appliances and processes which are known, are very imperfectly known, and the great mass of them are unknown. So that even supposing valua- tion of pleasures and pains for the community at large is more practicable than, or even as practicable as, val- uation of his own pleasures and pains by the individual ; yet the ruling of conduct with a view to the one end is far more difficult than the ruling of it with a view to the other. Hence, if the method of egoistic hedonism is unsatisfactory, far more unsatisfactory for the same and kindred reasons, is the method of universalistic hedonism, or utilitarianism. And here we come in sight of the conclusion which it has been the purpose of the foregoing criticism to bring into view. The objection made to the hedonistic method contains a truth, but includes with it an un- truth. For while the proposition that happiness, whether individual or general, is the end of action, is not invalidated by proof that it cannot under either form be estimated by measurement of its components ; yet it may be admitted that guidance in the pursuit of happiness by a mere balancing of pleasures and pains, is, if partially practicable throughout a certain range of conduct, futile throughout a much wider range. It is quite consistent to assert that happiness is the ultimate aim of action, and at the same time to deny that it can be reached by making it the immediate aim. I go with Mr, Sidgwick as far as the conclusion CRITiaiSMS AND BXPLANATIONS. 185 that " we must at least admit the desirability of con- firming or correcting the results of such comparisons [of pleasures and pains] by any other method upon which we may find reason to rely ;" and then I go further, and say that throughout a large part of conduct guid- ance by such comparisons is to be entirely set aside and replaced by other guidance. § 58. The antithesis here insisted upon between the hedonistic end considered in the abstract, and the method which current hedonism, whether egoistic or universalistic, associates with that end ; and the join- ing acceptance of the one with rejection of the other ; commits us to an overt discussion of the two cardinal elements of ethical theory. I may conveniently initi- ate this discussion by criticizing another of Mr. Sidg- wick's criticisms on the method of hedonism. Though we can give no account of those simple pleasures which the senses yield, because they are undecomposable, yet we distinctly know their charac- ters as states of consciousness. Conversely, the com- plex pleasures formed by compounding and re-com- pounding the ideas of simple pleasures, though theo- retically resolvable into their components, are not easy to resolve; and in proportion as they are heterogeneous in composition, the difficulty of framing intelligible conceptions of them increases. This is especially the case with the pleasures which accom- pany our sports. Treating of these, along with the pleasures of pursuit in general, for the purpose of showing that "in order to get them one must forget them," Mr. Sidgwick remarks : 186 THE DATA OF ETHICS. " A man who maintains througliout an epicurean mood, fixing his aim on his own pleasure, does not catcli the full spirit of the chase ; his eagerness never gets just the sharpness of edge which imparts to the pleasure its highest zest and flavor. Here comes into view what we may call the fundamental paradox of Hedonism, that the impulse toward pleasure, if too predominant, defeats its own aim. This effect is not visible, or at any rate is scarcely visible, in the case of passive sensual pleasures. But of our active enjoyments generally, whether the activities on which they attend are classed as ' bodily ' or as ' intellectual ' (as well as of many emotional pleas- ures), it may certainly be said that we cannot attain them, at least in their best form, so long as we concentrate our aim on them." — Methods of Ethics, 2d ed., p. 41. Now I think we shall not regard this truth as para- doxical after we have duly analyzed the pleasure of pursuit. The chief components of this pleasure are : First, a renewed consciousness of personal eifloiency (made vivid by actual success and partially excited by impending success) which consciousness of personal efficiency, connected in experience with achieved ends of every kind, arouses a vague but massive conscious- ness of resulting gratifications ; and second, a repre- sentation of the applause which recognition of this efficiency by others has before brought, and will again bring. Games of skill show us this clearly. Consid- ered as an end in itself, the good cannon which a billiard player makes yields no pleasure. "Whence then does the pleasure of making it arise? Partly from the fresh proof of capability which the player gives to himself, and partly from the imagined admiration of those who witness the proof of his capability : the last being the chief, since he soon tires of making cannons in the absence of witnesses. When from games which, yielding the pleasures of success, yield no pleasure de- rived f'";enters, but to the diaphragm 336 THE DATA OF ETHICS. and intercostal muscles. Physiology ignores failures in the actions of these several organs. It takes no account of imperfections, it neglects derangements, it does not recognize pain, it knows nothing of ivital wrong. It simply formulates that which goes on as a result of complete adaptation of all pa»tsto all needs. That is to say, in relation to the inner actions constitu- ting bodily life, physiological theory has a position like that which ethical theory, under its absolute form as above conceived, has to the. outer actions constituting conduct. The moment cognizance, is taken of excess of function, or arrest of function, or defect of function, with the resulting evil, physiology passes into path- ology. We begin now to take account of wrong actions in the inner life analogous to the wrong actions in the outer life taken account of by ordinary theories of morals. The antithesis thus drawn, howeve];',is -but pijelimi- nary. After observing the fact that there is a science of vital actions normally carried on, which igiiores abnormal actions, we have more especially to observe that the science of abnormal actions can reach such definiteness as is possible to it only on condition that the science of normal actions has previously become definite ; or rather, let us say that pathological. science depends for its advances on previous advances made by physiological science. The very conception! of dis- ordered action implies a preconception of well-ordered action. Before it can be decided that the heart is beating faster or slower than it should its healthy rate of beating must be learned ; before the pulse can be recognized as too weak or too strong, its proper strength must be known, and so throughout. Even ABSOLUTE AND BELATIVE ETHICS. 327 the rudest and most empirical ideas of diseases, pre- suppose ideas of the healthy states from which they are deviations, and, obviously, tlie diagnosis of diseases can become scientific only as fast as there arises scientific knowledge of organic actions that are undiseased. Similarly, then, is it with the relation between absolute morality, or the law of perfect right in human conduct, and relative morality which, recognizing wrong in human conduct, has to decide in what way the wrong deviates from, the right, and how the right is to be most nearly approached. When, formulating normal conduct in an ideal society, we have reached a science of absolute ethics, we have simultaneously reached a science which, when used to interpret the phenomena of real societies in their transitional states, full of the miseries due to non-adaptation (which we may call pathological states) enables us to form approxi- mately true conclusions respecting the natures of the abnormalities, and the courses which tend most in the direction of the normal § 106. And now let it be observed that the concep- •iion of ethics thus set forth, strange as many will think it, is one which really lies latent in the beliefs of moralists at large. Though not definitely acknowledged it is vaguely implied in many of their propositions. From early times downward we find in ethical speculations, references to the ideal man, his acts, his feelings, his judgments. Well-doing is conceived by Socrates as the doing of " the best man," who, " as a husbwdman, performs well the duties pf husbandry ; 328 THE DATA OF ETHICS. as a surgeon, the duties of the medical art ; in political life, his duty toward the commonwealth." Plato, in Minos, as a standard to which State law should con- form, "postulates the decision of some ideal wise man," and in Laches the wise man's knowledge of good and evil is supposed to furnish the standard : dis- regarding "the maxims of the existing society" as unscientific, Plato regards as the proper guide, that "Idea of the Good which only a philosopher can ascend to." Aristotle {Eth. Bk. iii. ch. 4), making the decisions of the good man the standard, says : " For the good man judges everything rightly, and in every case the truth appears so to him. . . . And, perhaps, the principal difference between the good and the bad man is that the good man sees the truth in every case, since he is, as it were, the rule and measure of it." The Stoics, too, conceived of " complete recti- tude of action" as that "which none could achieve except the wise man " — the ideal man. And Epicurus had an ideal standard. He held the virtuous state to be " a tranquil, undisturbed, innocuous, non - com- petitive fruition, which approached most nearly to the perfect happiness of the gods," who " neither suffered vexation in themselves nor caused vexation to others." * If, in modern times, influenced by theological dogmas concerning the fall and human sinfulness, and by a theory of obligation derived from the current creed, moralists have less frequently referred to an ideal, yet references are traceable. We see one in the dictum of Kant — " Act according to the maxim only, * Most of these quotations 1 mate from Pr. PMp's AB80L UTB AND RELATIVE ETHIGSI. 329 which you can wish, at the same time, to become a universal law." For this implies the thought of a society in which the maxim is acted upon by all and universal benefit recognized as the effect : there is a conception of ideal conduct under ideal conditions. And though Mr. Sidgwick, in the quotation above . made from him, implies that Ethics is concerned with man as he is, rather than with man as he should be ; , yet, in elsewhere speaking of Ethics as dealing with ■ conduct as it should be, rather than with conduct as it is, he postulates ideal conduct and indirectly the ideal man. On his first page, speaking of Ethics along with Jurisprudence and Politics, he says that they are dis- tinguished " by the characteristic that they attempt to determine not the actual but the ideal — what ought to exist, not what does exist." It requires only that these various conceptions of an ideal conduct, and of an ideal humanity, should be made consistent and definite, to bring them into agree- ment with the conception above set forth. At present such conceptions are habitually vague. The ideal man having been conceived in terras of the current moral- ity, is thereupon erected into a moral standard by which the goodness of actions may be judged; and the reasoning becomes circular. To make the ideal man serve as a standard, he has to be defined in terms of the conditions which his nature fulfills — ^in terms of those objective requirements which must be met before conduct can be right ; and the common defect of these conceptions of the ideal man is that they suppose him out of relation to such conditions. All the above references to him, direct or indirect, imply that the ideal man is supposed to live and act 330 THE DATA OF ETHICS. under existing social conditions. The tacit inquiry is, not what his actions .would be under circumstances altogether changed, but what they would be under present circumstances. And this inquiry is futile for two reasons. The co-existence of a perfect man and an imperfect society is impossible ; and could the two co-exist, the resulting conduct would not furnish the ethical standard sought. In the first place, given the laws of Mfe as they are, and a man of ideal nature cannot be produced in a society consisting of men having natures remote from the ideal. As well might we expect a child of English type to be borne among Negroes, as expect that among the organically immoral, one who is organically moral will arise. Unless it be denied that character results from inherited structure, it must be admitted that since, in any society, each individual descends from a stock which, traced back a few generations, ramifies everywhere through the society, and partici- pates in its average nature, there must, notwithstand- ing marked individual diversities, be preserved such community as prevents any one from reaching an ideal form while the rest remain far below it. In the second place, ideal conduct such as ethical theory is concerned with, is not possible for the ideal man in the midst of men otherwise constituted. An absolutely just or perfectly sympathetic person, could not live and act according to his nature in a tribe of cannibals. Among people who are treacherous and utterly without scruple, entire truthfulness and open- ness must bring ruin. If all around recognize only the law of the strongest, one whose nature will not allow bim to inflict pain gn others, must go to tbe wail, ASSOLVfB AJ^D ttSLAftVB ETHICS. SSJ There requires a certain congruity between the con duct of each member of a society and other's conduct, A mode of action entirely alien to the prevailing modes of action cannot be successfully persisted in — musi eventuate in death of self, or posterity, or both. Hence it is manifest that we must consider the idea' man as existing in the ideal social state. On the evo lution hypothesis, the two presuppose one another and only when they co-exist can there exist that idea conduct which Absolute Ethics has to formulate, and which Relative Ethics has to take as the standard bj which to estimate divergencies from right, or degrees of wrong. 332 THE DATA OF ETHICa. CHAPTEE XVl. THE SCOPE OF ETHICS. § 107. At the outset it was shown that as the con- duct with which Ethics deals is a part of conduct at large, conduct at large must be understood before this part can be understood. After taking a general view of conduct, not human only but sub-human, and not only as existing but as evolving, we saw that Ethics has for its subject-matter the most highly-evolved con- duct as displayed by the most highly-evolved being, Man — is a specification of those traits which his con- duct assumes on reaching its limit of evolution. Con- ceived thus as comprehending the laws of right living at large, Ethics has a wider field than is commonly assigned to it. Beyond the conduct commonly approved or reprobated as right or wrong, it includes all conduct which furthers or hinders, in either direct or indirect ways, the welfare of self or others. As foregoing chapters in various places imply, the entire field of Ethics includes the two great divisions, personal and social. There is a class of actions directed to personal ends, which are to be judged in their rela- tions to personal weU-being, considered apart from the well-being of others : though they secondarily affect fellow-men these primarily affect the agent himself, and must be classed as intrinsically right or wrong according to their beneficial or detrimental effects on TEE SCOPE OF ETHICS. 333 him. There are actions of another class which affect fellow - men immediately and remotely, and which, though their results to self are not to be ignored, must be judged as good or bad mainly by their results to others. Actions of this last class fall into two groups. Those of the one group achieve ends in ways that do or do not unduly interfere with the pursuit of ends by others — actions which, because of this difference, we call respectively unjust or just. Those forming the other group are of a kind which influence the states of others without directly interfering with the relations between their labors and the results, in one way or the other — actions which we speak of as beneficent or maleficent. And the conduct which we regard as beneficent is itself subdivisible according as it shows us a self-repression to avoid giving pain, or an expen- diture of effort to give pleasure — negative beneficence and positive beneficence. Each of these divisions and sub-divisions has to be considered first as a part of Absolute Ethics and then as a part of Relative Ethics. Having seen what its injunctions must be for the ideal man under the implied ideal conditions, we shall be prepared to see how such injunctions are to be most nearly fulfilled by actual men under existing conditions. § 108. For reasons already pointed out, a code of perfect personal conduct can never be made definite. Many forms of life, diverging from one another in considerable degrees, may be so carried on in society as entirely to fulfill the conditions to harmonious co-operation. And if various types of men, adapted to various types of activities, may thus lead lives that 334 THE DATA OF ETHIGS. are severally complete after their kinds, no specific statement of the activities universally required for personal well-being is possible. But, though, the particular requirements to be ful- filled for perfect individual well-being, must vary along with variations in the material conditions of each society, certain general requirements have to be ful- filled by the individuals of all societies. An average balance between waste and nutrition has universally to be preserved. Normal vitality implies a relation between activity and rest falling within moderate limits of variation. Continuance of the society depends on satisfaction of those primarily personal needs which result in marriage and parenthood. Perfection of individual life hence implies certain modes of action which are approximately alike in all cases, and which, therefore, become part of the subject matter of Ethics. That it is possible to reduce even this restricted part to scientific definiteness, can scarcely be said. But ethical requirements may here be to such extent affili- ated upon physical necessities, as to give them a par- tially scientific authority. It is clear that between the expenditure of bodily substance in vital activities, and the taking in of materials from which this substance may be renewed, there is a direct relation. It is clear, too, that there is a direct relation between the wasting of tissue by effort, and the need for those cessations of effort during which repair may overtake waste. Nor is it less clear that between the rate of mortality and the rate of multiplication in any society, there is a relation such that the last must reach a certain level before it can balance the first, and prevent disappearance of the TSE SCOPE OF ETBlOa. 335 society. And it may be inferred that pursuits of other leading ends are, in like manner, determined by certain natural necessities, and from these derive their ethical sanctions. That it will ever be practicable to lay down precise rules for private conduct in conformity with such requirements, may be doubted. But the function of Absolute Ethics in relation to private conduct will have been discharged when it has produced the war- rant for its requirements as generally expressed ; when it has shown the imperativeness of obedience to them ; and when it has thus taught the need for deliberately considering whether the conduct fulfills them as well may be. Under the ethics of personal considered in relation to existing conditions, have to come all questions con- cerning the degree in which immediate personal welfare has to be postponed, either to ultimate personal welfare or to the welfare of others. As now carried on, life hourly sets the claims of present self against the claims of future self, and hourly brings individual interests face to face with the interests of other individuals, taken singly or as associated. In many of such cases the decisions can be nothing more than compromises ; and ethical science, here necessarily empirical, can do no more than aid in making compromises that are the least objectionable. To arrive at the best compromise in any case, implies correct conceptions of the alterna- tive results of this or that course. And, consequently in so far as the absolute ethics of individual conduct can be made definite, it must help us to decide between conflicting personal requirements, and also between the needs for asserting self and the needs for subordi- nating self. 336 THE DATA OF ETHICS. § 109. From that division of Ethics which deals with the right regulation of private conduct, considered apart from the effects directly produced on others, we pass now to that division of Ethics which, considering exclusively the effects of conduct on others, treats of the right regulation of it with a view to such effects. The first set of regulations coming under this head are those concerning what we distinguish as justice. Individual life is possible only on condition that each organ is paid for its action by an equivalent of blood, while the organism as a whole obtains from the envi- ronment assimilable matters that compensate for its efforts; and the mutual dependence of parts in the social organism, necessitates that, alike for its total life and the lives of its units, there similarly shall be main- tained a due proportion between returns and labors : the natural relation between work and welfare shall be preserved intact. Justice, which formulates the range of conduct and limitations to conduct hence arising, is at once the most important division of Ethics and the division which admits of the greatest definiteness. That principle of equivalence which meets us when we seek its roots in the laws of individual life, involves the idea of measure ; and on passing to social life, the same principle introduces us to the conception of equity or equal/ness, in the relations of citizens to one another : the elements of the questions arising are qucmtitaUve, and hence the solutions assume a more scientific form. Though, having to recognize differ- ences amofag individuals due to age, sex, or other cause, we cannot regard the members of a society as absolutely equal, and therefore cannot deal with problems growing out of their relations with that THE SCOPE OF ETHICS. 337 precision which absolute equality might make possi- ble ; yet, considering them as approximately equal in virtue of their common human nature, and dealing with questions of equity on this supposition, we may reach conclusions of a sufficiently definite kind. This division of Ethics considered under its abso- lute form, has to define the equitable relations among perfect individuals who limit one another's spheres of action by co-existing, and who achieve their ends by co-operation. It has to do much more than this. Be- yond justice between man and man, justice between each man and the aggregate of men has to be dealt with by it. The relations between the individual and the State, considered as representing all individuals, '■ have to be deduced — an important and a relatively difficult matter. What is the ethical warrant for gov- ernmental authority ? To what ends may it be legiti- mately exercised ? How far may it rightly be carried ? Up to what point is the citizen bound to recognize the collective decisions of other citizens, and beyond what point may he properly refuse to obey thera ? These relations, private and public, considered as maintained under ideal conditions, having been formu- lated, there come to be dealt with the analogous rela- tions under real conditions — absolute justice being the standard, relative justice has to be determined by con- sidering how near an approach may, under present circumstances, be made to it. As already implied in various places, it is impossible during stages of transi- tion which necessitate ever changing compromises, to fulfill the dictates of absolute equity ; and nothing beyond empirical judgments can be formed of the extent to which they may be, at any given time, ful- S38 ^SB DATA OP BTEtOS. filled. "While war continues and injustice is done between societies, there cannot be anything like com- plete justice within each society. Militant organiza- tion no less than militant action, is irreconcilable with pure equity ; and the inequity implied by it inevitably ramifies throughout all social relations. But there is at every stage in social evolution, a certain range of variation within which it is possible to approach nearer to, or diverge further from, the requirements of absolute equity. Hence these requirements have ever to be kept in view that relative equity may be ascertained. § 110. Of the two subdivisions into which benefi- cence falls, the negative and the positive, neither can be specialized. Under ideal conditions the first of them has but a nominal existence ; and the second of them passes largely into a transfigured form admitting of but general definition. In the conduct of the ideal man among ideal men, that self-regulation which has for its motive to avoid giving pain, practically disappears. No one having feelings which prompt acts that disagreeably affect others, there can exist no code of restraints referring to this division of conduct. But though negative beneficence is only a nominal part of Absolute Ethics, it is an actual and consider- able part of Eelative Ethics. For while men's natures remain imperfectly adapted to social life, there must continue in them impulses which, causing in some cases the actions we name unjust, cause in other cases the actions we name unkind — unkind now in deed and now in wordj and in respect of these modes of be- TEE SCOPE OF ETHICS. 339 havior which, though not aggressive, give pain, there arise numerous and complicated problems. Pain is sometimes given to others simply by maintaining an equitable claim ; pain is at other times given by refus- ing a request ; and again at other times by maintain ing an opinion. In these and numerous cases sug- gested by them, there have to be answered the questions whether, to avoid inflicting pain, personal feelings should be sacrificed, and how far sacrificed. Again, in cases of another class, pain is given not by a passive course, but by an active course. How far shall a person who has misbehaved be grieved by showing aversion to him ? Shall one whose action is to be reprobated have the reprobation expressed to him or shall nothing be said ? Is it right to annoy by condemning a prejudice which another displays? These and kindred queries have to be answered after taking into account the immediate pain given, the possible benefit caused by giving it, and the possible evil caused by not giving it. In solving problems of this class, the only help Absolute Ethics gives, is by enforcing the consideration that inflicting more pain than is necessitated by proper self-regard, or by desire for another's benefit, or by the maintenance of a general principle is unwarranted. Of positive beneficence under its absolute form nothing more specific can be said than that it must become co-extensive with whatever sphere remains for it ; aiding to complete the life of each as a recipient of services and to exalt the life of eacli as a renderer of services. As with a developed humanity the desire for it by every one will so increase, and the sphere for exercise of it §o d^gr^ase, as to involve m jtitruistig o 340 TME DATA OF ETHICS. competition, analogous to the existing egoistic competi tion, it may be that Absolute Ethics will eventually include what we before called a higher equity, pre- scribing the mutual limitations of altruistic activities. Under its relative form, positive beneficence presents numerous problems, alike important and difficult, admitting only of empirical solutions. How far is self- sacrifice for another's benefit to be carried in each case ? — a question which must be answered differently according to the character of the other, the needs of the other, and the various claims of self and belong- ings which have to be met. To what extent under given circumstances shall private welfare be sub- ordinated to public welfare ? — a question to be answered after considering the importance of the end and the seriousness of the sacrifice. What benefit and what detriment will result from gratuitous aid yielded to another ? — a question in each case implying an estimate of probabilities. Is there any unfair treatment of sundry others, involved by more than fair treatment of this one other ? Up to what limit may help be" given to the existing generation of the inferior, with- out entailing mischief on future generations of the superior? Evidently to these and many kindred ques- tions included in this division of Eelative Ethics, approximately true answers only can be given. But though here Absolute Ethics, by the standard it supplies, does not greatly aid Eelative Ethics, yet, as in other cases, it aids somewhat by keeping before con- sciousness an ideal conciliation of the various claims involved ; and by suggesting the search for such com- promise among them, as shall not disregard any, but shall satisfy all to the greatest extent practicable. PO PULAR LITERATURE FOR THE MASS ES. 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By Samubx. M. Schmucker, LL.D. Webster's Speeches. (Selected.^ By Daniel Webster. Wee Wifie. By Rosa N. Carey. Westward Hoi By Charles Kings ley. We Two. By Edna Lyat l. What's Mine's Mine. By Georgs Macdonald. When a Man's Single. By J, M. Barrie. White Company, By A. Conan Doyle. Whites and the Blues. By Alex- andre Dumas. Whittier's Poems, (eari-y.) By Jos^r G. Whittier. Wide, Wide World. Br Susan War- ner. William, the Conqueror, JASe of. By Edward A. Freeman, LL.D. William, the Silent, Life of. By Frederick Harrison. WiUy Reilly. By William Carle- ton. Window in Thrums. By J. M. Barrie Wing and Wing. By Jam^s Feni- more Cooper. Wolsey, Cardinal, Life of. By Man- dell Creighton. Woman in White, By Wilkie Col- LINS. Won by Waiting, By Edna Lyall. Wonder Book, For Bovs and Girls, By Nathaniel Haw- thorne. Woodstock. By Sir Walter Scott. Wooed and Married, By Rosa N. Carey. Wooing O't. By Mrs. Alexander. Wordsworth's Poems. By William Wordsworth. Wormwood, By Marie Coreili \ Wreck of the Grosveaor, Bv W- ' Clark Russell. Cornell University Library BJ 1311. S74 1879a The data of ethics / 3 1924 005 446 475