CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Date Due lUL. 1 4 19' rr^ iARie 1957 fl X ^ittnii w< 10l^tmmim A JftfK^ 4959-flp " «. " ..-rrn — ff^ ^^ s^ ^JjLiI^ jg- ** 1 Cornell University Library BJ1111 .P33 1899 < «.hi^e hu Friedrich Paulsen System of. .ethics,,, px, uri iiiii iHii iiTll lllll lllll llll llll 3 1924 028 961 477 olin if MW B Cornell University The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028961477 A SYSTEM OF ETHICS .... And hence virtue would be, as it were, the health and beauty and harmony of the soul ; vice, however, disease and ugliness and weakness. Plato. .... Accordingly, the highest good of man consists in the exercise of the virtues and excellences of the soul, especially of the highest and most perfect. Aristotle. Virtue is nothing but action in accordance with one's own nature ; and there is nothing which excels it in dignity and worth. Spinoza. And therefore virtue is the good and!vice the evil for every on*. Shaftbsbubt, SYSTEM OF ETHICS BY FRIEDRICH PAULSEN PROFESSOR OP PHILOSOPHY IN THE DNIVERSITT OF BERLIN iBlJtteti anD Sttanalateli With the author's sanction, from the fourth eevised and enlarged edition BY FRANK THILLY PROFESSOR OP PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSIIIr OP MISSOURI CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON ml Copyright, 1899 Bt Charles Soribnek's Sons TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE Op all the treatises on ethics that have appeared in recent years, none is, in my opinion, so admirably fitted for intro- ducing the beginner to this study as the remarkable work of Professor Paulsen which I here present to the English-speak- ing public in their native tongue. As the author expressly declares, the book was not written for philosophical experts, bat for all those who are interested in the problems of prac- tical philosophy, and who are in need of some one to guide them in solving the same. It discusses the fundamental questions of ethics in a manner that cannot fail to attract the student and encourage him to reflect upon moral matters, which is, after all, the greatest service that any book can hope to render him. Many of our ethical treatises have a tendency to repel the average intelligent reader and to deaden instead of quickening his thought ; they make him feel that the subjects under discussion have absolutely no connection with life, at least, not with his life ; they often speak to him of things about which he knows nothing and cares less, in lan- guage which he cannot understand. This is a misfortune, for if any science has a message to deliver to the people of our country and age, it is certainly the science of conduct. Professor Paulsen divides his work into four books. The first traces the historical development of the conceptions of life and moral philosophy from the times of the Greeks down to the present, and is one of the ablest and most fascinating surveys of the subject ever written. The second examines ^1 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE the fundamental questions of ethics and answers them in a manner indicating the author's clearness of vision and soundness of judgment. The third, which is full of prac- tical wisdom, applies these principles to our daily conduct and defines the different virtues and duties. The fourth book is sociological and political in its nature, and deals with the "Forms of Social Life." The healthy common- sense pervading the entire work and its freedom from exag- gerations cannot but win the admiration of the reader. Owing to a desire on the part of the publishers not to in- crease the dimensions of this volume beyond a reasonable limit, I have translated only the first three of the books, leaving out, for the present, the " Umriss einer Staats- und Gesellschaftslehre. " I have also omitted the seventh and eighth sections of the sixth chapter in Book III, which dis- cuss the duel, in order still further to diminish the size of the translation, and because, in my belief, the subject does not have the same interest for us Americans as for the Germans. My translation is from the fourth German edition which has been revised and increased. I have added notes and bibliographical references whenever they seemed desirable; they will be found in square brackets. In conclusion, I cannot refrain from expressing to Pro- fessor Paulsen my sincere thanks for the encouragement and help he has given me during the progress of this work. FEANK THILLY. Columbia, Mo., March, ISQu. AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION In responding to the request of my friend Frank Thilly to speed this book on its journey, I feel impelled, first of all, to express to him my hearty thanks for his kindness in presenting my Ethics to his fellow-countrymen in their native tongue, a service which he has already performed for my Introduction to Philosophy. From my earliest youth I have had the feeling that a people closely akin to us dwelt beyond the ocean. This feeling was, perhaps, first aroused by the fact that not a few of the companions of my youth had found a new home on the other side ; in my native land, Schleswig-Holstein, from which the Anglo-Saxons once sailed westward over the sea, the migration to the West still continues. Since then the years have woven many new bonds of union. And so it is now a special source of pleasure to me, also, as an author, to come into closer contact with the great nation which has shown such remarkable energy in establishing itself in the new world. It is my earnest wish that this book may also contribute a little to strengthen the ties of spiritual fellowship unit- ing the two kindred peoples. We Germans well know, and gratefully confess, that no nation of the earth more deeply appreciates and more thoroughly understands the products of German thought than the United States of North America. FEIEDEICH PAULSEN. Berlin-Steglitz, September 27, 1898. PREFACE TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION Ich glaube nicht dass ich viel eignes neues lehre, Nocli durch meiu Sdierflein Witz den Schatz der "Weisheit mehre. Doch denk' ich von der Milh' mir zweierlei Gewinn ; Einmal, dass ich. nun selbst an Einsicht weiter bin ; Sodann, dass doch dadurch an manchen Mann wird kommen Manches, wovon er sonst gar hatte nichts vernommen. Und auch der dritte Grund scheint wert nicht des Gelachters : Dass, wer dies Blichlein liest, derweil doch liest kein sehlechters, — BiJCKERT. FROM THE PREFACE TO THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION The second edition of this work, which has been so kindly received by a large circle of readers, embraces, in the main, the same contents as the first ; I have, however, so far as I was able, made improvements here and there. The second book, especially, has been worked over ; I hope that the fun- damental concepts have gained somewhat in definiteness, and that the entire treatment has been somewhat rounded out. Perhaps this will make it a little easier for some of the critics to understand the conception of life and its values on which my system is based. This new edition, however, is still open to the objection, which has been repeatedly urged against me, that the treat- ment of the fundamental questions is much less searching and thorough, while the questions of the day receive more attention than they deserve in a philosophical treatise. I have not been able to make up my mind to enter upon a more detailed discussion of the principles, because I do not believe that great prolixity in these matters will do any one much good. The philosophers, of course, have long ago worked out their own principles ; to the readers, however, who do not lay claim to this title, the significance and fitness of the funda- mental notions will be proved more easily by the ability of the latter to explain particular cases and to solve concrete prob- lems. I have been equally unwilling to ignore the questions which are moving our age ; the books that have nothing to say to their times, and therefore fill their pages with un- X FROM THE PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION timely logical quibbles, or with endless historical-critical discussions, are plentiful enough as it is, and there has, thus far, never been a lack of tiresome books in Germany. There are books that are timeless because they are written for all times; but there are also timeless books which are written for no time. This book does not belong to the first class, nor would it like to belong to the second. And now that I have begun to make confessions, let me confess further that this book was not written for philoso- phers at all; God forbid that I should presume to think for people who are already overburdened with thoughts. I had in mind readers who have, in some way or other, been stimulated to meditate upon the problems of life, and are looking for some one to guide them, or, if that sounds too presumptuous, for some one to discuss these questions with them. Should any such take up this book and not lay it aside disappointed, the author's ambition will have been thoroughly realized. Besides, I do not believe that a new system of moral philosophy is either necessary or possible ; the great construc- tive principles have already been so thoroughly developed by Greek philosophy that they are, in the main, satisfactory even to-day. To bring the old truth into living touch with the ques- tions which preoccupy our age, is, in my opinion, the most important function of a modern ethics. Nor do I believe that I am mistaken in the assumption that this view is some- what widespread in our times. Perhaps there has never been BO little disagreement concerning the problem and principles of moral philosophy since the days of Christian Wolff as exists at present. Let me here briefly outline the conception towards which the thought of the age seems to be tending; I call it the teleological view. It is limited and defined by a double anti- thesis. On the one side, by hedonistic utilitarianism, which teaches that pleasure is the thing of absolute worth, to which virtue and morality are related as means. In opposition to FROM THE PKEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xi this, teleological ethics contends that not the feeling of pleasure, but the objective content of life itself, which is experienced with pleasure, is the thing ol worth. Pleasure is the form in which the subject becomes immediately aware of the object and its value. Intuitionalistic formalism is the other antithesis. This regards the observance of a sj'stem of a priori rules, of the moral laws, as the thing of absolute worth. In opposition to this, teleological ethics contends that the thing of absolute worth is not the observance of the moral laws, hut the substance which is embraced in these formulae, the human historical life which fills the outline with an infinite wealth of manifold concrete forms ; that the moral laws exist for the sake of life, not life for the sake of the moral laws. This is the form which Aristotle, the founder of ethics as a systematic science, originally gave to it. This conception controlled the entire Greek thought, and modern ethics too adhered to it, until it was overthrown by Kant's great reaction in favor of a formalistic intuitionalism. Teleological ethics, however, at once found an eloquent and warm defender against formal moralism in Schiller, and in a certain sense Specula- tive Philosophy also returned to the old view. At present this science is again turning into the old channels under the influence of the modern biological conceptions. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Txoa Nature and Function of Ethics 1 1. Definition (1) — 2. Position in the System of Sciences (1) — 3. Function (4) — 4. Method (6) — 5. Moral Law and Natural Law (13) — 6. Concept of Perfection (17) — 7. In what Sense Universal Validity may be Predicated of Morality (19) — 8. Practical Value of Ethics (25). BOOK I OUTLINE OF A HISTORY OF THE CONCEPTIONS OF LIFE AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY CHAPTER I The Conception of Life and Moral Philosophy among THE Greeks S3 L The Greek People's Conception of the Value of Life (35) — 2. Socrates (39) — 3. Plato (41) — 4. Aristotle (48) — 5. Stoics (53) — 6. Epicureans (56) — 7. Common Characteristics of Greek Ethics (68). CHAPTER n The Christian Conception of Life 65 1. Christianity is Supernaturalistic (65) — 2. Its Contempt for Learn- ing (67) — 3. for the Natural Virtues (68) r— 4. for Courage (69) — 5. for Justice (71) — 6. Its Relation to the State (72) — 7. to Enjoyment and Art (74) — 8. to Wealth (77) — 9, to Honor (78) — 10. Mercy, the Christian Virtue (81) — 11. Christianity and- liv TABLE OF CONTENTS Pack Family-Life (84) — 12. The Eternal Life (87) — 13. The Liberal- istic Conception of Christianity (89). CHAPTER III The Conversion of the Old World to Christianity ... 98 t. The Old World's Opinion of Christianity (98) — 2. Cause of the Change : Decline of Ancient Morality in the Roman Empire (100) 3. The Moral Self-consciousness of the Imperial Period : Epic- tetus, Marcus Aurelius, Neo-Platonism (106) — 4. Craving for a Religion of Redemption (110) — 5. Superiority of Christianity (112) — 6. Analogous Development in the Hindoo World (113). CHAPTER IV The Middle Ages and their Conception of Life .... US 1. The Conversion of the Germanic Nations (116) — 2. Mood and Mode of Life (118) — 3. The Clergy (119) — 4. Historical Necessity on Part of the Church to Assimilate the World (121). CHAPTER V The Modern Conception of Life 12J 1. Characteristics of the Modern Era (126) — 2. Renaissance (127) — 3. Reformation (129) — 4. The Love of Knowledge (135) — 5. Francis Bacon and his Dream of the Future (137) — 6. R. Des- cartes and his Programme of Civilization (140) — 7. The Modern Science of the State: Thomas Hobbes (143) — 8. Leibniz (144) — 9. The Self-satisfaction of the Modern Era (145) — 10. The Nineteenth Century : Pessimism, Nietzscheanism (147) — 11. Relation to Christianity (155). CHAPTER VI Medieval and Modern Moral Philosophy 169 I. Theological Moral Philosophy (169)— 2. Catholic Moral Theology (172) — 3. Modern Moral Philosophy; Thomas Hobbes (179) — 4. Spinoza (181) — 5. Shaftesbury (185) — 6. Hume, Bentham, Mill, Spencer (189) — 7. Leibniz, Wolff (193) — 8. Kant (194) — 9. Goethe, Schiller (201) — 10. Speculative Philosophy (203) — 11. Schleiermacher (206) — 12. Herbart (208) — 13. Scho- penhauer (209). TABLE OF CONTENTS XV BOOK II FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS AND QUESTIONS OF PRINCIPLE Paob Metaphysical and Psychological Introduction 219 CHAPTER I Good and Bad : Tkleological and Formalistic Conceptions . 222 1. Possible Conceptions (222) — 2. The Teleological Conception (224) — 3. Subjective-formal and Objective-material Judgment (226) — 4. The End Justifies the Means (233) — 5. The Importance of the Particular Act (240) — 6. Provisional Repudiation of Egoism (243) — 7. Summary (248). CHAPTER II The Highest Good : Hedonistic and Energistic Conceptions . 251 1. Critique of Hedonism : Pleasure not the End of Action (251) — 2. A Modified Form of the Hedonistic Theory (258) — 3. Signifi- cance of Pleasure from the Biological Standpoint (264) — 4. Pleasure not the Criterion of Judgments of Value (268) — 5. Positive Definition of the Highest Good (270) — 6. Histor- ical Confirmation (273) — 7. Further Remarks (275) — 8. An Objection (283). CHAPTER III Pessimism 287 1. Pessimism as a Mood and a Theory (287) — 2. Hedonistic Argu- ment (289) — 3. Moralistic Argument (297) — 4. The Historical- Philosophical Argument in the Hedonistic Sense (308) — 5. in the Moralistic Sense (314) — 6. Summary (318). CHAPTER IV The Evil, the Bad, and Theodicy 321 1. Theodicy (321) — 2. Physical Evil (322) — 3. Moral Evil (325) — 4. Consequences (332) — 5. Death (335). CHAPTER V Duty and Conscience 340 I.. Origin of the Feeling of Duty (340) — 2. Relation between Duty and Inclination (346) — 3. Critique of the Kantian View (350) xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS Pagb — 4. Further Errors of the A-prioristic-intuitionalistic Moral Phil- osophy (355) — 6. Conscience (363) — 6. Individualization of Conscience (368) — 7. Moral Nihilism (373) — 8. The Popular Usage of Language (377). CHAPTER VI 379 Egoism and Altruism 1. No Absolute Opposition (379) — 2. The Effects of so-called Egoistic and Altruistic Acts (383) — 3. and their Motives Overlap (386) — 4. Our Judgment of Egoistic and Altruistic Acts (391) — 5. Relation to the Evolutionistic Theory (394). CHAPTER VII Virtue and Happiness *"" 1. Effect of Conduct on Welfare (400) — 2. Effect of Welfare on Character (407). CHAPTER VIII Relation or Morality to Religion 415 1. Historical Connection, its Causes and Effects (415) — 2. Neces- sary Inner Connection (421) — 3. Relation between Religion and Science (425) —4. Cause of Unbelief (433) — 5. The Belief in Immortality (439) — 6. Objections (446). CHAPTER IX The Freedom of the Will 452 1. Historical Orientation (452) — 2. Presentation of the Facts (457) — 3. Responsibility (460) — 4. The True Meaning of Human Free- dom (467). BOOK III THE DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES CHAPTER I Virtues and Vices in General 475 CHAPTER II The Education of the Will and the Discipline of the Feelings, or Sklf-Control 4g3 1. Self-control (483) — 2. Temperance; Asceticism (485) — 3. Mod- esty (491)— 4. Courage (495) — 5. Independence, Perseverance, Patience (498) — 6. Equanimity (500) — 7. Wisdom (503). TABLE OF CONTENTS xvii CHAPTER III Page Bodily Life 505 1. Its Purpose (505) — 2. Nourishment; Drunkenness (506) — 3. Domicile, Clothing (515) — 4. Play and Work (519). CHAPTER IV Economic Life 529 1. Teleological Necessity of the Calling (529) — 2. Duty to the Com- munity (533) — 3. Avarice and Prodigality (536) — 4. Poverty and Wealth (540). CHAPTER V Spiritual Life and Culture 543 1. Nature and Import of Knowledge (543) — 2. Culture, Super-cul- ture, Half-culture (547) — 3. Nature and Import of Art (556) — 4. Present Position of Art (559). CHAPTER VI Honor and the Love of Honor 569 1. Nature of Honor (569) — 2. Its Significance for Moral Develop- ment (571)— 3. The Love of Honor as Pride (573) — 4: The Love of Honor as Humility (576) — 5. Self-confidence and Self- knowledge (578) — 6. Modesty (581). CHAPTER VII Suicide , 584 1. The Facts (584) — 2. How we Judge the Facts (586) — 3. The Causes (590). CHAPTER VIII Compassion and Benevolence 592 1. Compassion (592) — 2. Benevolence (599). CHAPTER IX Justice 599 1. Nature and Natural Foundation of Justice (599) — 2. Its Signi- ficance (602) — 3. Need of a Positive Legal Order (603) — 4. Punishment and the Right of Punishment (606) — 5. Duty to XVlll TABLE OF CONTENTS Paob Defend the Rights of Others and of Self (613) — 6. Magnanimity and Forgiveness (616) — 7. The Principle of Rights (624) — 8. Incongruity between Law and Morality; Necessary Wrongs (627) — 9. The Law Falls short of the Demands of Morality (633). CHAPTER X Love of Neighbor 638 1. Definition and Limitations of the Duty (638) — 2. Almsgiving (641) — 3. Selfishness (648) — 4. Significance of Love of Neighbor (652) — 5. Gratitude (665) — 6. Love of Home, of Country, of Humanity (656). CHAPTER XI Veracity 664 1. Negative Aspect : the Lie (664) — 2. Why Condemned (666) — 3. Calumny, Flattery, Hypocrisy, Perjury (669) — 4. Lie of Necessity (672)— 5. Why this Rigorism? (681) — 6. Positive Aspect : Veracity in Relation to the Individual (685) — 7. The Public Communication of the Truth (688) — 8. Why the New Truths are Persecuted (690) — 9. In how far this is Necessary (695) — 10. Is the Destruction of Error under all Circumstances a Duty ? (698). INDEX 113 INTRODUCTION— .NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 1. Ethics is, according to tlie Greek signification of the term, a science of customs or morals (^Sitten). There are two forms of a scientific treatment of morals : the historical-anthropological and the practical. The first we find, for example, in Herodotus and in Herbert Spencer's Descriptive Sociology. It investigates and describes the cus- toms of different peoples and times ; we might call it etho- graphy. The second inquires into the worth of human customs and modes of behavior ; its object is to guide us in the proper conduct of life. The Greeks applied the term ethics to inves- tigations of the latter kind. It was Aristotle who gave to this science its name and systematic form. — The following introductory remarks will endeavor to define provisionally the nature of such a science. 2. All scientific discussions may be divided into two classes : theoretical and practical, theories and technologies, sciences proper and arts. The former aim at knowledge, the latter seek to control things by human action, they tell us how to make the world subservient to our purposes. According to the above definition, ethics belongs to the practical sciences ; its function is to show how human life as such must be fashioned to realize its purpose or end. Conse- quently, it stands at the head of the practical sciences, em- bracing them all in a certain measure, for all arts ultimately serve a common purpose : the perfection of human life. This is as true of the art of shipbuilding and commerce as of the art of education and government. Hence, the corresponding 2 INTRODUCTION arts are subordinated to ethics, the theory of the art oi > or included as its parts. All practical sciences are based on theories. j ^ merely the application of theoretical truths to the solution of practical problems. The theoretical science to which ethics bears this relation is the science of man, anthropology and fsyclology. Presupposing a knowledge of human nature and the conditions of human life, ethics undertakes to answer the question : What forms of social life and what modes of indi- vidual conduct are favorable or unfavorable to the perfection of human nature? A comparison with another practical science will make the relation clear. The function of medi- cine is to teach men the physician's art ; and the object of this art is to aid the body in reaching its perfect development, to bring about favorable conditions, to ward off dangers, to remove disturbances ; dietetics and therapeutics together per- form this function. Physical anthropology forms the theoret- ical basis of medicine. We may, therefore, say : Ethics bears the same relation to general anthropology as medicine to physical anthropology. Based on the knowledge of corporeal nature, medicine instructs us to solve the problems of cor- poreal life, to the end that the body may perform all its func- tions in a healthy manner during its natural existence ; while ethics, basing itself on the knowledge of human nature in general, especially of its spiritual and social side, aims to solve all the problems of life so that it may reach its fullest, most beautiful, and most perfect development. We might, therefore, call ethics universal dietetics, to which medicine and all the other technologies, like pedagogy, politics, etc., are related as special parts, or as auxiliary sciences. With this view the founder of systematic moral philosophy, Aris- totle, wholly agrees. A remark will not be out of place here. It is easy to see that the arts are not really new, independent sciences. Science deals with the nature of things. The fact that objects may NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 3 be modified by our action does not constitute a special phase of their nature. Science might, therefore, confine itself to calling attention to this in occasional interspersed remarks ; physics might, for example, in discussing the subject of steam, add the following note : Such and such particular properties of gases enable us to utilize them as motors. The technolo- gies would thus be inserted into the theories as corollaries. If human beings were essentially theoretical beings, they might, perhaps, be satisfied with such a procedure. But such is not the case ; they are, rather, pre-eminently practical or volitional beings. The practical problems are earlier and more important than the theoretical problems. The sciences, we may say, without going far amiss, have been invented to solve problems; knowledge is, at least in its first beginnings, a means to practical ends. Thus, anatomy and physiology are means to the art of healing ; geometry, as the name indicates, a means to the surveyor's art. Similarly, philosophy, or the universal theoretical science, owes its origin to the ques- tion concerning the meaning and object of life. Yes, we may go still farther and say : The ultimate motive impelling men to meditate upon the nature of the universe will always be the desire to reach some conclusion concerning the meaning, the source, and the goal of their own lives. The origin and end of all philosophy is consequently to be sought in ethics. The priority of the practical sciences is shown in a remark- able way by the form which scientific instruction has assumed on its highest stage. Our university sciences are absolutely governed by practical ends. The medical sciences do not really form a systematic science ; they are united by a prac- tical aim : the medical faculty is a technical training school for physicians. It draws all such theoretical sciences into the sphere of its instruction as it regards essential and useful to the technical training of its students. In this way, physiology and anatomy, which, in a classification based on purely theo- retical principles, would, of course, be grouped under the 4 INTRODUCTION natural sciences, under the title biology, came into the facu y of medicine. The same is true of jurisprudence and theology. Neither of these is a special, independent science ; the fac- ulties of law knd theology are technical training schools, the former for judges and officials, the latter for preachers and spiritual advisers ; and whatever knowledge is required by the members of these professions, they draw upon and make sub- servient to their goal. A purely theoretical classification of the sciences would place all these subjects either under the head of history or philosophy. The question as to what was or is the law in any particular country belongs to history, as well as the question concerning the essence or the historical development of a particular religion. The question, however, concerning the nature of law in general and its significance for human conduct belongs to practical philosophy ; the question concerning the nature of God and the constitution of the uni- verse, to metaphysics. — We have here an illustration of the truth that knowledge exists for the sake of life, not life for the sake of knowledge. 3. Let me add a few further statements concerning the function and method of ethics. It has a double function to perform : to determine the end of life, or the highest good, and to point out the way, or the means, of realizing it. It is the business of the doctrine of goods (^G-uterlehre) to establish the goal, or the highest good. It will, to forestall the contents of a subsequent chapter, regard as the highest good, stating it in a general formula, a perfect life, that is, a life leading to the complete development of the bodily and mental powers and to their full exercise in all the spheres of human existence, in close communion with other closely related persons, and fully participating in the historical and spiritual life of society at large. The term tvelfare ( Wohl- fahrt) may also be employed to designate this goal, — which would suggest the subjective element involved in it, or the NATUKE AND FUNCTION- OF ETHICS 5 fact that such a life yields satisfaction (^WohlgefilM). Here, however, we must guard against the misconception that this feeling of satisfaction or pleasure is what gives life its real worth. The feeling is not the good, but the form in which the good is known aud enjoyed by the subject. The other function of ethics is to show by what inner quali- ties and modes of conduct the highest good, or the perfect life, is attained and realized. This problem is solved in the doctrine of virtues and the doctrine of duties {Tugend- und Pflichtenlehre). The doctrine of duties describes in general formula how we must conduct ourselves in order successfully to solve the problems of life, that is, attain to perfection. The doctrine of duties sets forth how we must fashion the character, or the will, in order to realize that goal : it makes clear to us that prudence, courage, justice, veracity, are quali- ties which enable us correctly to solve the problems of life, while their opposites, thoughtlessness, cowardice, and pleasure- seeking, inconsiderate selfishness and base mendacity, hinder the realization of the perfect life. Here, however, we must at once call attention to an im- portant fact. The means employed to realize the perfect life are not merely external, technical means, having no inde- pendent value, but they are at the same time parts of its con- tent. Just as the means of dietetics, work and exercise, rest and sleep, as functions of life, at the same time form constit- uents of bodily life, so the virtues and their exercise forni the contents of the perfect life. Or, to use a different illus- tration : Each part in a good poem is a means of expressing and unfolding the whole, otherwise it would be a superfluous episode ; and, conversely, every means also necessarily forms a part of the poem itself and as such possesses its own poetic value. So, too, everything in moral life is both a means and a part of the end, something that exists for its own sake and for the sake of the whole. The virtues have absolute worth as phases of the perfect man, but they are at the same time 6 INTRODUCTION valuable as means, in so far as the perfect life is realized through them. In both cases, however, a difference may be noted. Not all the parts of a work of art have the same value when compared with the purpose underlying it, nor are the different virtues equally important as means of realizing the perfect life. Similarly, the different duties may be graded according to their importance. 4. Let us now inquire into the method of ethics. What is the source of its knowledge ? How does it prove the truth of its propositions ? It is customary to distinguish between empirical and ra- tional knowledge. The latter, of which mathematics is the prototype, deduces propositions from definitions and axioms, and demonstrates them logically ; that is, it shows that they follow as necessary consequences from the principles. Em- pirical sciences, on the other hand, like physics and chemistry, observe facts and reduce them to general formulae, which aim to express the uniformity in the behavior of things; such formulae we call causal laws. The proof of the truth of these propositions does not consist in showing their logical connection with certain presupposed definitions, but in point- ing out that they adequately express an observed causal connection. It seems to me to be an indisputable fact that ethics resem- bles the natural sciences, rather than mathematics, in its method. It does not deduce and demonstrate propositions from concepts, but discovers the relations which exist be- tween facts, and which may be established by experience. Such and such a mode of conduct has such and such an effect ; that is the general form of its argument. Or, to state it in the converted form in which the causal connections are expressed in all practical or technical sciences : In order to produce or prevent such and sucli results, such and such means are necessary. Quod in contemplatione instar causae, id in operatione instar regulae, says Bacon ; the causal law NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 7 becomes a practical rule. But the correctness of the rule is proved by the causal connection ; and causal connections are ascertained by experience alone. Experience proves that cleanliness, exercise, fresh air, are means of preserving health. So, too, experience proves that prudent and rational conduct, a regular vocation, a well-ordered family life, are conducive to life ; and that indolence, shiftlessness, dis- honesty, and malice have the tendency to make life miser- able and to destroy it. The rationalistic view denies to ethics its empirical char- acter. It claims that propositions of morals are neither cap- able nor in need of empirical proof. It regards them as the expressions of an innate faculty, conscience, or practical reason, which judges and legislates a priori. It asserts that everybody knows what is right or wrong without any expe- rience. Experience decides what is advantageous or disad- vantageous in its effects, but everybody knows before all experience what is good or bad, and no experience of what human beings really do or what may be the actual effects of their action can place in doubt or correct this immediate knowledge of what they ought to do. Our answer is: It is indeed true that mankind did not await the coming of moral philosophy in order to distinguish between good and bad. Morality is older than moral philos- ophy, and there could be no moral philosophy without morality as its presupposition. It arises as the reflection on an exist- ing positive morality, which governs life and judgment, and which is not destroyed or made superfluous by its appearance. It is also true that something like an inner voice speaks to the individual : You ought to do this, you must not do that ! and that too without any reasons, in the form of an uncon- ditional imperative. This inner voice we call conscience. We shall recur to the anthropological explanation and teleo- logical interpretation of these things later on. Here, how- ever, I should like to show that it does not follow from this 8 INTRODUCTION that moral philosophy must be an a-prioristie or rational science. Let the science of dietetics again serve as an illus- tration to explain our meaning. What was said of the moral conduct of life may also be applied to bodily life. Just as men did not await the coming of moral philosophy before distinguishing between good and bad, they did not wait for the appearance of the science of dietetics in order to distinguish between the wholesome and the unwholesome. Long before medicine or any science existed, hungry men ate, the thirsty quenched their thirst, and the shivering covered themselves with skins. The ques- tion: Why do they do this, why is bread good for the hungry, and water for the thirsty ? would have seemed as strange to them as the question : Why is stealing wrong ? seems to our schoolboys. It is self-evident ; no other reason can be given for it. Here, as everywhere else, scientific investigation begins by regarding everything that has previously been accepted as self-evident, as a problem. After men had lived for untold ages according to the absolute imperatives of a naturalistic dietetics and an equally naturalistic therapeutics, which continue even to this day in the prescriptions or abso- lute imperatives of popular dietetics and medicine, what we call scientific medicine arose. Slowly and gradually, by means of observation and experiment, we have come to un- derstand the organization of the body and its relation to the external conditions of life, and have thus been gradually en- abled to prove the appropriateness of methods and cures which have long been practised, and to eliminate useless or harmful ones, and to employ new ones in their stead. Moral philosophy occupies a similar position. It, too, is confronted with a naturalistic, unscientific, traditional moral- ity. Just as bodily life was originally governed by instincts and blind habits, without physiology, so the entire human life, especially social life, was originally governed without science, by a kind of moral instincts. These moral instincts NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 9 of peoples are called customs (^Sitten). I employ this term to designate all those obligatory habits and forms of life, all those customs and laws, which uniformly 'govern the life of every member of a community. Like the dietetic rules, these customs appear in the consciousness of the individual in the form of absolute commands, which assign no reason for their validity. Thou shalt not kill, rob, or defraud a member of thy tribe, — so conscience speaks, without grounds and conditions; to do so is bad : that is a self-evident truth, just like the truth that fire burns, and bread satisfies hunger. Is this truth really incapable of proof, can moral philosophy do nothing but collect and arrange these absolute commands and prohibitions ? To say so is to deprive it of its character as a science, for science does not consist in taking inventories, but in the discovery and proof of truths. But such is not the case. The truths of popular morality themselves suggest a different answer ; they also appear in another form, namely in the form of proverbs : Pride goeth before a fall ; Lies are short-lived ; Honesty is the best policy ; A house divided against itself cannot stand. Here the imperative appears in the form of an assertion, one in which the reason is implied : Do not lie, for lies are short-lived; Do not cheat, for ill-gotten gains do not prosper. And this suggests to us the real func- tion of a philosophy of morals. It must unfold in detail the reasons, which are simply implied in popular morality, for the different value of the different modes of conduct. Like the science of dietetics, it must show that certain modes of conduct which have been followed instinctively for a long time, are suited to the nature and conditions of human life, and are therefore beneficial, while others are injurious and pernicious. It will show, for example, that it lies in the very nature of falsehood to injure the deceiver, the person deceived, and the entire community which is united by the ties of language, by destroying confidence and thereby undermining the founda- tion of social life, without which real human life is not pos- 10 INTRODUCTION sible. It will show that stealing disturbs the economic lire of the injured party, and almost necessarily utterly destroys that of the thief, and, finally, that it endangers the life of the entire community by making property insecure, which is the inevitable effect of theft, and thereby undermines the founda- tions of civilization and all human life. In this way, moral philosophy changes inatinotive custom into conscioui purpos- iveness. But it may possibly do more than this. Just as medical dietetics does not merely explain, but rectifies the rules of natural dietetics, so moral philosophy does not merely justify the injunctions of natural morality, but also supplements and corrects them. Thus it may, for example, in giving the rea- sons for a rule, at the same time define the limits within which it holds. In explaining the perniciousness of false- hood, it at the same time helps us to decide when wilful deception may be allowable and necessary. It solves the problem of the so-called lie of necessity, which so strangely confuses common-sense (as well as many moralists). By showing why it is good to forgive injuries, it at the same time determines under what conditions alone forgiveness is possible, and under what conditions retaliation is necessary. Naturalistic morality with its absolute imperatives leaves us entirely in the lurch in complicated cases ; it leaves it to the individual's own instinct or to his tact, as it is usu- ally called, to settle the point. Moral philosophy cannot make tact superfluous ; particular decisions, based upon con- crete circumstances, must always be left to tact ; but it may lay down rules for the guidance of tact which will accomplish more than these absolute imperatives. Such is the method of ethics in the doctrine of virtues and duties. It explains its propositions teleologically and caus- ally : in order to reach such and such a goal, such and such behavior is necessary. But what about the knowledge of the goal itself? From what source does ethics derive the knowl- NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 11 edge of the perfect life ; how does it prove that its definition of the highest good is correct ? Here the case is somewhat different. We may say : The nature of the highest good is in reality not determined by the intellect, but by the will. The individual has an idea of the conduct of his individual life, a life-ideal, the realization of which he feels to be his true function as well as the highest goal of his desires. It is really not the intellect from which this ideal springs, although it appears in the form of an idea ; its excellence cannot be proved to the reason ; it is nothing but the reflection of the innermost essence and the will of the individual himself in ideation. If other individuals have different ideals, I cannot prove to them the inadequacy of their ideals either by logical demonstrations or by empirical causal investigations. I may, perhaps, make them feel the value of my ideal by the mere revelation and description of it ; indeed, I may convince them that mine has greater value than theirs, and thus win them over to mine. Nevertheless, it is not the understanding, but the will which impels them to de- cide in its favor. The intellect as such knows absolutely noth- ing of values, it distinguishes between the true and the false- the real and unreal, but not between the good and the bad. Earlier ethics frequently discussed the question whether rea- ton or feeling was the source of moral knowledge. We shall say that both are involved. The question : What is a good life, will in the last analysis be decided by immediate, incontro- vertible feeling, in which the innermost essence of the being manifests itself. It is as impossible to force a man by logical proofs to love and admire an ideal of life as it is to make his tongue feel the sweetness or bitterness of a particular fruit. We can arouse such feelings only by showing that an object possesses the qualities which originally produced them in him, owing to his nature. And to a certain extent, a person's taste for the goods of life may be changed by habit, as his taste for certain foods may be changed. In that case, 12 INTEODUCTION however, the change depends on the internal modification of the nature of the being. But we may, when once the conception of the highest good is established, make clear to the intellect that such or such means are beneficial or injurious to its realization. It will not, tlierefore, be possible to give a scientific defini- tion of the highest good, which shall be valid for all, — one, that is, which we can force every individual by logical proofs to accept ; or, at least, it will be possible only in so far as the will itself is fundamentally the same in all individuals. And we may, considering the far-reaching similarity of the powers and the conditions of life, assume that this is, in a certain de- gree, actually the case. Just as all the members of an animal species, on the whole, desire to perform the same functions, so we shall find a certain similarity of ends or aims in the human species. It would be the business of a kind of natural- historical investigation to discover such a uniform goal. It would have to be shown, in the most general formulae, what men actually desire as the highest good, or the perfect life. The purpose of the moralist would here be identical with that of the biologist : he would be obliged not to prescribe the goal of life, but to discover it. Should he, however, succeed in discovering a universal end of life, he could not, of course, refuse to designate individuals absolutely deviating from the goal, or having differently-fashioned wills (if there should be such), as abnormal forms. As is well known, there are per- verse sexual impulses. Although it is impossible to prove to those who are so afflicted that their impulses are perverse — they say : Impulses are facts ; your impulse, tending as it does, is no more and no less a mere fact than ours — the physiologist is convinced that it is abnormal, and the person so afflicted can be clearly made to see that he is an exception, and that life would not be possible if the perversity were the rule. The same reasoning applies to an abnormal will. A man, for example, wlio is sensitive only to sensual impressions, NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 13 say, to those of the palate, and has absolutely no appreciation of the other pleasures, the pleasures which spring from perception and knowledge, the exercise of powers, or is totally indifferent to the weal and woe of his human surroundings or uniformly enjoys their sufferings : such a being we should regard as an abnormal form, and we should not hesitate to call him per- verse, even though we could not convince him of the correct- ness of oui* condemnatory judgment. And it is quite possible that he would not even grant that his nature was abnormal, that is, a deviation from the average, nay, he might assert that could we but look beneath the outward appearances we should find that all others thought and felt as he did. 5. Let me here add a remark concerning the relation of moral laws to natural laws. Natural laws are formula which express the constant uniformity of natural occurrences. In the narrower sense of the term, the concept is interpreted to mean an absolute uniformity, one admitting of no exceptions. Thus, physics assumes that the law of gravitation is an exact mathematical expression of the uniform reciprocal action of all masses in the universe. In this sense, the law of causality itself is conceived as a strictly universal natural law. In a wider sense, however, we also designate as natural laws such uniform occurrences in nature as are not absolutely, but rela- tively constant. The laws of biology for the most part belong to this class ; for example, the laws which express the uniformity of structure and function of an animal or plant species. In this sense, we may evidently call the propositions of medical dietetics natural laws : As a rule such and such a method of procedure reacts upon the body in such and such a way ; Cold water ablutions harden the skin and the entire organism against changes in temperature ; The exercise of the mus- cular and nervous systems leads to an increase in strength and skill, while organs which are not used decay ; Opium and alcohol have such and such direct and such and such indi- rect effects upon the organism. All these are uniformities 14 INTRODUCTION which cannot be determined with mathematical exactness, and which, owing to the complexity of vital processes, do not appear with the same constant regularity as those de- scribed by physics, but nevertheless they express universal and regular tendencies. In the same sense, we may call the propositions of ethics natural laws : they, too, express the constant connections existing between modes of conduct and their effects upon life. Falsehood has the tendency to produce distrust; dis- trust has the tendency to disturb and destroy human social life : these are generalizations of the same kind as the asser- tion that alcohol tends to impair consciousness. The proposi- tion : Idleness weakens the powers of the understanding and the will, is nothing but a universal biological law, translated into psychological language. The objection is urged : The propositions of ethics or the moral laws declare what ought to he, and not what is, as do the natural laws. Thou shalt not lie, is a law of morality, one that is universally valid in spite of all the deviations of reality. The moral laws, it is held, are closely related to the laws on the statute books, not to the laws of nature. — They are certainly related to these ; nay, perhaps we may say that the statutes merely represent a section of the moral law. But that does not hinder them from being related to natural laws. The statutory laws undoubtedly express what ought to be, and there are exceptions to them in actual practice. Still these are but exceptions ; as a rule, the law is an expression of the actual behavior of the citizens ; we should surely not reckon among the laws of the state a law that is universally violated. It is a real law, not because it 18 printed on a piece of paper, but because it is an expression of the uniformity of action, even though this uniformity be not absolute. Moreover, although the law of the state has Its ongm in tlie will of man, it is, in the last analysis, based upon t!,e nature of things, upon the causal connections exist- NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS IS ing between modes of conduct and their effects upon life. Thou shalt not commit forgery, shalt not steal, shalt not com- mit arson, or, as the law declares : Whoever forges, steals, or commits arson, shall receive such and such punishment : this law owes its origin to the fact that such acts have injur- ious effects upon society. Stealing has the tendency to undermine property rights, forgery has the tendency to undermine credit, and consequently to interfere with the pro- duction and distribution of commodities. This natural law is the ultimate groimd of the statutory law ; the statutory law is a rule of conduct for the members of a community whose aim is the security of the conditions of social life. The same remarks apply to the moral law. A moral law declares not only what ought to be, but what is. The historian of civilization will undoubtedly declare : It is an expression of the relatively uniform behavior of the members of the group who acknowledge its validity, and it is, at all events, a principle according to which acts are universally judged. I'l falsehood were as common among a people as truth-telling, if falsehood were not judged differently from veracity, there would be no moral law on the subject. And should a moralist come to such a community and say : But it is an absolute law that you should not lie, he would be told : We don't understand you, and will not be bothered by your whims ! There is, of course, no such a people, not because falsehood ouffJit not to be, but because it cannot be a universal mode of conduct. Falsehood can occur only as an exception : that is a law of nature, not a logical, but a psychological law. Lying presupposes faith in human speech, and such trust can exist only where truth- telling is the rule. And when this uniform relation between truth and confidence, falsehood and distrust, becomes fixed in conduct and finally also in consciousness, the moral law is formulated : Thou shalt not lie. Tlie causal law forms the basis of the practical rule, in morals as well as in jurispru- dence and medicine. If there were no uniform connections 16 INTRODUCTION between causes and effects, between acts and individual and social life, there would be no moral laws. The moral law is not the product of caprice, not the arbitrary command of a transcendent despot or of an uncontrollable " inner voice," but the expression of an immanent law of human life. Human life, that is, a life with a human mental-historical content, is possible only where all individuals act with relative uniformity, in accordance with the laws of morality, hence where the moral law has the validity of a biological law. Deviations from the moral law have the tendency to produce disturbances in indi- vidual and social life ; absolute violation of the moral law would lead, first, to the destruction of human historical life, and finally also to the destruction of its animal existence. Perhaps a comparison with the laws of grammar will eluci- date the formal character of the moral laws. It is popularly supposed that the laws of grammar declare what ought to be : grammar prescribes the way in which we ought to speak. The history of language regards grammar in a different light : grammar does not prescribe the ways in which we ought to speak, but describes the ways in which we do speak. The grammarian of Gothic or Middle High German collects and describes the forms which were actually used in the past ; the paleontologist collects and describes extinct forms of life; and the grammarian of the living language does the same. But a peculiar fact is observed here. There is a difference in the language of different persons, of different writers. True, we find great uniformity, at least in the general plan of the language, in the declensions and conjugations, but even here we find exceptions, especially in the spoken word. This compels the grammarian, whose real aim is to describe the language, to choose between different forms, in order to reach universal propositions. He will be guided in his choice, either by the frequency of their occurrence or by his estimate of the linguistic powers of the writers. Certain forms are declared to be the normal ones, and grammar, therefore, NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 17 becomes a normative science after all : it decides what is correct and what is incorrect. This procedure, however, it must be confessed, is ultimately governed hj teleological necessity : the purpose of the language is to communicate thoughts; deviations make this impossible, and they are therefore eliminated as disturbing elements. In the same way, popular thought regards it as the func- tion of moral philosophy to prescribe laws. But anthropology and history have a different conception of the problem. The primary aim is not to prescribe what men ought to do, and according to what principles they ought to judge, but to describe and understand the ways in which they really act and live. And to understand them means to understand the teleological necessity of their customs, laws, and institutions. Hence, here as before, a descriptive and explanatory science becomes a normative science : its propositions become prin- ciples of judgment and rules of conduct, in so far as they represent the conditions of human welfare.' 6. Let me now make a few more statements concerning the function of ethics to define the highest good. In sec- tion 3 we used the term perfection. A perfect human life, that is, a life in which all the bodily and mental powers of man are fully developed and exercised, is the highest good for the individual. We shall have to discuss the material phase of this definition in detail later on. Here I shall simply enter upon a brief consideration of its formal side. It has been said that thiB is a purely formal, empty definition, which may be filled with any concrete content whatsoever. As compared with this conception, the definiteness of other views, for instance, that pleasure is the absolute good, has 1 Schleiermacher, whose entire ethics rests upon a parallelism hetween ethics and physics, the moral law and the natural law, discusses the difEerence between natural law and moral law in an academic treatise of the year 1825. (Complete Works, 3d Division, toI. II., p. 397.) Compare also F. J. Neumann, Natural Law and Economic Law (in the Zeitschriftfur die gesamt. Staatsw., 1892, number 3), and Encken, Fundamental Concepts of the Present, 2d ed., 1893, pp. l73fE. 3 18 INTRODUCTION been extolled. When we speak of pleasure, it has been claimed, we know what we are talking about. I shall have to defer the discussion of hedonism to a later time. Here, however, I should like to show that it is utterly impossible to give anything but a formal explanation of the highest good. Medical dietetics does not give us a concrete exposition of the perfect bodily life, but only a general outline, which may be filled in in many different ways. Similarly, ethics can give only a schematic outline of a mode of life, the observance of which does not necessarily make a life valuable, although it is the presupposition of the healthy development of life. The value of such a life depends upon the number of con- crete elements which it contains, and no system of ethics, not even the hedonistic, can undertake to describe them. The following illustration will make our meaning clear. We cannot speak of one perfect life. A people or a race con- sisting of totally similar copies of a perfect original pattern would strike us as an infinitely poor and empty affair. Nay, the very thought of such a thing is horrible. Imagine a mul- titude of human beings wholly alike as to their inner nature and life, differing from each other only in the numbers at- tached to them. Perfection consists, not in the similarity, but in the variety of forms. In order to give a concrete representa- tion of the perfect life, we should have to take our ideal of humanity, and show what different forms of human life are possible or necessary to realize the idea ; that is, we should have to describe a multitude of nations, tribes, families, in- dividuals, and the modes of life necessarily resulting from their natural endowments. This would be the function of an artistic or creative philosophy of history ; manifestly an im- possible task. Indeed, it is not even possible to deduce the past life of humanity, which history reveals to us, with ite multitudes of peoples and its historical development, from an idea of humanity ; much less to outline the future history and its new forms. NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 19 No one expects cesthetics to represent beauty in the con- crete, that is, to deduce all the real and possible beautiful pictures, statues, poems, and musical compositions from an idea of the beautiful. The production of concrete beauty is the business of the genius. Esthetics reflects upon the products of genius, it aims to express in general formulae the conditions upon which the products depend, or at least without which they cannot arise. It cannot, that is to say, propose concrete problems to the future artist, but it can assist him in gaining an insight into his art and avoiding mistakes. The same may be said of ethics; it does not describe every possible form of good life — this the moral genius evolves out of the fulness of his nature — but under- takes to describe and to justify the rules of conduct without which a good and beautiful life cannot be realized. And ethics, too, may indulge in the hope that it can, in a measure, guide the student in discovering his peculiar life's task, and guard him against error in his attempts to solve it. 7. It further follows from the above that there can be no universal morality in the concrete. The different expressions of the universal type of man demand each its own particular morality. The Englishman differs from the Chinaman and negro, and desires and ought to differ from them. Conse- quently, each one among them has a different morality. It is an undoubted fact that every nation has its own particular ideal of life and its own morality. The only question is whether " what is " " ought to be." It is absolutely essential, so it is claimed, that the propositions of morality be valid for all mankind or, in the words of Kant, " for all rational crea- ttu'es." If we admit that there is a different code of morals for Englishmen and negroes, then shall we not have to con- clude that tiiere is a different code for men and women, for artists and merchants, and, finally, also, one for each par- ticular man ? Indeed, the conclusion is a logical one. But I do not see 20 INTRODUCTION how we can avoid it if once we grant and insist upon the assertion that differences in life are not only not an evil, but essential conditions of the perfection of mankind. If we jus- tify the different forms of human life, we shall also have to justify the different rules of conduct. Just as the dietetics of the Englishman naturally differs from that of the negro, his morality, which, according to our conception, is merely a universal dietetics, must differ from his. We shall, there- fore, be compelled to say that a mode of conduct which is suitable and essential to the former need not be so to the latter. And we find not only that the Englishman actually treats the negro differently from one of his own countrymen, but that his relations to the negro are governed by an en- tirely different code of morality ; all of which does not mean, of course, that I am willing to justify the atrocities which have been and are still being committed every day against the savages in the name of civilization, by Europeans — alas, now also by the Germans. Only in a limited sense can we speak of a universal moral- ity. In so far, namely, as there are certain fundamental sim- ilarities in the nature and life-conditions of all human beings, in so far will there be certain universally valid fundamental conditions of healthy life. Thus medical dietetics may present certain fundamental rules as universal truths : A certain amount of food, consisting, say, of such and such substances, albumen, fats, carbo-hydrates, water, etc., furthermore, a cer- tain amount of work and rest is necessary to the preservation of bodily life. In the same sense, morality can advance uni- versal propositions : The preservation of human life demands that some attention be given to the care of offspring and the rearing of the young ; and in order that this end may be reached the sexes must live together in some permanent form. Or : A tribe cannot exist without some regulations tending to hinder hostilities among its members ; the infraction of such rules tends to breed ruin; hence, murder, adultery, theft, NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 21 and perjury are bad ; justice, benevolence, and veracity, the inner dispositions of the will which prevent such acts, are good. But in order that such universal rules may be directly applied, life must be adapted to the particular nature and the particular conditions surrounding it. The dietetic rule of nourishment mentioned above does not mean the same for the Esquimau as for the negro. Similarly, the rules of a universal human morality must be adapted to the special historical forms and conditions of life before they can be directly employed in determining and judging conduct. The commandment: Treat your neighbor justly and kindly, observe the rules of family and social life, does not mean the same for an African negro as for a European Christian. That monogamy is the best form of family life for a civil- ized nation does not prove that it is the best form for the entirely different conditions governing the negro tribe. We may say with perfect justice that monogamy is the higher form of family life. But that simply means that it is suitable to the higher stages of development and not that it is wrong for the lower stages to have a different form. Perhaps polyg- amy is a necessary stage in the development of the family, just as blood-revenge is a necessary stage in the development of law, and slavery in the development of society. This implies also that different times have different moral codes. That it is so is an indisputable fact, but it is hard to convince common-sense that it must be so, that it is not necessarily a sign of imperfection and perversion for an earlier age to have other customs, different acts and judg- ments, than the present. We are inclined to think that what- ever differs from our customs is all wrong. We blame the Middle Ages for burning heretics and witches, torturing sus- pects and killing criminals by the thousands. We are right in calling their methods brutal and barbarous. This, how- ever, does not prove that a brutal age did wrong in employ- 22 INTRODUCTION ing them. Perhaps it did ; perhaps, at least, these methods were frequently abused, but perhaps, on the other hand — proof, of course, is impossible from the very nature of the case — this method of procedure was suitable and necessary in that age. Perliaps the disciplining of human souls by the church was so necessary a precondition of civilization, that the Middle Ages stand justified before the tribunal of history, for suppressing, with all the means at their command, every attempt of the individual to emancipate himself from this discipline (which was the usual object of heresy). Per- haps the entire administration of justice of those days, with its brutal methods, was at least a temporarily necessary pre- condition of the complicated social life of the mediaeval towns. It is consoling that our courts and police are more efficient, and attain the same or better results by means of more humane methods, but this does not prove that the Mid- dle Ages could have preserved the peace in the same way. The Middle Ages might make the following answer to our charges : You owe it to us that you are now able to get along with such mild punishments; it has taken us centuries of hard work to eradicate the elements which absolutely refused to adapt themselves to social order. To be sure, this was no agreeable task; but now that it is accomplished, it is not fair of you to censure us for having undertaken it. Besides, who knows how long your methods will prove successful ? And now we shall have to go still further and say : Even different groups of the same nation, and, finally, also, different individuals are subject to a special moral code. Different dispositions and life-conditions demand not only a different bodily, but also a different spiritual and moral diet. What is beneficial and necessary to one may be un- suitable and injurious to another. "We are never in doubt about this fact when it comes to actual practice. "We disap- prove and censure one man for something that we consider permissible or lovable in another. Indeed, we may say that NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 23 it is not possible for different individuals to act exactly in the same way. If it is true that the entire nature of the agent manifests itself in every act — and we may say that it is characteristic of real human action to express not merely a particular phase of man's nature, hut the whole will, the entire man — then every impulse and every act, every word and every judgment, bears the stamp of this particular indi- vidual. Conduct is only outwardly alike ; on the inner and the essential side the individuality asserts itself, and that is not a defect, but a mark of perfection. Only where true morality begins to disappear, where it approaches the domain of law, does the demand still hold that a man act, outwardly at least, according to rule. As Schiller's epigram puts it : Gem erlassen wir dir die moralische Delikatesse, Wenn du die zehen Gebote notdlirftig erfullst. We must remember, however, that there is a reason why the moral preacher should emphasize the universality of the moral laws rather than the individuality of morality. Nature and inclination will take care that the individual receives his rights; whereas submission to a general rule is not to his taste. Indeed, the individual is very apt to demand that an exception be made in his case, on the ground of his special nature and circumstances, his temperament and his social position, and to excuse his conduct before others and before his own conscience, without, however, being justified from the standpoint of higher morality. Kant's rigorism is entirely in place against the inclinations of the natural man. The main thing is that the sensuous will be subordinated to universal law. This is the beginning, the foundation, of all finer, more individualized morality. The latter is, in the words of the Gospel, not the " destruction " of the law, but the " fulfilment " QirXripoicyi';') of the law. Nor, as has already been said, can morality tell the individual in what the fulfilment consists. All it can do is to lay down general rules, leaving it to the 24 INTRODUCTION conscience and to the wisdom of the individual to adapt these to special conditions. When, however, he needs guidance in these matters, he will seek the help of a personal counsellor, a spiritual adviser, who is, perhaps, as necessary as is a medical adviser for the body. For, surely, the relations of moral life are no less complicated, its problems no less difficult, its needs no less serious, its disturbances no less menacing, than those of bodily life. Here as well as in the latter case we have a confusing mixture of inclination and aversion, fear and hope. All this seemed self-evident to an earlier age; nothing seemed more necessary than to place the individual under the official care of a wise and experienced moral and spiritual adviser, leaving it to custom and individual instinct to care for the body. Is the present increase of physicians and the corresponding relative decrease of spiritual advisers a sign that we are more solicitous of the body than of the soul ? Or are we in hopes of influencing the soul by means of the body ? Or is it because the task of caring for the soul is becoming more difficult in consequence of the growing differentiation of thought and feeling, and because our faith in its accomplish- ment is waning ? The fact remains, on the other hand, that the rules of moral philosophy are not absolutely valid for all. We may, as was said, conceive of a universal human morality, or even of a morality for all rational creatures, but no one is able to realize it. The moral philosopher is a child of his people in thought and feelings, and is influenced by their morality; positively, for he has been moulded by their judgments and ideals from the days of his childhood ; negatively, for his no- tions of what ought not to be and his ideas of what ought to be are conditioned by his times. The abstract rationalism of the eighteenth century did not appreciate this truth, which Kant, too, failed to observe. The historical century, as the nine- teenth century might be called in contradistinction from the eighteenth, the scBculum philosophicum, no longer finds it NATURE AND FUNCTION OP ETHICS 25 possible to believe in the "universal man." Every moral philosophy is, therefore, valid only for the sphere of civiliza- tion from which it springs, whether it is conscious of the fact or not. It can have no other aim than to draw the general outlines of a mode of life which must be followed by the members of the particular sphere, in order to make possible a healthy, virtuous, and happy existence. 8. In conclusion, let me say a word concerning the practi- cal value of ethics. Can ethics be a practical science, not only in the sense that it deals with practice, but that it iniiuences practice ? This was its original purpose. It is the function of ethics, says Aristotle, to act, not only to theorize. Scho- penhauer begins his ethics (in the fourth book of his main work) with the attempt to disprove this view. All philosophy, he says, is theoretical ; upon mature reflection, it ought finally to abandon the old demand that it become practical, guide action, and transform character, for here it is not dead concepts that decide, but the innermost essence of the human being, the demon that guides him. It is as impossible to teach virtue as it is to teach genius. It would be as foolish to ex- pect our moral systems to produce virtuous characters and saints as to expect the science of aesthetics to bring forth poets, sculptors, and musicians. I do not believe that ethics need be so faint-hearted. Its first object, it is true, is to understand human strivings and modes of conduct, conditions and institutions, as well as their effects upon individual and social life. But if knowledge is capable of influencing conduct — which Schopenhauer him- self would not deny — it is hard to understand why the knowledge of ethics alone should be fruitless in this respect. If a physician can by pointing out the causal relation existing between cleanliness and health, between the excessive use of alcohol or nicotine and the derangement of the nervous system, induce a mother to use water more freely, or a young man to be moderate, why should not a moralist have a right 26 IXTRODUCTION to hope that the discoverj of similar causal connections exist- ing between conduct and the form of life will influence con- duct ? If he can make clear that dissipation, indolence, anger, envy, falsehood, inconsiderateness, produce certain disturb- ances in life, while prudence, politeness, modesty, upright- ness, amiability, tend to produce good effects on the life of the individual and that of his surroundings, why should not such knowledge also influence the will ? Or shall we assume that everybody is perfectly well aware that the former modes of conduct are good and the latter bad, and that we need not wait for ethics to tell us these things ? And does experience really show that knowledge is unable to turn the will in the direction of the good ; is Schopenhauer right in saying, velle non discitur ? — If so, I believe it is not the right kind of knowledge. A real insight, which, of course, does not consist merely in memorizing and rattling off a lot of formulae and maxims, is bound to be as fruitful here as everywhere else. To be sure, we cannot expect such an insight to determine the will absolutely. Natural capacities, education, habit, example, praise and censure, the admiration and contempt of our sur- roundings, and other things, play their part. But knowledge, too, is a factor and a very important factor with the wise — by whom we do not necessarily mean the learned. But as for Schopenhauer's dogma that the will is something abso- lutely fixed in every life, I am inclined to regard it as one of the articles of superstition of which there is no dearth in Schopenhauer's teaching. There is no such rigid, constant will, not even in the narrower sense in which Schopenhauer uses the term : that the relation between egoism and altru- ism is unalterably determined at birth in the case of every individual. Moral instruction, however, can have no practical effect unless there be some agreement concerning the nature of the final goal — not a mere verbal agreement, to be sure, but one based upon actual feeling. It would be futile for a physician NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 27 to advise a man who does not care for health and bodily welfare to do certain things and to abstain from others. Similarly, it would be useless for a moral philosopher to recommend moderation and prudence to one whose notion of a " good life " is a few years of excitement and dissipa- tion, and then a bullet through the brain. Or perhaps it would not be all in vain. Who knows but what he might finally succeed in convincing such a person that he was mistaken about himself and his will, and his conception of the highest good ; who knows but what more careful reflection might show him that such a life cannot be good and the final goal of his own will ? We can hardly deny that conversions have actually taken place. Shall we say that moral preach- ing alone can produce these results, and that moral philosophy cannot ? Well, I do not know whether it is possible to draw a sharp line of separation between them. The preacher can scarcely hope to influence any one without appealing to his insight. And why should not the impartial presentation of the relations existing between conduct and welfare prove to be an effective sermon, even though — or rather let us say, just because — it does not assume the form of moralizing exhortation ? But should any one still hold the view that moral philoso- phy is not only fruitless, but dangerous and harmful, on the ground that the forces regulating life, custom and conscience, are weakened by speculations concerning their origin, import, and validity, we should reply : In the first place, such reflec- tions are not produced by philosophy, but, conversely, philoso- phy is produced by these inevitable reflections. Reflection on human conduct and judgment is inevitable. Whenever there is any controversy concerning a concrete case, concerning the Tightness or wrongness of an act, a judgment, or an institu- tion, we are compelled to go back to principles which will decide the case. Moral philosophy is nothing but a radical attempt- to discover ultimate principles by which to determine 28 INTRODUCTION the value of things, in so far as these depend upon the human will. Secondly, it is especially necessary that our age reach some conclusion concerning these principles. The present is characterized by a strong desire to reject a priori all the old accepted truths. There are many symptoms of this desire : think of the avidity with which Friederich Nietzsche's ora- cular utterances concerning the necessary transformation of all values {Die Umwertung aller Werte) are received by the young, as well as of the violent condemnation by the social democracy of all existing political and social institutions. A passionate mania for the new and unheard-of, in thought, in morals, and in modes of life, has taken hold of our times. It is utterly useless to appeal to authority and trajiition ; this mania is nothing but an outbreak of free individual thought, which has been repressed so long, and made distrustful by coercion ; it is the reaction against the school, which forced men not to think, but to memorize, against the church, which asked them not to think, but to believe. These are the symp- toms of the Aufklarung, the Aufkldrung which was long since reported dead ; it has come back to life and has taken hold of the masses, of the young men especially, of course ; they want to do their own thinking and mould their lives, and not to be governed blindly by the traditional thoughts and ac- tions of others. And to this they have a perfect right ; it is the fundamental right and highest duty of man to think his own thoughts and to act his own acts: independent self- determination is the royal prerogative of the mind. Nothing will avail here but free, unbiassed thought. It will be the business of ethics to invite the doubter and the inquirer to assist in the common effort to discover fixed principles which shall help the judgment to understand the aims and problems of life. It will not tell him : This shalt thou do, but will inves- tigate with him the question : What art thou striving after, what are thy true ideals, not merely thy temporary moods and whims? Perhaps he will then find that much of what NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ETHICS 29 he was about to cast aside, as a mere command of caprice, is rooted in tlie very nature of things, and consequently also in his own will.^ 1 [On the Problem and Methods of Ethics, the Relation of Ethics to other Sciences, and other introductory matter, see Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, chap. I.-II., pp. 1-24; Stephen, The Science of Ethics, chap. I., pp. 1-40; Schur- mau, The Ethical Import of Darwinism, chap. I., pp. 1-37 ; Muirhead, Elements of Ethics, chaps. I.-III., pp. 1-39 ; Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, chaps. I.-II., pp. 1-31, Appendix B, pp. 324-328; Hyslop, The Elements of Ethics, chap. I., pp. 1-17; Seth, A Study oj Ethical Principles, chaps. I.-III., pp. 1-35 ; Hoffding, Ethik, I.-IV., pp. 1-54 ; Wundt, Ethik, Introduction, pp. 1-17 (English transla- tion, pp. 1-20) ; Domer, Das menschliche Handeln, Introduction, pp. 1-23 ; Sim- mel, Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, vol. I., Preface ; Miinsterberg, Ursprung der Sittlichkeit, Introduction, pp. 1-10; Runze, Ethik, vol. I., pp. 1-16, which con- tains many excellent bibliographical references ; Marion, Lemons de morale, chap, I — Tb.] BOOK I OUTLINES OP A HISTORY OF THE CONCEPTIONS OP LIPE AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY Ita quadam non verhorum, sed rerum eloquentia contrariorium oppositione sectili pulchritudo componitur. AUGUSTINUS. CHAPTER I THE CONCEPTION OF LIFE AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY AMONQ THE GREEKS I SHALL precede my exposition of ethics with an historical survey of the development of the conception of life (Lelens- anschauung) and moral philosophy. I shall confine my attention to the historical phenomena which are still directly influencing the life of the Western nations. No one will reach a clear and distinct knowledge of the mixed and often confused conceptions and aspirations of our age who does not pursue the great tributaries which form the stream of our moral civilization to their sources. The previous history of our morality and theory of life divides itself into three great periods. The first embraces the development of the ancient world to its conversion ; the sec- ond, the Christian development with its two halves, the Chris- tianity of the old world and mediaeval Christianity ; the third, the development of modern times, which has not yet come to an end. The ancient world's view of life is naive-naturalistic : the perfection of human nature in civilization is the absolute goal. The Christian conception is supranaturalistio ; turning away from civilization, it demands the death of the natural man and his impulses, in order that a new, spiritual man may arise. The modern theory of life is not so consistent and self-contained ; it is influenced by both of these opposing tendencies. The naturalistic tendency predominates ; the dawn of the modern period is marked by the revival of the ancient 34 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY pagan conception of life (the so-called Renaissance). i » the modern view of life contains many essential elements o the Christian conception of life; and the supranaturalistic tendency forms an undercurrent in it, or runs parallel with it. Three groups of moral-philosophical systems, differing in form and contents, correspond to the different conceptions of life. Greek ethics proceeds from the fact of striving and acting. It asks: What is the final goal, and how can it be reached? The goal is the highest good; and hence the problem is : to determine the nature of the highest good, and to indicate the way to its attainment. Inasmuch as the highest good consists in a form of human life, or presupposes it as the means of its realization, Greek ethics essentially assumes the form of a doctrine of virtues : it describes the perfect man in his differ- ent phases. Christian ethics makes the fact of moral judgment its starting- point. Human strivings and acts are objects of judgment; the predicates good and bad are applied to them. And they are thus judged not only by man, but, according to the Chris- tian conception, above all by God, the highest law-giver and judge. Christian ethics, therefore, inquires : What, according to God's commandment, is duty, and what is sin ? It is a doc- trine of duty and as such does not instruct us how to pro- mote individual and social welfare, but sets up a moral law, the application of which necessitates interpretation and casuistry. What was said of the modern conception of life is true of modern ethics : it is influenced by the two preceding stages of development, and does not therefore exhibit a thorough- going uniformity. It is as a whole — a few theological sys- tems apart — more closely connected with Greek ethics. Still, the Christian influence is everywhere recognizable . We notice it in the form of the science : modern ethics is largely a doctrine of duties. We notice it also in the matter ; thus, THE GREEK CONCEPTION 35 for example, duties towards others usually occupy the most important place among the duties, while in Greek ethics em- phasis is laid upon the virtues and duties which tend to the perfection of individual life. And when the highest good is discussed, the good of the individual is not first thought of, as was the case in Greek ethics, but the good of the commun- ity. The idea of the kingdom of God, which Christianity has made the keystone of its theory of the universe and life, even permeates the thoughts of those who know nothing of it or do not want to have anything to do with it. Even the men of 1789 cannot deny their relation to Christianity. They destroy the church, but the notion of a kingdom of God on earth — altered though it be — influences them also ; for where else do these ideas of the freedom, equality, and fraternity of all men and all nations come from ? 1. The moral philosophical reflections of the Greeks ^ start from the question : What is the ultimate end of all striving (to reXo';), or what is the highest good ? It necessarily 1 There is no dearth of elaborate treatments of the subject. Besides Zeller's History of Greek Philosophy, -we may mention : the thorough work of K. Kostlin, Die Ethik des klassischen Altertums, Part I., 1887 (to Plato) ; Luthardt, Die antike Ethik, 1887; Th. Ziegler, Die Ethik der Griechen und RBmer, 1881. An excellent work on the ethical conceptions of the Greek people is L. Schmidt's Die Ethik der alten Griechen, 2 vols., 1882. A good survey of the history of ethics in general is given by H. Sidgwiek, Outline of a History of Ethics, 1886; a detailed account of the most important movements, by P. Janet, Histoire de la philosophie morale et politique, 2 vols., 1885. [See also Wundt, Ethik, Part II., The Development of the Moral Conceptions of the Universe, pp. 270-433 ; English translation, vol. II. ; J. Seth, A Study of Ethical Principles, Part I., The Moral Ideal, pp. 77-249 ; Watson, Hedonistic Theories from Aristippus to Spencer ; Hyslop, Elements of Ethics, chap. II., The Origin and Development of Ethical Problems, pp. 18-89 ; Calderwood, Handbook of Moral Philosophy, pp. 318-369 ; Encken, Die Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker. The first two chapters of Jodl's Geschichte der Ethik in der neuern Philosophie, vol. I., pp. 1-85, give a sur- vey of the history of ethics down to the beginning of modem times. Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, 2 vols., discusses some of the most important systems. See also the histories of Greek and General Philosophy which are mentioned in Thilly's translation of Weber's History of Philosophy, pp. 8-16. For bibliographies on particular thinkers, see the standard histories of philosophy, especially Uber weg, Erdmann, Windelband, Weber, all of which have been translated. — Tk.] 36 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY suggests itself to the agent when he reflects upon his con- duct. Aristotle, the founder of ethics as a systematic science, gives us the following lucid exposition of the subject, at the beginning of his Nicomachean Ethics.^ Every art, and every scientific inquiry, and similarly every action and purpose, aims at some good. As there are various actions, arts, and sciences, it follows that the ends and goods are also various. Thus health is the end of medicine, a vessel of shipbuilding, victory of strategy, and wealth of domestic economy. But certain arts are subordinated to other arts ; the art of making bridles works for horsemanship, the latter for strategy, and so others for others. But inasmuch as the end of the lead- ing art embraces the ends of the subordinate arts, and since the latter are desired for the sake of the former, there must, if our desires are not to be idle and futile, be an ultimate goal or good which is not in turn a means, but is desired for its own sake, all other things being desired for the sake of it. What is this highest of all practical goods (ti to TrdvTwv uKpoTaTov Toiv irpuKTcbv ajad&v) ? As to its name, he continues, there is a general agreement. The masses and the cultured classes agree in calling it hap- piness ; it is happiness (evSaifiovla) or welfare (to ev ^ijv koX €v TrpdrTeiv). But in what does happiness consist? Here the views begin to diverge. The masses define it as pleas- ure, or wealth, or honor, or something similar; different people give different definitions of it, and often the same person gives different definitions of it at different times; for when a person has been ill, health, when he is poor, wealth is the highest good. Cultivated people, however, the phil- osophers (ot j^apt'ei^re?), define it as virtue and also as philosophy. We are perhaps justified in saying that Aristotle exag- gerates the differences of opinion with respect to the highest good ; in the last analysis the Greek people and their moral 1 See Welldon's translation of Aristotle's Ethics. THE GREEK CONCEPTION 37 philosophers had essentially the same conception of the nature of happiness. We are in the habit of translating the word eihaifiovLa by the term happiness (Grluckseligkeit). We thereby make it a matter of feeling. The Greek word does not connote a subjective state of feeling, but rather an objective form of life : evBaificov (with which ayaOoBaifiaiv, KUKoSaificov, are con- trasted) is the man who is blessed with a good Bai/xcov and therefore with a good lot in life, for Bai/xwv signifies the god- head who apportions to men their fates. Now, what is the Greek conception of a happy lot or fate ? I cannot describe it more briefly and more forcibly than by calling to mind the well known anecdote of the meeting of Solon and Croesus which is narrated by Herodotus.^ It admir- ably contrasts the Hellenic conception of what is a good life with that of the barbarians. After showing Solon through his treasury, the king addresses him as follows : " stranger from Athens, we have heard much of your wisdom and travels, we have been told that you have visited many coun- tries, in the pursuit of philosophy, for the sake of study (^eojptV eveKo). Now, I should like to know whether you have ever seen a man whom you regarded as the happiest of all (oXyStooTaTos)." But he asked him, expecting that Solon would call him, the king, the happiest of all men. Solon, however, did not wish to flatter him, but spoke the truth : " King, the Athenian Tellos." The king was surprised, and asked : " Why do you esteem Tellos happier than all others?" Solon an- swered : " Tellos lived at a time when the city was prosper- ing ; he had beautiful and good children, and, above all, lived to see his grandchildren, and all of Ihem were preserved to him ; he was, for our conditions, in good circumstances, and finally, he suffered a glorious death ; at Eleusis, in a battle between the Athenians and their neighbors, he succeeded in repelling the enemy after a gallant fight, and met a most 1 I.. 30. 38 ORIGINS OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY beautiful death. And the Athenians buried him where he fell, at public expense, and greatly honored him." But when the king received an equally unsatisfactory answer to the question whom Solon would regard as the happiest man after Tellos — Solon, as we know, mentions two unknown Argive youths, who died suddenly, after having done their mother an honorable service — Croesus could no longer re- strain himself : " And is our happiness (evhaifiovM) absolutely nothing in your eyes, that you place it after that of those pri- vate persons ? " Solon gave an evasive answer : " Envious are the gods and impatient, and many things are experienced in the long time which we do not desire ; and many sufferings. A human life may last seventy years, which makes, not counting the intercalary months, 25,200 days, but if we count these, 26,250 days. Of all these days no two are alike, there- fore I cannot call you happy until I know that your end has been a happy one." I call it an evasive answer ; the well known pragmatic use which Herodotus makes of the anecdote necessitates such a reply. The true answer to the question of the king would have been as follows: King, what we Hellenes and what you here, whom we call barbarians, call happiness is not the same. You regard as a happy lot to have much and to enjoy much, while for us it means to live nobly, to act nobly, and to die nobly. When a man has our good wishes, we say to him : Act nobly (eu irparreiv) ; while you would have to say : May good things happen to you [ev Trao-p^ew/). Hence I have called Tellos a happy man. He did not enjoy the luxury of a royal household, but he possessed what a citizen in a Hellenic town needs. He was a capable man, and governed his affairs wisely; he had beautiful and good children, his city honored him, and his name was not un- known to its enemies. That is our idea of a happy man. This is what the story of Croesus and Solon, which cir- THE GREEK CONCEPTION 39 culated among the Hellenes, seems to me to signify ; it expresses the popular Greek conception of the difference between the Hellenic and barbarian view of life. According to the latter, the value of life consists in the possession of wealth and enjoyment; according to the former, virtuous activity or active virtue alone makes life worth living. For- tune may crown it with a beautiful death. — The same idea of the difference between the Hellenic and barbaric conception of life is brought out in the legendary epitaph, transmitted in various forms, which the Greeks dedicated to the legendary King Sardanapalus : Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die. 2. Greek moral philosophy consists essentially in the analysis and conceptual formulation of the popular Greek ideal of a perfect life. I shall attempt to show this by em- phasizing the chief phases of its history. The real scientific treatment of moral philosophy dates from Socrates.^ Greek philosophy began with speculations upon the external world, upon the form, origin, and primal elements of the universe. Socrates refuses to consider these things, he makes the affairs of human life the objects of his reflections; these he regards as more important and more capable of investigation. The change represented by Socratic thought connects itself with the general changes in the life of the Greek people. Greek life, which was centred at Athens in the fifth century, tended away from the old simplicity and constraint towards a fuller and freer development. All the arts of civilization flourished on the soil of the new metropol- itan life. Rational arts, based upon theories, gradually took the place of the traditional handicraft ; geometry and astron- omy, music and architecture, gymnastics and medicine, strategy and rhetoric, became objects of scientific reflection and sys- 1 [For Socrates, see : Xenophon's Memorabilia, translation in Bohn's Library ; Plato's Protagoras J Apology, Crito, Phaedo^ Si/mposium, etc. ; Aristotle's Metapki/s- ics, I., 6. See also for Socrates and the following systems the references mentioned, p. 35. — Tk.] 40 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY tematic treatment. Excellence or efficiency (aperj?) in these arts now became a matter not merely of natural skill and practice, but of theoretical knowledge : whoever desires to ac- quire the former must possess the latter. — Is not this true of all excellence, is it not true also of the excellence of the citi- zen and statesman, nay, of the excellence of man in general ? According to the traditional view, civic and human excel- lence is innate: whoever comes into the world as a good man and as the descendant of good men, and is reared among the good, possesses it as a gift of the gods QeiiBaificov). The enlightened ones of the new period gradually convinced them- selves that all excellence, moral and political no less than technical, is the result of instruction and education: virtue can be taught, that is the new conception which the Sophists first advanced in systematic form. " If you associate with me," Protagoras promises the young man in the Platonic dialogue bearing his name, " on the very day you will return home a better man than you came." And upon being asked by Socrates in what he would become better, he adds : " If he comes to me, he will learn that which he comes to learn. And this is prudence in affairs private as well as public ; he will learn to order his own house in the best manner, and he will be able to speak and act for the best in the affairs of the state." By many of his contemporaries Socrates was looked upon as one of the Sophists. Not altogether unjustly ; he differed from the latter : he did not regard himself as a possessor of wisdom, and did not acquire money through public lectures ; but in his views he had much in common with them. Above all, he believed with them that excellence or virtue depends upon insight and may be taught. This proposition is em- phasized in all the accounts, in Xenophon, Plato, and Aris- totle, as characteristic of his point of view : Socrates so Aris- totle declares, considered the virtues to be forms of reason.' » Nic. Eth., VL, 13. THE GREEK CONCEPTION 41 The same is true of human excellence as such : without knowledge no virtue ; and conversely : right conduct neces- sarily depends upon the proper insight, no one knowingly and willingly does wrong (^oiiBel^ ekqiv afiaprdvei). If a man knows the right goal and the right path, he will necessarily follow it; his going astray and also his moral trangression are always the result of error, as the Greek word dfiapTaveiv indicates. This is especially true of civic virtue; hence Socrates condemns the Athenian state. The democratic constitution rested upon the tacit assumption that political excellence was the inheritance, so to speak, of every citizen. Socrates is constantly attacking this view in arguments like the following : Do you not, when you wish to steer a ship, look around for a man who has learned and understands the art of navigation ? And when a man is sick you send for some one who understands the art of medicine ? But when it comes to governing the city or the state, you choose any one for whom the lot may decide. Hence knowledge, scientific knowledge of that which is really good, and of the means of acquiring it, is the great condition of all excellence and virtue. That is the view upon which Socrates bases himself and which places him at the head of the Greek moral philosophers. It is the funda- mental conception common to his successors. The sage alone, the man who has scientific knowledge — in this Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics and Epicureans, agree — is virtuous and happy in the full sense of the term. The wise man alone is capable of governing the state ; if we are to have a perfect state, kings must either become wise men, or wise men kings, to quote the well-known saying. 3. Socrates saw the necessity of a science of right con- duct and right government, but he did not solve the problem which he proposed ; he left it to his pupils to create the sciences of ethics and politics. Plato ^ first undertook 1 [See the Dialogues of Plato, Jowett'i translation, especially, TheaetetuM, Phaedo, Philebus, Gorgias, Republic. — Ts.l 42 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY the task. Its accomplishment seemed all the more urgent, the weaker the old foundations of morality were becoming. With the entrance of the Greek people upon the period of enlightenment, the old civic respectability and morality rapidly declined. The younger Sophists — as Plato portrays them in the persons of Callicles and Thrasymachus (in the Gorgias and the Republic) — formulated the facts into a theory: there is no objective difference between good and bad, it does not inhere in the nature of the things, but is a mere matter of convention and caprice. The sanction of cus- tom and law rests upon fear and superstition, which restrain the stronger from making use of their natural superiority ; or they are another means, in the hands of the mighty themselves, to strengthen their power. The enlightened one knows it and acts accordingly ; he obeys law and custom when they are conducive to his interests, he breaks them when they thwart his plans, and when he can do so with impunity.^ Plato undertakes to overcome this enlightenment, not from without, but from within, by a deeper philosophy. This is, indeed, the only remedy : half-enlightenment, pseudo- enlightenment, can be destroyed only by complete enlighten- ment. To fetter thought, to oppose it with authorities, is utterly useless, nay, simply makes matters worse. Plato therefore explicitly places himself upon the standpoint of reason, which the Sophists, too, claim to occupy. With Socrates he recognizes the necessity of basing human and civic virtue upon knowledge. Virtue without knowledge, virtue resting solely upon education, habit, authority, correct opinion, is a blind groping; it may accidentally find the right path, but there is no certainty of its doing so. Only the scientific knowledge of the good can make man's willing correct, certain, and steady. 1 Laas has given ns a good description of this sceptical-nihUistic sophistical philosophy, which had a f;reat deal to do with producing and influencing the Platonic ethics, as its antithesis, in the introduction to the second volume of his Idealismus und Positivisnius. THE GREEK CONCEPTION 43 But is there such a thing as objective goodness and right ? This was denied by Callicles and his companions : that is good which happens to please, and that is' right which we have the power of enforcing. The aim of Plato's entire philosophy, is to prove, in opposition to this, the proposition : The good and right is something absolutely independent of opinions, something determined by the nature of the things themselves. What is the good and right as such ? The Platonic philosophy gives an answer to this question _that far transcends the horizon of the healthy common-sense which we find in Socrates. The good is nothing but the world, or reality itself. But, Plato immediately adds : reality as it is in itself, that is, in idea. That which common-sense regards as the real reality, the sum total of these sensuous, particular things, is not the good ; the world of sense is full of imperfections. But it is not the true reality, it has no being in the real sense of the term ; its being is mixed with non-being; it is in a state of constant growth and decay. The true reality, on the other hand, of which being can really be predicated, is an absolutely existing, absolutely unitary, ideal, spiritual, being, and this is nothing but the good itself, or God. — God is both the absolutely good and the absolutely real, says scholastic philosophy, following in the footsteps of Plato. Now the question arises, What is good and right for a particular being? This will naturally depend upon his re- lation to the All-Good and All-Real ; or, stated in different language, the value of a particular element of reality can be determined only by its significance within the whole of reality. The world is not, like a bad poem, full of super- fluous episodes, but the unitary realization of an idea, the idea of the good, which unfolds itself in a variety of qualities or ideas, and so forms a cosmos of ideas, an intelligent organism in which every element of reality, like every scene in a good drama, occupies the position of a necessary 44 ORIGIKS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY member. So, too, the idea of man must be defined by his place in the cosmos, if we are to reach a knowledge of what man is in reality, or in idea. If the philosopher, the dia- lectician, who has the gift of seeing things in their logical relations, succeeds in reaching this definition, he may say that he has oljectively defined the essence of goodness and right. Thus Plato brings ethics into the most intimate con- nection with metaphysics ; he makes it a part of the one unitary science of the real, or the good. What now is found to be the idea of man in the idea of the universal reality ? In the Timceus, of which parts of the Phcedrus form the prelude, Plato has made the most elabo- rate attempt to explain man's place in the cosmos. The human soul is derived from the world-soul ; it is, like the latter, a mixture of two elements ; on the one hand, it participates in the real reality, in the world of ideas, the world of existent thoughts, or the life of God ; on the other, in the world of origin and decay, in the corporeal world. With the reason (vov<;), it belongs to the world of ideas, with the animal impulses (^iirtOvfiiat) arising from its union with the body, it belongs to the corporeal world. These two dis- similar parts or phases of the soul are connected by an intermediate form : Plato calls it Ov/j-o^ or to 6vfi,oeiSe<; ; it embraces the higher, nobler impulses, the affections of the heart, moral indignation, courage, the aspiring love of honor, moral awe ; perhaps the Platonic term may be best trans- lated by our word will. The organization of the inner man is made visible in the organization of the outer man; the head is the seat of reason, the citadel of the ruler ; in the breast dwells the heart, the seat of the affections, as common: sense looks at it ; it is, so to speak, the watch-house in which courage and anger dwell, ready to break forth at the beck of the ruler ; under the diaphragm, at last, are situated the organs of animal desire, the organs of nutrition and repro- THE GREEK CONCEPTION 45 dnction. — The function of man is to represent a cosmos on the small scale after the pattern of the larger cosmos : as the macrocosm is fashioned into beauty and order by the ideal element, so the microcosm must be fashioned into proportion and harmony, order and beauty, by reason, the ideal element peculiar to it. The anthropological-ethical application of this metaphysical principle of the science of the good is made in the dialogue on the State. It begins with a discussion of the notion of the " just man." How shall we define a just man, a man who realizes the idea, the natural or divine vocation of man ? He is one in whom the three elements, defined above, harmo- niously co-operate to perform their special functions. We thus arrive at the scheme of the so-called cardinal virtues : wisdom (a-o^la), courage (avhpela), and self-control or healthy- mindedness (aax^poavvrj), which three combined give us Justice (ZiKutoavvT)). A man is wise, in whom reason realizes its purpose, the knowledge of the true reality, and as the ruling principle regulates his entire life ; he is courageous when the will does its work, assisting the reason in governing and bridling the irrational element; he is healthy -minded when the animal impulses peacefully perform their functions, without disquieting and disturbing the spirit. Such a well- regulated soul deserves to be called a just soul ; it typifies human nature, or the idea of man. In it the exercise of reason forms the real, essential content of life ; reason as such consists in knowledge ; perfect knowledge, however, is philosophy, that is, the dialectical re-creation of the absolute ideal reality in concepts. The other elements and their func- tions are subordinate to it. And hence we may say : Philo- sophy is the true function, the highest content and purpose, of human life. This would answer the question concerning objective good- ness : such a life is good in itself, good for man, not accord- ing to accidental opinion and convention, but in the nature 46 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY of things, in which philosophy forms the central purpose to which all the other functions and actions are subordniated as means. That such a « just" life is at the same time a happy and desirable life hardly seems to need proof. Just as the sound- ness of the body is subjectively experienced as good health, disease as poor health, so " justice," which is nothing but the health of the soul, or the state expressing its true nature, necessarily procures the greatest satisfaction. And so the opposite of justice (aBiKia) will necessarily be the greatest subjective evil for a man, not because of some accidental effects, like punishment and disgrace, but on account of the ugliness which characterizes an "unjust" life (wahn- schaffen, misshapen, we might call it, employing a term peculiar to the Northern languages). "With incomparable skill Plato portrays the life of such a " misshapen " soul and its inner discord in his picture of the tyrant, who satisfies all his desires and enjoys the privilege — which those illumi- nators envy him — of perpetrating all kinds of wrongs and violent deeds with impunity. Let me also briefly mention that the same fundamental traits reappear in the constitution of the Just state, man on the large scale. A state is just in which the wise rule, the strong and courageous (a military nobility) disinterestedly and submissively serve the government, and finally, the producing classes peacefully and modestly perform their tasks. We see, Plato does not differ very radically in his views from the popular Greek conception of justice and happiness. It is true, he emphasizes the element of knowledge in his scheme, and the kind of knowledge which he has in mind, the speculative knowledge of the real reality, is, of course, something wholly foreign to the popular idea. We must not, however, lose sight of another fact. Our exposition of Plato's ethics has not sufficiently emphasized a THE GREEK CONCEPTION 47 phase of his conception of life which stands out quite promi- nently in many dialogues, alienation from the world ( Welt- fliichtigkeit), a doctrine which differs so remarkably from the old Greek mode of thought, and approximates the Christian view. Plato does not always adhere to the conception, out- lined above, of the nature of man as a spiritual-sensuous being, but often manifests a strong tendency completely to spiritualize the nature of man : reason constitutes his real essence ; the animal nature, sensuality and desire, is an acci- dental appendage, which drags down the spirit, and of which the wise man strives to divest himself. God is pure thought, free from desire ; to be like him is the highest goal of human striving. The notions of pre-existence, transmigration of souls, and immortality are connected with this idea; this mundane life is conceived as a prison-house from which the spirit seeks to escape. It is evidently, first of all, his opposition to the doctrine of pleasure which provokes these thoughts. Callicles and his followers make the satisfaction of the desires the highest good, while Plato sees in pleasure something, " a' trace of which," as we read in the Phcedrus, " a demon has added to all bad things." Hence he looks upon life as a struggle of reason with lust, a struggle in which the nobler impulses of the heart are on the side of reason. This teaching supplies the moral preacher with a wonderful weapon, which Plato himself handles with great force and skill, and we ought to make a more extended use of his writings ; they would appeal more powerfully to our young men than the weak-kneed Cicero ; the Republic is the very thing for young people whose thoughts are preoccupied with and confused by Nietzsche's tibermensah. But perhaps it is also possible to connect this mode of thought with Plato's personal experiences. His relations with his contemporaries were not friendly. His native city gave the philosopher no opportunity for public activity^ as he uiiderstood the term. That he did not always 48 ORIGINS OF MOKAL PHILOSOPHY bear his isolation with equanimity may be inferred from his harsh criticism of the persons who took a prominent part in public life, the statesmen, Sophists, and rhetoricians. He re- garded them as the representatives of the most unworthy art, the art, namely, of catering to the whims of the great animal, called Demos, and thus acquiring advantages and fame; whoever interferes with their schemes, and refuses to become a party to their crimes is doomed. And so the untimely philosopher, " like one who, in the storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along, retires under the shelter of a wall," withdrew from public life and sought refuge in the solitude of the Academy ; his life was enriched and blessed by the contemplation of the true reality, and he looked forward to his deliverance in peace and good-will, with bright hopes.^ Thus Plato, like every honest philosopher, utilized his own personal experiences as the key with which to interpret human life, nay, all things in general. Yet he was too much of a Greek to reject this natural-sensuous world altogether. He was a pessimist in his judgment of men, but he remained an optimist in his judgment of man. In the passage of the Republic quoted above, he adds that the solitary philosopher will not do the greatest work unless he find a state suitable to him ; for in a state which is suitable to h'.m he will have a larger growth, and be the savior of his country as well as of himself. 4. Aristotle,^ in Dante's words " the master of those whci know," " the eternal prince of all true thinkers " as Comte calls him in the CaUcMsme positiviste, was the first to stake off practical philosophy as a separate field of knowledge and to discuss it, as a systematic whole, in its three parts, ethics, politics, and economics. His works lack the wonderful charm I Republic, 496 D. » [Nicomaehean Ethics, transl. by Welldon. For other translations and bibliography, see my translation of Weber, History of Philosophy, p. 104 note4.— Tk.] ' THE GREEK COJifCEPTlON 49 of the Platonic expositions, but we are compensated for this loss by a wealth of great thoughts. I shall give an outline of his ethics ; in the main it follows the lines marked out by the Platonic system. He begins with the question concerning the highest good, which all agree to designate as happiness (evhaifiovia), and finds, by means of one of those Socratic inductions which are so common in his writings, that it must consist in the exercise of the specific excellence of the human soul : for, as with a flute-player, a statuary, or any artisan, or in fact anybody who has a definite function and action (_£pyov ri Kal Trpaft?), his goodness or excellence (rar/aOov koI to ev} seems to lie in his function, so it would seem to be with man, if indeed he has a definite function. What, then, is this function or action of man? Aristotle compares man with organic beings and finds that he shares with all beings the vegetative func- tions, and with all animals sensation and desire, but that he alone possesses reason (^ro \6yov exov). The peculiar func- tion of man, then, is an activity of soul in accordance with reason, or not independently of reason (■^v^^fj'i ivipyeia kutcl Xoyov fj fir] dvev \6p6vT}ai'i') undoubtedly also plays a part in the ethical vir- tues, for it shows which is the normal state for every one in every case. And so we obtain the definition of ethical virtue which Aristotle places at the head of his discussion of the virtues : Virtue is a state of deliberate moral purpose con- sisting in a mean that is relative to ourselves, the mean being determined by reason, or as a prudent man would determine it.^ It is evident that this definition does not yet furnish us with an objective standard. For what is the mean or normal, or what is the standpoint from which reason or the prudent man determines it ? Aristotle did not answer this question, because, so it seems, he did not believe an answer could be found. He repeatedly accentuates the difference between this field of knowledge and the theoretical sciences, which treat of things " which cannot be otherwise," while the prac- tical sciences deal with things " which can be otherwise." In the sixth book, where he discusses the question of prudence ((ftpovrjo-K'), as opposed to theoretical knowledge {a-o^ia), he even seems to incline to the view that the former never gives us universal judgments, but only particular decisions ; which would be equivalent to denying the possibility of a scientific ethics. And indeed we must admit that Aristotle's doctrine of the ethical virtues fails to meet the demands, which must be made upon a scientific treatment of the subject; he makes no attempt whatever to explain the difference in value between virtuous conduct and vicious conduct, as was done later, say by Spinoza, who entertained the same general view. He confines himself to a description of virtuous modes of conduct, which draws mainly upon Greek popular usage, and does not care for systematic completeness. Of real value is the acute exposition of the meaning of the words which the Greek people used to express moral distinctions. 1 1106 b. 36, B. 11., chap. 6. THE GREEK CONCEPTION 63 In thia way Plato and Aristotle meet the Socratic demand for a science of the good. They take intq account the place of man in the cosmos, and then attempt to define his idea, that is, his natural and divine purpose, and to show how he may realize this purpose. The conception of the perfect man which they advance, essentially resembles the popular Greek ideal. There is only one marked difference : in the scheme of the philosophers the purely theoretical exercise of the intellect constitutes the chief element of human perfection ; the philosophical ideal not only embodies the general features of the Greek character, but also embraces the personal feat- ures of the philosophers, which gives the concept greater precision. 5. The post-Aristotelian moral philosophy can hardly be said to have created any new conceptions ; on the whole it follows in the traces of its great predecessors. But it is lacking neither in great and fruitful thoughts nor in strong and forcible moral preaching. I must confine my efforts to a mere outline of the standpoints of the two chief schools, which for a long time formed the chief subject of interest in philosophy, the Stoics and Epicureans. The Stoics,^ like Plato and Aristotle, regard the realiza- tion of his natural purpose as the highest good and highest happiness of man. They formulate this idea into a principle : life according to nature (^ofj,o\oyovfievo)<; Trj (pvaei ?^i'). On the basis of the unusually comprehensive and valuable extracts from the ethical writings of the Stoics, which we find in Dio- genes Laertius,^ we may outline their ethical philosophy about as follows. The underlying thought is the proposition : The fundamental impulse of every living being aims at self- preservation (rrju TTpcoTTjv opfj,rjv to ^a)ov to-^eti' eVl to Trjpelv f.avTo), to which is added the polemical statement : and not 1 [SeeDiogenesLaertius, Book VII.; Stobseus, Eclogues,!!.; CictTO, Dejinibus, Bibliography in Weber-ThUly, p. 140, p. 146. — Tb.] 2 VII., 84-131. 54 ORIGINS OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY at pleasure. The law of its nature is, therefore, to avoid the harmful and to strive for what is appropriate to it (ra oUela). Pleasure, however, arises as an accompaniment when a being obtains what is appropriate to it (iTriyivvri/j,a, which calls to mind Aristotle's i-mryiyvofievov reXo?). Even plants act in this way, altliough they are unconscious of the impulse, which is also the case with our own vegetative functions. Ani- mals, however, are conscious of the impulse, and hence it is the law of their nature to follow their conscious impulses (for them to kuto, ^variv is equal to to Karh, rr)v op/iijv Sioi/eei(T0ai). But man is endowed with reason (o Xoyot'), besides impulse ; hence to live according to nature means for him to live according to reason (^Kara \6yov), for reason is by nature the regulator of desire (\0709 Tej(vlTt]i iiri^iverai t^? opixfi'T). It would be contrary to nature for man to follow irrational desire. — But in so far as the nature of each individual being is determined by the nature of the All, to live according to reason means for man : to obey the universal law, or, which is the same thing, Jupiter, the highest regula- tor and ruler. — And this is eudcemonia and welfare (evpoia Tov ^iov), namely to do everything in harmony with our demon, according to the will of the universal governor and manager of all things. And the natural disposition of every being is its virtue or perfection (TeXetwcrt?) ; and this we ought to seek for its own sake, without being influenced by the fear or hope of any external effects : for it is in it that happiness consists. — If now we call a man who lives accord- ing to reason a wise man, we may say : The wise man, and the wise man alone, is virtuous and happy. These thoughts may all be regarded as applications and, in part, more definite expressions of Aristotelian principles. Reference is often made to the rigorism of the Stoic ethics, which holds that virtue alone is a good, but this is, in the last analysis, exactly what Plato and Aristotle teach: that happiness does not consist in pleasure, but in the exercise of ■THE GHEEK CONCEPflOJJ 56 virtue. Nor is there any radical difference in their concep- tions of the value of the so-called exteraial goods, wealth, health, beauty, fame, etc. The Stoics will not concede that these things are real goods : in themselves they are neither useful nor harmful, good or bad, but either one or the other, according to the use to which they are put, while that only is good which can never be harmful, but only useful. Yet they confess that they are not absolutely indifferent, that wealth is preferable to poverty, health to sickness {TTporyyiJ.eva — airoTrpoTf/fieva'). These, too, are at bottom merely systemat- ized, technical statements of Aristotelian ideas. Aristotle had used an admirable figure in defining the value of external goods : they are for life what the ■x^opTj'^ia is for the tragedy, hence they certainly belong to the perfect happiness of life, just as the ■x^opvy^"' i^ necessary to the perfect production of the tragedy, without, however, forming a real part of happiness. It seems, however, that the desire gradually grew stronger in the Stoics to make happiness (evSaifiovla) absolutely inde- pendent of external goods. Tlie freedom from passions (irddri) which are aroused in the soul by the acquisition and loss, the possession and want, of external goods, the doctrine that virtue suffices for happiness, old and legitimate concep- tions of Greek ethics, are emphasized more and more as moral philosophy becomes moral preaching. The practical moralist's most thankful and fruitful task is to throw man upon his own inner resources, and this task the Stoic philos- ophy accomplished with laudable skill : nowhere shall we find more forcible exhortations to make ourselves independent of the things which are not in our power, and to depend upon ourselves with inner freedom, than in Epictetus's little Manual} With this tendency to moral preaching is connected an- other element in the Stoic philosophy : the value of theoreti- ' See Long's translation. 56 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY cal activity is lessened, while the exercise of the ethical virtues, the field of action, especially action dealing with human relations, the family and the state, gradually becomes more prominent. But the demand that we keep ourselves free remains the chief and the highest demand. 6. Epicurus,^ too, and his disciples are in search of the highest good and find it in eudsemouia; but their defini- tion of it differs from that of the philosophers mentioned above, nay, even from the popular Greek conception: for them eudsemonia is a feeling of pleasure, Tliis view leads to a change in the position of virtue or excellence: virtue becomes a means to the end of pleasure.^ The difference between the two standpoints is perfectly apparent. The Stoics agree with Aristotle and Plato in defin- ing happiness as an objective condition of the soul : a life that realizes the natural purpose of man, or perfectly realizes his idea, is itself the highest good. To be sure, the subjective satisfaction follows the objective constitution, as the shadow follows the body, but the satisfaction is not itself the good. The Epicureans, on the other hand, regard the feelings of pleasure which life procures as the good itself, and the con- stitution or character of which they are the effect, as the means. When we disregard this question of principle and examine the counsels which Epicurus gives to his pupils concerning their mode of life (for example in his letter to Menoikeus) * the difference largely disappears, yes, we might almost be tempted to view it as a purely scholastic or technical differ- ence. Epicurus by no means advises us to choose every pleasure, nay, he expreasly warns us against it. "When. 1 Piogenes Laertiua, X. ; Cicero, De finihus ; Lucretius, De rerum natura (translated by Munro). Bibliography in Weber-Thilly, p. 194, note I.] 2 Kostlin shows us in his exceUent exposition of the Democritean ethics, Geschichte der EtUk, I., 196, how, even in his ethics, Epicurus was forestalled by the forceful thinker whom he followed in his physics, Democritus. « Diogenes Laertiu.s, translation by Yonge in Bohn's library, X., 122-125. THE GREEK CONCEPTION 67 therefore, we say that pleasure is a chief good, we are not speaking of the pleasures of the debauched man, or those who lie in sensual enjoyment, as some think who are ignorant, and who do not entertain our opinions, or else interpret them per- versely ; but we mean the freedom of the body from pain, and of the soul from confusion." By happiness, he says, he means the health of the body and the freedom from disquiet- ude of the soul (t^v tov <7a)fj,aT0ov fir) iroKtreveffdai) are common among the later philosophers. Hence there was but one thing left to them — philosophy. CHAPTER II THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF LIFEl 1. The conversion of the ancient world to Christianity was the greatest revolution which European humanity experienced. It meant the complete overthrow of all their theories of life, the " transformation of all values " {Die Umwertung alter Werte'), to use Nietzsche's expression. In order to draw the lines as sharply as possible, I shall attempt, first of all, to con- trast the Christian doctrine of self-denial in its harsh grandeur with the Greek doctrine of self-preservation. The world always tends to compromises and conciliations ; they are not wanting in ancient Christianity, and in the Middle Ages they are very common, still more so in the development of the Christianity of modern times, as will be seen later on. Here I should like to accentuate the fundamental difference between the Greek and the Christian conception — sharply and one- sidedly if you please — as Christianity itself conceived it at its entrance into the ancient world. The Greek affirmation of the world ( Welthejahung') and the Christian negation of the world {Weltiiberwindung'), these are the two paths open to man.* * [See, besides the works of Sidgwick, "Wundt, Jodl, Janet, Eucken, mentioned on p. 35 : Gass, Geschichte der chrisilichen Etkik ; Bestmann, Geschichte der ehristlichen Sitte; Ziegler, Geschichte der christUchen Ethik ; Luthardt, Geschichte der christUchen Ethik ; Lecky, History of European Morals ; Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, vol. II., §§ 4 and 5 ; Baur, Das Chrislenthum der drei ersten Jahr- hunderte (Engl, transl. by Allan Menzles) ; Hamack, Dogmengeschichte ; Fisher, The Beginnings of Christianity. Consult also the standard Lives of Christ and church histories. For further bibliographical references, see the beginning of the second volume of Ueberweg ; also Weber-Thilly, p. 9, note 2. — Tr.] ' The exposition which follows has been criticised, on the ground that it rep- resents Christianity as a weak, meek, world-weary, down-trodden, ascetic afiair. That is not the impression which I intended to create. Christianity was at first 5 66 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY The Greeks regarded the perfect development of the natural powers of man as the great aim of life. Christianity, on the other hand, clearly and consciously sets up the opposite as the goal of life : the death of the natural, and the resurrection of a new, supernatural man. " Except a man be born again," so Christ teaches Nicodemus, "he cannot see the kingdom of God " ; the repentance (/j.eTavota') which Christ demands, with John the Baptist,i is in truth a regeneration. The old and the new man are opposed to each other as the flesh (^adp^) and the spirit {irvevixa).^ Paul logically defines this antithe- sis : there is a twofold life, the life after the flesh and the life after the spirit ; the former the life of the natural man, the latter, the effect of grace ; the former intent upon perishable things and leading to death, the latter turned toward eternity and leading to eternal life : " for he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting." ^ The new life is the death of the old ; through the spirit the deeds of the body are mortified.* This character of the new religion is expressed in its sacred acts. We enter into Christianity through baptism; it is called by Paul a likeness (ofjiolwiui) ^ of the death of Jesus ; certainly not a negative, but a very positive thing ; it was not characterized by feelings of depression and dejection, but by a feeling of cheerful certainty, the certainty of possessing a treasure beyond all other treasures. And from this conviction sprang the proud feeling of freedom, with which the Christian opposed the " world " and its regulations, society and its conventional values, the law and its pedantic formalism. — But my main purpose here was to contrast it sharply with the Greek conception of life and morality, and hence I first considered Christianity from its negative side, the side which distinguishes it as something entirely new in the world. Besides, Christianity now and then becomes conscious of its original negative relation to the " world " and the kingdom which is of this world, and so, in my opinion, regains some of its pristine essence and strength. A Christianity entirely reconciled and at peace with the world is a weak and powerless affair, and surely not the real and original Christianity. True Chris- tianity may always be recognized by the fact that it seems strange and danger- ous to the world. « Math., iv., 17. » John, iii., 6. « Rom., yiii., 13. • Gal., vi., 8.^, * Eom., vi., 5. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 67 a very intelligible symbol, so long as Christianity was at war with the world ; it was a serious reminder of the bloody bap- tism which might follow the water baptism. The other sacra- ment is no less suggestive of death ; by eating the body and drinking the blood of Jesus, the believers celebrate the mem- ory of his sacrificial death, themselves forming a community consecrated to a bloody sacrifice. It is likewise worthy of note that the new churches usually also served as burial- places, that the bones of the martyrs were interred in the altar itself. The natural man dreads contact with death ; it is a pollution, according to the Greek as well as the Jewish con- ception, even in the religious sense, while to the Christian, death is a familiar thought; it is the entrance into life. 2. The entire Christian life is permeated with this concep- tion. What the old or the natural man desires or values is regarded by the new man as worthless or dangerous; and conversely, the sufferings and privations which the former seeks to escape, the latter regards as salutary and beneficial. Let me point out the main differences between the two theories of life. The perfection and exercise of the intellectual capacities seemed to the Greeks a highly important, to their philosophers an absolutely necessary, function of human life. The attitude of primitive Christianity towards reason and natural knowl- edge is one of contempt and distrust. The poor in spirit are blessed by Jesus; the people who follow him are poor and uncultured; what is hidden from the wise and prudent is revealed to children. Nay, natural reason and wisdom are really a stumbling-block to the kingdom of God, the preach- ing of the cross is foolishness to it. " Where is the wise ? " Paul asks the congregation at Corinth,^ " where is the scribe ? where is the disputer of this world ? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world ? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased 1 1 Cor. i., 20. 68 ORIGIKS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that belieye." The church did not strictly adhere to this view ; as a church she could not adhere to it. When she began to dominate the entire life of the peoples, she was compelled to press into her service the most important instrument of temporal power, knowledge. But primitive Christianity stood in no posi- tive relation to worldly, scientific knowledge. " The form of a servant, the spiritual form, disappeared in the third century when brilliant teachers of the church and even rich bishops appeared ; but in its poor form Christianity overcame the world." 1 And we may note the after-effects of this original relation in the entire history of the Christian church life: I am thinking not merely of the Christian's distrust of scientific investigation and the law of obedience, which the intellect, too, was expected to observe — a law, it is true, which often sprang from very worldly motives — but, above all, of that simplicity of heart which always succeeded in minimizing, among all true believers in Christ, those differences of culture and knowledge, which hinder the free interchange of thought in the personal intercourse of the worldly-minded. And deeply religious natures have always shown an aversion to puffed-up learning, to the spirit of criticism and negation, which springs from arrogance and begets arrogance, to the mania for systems, and to scientific pride. Hence the virtues of the intellect, freedom and boldness of thought and the power to doubt, the vital principle of scien- tific research, are, in thfe eyes of primitive Christianity; worthless and dangerous. Faith and obedience are becoming to the Christian. 3. Like the virtues of the intellect, so are also the ethical virtues of the Greeks, which are nothing but natural impulses educated and disciplined by the reason, worthless and dan- gerous, according to the conception of primitive Christianity ; 1 Hase, Kirchengeschichte, 1,258. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 69 the more dangerous because they seem good : they are splen- did vices. " Though it may seem laudable that the soul govern the body, and reason the vicious impulses, yet the soul and reason itself, cannot by any means, unless it serve God, as God himself has prescribed it, govern them in the right way. For what kind of a lord of the body and of the vices can a mind be, which, being ignorant of the true God and not sub- ject to his governance, is prostituted and corrupted by the demons polluted with all the vices ? And the virtues them- selves, if they bear no relation to God, are in truth vices rather than virtues ; for although they are regarded by many as truly moral when they are desired as ends in themselves and not for the sake of something else, they are, nevertheless, inflated and arrogant (inflatce ao superbce), and therefore not to be viewed as virtues but as vices." This is St. Augustine's opinion of all purely human virtues.^ 4. In the opinion of the natural man, courage is the chief ' De Civitate Dei, xix., 25. — In his Confessions he moralizes upon his own past life from this standpoint : everything natnral and human in it was an alienation from God and therefore reprehensible. With tiresome monotony he passes from one period of his life to the other, and shows the emptiness and haseness of all those acts of his which sprang from his natnral impulses. That the nursling cried for the breast, that the boy took pleasure in his sports and the youth in rhetorical exercises, that he was ambitions for distinction and fame, that he was devoted to friends and followed his natural sexual impulses, that he admired distinguished teachers and dedicated his maiden works to a revered man, that as a teacher he gathered young men about him and joyfully and zealously instructed them in knowledge and in eloquence, that he passionately searched for the truth and believed that he would find it in the philosophers : all this he now condemns from his newly acquired Christian-ecclesiastical standpoint : it was nothing hut vanity, foolishness, and carnal corruption. One point alone, which the purely human judgment would perhaps regard as the blackest spot in the previous life of the Saint, he passes over without a single word of blame; his resolution, namely, to abandon a woman who had heen his mistress for years, and who had home him a son, and, at the instigation of his mother, to marry a woman of his own rank. This resolution — which his mistress prevented him from carrying out this intended act of faithlessness to a woman whom he loved, hut could not marry for social reasons, he passes over without a complaint, without a word of self-reproach, only to condemn himself violently immediately after for his in- ability to resist his longing for her even after the separation. So completely da his feelings differ from the natural human feelings. 70 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY virtue; it is, as Greek and Roman popular usage implies, the virtue or excellence as such, and its absence is equivalent to absolute unworthiness. Courage is based upon the impulse of self-preservation ; it ensures the success of the ego and its claims in the struggle witli those opposing it. The Christian, who obeys the law of God, " resists not evil," he does not combat it, but endures it ; patience or patient waiting {virofiovn) is his courage. He does not wield the sword. The sword is the instrument by which to obtain one's share of the world ; the Christian has and desires no part in the world; his heritage is in the future world, it cannot be won or lost by the sword. The old church is thoroughly imbued with the thought that a Christian cannot wield the sword. Even though the times soon accommodated themselves to the necessities of life, we can hardly suppose that they did so without some misgivings. Christian soldiers were, beyond doubt, regarded as an anomaly in the congregation, during the earlier centuries. TertuUian expresses the conviction of the primitive Christian, though in a more emphatic and categorical manner, when he says : " It is impossible to swear fealty to God and to man, to serve under the banner of Christ and under the standard of the devil, in the camp of light and in the camp of darkness ; one soul cannot serve two masters, God and the Emperor. When the Lord deprived Peter of the sword, he disarmed all." ^ It surely seemed au absolute con- tradiction for a clericus to wear the sword. Among all the sects which renew the old Christian mode of life, the dread of shedding blood at once reappears in its original strength. The same feeling asserts itself against capital punishment. How far removed the modern world is from the old Christian conception is perhaps nowhere so clearly seen as here: the fear of the sword and of bloodshed has wholly disappeared — disappeared even from the church. The great military heroes are the national saints of the modern nations, the 1 Z)e idohlatria, chapter 19. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 71 anniversaries of victorious battles are celebrated as public holidays, the streets and squares of our cities are named after bloody battle-fields. In the schools our children learn the history of wars, which comprises the chief part of the history of mankind ; the victories of our nation over our neighbors are regarded as its most important and grandest achievements. In the churches prayers are offered every Sunday for the royal arms on water and on land. The modern Christian has no fault to find with all this — a sure sign that he differs from the primitive Christian, who proved his courage solely by his patient suffering and heroic martyrdom.^ 5. Related to the virtue of courage is the virtue of justice, by which we mean that strong sense of justice which every- where insists upon the right, the right of others as well as of self. Not to do wrong is one side of justice ; its comple- ment is not to permit wrong to be done, either to self or to others. This is what the Greeks and Romans understood by the duty of justice, and so Jhering has recently interpreted it in his book, Tfie Battle for the Eight.^ The law-suit, or the legal battle for the right, is the civil form of self-preser- vation and self-assertion, of which the sword is the military form. Primitive Christianity does not recognize justice in this sense as a virtue ; it is acquainted with only one side of it, with the duty not to do wrong, not with the duty not to per- mit wrong. It does not say : If a man injures you and tram- ples upon your rights, you ought or are allowed to resist him by lawful means ; but the law of Moses : An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is expressly abrogated and replaced by a new law : " But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil (too TTovnpw), but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak 1 [See Herbert Spencer, Inductions of Ethics, §§ 115, 118, 192. — Tk.] * Dtr Kampfums Rechl. 72 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY also, and whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." ^ And a few verses further back we read : ^ "Agree with, thine adversary (to5 avrtBU^) quickly, while thou art in the way with him." Hence not only anger and hatred and private revenge, but law-suits are explicitly pro- hibited. This is also St. Paul's notion of it: he strictly for- bids the Corinthians to go to law before heathen judges, before the unjust, who are not esteemed in the church : " Is it so that there is not a wise man among you ? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren ? " And then he proceeds: "Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law with one another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded ? " ' Even though this law was not always observed among the old Christians, it was undoubtedly recognized as binding ; they felt the same dread of the law- suit as a means of defending their individual rights as of the sword.* In this respect, too, the difference between modern and primitive Christianity is apparent enough. We regard it as the most natural thing in the world to go to law for our rights, or to turn over to the judge for punishment a man who has damaged our body and life, our honor and property. I am not saying that this is right or wrong ; all I mean to imply is that in doing these things we are undoubtedly acting contrary to the spirit of primitive Christianity. 6. This determined the attitude of the Christian towards 1 Matt., \., 38-41. 2 Verse 25. » 1 Cor.,vi., 7. * It must be confessed, however, that a passage in the Gospel {Matt., xviii., I.'j-IT) incliues to a more positive treatment of this side of life : " Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone : if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee ,one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church ; but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be onto thee as a heathen man and a publican.'' However, not a single word is said of the law-suit and the law. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 73 the itate. The Greek and Roman regarded participation in the affairs of state as the highest and mosj; important duty of man. The primitive Christian, who did not value the fund- amental political virtues, courage and the sense of justice, looked upon the state as something alien to himself and the inner principle of his life : in the state men wrangle over the things of this world, employing the means of this world ; war and courts of justice are its two fundamental functions. The primitive Christian's attitude to this entire institution was one of forbearance. He formed a part of it, as he formed a part of the world in general, as a stranger and a pilgrim ; he had even less interest in it than the member of another state. — As a passive citizen, however, his conduct was exemplary : he was obedient in all things which were not contrary to his divine mission ; he willingly paid taxes ; he obeyed all laws which prohibited wrong-doing, not only on account of the punishment, but for conscience' sake, and in so far as the magistracy realized justice, it was recognized as the order and instrument of God. When, however, he was asked to act in vio- lation of his conscience, then, of course, he could not obey ; he would not sacrifice to the gods or to the Emperor, nor swear in their name ; he thereby declared that there was something higher for him than the state, namely the kingdom of God, of which he considered himself a citizen, and he would allow no command of eai'thly rulers to turn him aside from the duties which this citizenship imposed upon him. But here, too, he rendered obedience in so far as he accepted the punishment which was inflicted upon him, without opposition and complaint. — Hence the Christians were both submissive to authority and yet inwardly free in their attitude to the state, something which the ancient citizen neither could be nor cared to be. — Can a Christian be an officer of the state ? In the earlier times there was little occasion for discussing the question : it was not the powerful and the noble after the flesh who first came to the community of Christ, but the ignoble and the despised in the 74 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY eyes of the world. It would undoubtedly have been regarded as a strange contradiction to serve both the crucified one and the lord of this world. In TertuUian the spirit of primitive Christianity strongly protests against the gradual seculariza- tion of the church. " By despising the power and the glory of this world," he declares,' "the Lord rejected it and condemned it, and reckoned it among the things which are the pride of the devil. If they were his, he would not have condemned them ; but that which is not of God can belong to no one but the devil. And this, too, may remind you that all the powers and dignitaries of this world are not only foreign to God, but hostile to him, the fact namely, that they condemn the servants of God to death, but forget the punishments which are intended for criminals." Even as late as the year 305 the synod of Elvira decreed : Whoever holds the office of duumvir must stand aloof from the church during his term of office.^ Not until the conversion of Constantine, when Christianity became a state religion, did a complete change take place : now the officers of the state became the repre- sentatives and the defenders of " Christianity," and the clergy in a sense became state officers. And at present many are perhaps inclined to believe, reversing the words of Paul,' that the preservation of Christianity is the especial business of the wise and powerful, the cultured and high-born, and that it would die out if the princes and lords of this world and their servants did not take care of it. 7. The fourtli cardinal virtue, after wisdom, courage, and justice, is, according to the Greek conception, trio^poa-vvrj, or temperance. It is the state of the healthy-minded man, who understands the art of moderate and beautiful enjoyment, and can also do without things when necessary. Greek education endeavored to cultivate this virtue : by means of the gym- * De idol., chap. 18. ' Uhlhorn, Die christliche LiebesthStiglceit in der alien Kirche, p. 356. See also Gass, Geschichte der chriitUchen Ethik (1881), l, 92 ft. • 1 Cor., i. 26. THE CITRISTIAN CONCEPTION 76 nastic and musical arts, the two phases of education, it strove to inculcate in the body and the soul of the young the power of self-control and the faculty of enjoying thenfselves beautifully. The gymnastic and musical contests formed the climax of national pleasure ; to participate in them, as a competitor for the wreath and as a spectator, was culture (TraiSevo-ts). The attitude of primitive Christianity towards enjoyment was an entirely different one, and hence could not recognize this virtue, or only recognize its negative side, as in the case of justice : the ability to resist the allurements of pleasure. The Christian fled from earthly-sensuous pleasure in every form; even though it might not be sinful in itself, it was too apt to endanger the soul, by fettering it to that which is earthly and perishable, and impeding the free flight of the spirit to eternity. With fearful earnestness Jesus commands us to pluck out and cast from us every member that offends us : for it is better to enter into glory lame and disfigured and witliout eyes, " than that thy whole body should be cast into hell." " Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." So the Apostle John ad- monishes the Christians in his first letter, debarring not merely coarse sensuous pleasure, but also assthetical pleasure (the lust of the eyes) and everything that makes this life glorious and grand (dXa^oj/eta tov ^iov) in the ej'cs of the children of this world. So, too, the first letter of Peter ^ beseeches the brethren : as strangers and pilgrims to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. And Paul does not weary of admonishing those who are of Christ to crucify the flesh. Nowhere, however, are we exhorted to make the body and the soul capable of enjoying the beautiful pleasures of life, or to train tbe physical and spiritual powers for par- 1 ii., 11. 76 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY ticipation in gymnastic exercises and games^ or in the cheerful play of poetry and art. The education of a Christian has an entirely different object in view from the education of the Greek : it must open our eyes to the vanity and transitoriness of this life, and to its awful seriousness, inasmuch as the eternal life depends upon how we live here. Musical and gymnastic arts, however, are not suited to prepare us for eternal life ; they are sown in the flesh and are raised in cor- ruption. How can a Christian who aspires to the imperish- able crown strive after the virtues by which wreaths are won at heathen games ? Who can find pleasure in the fables of the poets, when he can hear the words of the Lord and the apostles ? How can he strive for " culture " who is struggling for " holiness " ? All this is so self-evident that it does not even have to be mentioned : in a true Christian even the desire for such things is inconceivable. Among the Christians it is not culture and eloquence that are prized, but silence. Silence is the first duty recommended by Ambrosius in his work on the duties of the clergy : ^ "It is written : By thy words thou shalt be condemned. Hence why wilt thou rush into the danger of perdition by speaking, when thou mayst be safe by keeping silence ? I have seen many fall into sin by speaking, but hardly a single one by keeping silence. Hence he is wise who can be silent." And soon after he says : ^ " There may be decent and amiable jests, but they are not compatible with the rules of the church ; how can we make use of that which does not appear in the Scriptures. We must also avoid the fables of the poets, lest they weaken the firmness of our resolutions. Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep : so says the Lord ; and shall we seek for matter to laugh at here that we may weep hereafter ? I believe we must not only avoid wanton jests, but all jests; one thing alone is proper: a mouth full of sweetness and grace." * Z)e off. minisirorum, I.. 2. 3 I., 33. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 77 8. This also determines the attitude of Christianity to earthly goods. Since wealth is, first of all, a means to sen- suous good living, and secondly, to beautiful enjoyment and culture, he who does not value these things, cannot approve of the means which make them possible. Riches have no value for the Christian ; he has enough when he possesses what suffices to satisfy his daily needs. But riches are not only worthless, they are dangerous. There is, of course, nothing sinful in possession as such, in itself it is abso- lutely indifferent; but wealth is a serious menace to the owner, in so far as it constantly tempts him to use it, and thus enslaves the soul. Nothing recurs so frequently in the Gospels as the warning against the dangers of riches. It seems almost impossible to Jesus that a rich man should enter into the kingdom of God ; it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Wealth makes us eager for this world and careless of the hereafter, as the rich man learned when he reaped a good harvest and soon began to meditate what to do and where to bestow his fruits ; wealth sates us and makes us indifferent to the wants of our neighbors, as Dives learned before whose door poor Lazarus lay ; wealth alienates God from us, for he allows no other God beside himself: ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore, Jesus commanded his disciples that they should take noth- ing for their journey : no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse, when he sent them out to preach ; and it surely was not an accident that Judas, who carried the purse, most likely because he was the ablest financier of the twelve, should have turned traitor. Hence the urgent entreaty to the good young man to give up his riches : " Go thy way, sell whatever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." Interpreters of the Gospel are in the habit of protesting against the misconception that Christ actually commanded the young man to give up his riches. Clement of Alexandria 78 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY early pointed out, in his discussion of the question, What Rich Man will be Saved? that the command to sell everything and give to the poor, did not mean, as some hastily assume, that he should abandon his possessions, but merely his false opinions with respect to them, his love and greed for them. This ingenious discovery has been made over and over again. According to the same art of interpretation, we might reason : When a mother tells her child who has taken hold of a sharp knife, to lay the knife aside, this does not mean that he should put it down, but only that he should not cut himself with it ; that he may keep the knife. — Would the young man have gone away grieved if Jesus himself had thus interpreted his saying for him ? I believe he would at once have replied : " This have I observed from my youth." Here, again, I am not deciding whether the command of Jesus ought to be obeyed, or whether it could possibly be obeyed universally ; 1 am simply defending its true and un- mistakable meaning against all sorts of interpretations which attempt to bring the Gospel into harmony with the world. We hear it said that the fulfilment of this law would destroy our entire civilized life. It is very probable that it would. But what does that prove ? Where is it written that it should be preserved ? Tertullian answers the objection of those who refused to obey the law against the pursuit of handicrafts or trades relating to heathen worship, on the ground that they must live, by asking the question: Must you live ? What companionship have you with God, if you desire to live according to your own laws ? You will suffer want ? But the Lord calls those that suffer blessed. You cannot support yourselves ? But the Lord says : Take no thought for your life ; consider the lilies of the field. 9. Let us now compare the Greek with the Christian view of honor. According to the Greek conception, the love of honor is a virtue : the just man desires to be the first in his sphere (irptoTeveiv), and to be esteemed as such. Noble pride. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 79 high-mi ndedness (fj,eya\oy}rv)(^Ca), is the intensification of the proper love of honor. The high-minded man regards himself as worthy of high things, and is worthy of them : so Aristotle defines him, completing the picture with many delicate touches.! The virtue of the Christian is humility. Once, when a quarrel arose among the disciples about the highest places in the new kingdom, Jesus rebuked them : " Ye know that those which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lord- ship over them : and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you : but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister : and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all." ^ That is the order in the kingdom of heaven, the direct opposite of the order in the earthly kingdoms. — And it is perfectly self-evi- dent that the Christian neither seeks for nor obtains the glo- ries of this world. Before the world he is nothing ; disgrace and ridicule are his glory, as Jesus declares to his disciples. And he calls them blessed for it : " Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad : for great is your reward in heaven : for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." ' And the Gospel of St. Luke, which is still more emphatic in its opposition to the world, adds : " Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets." * This humility does not exclude, but rather has as its ob- verse, a harsh pride, the pride which scorns and despises the world and everything that is in it and is esteemed by it. Humble before God and the weak and lowly, but proud towards those who think well of themselves and bask in the light of their glory : that too is a fundamental characteristic of the Christian. Both John the Baptist and Christ exhibit this » Nic. Ethics. IV., 7 ff. s Matt., y., 11, IS. • Mark, X., 3.') ff ■< vi., 26 80 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY honest, fearless, nay, defiant pride towards tlie great and the respectable, the Sadducees and Pharisees, the high-priest and the Roman governor. And we also occasionally find this pride in later disciples of Jesus, who have turned their backs upon the world and now frankly tell it that they neither desire nor esteem its glory and its honor, its virtue and its grandeur; for which the world, as is to be expected, pays them back in hatred and disgrace. So long as Christianity retained its original relation to the world, to be disgraced in the eyes of the world was the mark of a Christian ; whenever the church made her peace with the world, and sects began to separate from her, in order to live after the primitive Christian fashion, men again began to regard it as a necessary test of true Christianity to suffer disgrace in the name of Christ. A. H. Francke tells us in his autobiography that when he was a diligent and respectable studiosug theoloffice, intending to become a very elegant and learned man, " the world was well pleased with him. I loved the world, and the world loved me. I was entirely free from persecution then." After his conversion, however, he tells us, things changed ; then, for the first time, he dis- covered what the world was, and in what it differed from the children of God, for soon it began to despise and to hate him. It is, therefore, true that all Greek virtues are, in the light of Christianity, splendid vices -, they are all rooted in the natural man's impulse of self-preservation, in the impulse of knowledge, in the impulse of revenge, in the desire for culture, in the love of honor; they represent the perfection of his nature in perfect civilization. It is true that nothing less than the death of the old and the birth of a new man is neces- sary to transform a Greek into a Christian. Nothing that was prized among the Greeks was prized by the Christians, and conversely, nothing that was prized by the latter wap prized by the former. It is true that the virtues of the Greek THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 81 are an impediment to regeneration : the publicans and sinners, those who have failed with their natural strength and virtue, and now look back upon a wrecked life, are far more apt to suffer a great and radical change of heart than the just. Through sin and suffering leads the path to conversion. 10. For the natural virtues of the Greeks, Christianity substitutes a single new one : pity or mercy. To love your neighbors, to take pity upon their misery, to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to visit the outcast, nay, not even to resist the evil, to forgive and to do good unto those that hate you and persecute you, — that is the ideal which Jesus places before his disciples, and lives out himself. By this pity we are not to understand weak-hearted dolefulness, nor by the love of enemy, tender-hearted compliance. The obverse of these virtues is a passionate anger against those who cause such misery, or at least harden their hearts against it, against the unjust and selfish lords who devour the substance of the widows and orphans, against those well-fed and self-righteous respectable persons, who see the wretchedness of the people and complaisantly say : It is their own fault ; why are they not virtuous like us, for then they would prosper as we do. Compassionate love is the great virtue which Jesus preaches, and self-righteous hardness of heart the great vice upon which he pronounces harsh judgments. For all he has a word of pity and love, the lost sons and daughters of his people he takes to his heart, the woman who has sinned much he raises up, the thief on the cross who confesses his sins he promises to meet in paradise : only for the virtuous and self-righteous Pharisee who is not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican, he has harsh words ; only for the servant who cannot forgive his fellow-servant he has no forgiveness. Now, the Greeks are as unfamiliar with the vice of self- tighteousness as with the virtue of pity. As the normal condition of the feeling of self-esteem the 6 82 ORIGINS OF M(JRAL PHILOSOPSIf Greek regards the consciousness of individual power and ex- cellence ; it is the necessary accompaniment of the thing itself. His morality warns him against arrogance (v^pt?), which makes a man despised before gods and men, but it warns him no less against the opposite, lowliness of mind {TaTreivo- poveiv). The Greek is proud of his virtues, he has acquired them himself, they are the fruits of hard labor. " In one re- spect," says Seneca,^ " the wise man excels God ; the latter owes it to his nature that he fears nothing, the wise man owes it to himself." "I die without remorse," said the dying Julian, " as I have lived without sin." — On the other hand, lowliness of mind {Taveivocfypoveiv) is the beginning of Chris- tianity. Conversion begins with remorse and penitence, and the feeling of powerlessness and sinfulness is one of the funda- mental moods of the Christian ; he prays every day with the publican : God have mercy upon me a sinner. A remarkable statement by the Princess A. von Galitzin expresses this mood in a somewhat morbid form, and at the same time be- trays the curious logic peculiar to Christian humility : " An important element of Hamann's spirit and teachings has clung to me, the conviction, namely, that the desire for a good con- science would be a very dangerous leaven in me, and that one of the chief features of faith must be that I suffer the thought of my nothingness and completely trust in God's mercy. I plainly saw that the feeling of complacency aroused by my dis- satisfaction with my own imperfection and weakness, would be the most concealed and dangerous hiding-place of my pride." ^ Just as self-righteousness is not one of the vices of the Greek, pity is not one of his virtues. In the list in which Aristotle enumerates ^ the qualities esteemed as virtues by the Greeks, mercy finds no place. In its stead we discover a kind of heathen counterpart to it: liberality (eXeu^e/jtoxTj?), 1 Epist., 53. " Correspondence and Diary of the Princess Galitzin, new series, 1876, B. 3S9. ' Book IV., Nicomachean Ethics. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 83 and the intensified form of the latter, magnificence (^fieyaXo- •wpeireia). He is liberal, according to Aristotle's version, who gives from a noble motive and in a right spirit, who gives the right amount, and to the right persons at the right time, and satisfies all the other conditions of right giving ; ^ he is mag- nificent who spends large sums of money with good taste, for example, upon votive offerings to the Gods, or " upon the favorite objects of patriotic rivalry, as when people consider it their duty to supply a chorus or fit out a trireme or even to give a public dinner in handsome style." ^ But here the im- portant person is not the recipient of the gift, but the giver, the object is not to alleviate suffering, but to glorify the name of the benefactor. Not a single word, throughout Aristotle's long discussion, is said of the neediness of the recipient; compassion plays no part as a motive. The climax of mag- nificence and munificence was reached in Rome ; from the booty stolen from all the nations of the earth the Roman lords gave to the populace of the metropolis money and bread, theatres and baths. It is obvious that this virtue has noth- ing in common with Christian pity. The fundamental char- acteristic of Christian charity is self-denial, while liberality is a form of self-enjoyment. Pity contemplates the want of others, and makes sacrifices to help them, liberality has for its object the glorification of the giver. Pity is practised in secret; publicity is peculiar to liberality. Pity is bestowed upon the stranger, who is nothing to you in the order of nature ; liberality, on the other hand, upon relatives, clients, and fellow-citizens. Christian charity does not spring from the natural impulse to enjoy one's own superiority by giving help, nor is it rooted in the natural impulses of sympathy which grow out of gen- eric life and unite man with his neighbor. The story of the good Samaritan shows this phase. It is the answer to the question: And who is my neighbor, whom I shall 1 Book IV., chap. 2 ff . 2 Chapters 4 and 5. 84 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY love ? The natural man answers : My family, my children, my parents, my wife, my relatives, the members of my house- hold, my neighbors, fellow-countrymen, and co-religionists. That must have been the opinion of the scribe also. Jesus enlightens him : Not these, but the very first man whom you happen to meet, and who is in want. For this is evidently the meaning of the somewhat perverted ending of our account. The commentary to it may be found in the verses which substitute the commandment of brotherly love for the com- mandment of Moses, in the Gospel of Matthew.^ Moses has commanded you to love your neighbors and hate your enemies. But what would there be so remarkable in that ? Do not even the publicans the same ? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others ? Do not even the heathen the same ? Be ye therefore perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. He makes no distinctions in his benefi- cence, hence you should not do it either, unless it be, perhaps, to give strangers preference over your friends : " When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors ; lest also they bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and thou shalt be blessed." " The highest, however, is to do good even to your enemies ; to suffer evil for the sake of the good, and not to bear malice : that is per- fection. Savonarola once summed up Christianity in the sentence : " My son, to be good means to do good and to suffer evil, and not to weary of it to the end." 11. We may now consider the attitude of Christianity to family/ life. The family is the beginning of all natural charity or love of neighbor. Christianity, which never aims at the development of natural impulses, cannot, as might at first be supposed from the estimate it places on love, regard the family as a thing of absolute worth. For it the community 1 T., 43. « Luke, xiT., 12. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 85 of the flesh is far inferior to the community of the spirit. Jesus left his family and gathered around him a new family, one not united by the ties of blood, but by spiritual ties ; which caused at least a temporary estrangement from his blood- relatives. He demands that those who follow him likewise sever their natural ties, wherever occasion may demand : " If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." ' He knows that his preaching will break natural bonds : " For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father ; the mother against the daughter and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter- in-law against her mother-in-law." ^ Natural ties lose their importance for those who no longer live in the flesh. The ability to sever them altogether has always been regarded by the followers of Christ as a criterion of perfec- tion. The saints are often openly praised because the ties of blood have no power over them. In Hartpole Lecky's History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne^ we find a number of passages from the literature of the saints, which show, by way of example, the meritoriousness of absolute indifference to blood-relationship. Let me quote one of the examples. In Cassian's work. Be coenohiorum institutis,* we read the following story. A man named Mutius, accompanied by his only child, a little boy eight years old, abandoned his possessions and demanded admis- sion into a monastery. The monks received him, but they proceeded to discipline his lieart. " He had already forgotten that he was rich ; he must next be taught to forget that he was a father." His little child was separated from him, clothed in ^ Luhe, xiv., 26 ; somewhat weakened in Matt., x., 34. « Luke, xii., 52 ft. » Vol. II. « IV., 37. 86 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY dirty rags, subjected to every form of gross and wanton hard- ship, spurned, and ill treated. Day after day the father was compelled to look upon his boy wasting away with sorrow, his once happy countenance forever stained with tears, dis- torted by sobs of anguish. But " such was his love for Christ, and for the virtue of obedience, that the father's heart was rigid and unmoved. He thought little of the tears of his cliild. He was anxious only for his own humility and per- fection in virtue." At last the abbot told him to take his child and throw it into the river. He proceeded without a murmur or apparent pang, to obey, and it was only at the last moment that the monks interposed, and on the very brink of the river saved the child. The story may have been invented in imitation of the sacrifice of Isaac; but the admiration which the narrator expresses is not an invention. This conduct is, doubtless, not in accord with the views of Jesus. We must confess, however, that it may be deduced as an extreme consequence from certain passages in the Gospels. To the question of Peter : " Behold we have forsaken all and followed thee ; what shall we have therefore ? " Jesus answers not rebuk- ingly, but with the promise that they shall be nearest to him in his glory ; " and every one that has forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hun- dredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life." ^ Such a mode of thought is, of course, not conducive to the formation of family ties. Jesus himself remained unmarried, and suggests that others, too, may dispense with marriage for the kingdom of heaven's sake. ^ Although the Apostle Paul thinks highly enough of the institution of true marriage to refer to it in illustration of Christ's relation to the church, he nevertheless shows a de- cided preference for unmarried life. The church at Corinth » Matt., xix., 27 a. t Matt., xix., 12. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 8? had asked him some questions concerning marriage. In his answer ^ he lays special emphasis upon thq^ollowing sentence by placing it at the beginning : " It is good for a man (/caXoi/) not to touch a woman." Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife and let every woman have her own husband. " I say therefore to the unmarried and the widows : It is good for them, if they abide even as I." " He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord ; but he that is mar- ried careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife." Tliis, of course, is not a commandment; and those who " cannot contain, let them marry." Similarly, in the Apocalypse ^ virginity is regarded as a merit, which will also be recognized in the new kingdom. Therefore, marriage is permitted on account of the weakness of the flesh, but it is nowhere looked upon as a phase of life essential to the perfection of human nature. And this thought runs through the entire Patristic literature : virginity, the freedom from the bondage of sensuality, constitutes a fundamental part of perfection. 12. The starting-point of this radical change is the certainty that our earthly life is not the true life. The ancient Greeks knew of no other life than this, everything good and beautiful and great known to them was contained in it ; the life of the dead, which foi-med the subject of doubtful fables, had for them a shadowy existence. And this earthly life is good and worth living for him who knows how to live it well : it offers everything that a healthy mind can desire. — The ancient Christians are absolutely convinced that this temporal life is perishable and vain and worthless. Upon our earth the real life and the real goods are not to be found ; only the world to come (o almv fieXKcov') will bring them to light. To this future world, which the apostolic times believed was about to be established by the return of the Lord, belonged the Christians; in the 1 1 Cor., vii. ^ xiv., 4. 88 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY earthlj world they are strangers and pilgrims. A traveller does not take any active interest in the affairs of a foreign country, but bears them as best he can. So the Christians behave with respect to this world. They are in the world in the flesh only, and their spirit is not at home in it ; they live in the world, but their hearts are in heaven ; they do the work which living in the world imposes upon them, but they have no interest in it. Pleasure and desire are the bonds with which the world strives to fetter their hearts ; therefore the Christians constantly crucify the flesh with its lusts and desires ; the natural man loves pleasure, and flies from pain as from something evil ; the Christian, on the other hand, looks upon pain as wholesome and upon pleasure as dangerous — pleasure is the bait with which the devil ensnares the soul in order to chain it to the world. To be dead to the pleasures and the pains of the earth is the mark of perfection. But it would be a complete misrepresentation of the Chris- tian mood to conclude that its chief characteristics are dis- content and gloom. Nay, the fundamental feeling is rather one of deep tranquil peace, in which are mingled notes of sorrow for the vanity and nothingness of the world, notes of " divine sadness," but which also contains cheerful strains of heavenly joy and hope. World-sorrow and pessimism vanish as soon as earthly things cease to excite and to alarm the heart with fear and hope, pleasure and disappoint- ment. Hence Christianity is not essentially negative, like pessimism, but positive : the eternal life which is to come and is close at hand overshadows the temporal life. The carnal man's natural impulse of self-preservation gives way to the supernatural impulse of self-preservation of the spiritual man, in accordance with the words of Jesus : " Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it ; " i or " He that loveth his life shall lose it i and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life 1 Luke, xvii., 33. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 89 eternal." ^ But the transmundane eternal life influences our earthly life : it creates a new will, whicU strives after holi- ness and perfection, as the Father in heaven is perfect ; it creates a new feeling of self-reliance : the feeling that we are children of God ; it creates a new form of human intercourse : the community united in brotherly love ; lastly, it creates a new relation to the earth and its goods : the Christian is the master of all things, capable of enjoying all innocent pleasures, and yet firmly attached to none. Paul often aptly describes this paradox in the life of the Christian : " As sor- rowful, yet always rejoicing ; as poor, yet making many rich ; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." ' 13. Many will fail to recognize in the above exposition of Christianity and its conception of life, the picture which they may have formed of it. Many believe that Christianity and Greek humanity are, if not absolutely identical, at least closely akin to each other. It is not unusual, even in our day, to find Jesus described as an amiable, cheerful, and mild moral teacher, who made it the object of his life to remove all hatred and enmity from the world, and to establish a king- dom of peace and love. He was himself capable of enjoying everything beautiful and good, and therefore did not begrudge his disciples any pure pleasure which life offered. Hase so portrays him in his Life of Christ : Jesus naively enjoyed the goods of this world, although he did not burden himself with their possession, on account of his higher mission. Like a bridegroom he lived among his disciples ; he did not even abstain from indulging in a social cup of wine : in short, " never was a religious hero less opposed to the pleasures of life." ^ That he did not take a wife must have been due to accidental causes : " let us assume, say, that his affianced died. Or, this, too, may be conjectured: that he from whose religion the ideal conception of marriage, foreign to antiquity, was » John, xii., 25. = 2 Cor., vi., 10. » § .53. 90 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY derived, found no one in his times whose heart was worthy of such a union," ^ He speaks of the " true humanitarian spirit " which Jesus showed with respect to ascetic rules, and finds that the peculiar culture of Jesus consists "in his religious perfection, the flower of all purely human striving." ^ Similarly, Keim, in his History of Jesus : ^ No religious re- former ever took such loving interest in all the forms of earthly life as he did, no one lived so " like a man of the world ;" * in another place he even speaks of a " comfortable, easy-going congeniality" (hehagliche stillsitzende GremiithUch- keif) which the character of Jesus encouraged.* In the con- flict with the Pharisees concerning the Sabbath he comes out victorious, " because he modestly and overwhelmingly unfolds the banner of humanity." ' It is undoubtedly true that the writings of the New Testa- ment transmit features of the life of Jesus and sayings from his teachings, which may be utilized for such a picture. Whether they indicate different stages of development in the life of Jesus itself, as Renan, for example, assumes, or whether his teachings and the conception we have of him have been distorted by tradition, say by Ebionitic inter- 1 §45. 2 §29. ' 3d ed., 1875. [Engl, translation by Ransom and Geldart, 1876.] * P. 165. ' P. 145. ' P. 199. David Strauss does not go so far in his Life of Jesus [tr. by George Eliot] in misrepresenting the essence of Christianity. But he, too, speaks of the " humane love of Jesus," of " the cheerful soul at peace with God, and embracing all men as brothers," and calls this " cheerful, vigorous element, this acting from the pleasure and joyf ulness of a beautiful soul, the Hellenic element in Jesus." To be sure, he also emphasizes the fact that there are essential " defects in the human- ity " of Jesus : family, state, acquisition, art, and beautiful enjoyment do not fall within its scope. But this one-sidedness, he says, is partly due to the Jewish nationality, partly to the conditions of the times ; besides, it can easily be remedied by different temporal, political, and educational conditions, and remedied in the best way only after we have come to understand the work of Jesus as a human achievement, hence as capable and in need of further development {Life of Jesus, 4th ed., I. 262, II. .-^88). In his last work (The Old and the New Faith, § 24, tr. by M. Blind), Strauss, influenced by Schopenhauer, seems to draw the lines more sharply between Christianity and the world. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 91 pretations, as Hase believes, or by the opposite, which would be more in line with the natural man's inclinations, — indeed, during his lifetime his disciples could not free themselves from the notion that he was to set up a worldly kingdom invested with all the power and glory of such a kingdom, — upon this point I do not venture to express an opinion. I share Strauss's view that it is a hopeless undertaking to write a true history of the life and development of Jesus, on the basis of the sources at our command ; and there also seem to me to be insurmountable difficulties in the way of a sys- tematic exposition of the teachings contained in his sermons. Disconnected sayings and parables are handed down to us, which cannot be comprehended into a unified philosophical system ; which, of course, does not diminish their value ; on the contrary, the Gospels owe their wonderful power to the fact that they do not form a theological or philosophical system. Systems pass away, concepts are tools with which an age apprehends and fashions things ; and in a certain sense every age must produce its own tools, in order that it may manipulate them satisfactorily. The great poems, on the other hand, are eternal, like their content, human life itself. There is no condition in life, and no mood which will not find in the Scriptures, in the Old and New Testaments, a story or a saying to express it, from which to draw conso- lation in adversity and inspiration in prosperity. Had these books merely transmitted to us a philosophical system, they would have grown old and perished long ago ; but they por- tray human life as it is, with all its joys and sorrows, and hence they are imperishable. But of one thing there is no doubt m my mmd, and that IS this : The Gospels, as they have come down to us, breathe the spirit of world-denial ( Weltverleugnung~) rather than that of earthly joy. In what moods do men most frequently turn to these writings ? In the exultation of victory and rejoicing, or in the sorrow of defeat, in the throes of sickness and death ! 92 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY No one will hesitate for an answer. Hearts bowed down by suffering and oppressed with sin, world-weary and life-wearj hearts, — these have invariably sought and found consola- tion and relief in the Gospels. The powerful and victorious, tlie hopeful and prosperous, are more apt to find their feelings expressed in Greek philosophy and in the Odes of Horace. Nor is there any doubt in my mind that the soul of Jesus, too, was attuned, not to happiness and victory, and life of life, but to death and world-denial. And would it not have been a most remarkable confusion if Christianity had taken as its starting-point the Jesus of Hase ? Hase believes that if Jesus had been a disciple of the Essenes, they would have cursed him as an apostate : " How these gloomy pietists would have shaken their pious heads and rolled their devout eyes at this cheerful and energetic man." But how strange, then, that this man looked upon the Baptist, that powerful figure, so unique in his rugged greatness, as his forerunner, that he pro- duced a Paul, who made such a sharp distinction between the flesh and the spirit, that the apostolic church, leaning as it did towards Ebionitism, the entire primitive church, with its ethical supernaturalism, followed his banner. Was all that a single grand mistake ? It seems strange to me that any one should attempt to correct this living tradition by means of the scanty fragments of the great living tradition, which have been preserved in the Gospels. If the oldest communities, which counted among their number the living witnesses of the life, teachings, and death of Jesus, did not know what these things meant, then it is not probable that we of the nineteenth century shall discover it by historical investigations. This inability to understand Christianity is evidently due to the fact that it has not yet become " historic." If it, to- gether with its effects, were a thing of the past, a purely historical investigation would not long remain in doubt as to its fundamental character. But such is not the case ; we are still surrounded, on all sides, if not by primitive Chrig. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 93 tianity itself, at least by its embodied effects. Our very lan- guage betrays the influence which Christianity has exercised upon it for centuries : no one would be willing to dispense with at least the name of a Christian. This explains the tendency which every man has to interpret Christianity conformably with his ideal of life. It also explains why we discover in the writings of the New Testament the very views of life and the world which we ourselves entertain, with, at most, a few slight changes here and there. For the champion of a con- servative state church the fundamental doctrine of Christianity consists in subjecting oneself to tliose in power, in respecting the institutions of the state and the church, the family and property. Liberal Protestantism, on the other hand, sees in Jesus the man who preached freedom, who broke the fetters of Jewish orthodoxy, who despised the ascetic ordinances ; hence he was evidently an advocate of the principle of free research, one of the great heroes of civilization, who delivered man from the yoke of superstition and turned him in the direction of progress ; in our times he would have been a liberal professor of theology, or, according to others, a social reformer. Est liber hie, in quo quserit sua dogmata quisque; Invenit in illo dogmata quisque sua. But, you will say, is it not true that Jesus had a low opinion of ascetic practices ? Did he not, in contrast with tlie Baptist, absolve his disciples of the duty of following them ? Did he not thereby give such offence to the Pharisees that they called him a glutton and a wine-bibber? — It is true ; although he did not prohibit ascetic practices, but took for granted that his disciples would fast, which they actually did. But why does he not enforce such practices ? Perhaps, because they are a hindrance to the enjoyment of life ? Not at all ; but simply because they do not suffice ; he regards them as a part of those works which the Pharisees of all ages have 94 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY offered to God to take the place of true worship: alms and prayers and tithes of mint and anise and cumin, instead of righteous works of justice and love of neighbor; external abstinence in lieu of the sacrifice of one's entire life. Jesus did not fail to see how prone the human heart is, eyen the sincere and well-meaning heart, to deceive God and itself in this manner, and hence he took it upon himself to break his disciples of the habit of prizing such things. He de- manded more, he demanded the complete separation of the heart from the world and entire devotion to God. The per- fect man needs no further preparation ; he who is imbued with the new spirit no longer needs to practise those little abstinences, he has no use for them ; which, of course, does not mean that they cannot be of service and of benefit to tJie novice. Paul describes the life of the perfect Christian : " It remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none ; and those that weep as though they wept not ; and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not ; and they that buy as though they possessed not ; and they that use this world as not abusing it : for the fashion of this world passeth away."i Whoever has so thoroughly emancipated himself from the world does not stand in need of such preparation. Now, that such a state is not adapted to promote what is called civilization can hardly be doubted : he whose heart is in heaven will not be very apt to make this earthly life rich and beautiful and grand, nor will he on that account have any censure to fear from Jesus. The Gospels nowhere say : Accumulate wealth and save, care for your own and the economic welfare of your family. But they do say : " Take no thought of your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on ; lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal." We no- where read : Have a care for the development of your natural 1 1 Cor., vii., 29 ff. THE CHRISTIAlSr CONCEPTION 95 capacities ; train the body by gymnastic exercises, make it strong and beautiful ; train the intellect, and the senses, so that you may appreciate the creations of art and poetry, the products of philosophy and science. But we do read : " If one of thy members offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee." We nowhere read : Try to obtain honors, help your friends to achieve fame and position ; but we do read : " Blessed are ye when men shall revile you ! " We nowhere read : Go and take a wife, and rear able citizens for the state ; but we do read : " There be eunuchs which have made them- selves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." We no- where read : Go and serve the state with thy sword or with thy counsel ; but we do read : " My kingdom is not of this world." We nowhere read : Go and labor for the happiness of the human race; the word happiness or its equivalent does not even occur in the writings of the New Testament. But we do read : " The world passeth away and the lusts thereof." If Jesus really believed that his disciples ought to make themselves useful to the world, not by preaching the transi- toriness of everything earthly and the eternal kingdom, but by taking part in the work which the world itself regards as important and great, then. Indeed, it must be confessed, he left nothing undone to be misunderstood. If, on the other hand, it was his purpose to exhort men, by his example and his teachings, to overcome the world, then we have the right to say : His preaching was as intelligible as it was effective. Indeed, no one has hitherto succeeded in wholly obscuring his meaning. Contemtus mundi and amor Christi are the inscriptions upon the two curtains enshrouding the hidden sanctuary in which dwells the community of Christ ; so Amos Comenius describes it in his Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of the Heart. Contemtus mundi alone is not Chris- tianity ; without amor Christi it becomes Schopenhauerian pessimism or Nietzschean tyrant-morality ; nor, on the other 96 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY hand, can there be Christianity without an admixture of con temtus miindi. But the man who is unable to glean the meaning of Chris- tianity either from the sermons of Jesus himself or from the interpretations of the apostles, may learn something from the way in which it was received by the world. Had Jesus been such an amiable preacher of human woi-ld-wisdom, his contemporaries would most likely not have considered it necessary to nail him to a cross : the amiable, proper, and charming people, who live and let live, who understand the art of combining " religion " with " culture," who incline toward " easy-going congeniality " and enjoy " the pleasures of a social cup," have never been regarded as dangerous, and nailed to crosses. If the Christianity of the early times had been what the interpreters of later ages have now and then made of it, the deadly enmity which it aroused in the world would be absolutely inconceivable. The apostles did not consider it so ; they evidently regarded the treatment they received as perfectly in order. Jesus had prophesied it : " Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake." " If ye were of the world, the world would love his own ; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." " The time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doth God service." Nothing was prophesied oftener and more distinctly by Jesus, and none of his prophecies was ever more accurately fulfilled. — Why this hatred ? Because the Christians despised what the world conceived to be the highest good. There was no better reason for hating any one. He that did not look upon the Emperor and the Empire as the highest good, did he not deserve to be hated? He that despised culture and science, did he not deserve to be hated? He that de- spised wealth and good living and social recognition, who withdrew from society and amusements, did he not de- serve to be hated ? Was he not really scorning others, if not THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 97 in words, at least by his mode of life ? He that is not for me is against me. This is the maxim which has always governed the feelings and actions of men.^ 1 There is no better commentary on the Gospels than the life of Savonarola as it is described in the admirable work of the Italian Villari [English transla- tion by L. Villari]. The life of Jesus in the Gospels is like a series of saintly pictures drawn upon a golden background, in which the chief figure stands out in bold relief, but without its background ; the life of Savonarola, on the other hand, resembles a great historical painting with a multicolored bacjcground. The fundamental outlines are the same ; the particular features recur with as- tonishing regularity : the preaching of the kingdom of God and the vanity of the world and its pleasures, its power and glory, its civilization and art, at first produces a strange excitement, especially in the hearts of the common people ; they applaud the great preacher and miracle-worker. Then the lords of this world, spiritual and secular, get together and deliberate how to check the scandal which is destroying peace and progress ; they convince themselves that it can only be done by removing the disturber. He is brought to trial amid the applause of all the educated ones, and is finally executed as a false prophet, swindler, and pretended miracle-worker, who cannot save himself, with the curses of the fanatical populace ringing in his ears. — Here again, moreover, we may find the word of Aristotle corroborated, that poetry is more " philosophical " than history. That the Gospels are not historical accounts like those we have of the life of Savonarola or Goethe, no one will doubt who is willing to follow a critical investigation like the one offered by Strauss. They are historical poems born of the faith that the life and death of Jesus are the absolutely important facts of history. To this day they have shown a unique and incomparable power in expressing and propagating this faith. If we had a " scientific " biography of Jesus, one based upon the most thorough research and drawn from the most reliable and copious sources, and written in the most admirable manner, like the above mentioned life of Savonarola, for example, its infiuence would, as com- pared with that of the Gospels, still be equal to zero. If efficacy ( Wirksamkeit) is the standard of reality ( Wirktichkeit), as the German language seems to imply, then the truth will remain that the Gospels are the greatest " reality " {das Wirk- lichste) ever made by human hands. — It seems to me this is occasionally forgot- ten by the critics of the Gospels as well as by those who are afraid of criticism — as though the Gospels could be destroyed by it. " For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." CHAPTER ni THE CONVEBSION OF THE OLD WOELU TO CHRISTIANITY » 1. Among all the occurrences recorded by history none is more astonishing than the conversion of the old world to Christianity. Never was there a spiritual movement which seemed so lacking in everything calculated to conquer the world, as Christianity. When Jesus died, he left behind a handful of followers, not a great fruit, it seemed, of such a life-work. And these followers were poor, uneducated people, without science, without wealth, without fame, without cour- age, except in suffering, without a single passion except a strange fanatical enthusiasm for a kingdom in a transmundane world. This is the impression which Christianity made upon those who witnessed its birth and early growth. Originating among the most despised of all nations, the Jews, consisting in the worship of a man who had been cast out by this people as an idle dreamer aud deceiver, and had died on the cross, it seemed that, weighed down with the contempt and hatred of the cultured, it would, like so many other superstitions of the age, soon sink into an inglorious oblivion. In a posthumous work of Th. Keim, Rome and Christian- ity^ may be found references from Graeco-Roman litera- ture which describe the feelings which Christianity aroused among its contemporaries : they are contempt and hatred. "The Christians," so says the philosopher Celsus (under 1 [Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. I., chap. IH. ; Friedlander, Dit Sittengeschichte Rom's (translated into French) ; Keim, Rom utid das Christen- thum; Baur (see p. 65), Part I. ; Fisher (see p. 65.) — Tk.] * Published by H. Ziegler, 1881. CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 99 Marcus Aurelius), " purposely and expressly exclude all wise and educated men from their meetings, and, like the quacks having the poorest wares, turn their attention only to the un- cultured rabble. Nay, they do not, as priests usually do, appeal to the pure and sinless, but to the unfortunate and sinful, to the criminals ; as though God did not accept the sin- less, as though he were, like a weak man, influenced by the laments of the wicked, and not by the justice of his judgment. This, however, the Christians merely do because they cannot gain adherents among honest and upright people." ^ This was the opinion of the philosophers. The masses detested them as atheists, of whom it was believed that they committed the most hideous crimes in their secret gatherings.^ The states- men, who really did not begin to pay any attention to Chris- tianity until the second century — the persecutions of the first century were outbreaks of temporary moods — regarded it as an obnoxious weed, which the interests of the state and society demanded should be eradicated. Trajan gave his gov- ernors orders to this effect : " The Christians shall not be hounded, but if they are accused and convicted, they shall suffer capital punishment. But if the offender denies Christi- anity and proves it by doing homage to our gods, he shall be pardoned for his past offence." ^ This was, in the main, the attitude of the government during the second century ; we shall have to agree with Keim that a more appropriate method of suppressing Christianity could not have been chosen. By keeping the mean between exemption from punishment and persecution, the state, on the one hand, hindered the introduc- tion of the new religion as the officially allowed or recognized form of worship, and, on the other, deprived it of that attrac- : tiveness with which persecution always invests a cause : only the senseless obstinacy which expressly refused, when asked, to show any respect for the gods of the state and people, was punished. For, an age which was in the habit of looking 1 402. 2 362 ff. » 52a 100 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY upon worship partly as the duty of the subject, partly as the satisfaction of harmless private desires, could not but regard such refusal as " mere obstinacy," as Marcus Aurelius con- temptuously calls the attitude of the Christians.^ And yet the incredible happened. Christianity gradually spread until it finally became the ruling religion in the great federation of nations of the Roman Empire. How was it possible for the old world to desert its religion ? How did it come about that the Greeks and the Romans were converted to a religion which despised everything that no Greek and no Roman could despise without repudiating himself: science and philosophy, poetry and art, fatherland and gods ? 2. Every attempt to understand this process will always find itself driven to conclusions which have often been drawn. The old world had outlived itself ; the principle of its life was dying. The city-state was the form of ancient life, free sovereign citizenship was the bearer of the ancient virtues. The city-states had been ruined, internally and externally; internally, by the splitting-up of the citizens into the two fac- tions of the rich and the poor, which antagonized each other in bloody conflicts ; externally, by their incorporation in the Roman Empire. The entire world was ruled by the Roman court. " Have I not," so Seneca lets the Emperor say in his work On Mercy ^ with which he flatteringly greeted the youthful Nero upon the latter's accession to the throne, " have I not been chosen from all mortals to govern as the representative of the gods upon earth ? Am T not judge over the life and death of nations ? Do not the fate and the position of every individual rest in my hands ? Does not Fortune proclaim through my mouth what she is willing to bestow upon every one ? Are not our decrees the cause of jubilation among nations and cities ? Can any part of the empire thrive without my will, without my favor ? These many thousand swords which are kept in their scabbards by 1 Reflections, XI., 3. a De dementia, I., 2. CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 101 my decrees of peace, are they not drawn at my beck and command ? Is it not at my behest that nations are exter- minated or transplanted, that freedom is given or taken away, that kings are sentenced to slavery or crowned, that cities are destroyed and built ? " And now when this supra- human power, as often happened, became the sport of f reed- men and courtesans, what an awful abyss of corruption yawned before the Romans and poisoned all nations and princes with its foul odors. In such an empire there was no more room for the old virtues. Among the ancient nations all virtues and excel- lences were connected with the state, totally differing from the modern virtues in this respect. The four cardinal virtues, prudence, courage, justice, temperance, are essentially civic virtues. The destruction of the old communities deprived them of the soil upon which they flourished and were prac- tised. In place of courage and justice, subserviency and the arts of flattery, treachery and violence, became the means of acquiring wealth, power, and dignity ; in the imperial period the goodness of a few emperors could not prevent these things, except to a very limited degree and within narrow circles. With the ancient manliness (virtus) and honorableness, the virtue of temperance passed away. Pomp and luxury on the one side, and proletarian wretchedness on the other, took the place of beautiful and moderate enjoyment. Friedlander has given us in his History of the Morals of Rome^ an authentic account of the life of the imperial city during the first two centuries. If I can trust my own im- pressions, no one will lay the book aside without a feeling of horror, although it was not written with the intention of producing that effect : with so much wealth and power, so much splendor and greatness, such a terribly empty and desolate life ! The chief purpose of this vast empire seems to * Sittengeschichte Rom't, 102 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY have been to feed and amuse the populace of the metropolis. Rome was not an industrial city, she really had no commerce and manufacture, but only an enormous import : from all parts of the world commodities were brought thither for consump- tion. The distribution of these commodities by shopkeepers constituted one of the most desired sources of revenue of the third estate. ■ The public administration seems to have been essentially an institution for the exploitation of the provinces by the relatives of the families who belonged to good society, the senatorial and equestrian classes. The population of the city was divided into two halves : the ruling families, who drained the provinces, and the masses, who in turn lived as parasites upon these vampires. " All the people whom you see in this city," writes Petronius, " are divided into two parties : they are either angling for something or being angled ; " or, using another figure : " You will behold a city that resembles a field during a pestilence, which contains nothing but corpses, and ravens which are devouring them." ^ The ravens were the swarms of clients, beggars, legacy-hunters, singers, actors, artists, astrologers, parasites of all kinds ; the corpses upon which they fed were the owners of large estates, the large capitalists, who squandered at Rome what their ancestors had made by administering the provinces, or what they had themselves in turn acquired through gifts, legacy-hunt- ing, etc. Every noble house supported, besides its army of slaves, an army of clients, whose sole function consisted in proving by their mere presence the noble rank of the man in whose atrium they appeared early in the morning, and whom they accompanied on his walks. They were rewarded for their services by receiving board or alimony and occasional presents ; niggardly enough, of course, in the opinion of those who received them. In addition to this, the masses of the metropolitan popula- tion were directly fed by the state, even during the lattei 1 Friedliinder, I., 371. CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 103 days of the Republic. According to Uhlhorn,^ C. Gracchus was the first to have a law enacted, which provided for the sale of wheat to Roman citizens by the state at cost price ; soon after it was distributed gratis. Caesar is said to have found as many as 320,000 receivers of grain in the city, and to have reduced the number to 150,000. Under Augustus it again rose to about 200,000 (for about one and one half millions of inhabitants). They also received gifts of oil, salt, meat, and money ; on all extraordinary occasions, accessions to the throne, anniversaries, testaments, there was always some- thing left over for " the people ; " Uhlhorn estimates the average amount of annual contributions in money at about six million marks. The second great object of concern of the governing classes was to amuse the masses. To this end theatres, games in the circus and amphitheatre, baths, etc., were instituted. In these matters, too, the beginning had already been made under the Republic ; the competition for the good will of the voters constantly increased the expenditures for the games which the successful candidates had to arrange. During the Empire, races, gladiatorial contests, and plays, especially the first, took the place of public business. " It is to your advantage, Caesar, that the people occupy themselves with us," a pantomime once called out to Augustus.* The splendor and grandeur as well as the number of the games constantly increased under the succeeding emperors. Under Augustus they occupied sixty-six days according to the festival-calen- dar, under Tiberius the number increased to eighty-seven days, not counting the frequent gladiatorial contests ; in the middle of the fourth century it was one hundred and seventy-five days. In addition there were extraordinary games : at the dedication of the Flavian amphitheatre Titus gave a festival lasting one hundred days ; in commemoration of the second ' Geschichte der christlichen LiebesthatigJceit in der alten Kirche, pp. 10 fl. * Friedlander, II., 257. 104 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY Dacian victory Trajan gave a festival lasting one hundred and twenty-three days. All the greater performances be- gan at daybreak and lasted till sunset. The number of seats in the three theatres together was 49,590, in the amphitheatre 87,000, in the circus, under CiEsar, 150,000, under Vespasian, 250,000, in the fourth century, 385,000. The emperor frequently also provided the spectators with re- freshments. " At a festival, which Domitian gave in the year 88, the number of young, beautiful, and richly attired imperial servants, who waited upon the people in the amphi- theatre was, according to Statius's account, as great as the immber of spectators. Some brought costly viands in baskets and white table-cloths, others old wines. Children and women, the populace, the nobles, and the senate, everybody feasted as at a table ; the Emperor himself condescended to take part in the meal, and the poorest man felt happy in the knowledge that he was his guest." ^ The festival was held in the amphitheatre ; the centre around which the large company gathered was the arena, the great slaughter-house in which criminals, slaves, and finally, above all, prisoners of war from all nations, after first having been trained for the purpose in the gladiatorial schools, killed each other for the delectation of the guests of the emperor. Under Augustus, a total of 10,000 men fought in the eight combats which he arranged ; in the festival lasting four months, which Trajan gave after the conquest of Dacia, as many as 10,000 men. Thus the captives of war of all nations had the honor of fighting once more before the lord of the earth and of dying under his very eyes. With the blood of all the nations was mingled in the arena the blood of all the animal species of the earth. In the games of Pompey were seen 17 elephants, 500 to 600 lions, and 410 other African beasts. In the 26 games alone, instituted by Augustus, about 3,500 African animals were hunted and 1 Friedlander, IL, 277. CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 105 slaughtered ; at the dedication of the Flavian amphitheatre, under Titus, about 9,000 tame and wild animals. New and more refined settings were invented : nocturnal combats were added, sea-fights alternated with land-battles, the arena being flooded with water. And around this scene of blood and horror were gathered the emperor and the senators, the people and nobility, men and women, eating and drinking, laughing and courting, shouting and roaring: a scene of horror, a city of horror, the like of which has never been witnessed upon this earth. The history of the morality of Eome is the commentary to the Apocalypse. The provinces followed tlie example of the capital, the governors the example of the emperor. In all the cities we find the same division of society into vampires and parasites. By distributing offices and honors, the municipalities them- selves sponged upon the wealth of the few ; in addition to this, a countless train of clients fastened itself upon the rich house- holds. In all the cities we find gladiatorial contests and animal-hunts : " There was not a single city from Jerusalem to Seville, from England to Northern Africa, in whose arena numerous victims were not slaughtered year after year." The Greek populace alone retained a trace of its former refinement and culture, and only gradually and with difficulty found pleasure in these games ; while the cultured classes in Greece held themselves entirely aloof from them." ^ Nor is it likely that they took greater pleasure in the theatrical perform- ances with which the lords of the world were entertained, the Atellanae and mimes, the pantomimes and ballets. " By the side of the violent excitement furnished by the circus and the arena, the stage could not retain its attraction for the masses except by offering brutal enjoyments and tickling the senses : and so, instead of counteracting the pernicious in- fluence of these other spectacles, it contributed not the least part in corrupting and brutalizing Rome." " What an awful i Friedlander, II., 380 it « II., 391. 106 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY state of debaucherj resulted from all this is shown with photographic exactness in a description which we have of the life of a little Italian town, dating from the time of Nero : The Feast of Trimalchio by Petronius.^ The coarseness of taste and feeling displayed by the host and the guests at the table of the freedman of Cumffi, who had grown rich by com- mercial speculations, most likely surpasses anything that has ever been witnessed in the circles of the parvenu and the parasite. 8. It is not strange that a feeling of profound discontent accompanied such a life. Pleasure, according to the well- known Aristotelian dictum, follows efficient action ; a life of idleness and amusement ends in pain and nausea. Philosophy is a mirror of the feelings of an age. It is not those addicted to the life we have described who philosophize — I mean seriously philosophize, for, of course, there is a " philosopher " among the parasites of every noble house- hold — but those who endeavor to fly from it and yet cannot emancipate themselves from their times. They feel the utter nothingness and emptiness of their existence ; their philoso- phy is a philosophy of redemption. The vanity of all things which everybody is running after, and the possibility of being delivered by philosophy, that is the fundamental theme of the reflections of Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius: Seek the seclusion of your own soul, do not desire what is not in your power, let the world go its way, and you will be at peace. " Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish ; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life." " When a raven has croaked inauspiciously, let not the appearance hurry you away with it ; but straightway make a distinction in your mind and say. None of these things is signified to me but to my poor body, or to my small property, or to my reputation, or to my children, or to my wife ; but to me all ' [English translation by H. T. Peck, New Tork, 1898.] CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 107 significations are auspicious if I choose. For whatever of these things results, it is in my power to derive benefit from it." " Remember that in life you ought to behave as at a banquet. Suppose that something is carried around and is opposite to you. Stretch out your hand and take a portion with decency. Suppose that it passes by you. Do not detain it. Suppose that it is not yet come to you. Do not send your desire forward to it, but wait till it is opposite to you. Do so with respect to children, so with respect to a wife, so with respect to magisterial offices, so with respect to wealth, and you will be some time a worthy partner of the banquets of the gods. But if you take none of the things which are set before you, and even despise them, then you will be not only a fellow banqueter with the gods, but also a partner with them in power. For by acting thus Diogenes and Heracleitus and those like them were deservedly divine, and were so called." " Let death and exile and every other thing which appears dreadful be daily before your eyes ; but most of all death, and you will never think of anything mean nor will you think of anything extravagantly." So says Epictetus.^ To suffer and renounce : that is the final aim of wisdom. Still more strongly does the feeling of melancholy though calm resignation appear in the Reflections ^ of Marcus Aure- lius. " Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judg- ment. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor, and life is a warfare, and a stranger's so- journ, and after-fame is oblivion. What, then, is that which is able to conduct a man ? One thing and only one, philoso- phy. But this consists in keeping the daemon within a man 1 [See the Encheiridion or Manual, 8, 18, 15, 21, Eng. translation by Long.] ' [Eng. translation by Loni;.] 108 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleas- ures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything ; and besides, accepting all that hap- pens, and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, where- ever it is, from whence he himself came ; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded." ^ " Constantly consider how all things as they now are, in time past also were; and consider that they will be the same again. And place before thine eyes entire dramas and stages of the same form, whatever thou hast learned from thy experience or from older history ; for ex- ample, the whole court of Hadrianus, and the whole court of Antoninus, and the whole court of Philippus, Alexander, Croesus ; for all those were such dramas as we now see, only with different actors."* " The idle business of show, plays on the stage, flocks of sheep, herds, exercises with spears, a bone cast to little dogs, a bit of bread into fish-ponds, laborings of ants and burden-carryings, runnings-about of frightened little mice, puppets pulled by strings. ... It is thy duty then in the midst of such things to show good humor and not a proud air ; to understand, however, that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself." ^ "What, then, is that about which we ought to employ our serious pains? This one thing : thoughts just, and acts social, and words which never lie, and a disposition which gladly accepts all that happens, as necessary, as usual, as flowing from a principle and source of the same kind." * " Cast away opinion, thou art saved. What then hinders thee from casting it away?"^ "Con- sider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. Take away, then, when thou choosest, thy opinion, and, like » 11.. 17. » VII., 3. • XII,, 25. » X.. 27. * IV.. 33. CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 109 a mariner who has doubled the promontory, thou wilt find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay." ^ " Seldom, indeed," says Lecky,^ " has such active and un- relaxing virtue been united with so little enthusiasm, and been cheered by so little illusion of success." We meet the same features in the philosophy of this period. The movements which Zeller embraces under the title : Pre- cursors of Neo-Platonism, in the last volume of his History of Greek Philosophy, the Neo-Pythagoreans, the later Cynics, the Essenes, the Judaeo-Greek philosophy of Philo, all of them have their origin in the same mood of life and show the same traits ; they preach submission and resignation, absten tion from the world, supported by asceticism, a return to the suprasensuous world, to which the soul really belongs. The life in the body they regard as a life in a prison-house, death as the emancipation of the just. This last offshoot of the old trunk of philosophy, Neo-Platonism, has shown a re- markable power in utilizing the results of all previous phil- osophical investigations, and has constructed a system of the universe based upon this mood. The goal of the philosophy of Plotinus is a purely supranaturalistic ethics. By freeing itself from the sensuous impulses and sensuous knowledge, the soul is enabled wholly to give up its temporal-personal self-consciousness, and to raise itself into communion with the divine by means of ecstasy. Thus it returns to its origin and fulfills its highest mission. It is said that Plotinus re- fused to allow a painting to be made of himself, because he was ashamed of his body. — Thus philosophy came to be exactly what Socrates once called it: the study of death (jjLekeTTi davdrov). It would, of course, be a mistake to suppose that this philo- sophical movement reflected the general conception of the times. In the section of his work which deals with the rela- tion of philosophy to the age, Friedlander has brought to- ' XII., 22. ' History of European Morals, I., 253. 110 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY gether a mass of evidence to show that philosophy was not without its enemies and despisers. Educated and uneducated people derided the philosophers as ridiculous fools, who with their breadless art acquired neither advancement nor reputa- tion, neither money nor favor ; they at the same time hated them as men who by their words and their mode of life dis- dained and censured their fellows and their aspirations. By many the occupation with philosophy was regarded as at least improper for the statesman ; at times it was even con- sidered dangerous to the state ; during the first century the philosophers were twice driven from Rome. The relation of a philosophy to its age by no means consists in expressing that which its age possesses, but rather in expressing what it lacks; it shows what the most reflective and the most sensitive among those living at the time desire and strive after ; their ideal contains the features of the present, but only as a negative picture. But in so far as all historical progress has its origin in the feeling of want or discomfort, we may also say : The philosophers are diviners of the future ; we can learn from them not what is and what is esteemed, but what is to come. In this sense we may regard the philosophy of the Empire as a sign that a radical change is about to take place in the inner life of the ancient peoples ; their deepest longing is no longer for the development and perfection of the natural life ; exhausted by the pleasures and sufferings of this world, they are beginning to crave with secret yearnings for deliverance. 4. By offering them deliverance and, besides, an eternal life in transmundane, suprasensuous glory, Christianity satis- fied the most secret and deepest yearnings of the age. That which the philosophers brought particularly to the educated and high-born, was promised by Christianity to the poor and wretched, the weary and heavy-laden : deliverance from the bondage of earthly fear and desire, in which the soul is held by the world and outward show. The former promised deliver- CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 111 ance as the fruit of knowledge, the latter as the effect of grace ; and in so far the disposition of ^e philosopher is radically different from that of the Christian, the old pride of conscious virtue or self-righteousness still clings to the former. But they almost entirely agree in their judgment of life and man. Christianity was not the only religion from the Orient which gained adherents at this time. The Egyptian, Syrian, and Persian gods and forms of worship also made devout and grateful converts in the Roman Empire ; likewise Juda- ism, the old and the new, as which Christianity was first regarded. Friedlander ^ accounts for the reception of the foreign cults by the thorough mixture of the nations ; poly- theism, he finds, does not really exclude the gods of the newly incorporated peoples, but leaves to them their special spheres of action; the Romans in foreign lands unhesitatingly ap- pealed to the native gods. The mixture of nations was un- doubtedly the cause of the mixture of religions; but why did these Oriental cults, the worship of the Syrian Baal and Astarte, the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, the Persian Mithras, prove 80 attractive to the people of the Empire ? For, as J. Burckhardt properly insists in his beautiful work on the Age of Constantine the Great^: "The later Romans in their truly universal superstition conformed to the local worship in Gaul as well as everywhere else ; but no Gallic god was trans- ferred to Italy or Greece ; " whereas the Oriental cults really took root in Greece and Rome. The reason can surely be found only in what Burckhardt finds it : owing to their inner characteristics the Oriental religions met a need of the Roman world which was no longer satisfied by the old native religion. Now, these cults are peculiar, in that the doctrine of a life after death is essential to them all. After doing severe penance and mortifying himself, the believer is promised ex- piation and purification, in virtue of which he will escape 1 III.. 4. ' Section V. 112 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY the punishments awaiting the impenitent offender in the hereafter. Human sacrifices and self-mutilation are customary in many of these cults. The thought of a life after death was rather foreign to the classical age : this earthly life was the true life, the life after death a shadow of the present life. The only concern which men felt for the hereafter was to preserve a good reputation among the living.^ During the empire a change gradually took place ; the hereafter assumed greater and greater importance at the expense of this world. And now the old gods would no longer suffice. Not only to the men of the classic age, but to their gods also, the here- after was an unfamiliar thought ; they were the gods of the living, not of the dead ; they were the givers and preservers of earthly gifts ; health and beauty, victory and wealth, they bestowed upon their favorites, and were honored with cheerful festivals in return. With the dead tliey had nothing to do. The age showed its solicitude for the future life by seeking new gods and forms of worship, and found them in the old religions of the East. 5. The Christian religion gained the victory over her rivals. What made her victorious ? We are surely justi- fied in believing : her inner worth. Perhaps it was, first of all, the sensuous-suprasensuous conviction of the immediate return of the Lord to judge the earth and to establish the kingdom of glory, which gave the members of the church the strength to despise the world and imbued their preach- ing of the kingdom with such overpowering force. More- over, the esprit de corps was for this very reason much stronger among the professors of Christianity than among the other religious communities; they looked upon them- selves, not without a feeling of pride, as a community of saints chosen from the world, as the members of the kingdom of glory, whose sojourn here in the flesh was a mere accident. This separation from the world was encouraged by the > Friedlander, III., 5. CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 113 jealous exclusiveness of their worship, a heritage of Jewish monotheism, which branded all adoration, of other gods as of idolatry. The power of a religion to gain adherents is in inverse proportion to its tendency to mix with others. Then, again, there was more of the self-sacrificing devotion of the founder in the Christian communities than among the fol- lowers of the other cults, although all of them demanded sacrifices, and none was without its martyrs. But none of them had such a host of martyrs as Christianity. It is a wonderful fact, one that does honor to human nature, that no sermon makes a deeper impression upon it than that preached from a cross. Finally, the Christian belief also satisfied the reason in a certain sense ; the rational mono- theism of the new religion, which worshipped God as a spirit, was more acceptable than the myths of the old popular religions, which were no longer believed, or than many of the absurd superstitions of the East. 6. Perhaps the conversion of the Greeks and Romans to Christianity also admits of a further explanation. We may regard the conversion of a people to a religion of redemption as the final stage in the development of its entire spiritual life. I venture merely to suggest this view, for a knowl- edge of the laws of the evolution of a popular life, similar to that which we have of the development of an individual life, is of course utterly out of the question. Let us say, then, that the religion of redemption is the product of a nation's senility: it produces mythology and the tales of heroes in its youth, philosophy and science in its manhood, a philo- sophy of consolation and a religion of redemption in its old age. We might compare the stages of development in the world of ideas with parallel stages of development in the practical world: youth yearns for action in the chase and war ; manhood turns to work and acquisition, to commerce and industry ; old age lays aside its tasks, and feeds on the products of its former achievements ; it yearns for rest, and 8 114 ORIGINS OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY withdraws from the present, it lives in the memory of the past and in the thought of the hereafter. The new religion, therefore, offers itself as a substitute for poetry and science, for work and conflict, hopefully transfiguring the evening of life as with a soft twilight. The same development of the great Eastern branch of the Aryan stock also seems to favor such a view of the conver- sion of the old nations to Christianity. The Hindoos, too, had once started out, under the protection of kindred martial gods, upon a career of conquest and victory, and had battled for their habitations on the banks of the Indus and the Ganges. They, too, had reached a high stage of mental and economic evolution. And among them also, at last, the desire for civilization changed into religiosity. Brahmanism, and still more Buddhism, both of them products of immanent development, are to the Orientals what Christianity was in the Graeco-Roman world. The two conceptions of life show such an astonishing similarity in their details, that the belief in the derivation of Christianity from Indian sources constantly forces itself upon us. The commands of the Dhammapadam, a collection of wise Buddhistic sayings,^ often exactly agree, in meaning and in language, with the collection of sayings of the so-called Sermon on the Mount. To exterminate tlie desires, to suffer wrong without anger and revenge, to be pure in heart and peaceful in disposition : these are the commands which are given to the believers in the former case as well as in the latter. The forms of life, 1 For a German translation see W. Weber's Hindoo Studies (Indische Studien), I., 29-86. The able work of H. Oldenberg, Buddha, his Life, his Doctrine, hit Order {Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde) [English translation, London, 1882] (2 ed., 1890) gires the historical basis for the interpretation and understanding of these sayings. In the third volume of Duncker's History o] Antiquity we have an attempt to trace the development of the Hindoo popular spirit, in which the contrast between a stage of civilization and a religions stage of development is very marked. [See the excellent little work of Panl Cams, The Gospel of Buddha and his Table of Reference, on pp. 231-241 ; also the bibliography given by him on pages 241-242. — Ts.] CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD 115 too, in which these demands are sought to be realized show the most remarkable similarity ; here as well as there we find monasteries and monks, with the three vows of poverty, chastity, and humility or obedience. There are, of course, also radical differences between Budd- hism and Christianity, differences conditioned by the lives of the two founders. In Buddha, the Enlightened One, there is no passion, we might almost say, no personal will ; a gentle teacher, he travels from place to place, communicating the truth discovered by him that life is suffering, and that the way to salvation passes through the knowledge of the essence of existence. The life of Jesus is a struggle with the world and with evil, which confronts him in personal form in Satan. Buddha's death is the quiet extinction of a flame, the death of Jesus is the victorious death of a hero. The words of Jesus are flames which arouse passions, the preaching of Buddha is monotonous repetition ; we might almost say, it has a hypnotizing effect. Schopenhauer's claim that Christianity is in every respect inferior to Budd- hism, can be explained only by his a priori aversion to Christianity, or rather to the church and theology ; for other- wise he could not have failed to see how much greater is the value of Christianity, considered from the purely human and poetical standpoint, than that of Buddliism. The more highly developed the will-to-live is in the Occident, the greater is at least the dramatic interest in its conversion. But in so far as the above-mentioned differences are differ- ent expressions of the original or acquired character of the nations, we may say : Christianity and Buddhism are homologous processes of development. CHAPTER IV THE MIDDLE AGES AND THEIK CONCEPTION OF LIFE^ 1. The Middle Ages seem, at first sight, to have been abso- lutely ruled by the Christian conception of life. The church represents the framework in which their entire spiritual life was embraced. The church doctrine governed knowledge ; the vita religiosa, the monastic life, which rests upon the principle of world-estrangement and self-denial, was unreservedly ac- cepted as the ideal of conduct. Indeed, poverty, chastity, and obedience, the three monastic vows, meant nothing but the extermination of the three strongest impulses of the natural man : the impulses which aim at possession, family, reputation and power. In reality, the entire clergy were amenable to the rules of the vita religiosa; their mission consisted in exemplifying to the people the Christian life ; but the church never wholly succeeded in imposing monachism upon the clergy living outside of the monasteries; celibacy alone was gradually enforced. Nevertheless, it would be an error to suppose that mediaeval life was really the same in character as the life of the old Christian communities in the Graeco-Roman world. If there is any truth whatever in the view suggested above, concerning the nature of the religion of redemption, this cannot have been the case. The Middle Ages do not represent the senility of the Germanic nations, but, if we may be allowed to continue our comparison of a collective life with an individual life, their school-days ; they went to school to antiquity, learning 1 [See references in notes on pp. 35 and 65. — Tk.] THE MEDIAEVAL CONCEPTION 117 language and science, philosophy and religion, useful and beautiful arts. Now, these youthful nations could no more be converted, in the real sense of the term, than a schoolboy can be converted. He alone can be converted who has lived, and now discovers that life does not keep what it seemed to promise. The old nations were converted, they made this discovery at the end of a long and brilliant career of civili- zation ; after having failed to find happiness by satisfying their- desires, they now sought peace through deliverance from desire. When the Germans became Christians, they had hardly entered upon the path of civilization ; they could not receive the baptism with the same feelings as the ancients. Of this the history of their Christianization does not leave us in doubt. In the old world the conversion to Christianity was absolutely spontaneous and from within. Christianity had come to the ancients, not with the force of arms, like Islam later on, nor with superior culture and science ; it possessed none of these things, nay, the lack of them constituted one of its essential traits. It triumphed not by the methods of pol- itics, but contrary to the will of the political powers. To be sure, after its establishment, after it became a power, this state of affairs soon changed ; the politicians, who make everything subserve their ends, also utilized Christianity, the state itself became Christian, or Christianity was organized into a state, and the last remains of paganism were finally eradicated by the government. All this, of course, could not fail to in- fluence the inner essence of Christianity ; ever since the existence of Christian emperors, which Tertullian had de- clared to be a contradiction in terms,^ the church could no longer assume the harsh opposition to the " world " which the primitive communities assumed ; a kind of compromise was made between Christianity and the world : it assimilated 80 much of the world as was needed, not to overcome but to 1 Apol., i;. 21. 118 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY rule the world. In this way the church developed into a new world-power during the latter days of antiquity, not, however, without having first created a kind of refuge in the mon- asteries for an unworldly or extra- worldly Christianity ; and the high estimate which the church places upon the monastic life shows that she is still conscious of the true relation of Christianity to the world. The conversion of the Germanic peoples was a process entirely different from the original conversion of the old nations to Christianity ; they were, we might say, not really converted to Christianity, but to the church. Politics and coercion always played a part in the reception of baptism, and often cast the deciding vote. The Germanic tribes, from whom the German people sprang, were all of them com- pelled by the force of arms to join Christianity or rather the political-ecclesiastical system of the Prankish Empire. The liistory of the wars and administration of Charlemagne tells bloody tales of the "conversion" of the Saxons. He that refuses baptism, so it is decreed in the eapitulare of Pader- born (785), or wantonly eats meat during Lent, or burns a corpse after the custom of the heathens, shall die. Whoever cannot recite the Lord's prayer or the creed, so a later eapitulare decrees, shall be punished with blows or by fast- ing, whether it be a man or a woman. 2. Just as the conversion of the Germans was different from that of the ancients, so their conceptions and mode of life differed from those of primitive Christianity. The Middle Ages were not tired of the world and sated with life, but full of energy and the desire to achieve great deeds. Individuals were not wanting in whom the true Christian mood asserted itself ; in many a mediaeval church hymn the feeling of world- weariness and the yearning for deliverance from this misery and for the heavenly fatherland is pathetically expressed. But that was not the prevailing mood. By the side of the church poetry flourished the popular epie or heroic poem ; THE MEDIEVAL CONCEPTlOX 119 coming nearer to the hearts of the people, it was transmitted by word of mouth throughout the entire Middle Ages. It is not at all Christian in character. The virtue most admired is not resignation and patience, but ferocious courage ; the warlike hero is the ideal of the Nibelungenlied no less than of the Iliad. To love your enemies and to suffer wrong was as foreign to the German warriors as to the heroes in Homer. The true man was a strong and true friend to his friends, and an awful enemy to his enemies. The old Saxon poem of the life of Jesus (the Heliand) makes Christ a mighty lord and the disciples his retainers ; the transformation shows how impossible it was for the Saxons to imagine the real Jesus and his followers. The lyric poetry is as little Christian in character as the epic. It sings of the pleasures and sorrows of love, the joys of spring and the love of the world. Such poetry springs directly from the hearts of the people. There is no doubt that it is a true mirror of their real life. Measured by the command of the Gospels to despise the world and its pleasures, the life of the Germanic nations during the Middle Ages was not a Christian life. The great business of the men was war ; martial games and the chase occupied the leisure of the nobles. The pleasures of the table and society were also prized, and the relations of the sexes were made the subject of an art and a study, all of which is elaborately set forth in Weinhold's Buch uher die deutschen Frauen im Mittelalter. 3. Nor did the actual life of the clergy, as has frequently been pointed out, always wholly conform to its ascetic ideal. The Pope, who, in remembrance of the command of Christ, called himself the servant of the servants of God, was in reality the lord of the world ; the bishops were princes and rulers, many among them caring more for their lands and people, for power and wealth, than for the salvation of souls. The cloisters, in which the spirit of unworldliness ( Weltflucht, world-flight) and asceticism was supposed to thrive, were 120 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY centres of civilization, and occasionally also the scenes of luxurious and unholy enjoyment. The Benedictines and Cistercians carried handicrafts and arts, horticulture and agri- culture, wherever they went. Even the treasures of heathen science and literature sought refuge in the monasteries, and were preserved by them for posterity, a service for which they have often been extolled. The praise is well deserved, but it is strange, nevertheless, that the brotherhoods of Christian asceticism should have sought and found praise not only for transcribing the verses of Ovid and Horace, the writings of Aristotle and Lucretius, but also for studying, explaining, imitating, and so constantly keeping them alive. And no less strange seem to us, looked at from this point of view, those military orders the members of which, as the soldiers of Christ, wore the sword and the cross, the coat of mail and the cassock, and inflicted as well as bound up wounds in his service. The intellectual life of the Middle Ages, which was directly dominated by the church, also differed from that of primitive Christianity. A strong, youthful craving for knowledge was unmistakable; the age still distrusted its own powers, and drew upon others for its science, but it took it wherever it found it ; from the books of the heathens, Jews, and Saracens, the scholars of the mediasval universities derived their knowl- edge of things. Scholastic theology itself is a first modest attempt to rationalize the sacred teachings. The saying of Anselm : " I believe in order that I may understand," is char- acteristic of mediaeval theology; the latter does not aim to create a new truth, — we have the truth ; but it desires to ap- propriate, and, as it were, to master by the natural reason the truth which was originally accepted on faith. That was the high goal of the intellectual strivings of the Middle Ages — a goal, however, which was found to be more and more unattain- able as the work progressed. We cannot say that this aim was in harmony with the spirit of primitive Christianity ; Paul, at THE MEDIEVAL CONCEPTION 121 least, in whom the "foolish preaching of the cross" was first confronted with Greek wisdom, does not dream of a com- promise between the two, or of rendering tHe truth of salva- tion intelligible to the natural reason ; TertuUian with his / believe because it is absurd, evidently comes nearer to his way of looking at things than Anselm. The desire to comprehend the faith is, in a certain sense, the first beginning of the desire to be emancipated from it, to rise above it. So Luther felt about the matter ; he hated scholastic theology and philosophy, because they mingled with the Christian faith the heathen wisdom of Aristotle ; he desired to restore the former in its purity. Hence mediaeval Christianity was not the same as primitive Christianity. Not only were the Germans Christianized, but Christianity was also Germanized; it appropriated the nat- ural desire for civilization of the youthful nations, and was thoroughly imbued with their spirit. Moreover, it had, as has already been pointed out, gradually assumed a more positive relation to the world and its aims, even during antiquity, and was thus prepared for the task of bringing to the new nations the elements of the old civilization along with the new faith. 4. What shall we say of this mixture of Christianity and the world ? The sects which separated from the triumphant church have always regarded it as a corruption of Chris- tianity ; they were unable to recognize in a state church the community of saints who had gathered around the word of the cross in the primitive times. The peculiar essence and strength of Christianity seemed to them to have been lost when the church divided with the state the power over the world, either ruling it, as the Catholic church always aimed to do, or being ruled by it, as in the case of Protestantism. From the standpoint of primitive Christianity it would be hard to contradict this view. Christianity was originally a battle with the world. A Christianity without battle, a 122 OKIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY Christianity recognized by the world, approved and author- ized by the state, is no longer the same thing ; or if all men had become Christians, there would no longer be any world or state ; the times would be fulfilled, history closed. — It is also certain that a type of character has been produced by the mixture of Christian forms and modes of speech with worldly manners, which is one of the most repulsive deform- ities ever suffered by the nature of man ; it is called Pfaffen- tum: haughtiness and greed for power assuming the form of Christian humility ; harshness and presumption, disguised as love and care for the soul of the brother. The ancient world was unfamiliar with this type, but it is as old as the church, and is found, moreover, not only among the servants of the church, but also among the servants of the state and science, indeed among all who have spiritual or worldly power. If we look upon the priests as the representatives of the church, we can hardly regard the church as anything but a great degeneration.^ 1 As an attempt to write a history of non-ecclesiastical Christianity, that is, the true evangelical Christianity, a work hy L. Keller, The Reformation and the Older Reform-Parties {Die Rrformation und die alteren Reformparteien), 1 885, is of interest. That the author has succeeded in proving an uninterrupted, historical connection in the " evangelical communities " from the time when Christianity became a state religion under Constantiue, down to the Reformation and beyond it to our times, the expert may well doubt. We must not, however, forget that not every- thing that has happened is to be found in the fragmentary records which have come down to ns. — A passionate protest is raised against state Christianity from the standpoint of primitive Christianity by the Dane, Soeren Kierkegaard, in his later writings. In the intensely sarcastic articles published by him in the year 18.5.5, in a number of journals, and entitled "Moment" (German translation in: Soeren Kierkegaard, Attack upon Christianity, edited by A. Dorner and Chr. Schremph, 1896), he again and again contrasts the original preachers of Chris- tianity, who gave up their lives for it, with the thousands of " witnesses of the trnth," employed bj-the royal Banish government, who by preaching the passion of Christ win positions, decorations, silver table-services, gilded reclining chairs, and other glories. The true Christian is even to this day recognized by the Cross ; not by the gold or silver cross which is worn on a colored ribbon around the neck or upon the bosom and marks its wearer as a knight or a commander, but by the Cross which is imposed as a martyrdom and a disgrace by the self- appointed and official representatives of the world upon those who despise tha world for Christ's sake. Indeed, it is perhaps the strangest irony of history that the cross, or, translating the Rom.in custom into modern language, the THE MEDIEVAL CONCEPTION 123 The judgment of history, however, can and must be a dif- ferent one. In order to become the powerful leaven which it afterward became, in order to be not merely the euthanasia of the old peoples, but a life-principle of the new society of nations now appearing upon the theatre of the world, Chris- tianity had to assume a positive relation to the world, it had to be organized into the strong and permanent form of the church, after the manner of a world-kingdom. It is, of course, an indisputable fact that it was thereby changed, but it is no less certain that this was the only condition under which it could have hoped to influence the future historical life of the modern nations. It is not probable that the old Christian communities would have succeeded in converting and educat- ing the warlike Germanic tribes. The latter bowed dowB before the brilliant retinue of Christ in the church ; it h more than doubtful whether they would have bowed down before the followers by whom Jesus himself was surrounded on earth. Now, unless we deny that very valuable elements have been added to the life of these nations by the church, we cannot deny that the transformation of Christianity into the church was an historical necessity. But there is no danger that an impartial observer will deny such a proposition, unless, of course, he is prepared to reject not only the church, but the Middle Ages themselves as one great mis- take. A fanatical prophet of the Eenaissance or a passionate follower of the Reformation might perhaps have been ready to do such a thing ; at present no one will refuse to admit that the spiritual-moral life of the Middle Ages was full of peculiar beauty. And this beauty universally depends upon the eccles- iastical-Christian character of their thoughts and feelings. 1 call to mind the tender, high-minded sense of justice, which, gibbet, should be wom as a mark of honor. — A book of Leo Tolstoi, My Religion, (English translation. New York, 1899) expresses similar views with respect to the relation of Christianity to the Greek Orthodox Church. The commentary from the inner life gf the poet is furnished by his wonderful Popular Storiei (Keclam Libraiy), 124 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY grafted upon the military virtues of the Germanic nations, pro- duced such a peculiar type of moral nobility in their knight- hood ; and the merciful treatment of the poor and wretched, a form of beneficence which, embodied in thousands of charit- able institutions, has come down to us, and to this day alleviates suffering and dries tears. I also call to mind their spiritualized relations to women, and their aversion to all sexual unchastity — although the latter frequently failed to prevent what is hardly repulsive to the natural man, and the former resulted in strange aberrations in the Minnedienst, yet the tenderness and rigor of the Middle Ages contrast favorably with the frivolousness and superficiality of the ancient world. I call to mind the gradual growth of the sentiment that slavery, the order of society according to the natural right of the stronger, does not agree with the commandment of love. Although the church did not abolish slavery, but permitted it to exist, like other worldly institu- tions, as an indifferent form by the side of the order in the kingdom of heaven, nay, expressly recognized it and bought and owned slaves herself, she was neither able nor willing to hinder the spirit of the Gospel, wherever it triumphed, from entirely transforming the relation between masters and slaves, so that even the legal form ultimately became impos- sible.^ I finally call to mind the union of the nations in the church, which somewhat softened the national antag- onisms ; not sufficiently, it is true, to prevent wars, but yet sufficiently to rob them of the character of wars of annihila- tion, in which these antagonisms result according to the natural order of events. We cannot fail to recognize in all these things the influence of organized Christianity, which had, by assimilating elements of civilization of all kinds, become a world-power. And the glorious development of > See the instructive essay by F. Overback on the relation of the old chnrch to slavery in the Roman Empire in his Studies on the History of the Ancient Church {Studim zur Geschichte der alten Kirche), 1875. THE MEDIiEVAL CONCEPTION 125 mediaeval art, the promising beginnings of scientific study, would they have been possible without the church ? The "evangelical communities," which clung to the old concep- tion concerning the relation of Christianity to the world, have always shown indifference or aversion to art and science. Hence, whoever does not regard all civilization as a mistake, or the participation of the Germanic nations in Christianity and ancient civilization as an aberration inconsistent with their own immanent development — a view which is possible, but which, of course, can neither be proved nor refuted — cannot regard the mixture of Christianity with civilization as a mere corruption of the Gospel.^ ' The aboTe exposition agrees in its historical conception as well as in its criti- cal estimate with the view held by Harnack in his History of the Dogma. A few passages from the first volume of this work, which gives us a clear idea of the growth of the theoretical side of ecclesiastical Christianity, may suffice to show this. " By surrounding the Gospel with h, protecting shell, Catholicism at the same time obscured it. It preserved the Chri.stian religion against acute Hel- lenization (Gnosticism), but was at the same time forced to permit a con- stantly increasing measure of secularization. In the interests of its worldly mission, it did not, indeed, exactly destroy the awful earnestness of the religion, but it made it possible for those who were less serious in their convictions to be regarded as Christians and to regard themselves as such, by permitting a less rigorous ideal of life. It allowed a church to arise which wasi no longer a com- munity of faith, hope, and discipline, but a political community, in which the Gospel simply constituted one of many important elements. It invested all forms which this worldly community needed, with apostolic — that is, indirectly, with divine — authority, in an increasing measure, and thereby corrupted Christianity and obscured and rendered difficult the knowledge of what was Christian. But in Catholicism the religion for the first time received a systematic form. In Catholic Christianity the formula was found which reconciled faith and science. This formula satisfied mankind for centuries, and the blessings which it brought continued even after the formula itself had become a fetter." (I., 275.) Catholicism, the product of the most intimate fusion of Christianity with antiquity, "conquered the world and became the foundation for a new phase of history in the Middle Ages. The union of the Christian religion with a particular historical' phase of knowledge and civilization of humanity, may be deplored in the interests of the Christian religion, which was thereby made worldly, and in the interests of civilization, which was thereby impeded. But complaints here become presumptuous : for we are indebted for nothing less than everything we possess and prize to the union which has been formed between Christianity and antiquity, a union in which neither element has been able to overcome the other. But upon the conflicts resulting from this relation our inner and spiritual life depends to this day." (p. 284.) CHAPTER V THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF LIFE 1. The end of the fifteenth century marks a new epoch in the life of the Western world ; the modern era becomes the heir of the Middle Ages. The line of demarkation is clear and distinct ; it is defined by two powerful spiritual move- ments : by the Renaissance and the Reformation. New forms of life and a new conception of the universe were subse- quently developed. The state, the institution of the modern times, gradually supplanted the church, the dominant insti- tution of the Middle Ages : the influence of the latter declined, the individual became self-dependent in his highest relations, in his relation to God, and gradually shook off the guardian- ship of the church in matters of faith and salvation. The state, on the other hand, was constantly expanding. It deprived the church of one function after the other : the school, the promo- tion of science and art, the care of the poor and weak, legisla- tion and the administration of justice, a field which had been largely appropriated by the church. Thus the state became a comprehensive institution for the advancement of civilization; it was firmly planted in this world while the church had its deep- est roots in the transmundane world. — There is a reciprocal relation between the development of the world of institutions and the world of thoughts. The old conception of the uni- verse, based upon authorities and treating of heavenly things, was gradually overthrown by the new philosophy, which had its formal basis in the principle of rationalism, the principle of free investigation, and its material basis in the new cosmology THE MODERN CONCEPTION 127 and natural science, which deal with the things of this world. — The development of economic and* social life formed the starting-point of the entire transformation. The rapid increase and expansion of international commerce beginning in the thirteenth century gave rise to the first large cities ; the new society became more and more intent upon con- quering the earth and appropriating its wealth. The yearn- ing for the hereafter was stifled in the mad race for the things of this world. Nevertheless, from the standpoint from which we have just been considering the Middle Ages, we shall not regard the change as a radical one. We find no such revolution as followed the conversion of antiquity to Christianity. Per- haps it would be safer to say that the flames which were smouldering in the Middle Ages now burst forth ; the ten- dency to civilization which already existed in mediaeval times, but was somewhat impeded and obscured by the shell of the supranaturalistic religion in which it was encased, now over- came all resistance. The Renaissance and the Reformation represent the breaking of the shell. 2. The Renaissance} It means the rebirth of classical, that is, pre-Christian, pagan, antiquity. Pagan antiquity had perished with the conversion of the old nations to Chris- tianity. Christianized antiquity, which evolved its new form in the church, had undertaken the education of the new nations, and had thus far guided their religious, scientific, and moral life. The church had also given them the elements of the old civilization, above all philosophy and literature ; ' [For the Reaaissance and Reformation see the general and modern histories of philosophy, the works mentioned p. 35, and the following : Carrifcre, Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformattonszett ; Voight, Die Wiederbelebunrf des classischen Alterthums ; Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance (Engl, translation by Middleman) ; Geiger, Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutsckland ; Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy; Peschel, Geschichte des Zeit- alters der Entdeckungen. See particularly Kuno Fischer, i?i«(ory of Modern Phil- osophy, vol. I.. 1, chapters V. and VI. For further bibliography, TJeberweg, vol ni., §§ 2-6 ; Weber, p. 10, note 1, p. 274, note 6. — Tk.] 128 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY and the young nations had derived instruction and pleasure from them ; not without some misgivings, of course : they knew (the church told them so) that it was heathen philoso- phy and literature, and that it was really not proper for a Christian to enjoy them. These doubts and fears were wholly given up in the time of the Renaissance. The age emancipated itself from ,the old morose school and task- master, the discovery was made that antiquity had itself been young before it became old and crabbed, and the youthful heathen antiquity was found to be much more attractive and grander than Christianized antiquity. All minds were filled with a passionate admiration for antiquity; the pro- ducts of its literature, its art, its philosophy, were ardently sought after, studied, imitated, and thoroughly assimilated. The literary and artistic productions of the Middle Ages were thrown aside with the contempt with which the schoolboy casts aside his school exercises and text-books at the close of his course ; everything mediaeval was now designated as Gothic barbarism. The age was anxious to think and to feel, to make poetry and to create, to live and to enjoy, like the models placed before it by classical antiquity. The putting on of the new man received its symbolical expression in the rejection of the old and in the adoption of new Latinized or Hellenized names. — It must be confessed, however, that the Renaissance reached its highest perfection only in Italy. From J. Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, we may glean what the " rebirth," the birth of the new man, signified. In Italy the evolution was a necessary one. On this side of the Alps the movement was not spontaneous, nor did it take such deep root in the hearts of the people ; here it was some- what imitative in character. And here the conflict between the old and the new culture — after the latter had just gained a foothold in the universities — was cut short by the breaking out of a new conflict, the conflict which Luther inaugurated against the church in the name of the Gospel. This struggle THE MODERN CONCEPTION 129 SO thoroughly absorbed the attention of the German people, and soon after also of the other nations, that the Renaissance was completely overshadowed. Only after the at least provisional settlement of the conflict in the seventeenth century, after a certain equilibrium had been restored between the Catholic and Protestant powers, there arose in the middle of the eight- eenth century, and now originating in Protestant Germany, a kind of literary and artistic after-bloom of the Renaissance. The trait common to the first and the second Renaissance was a passionate craving for freedom on the part of the individual: he was no longer willing to be bound by established opinions and institutions, but desired the complete and free develop- ment of his particular nature, the complete and free exercise of all his impulses and powers ; in the struggle for freedom he opposed nature to convention and tradition. But this was ex- actly what the Greeks had aimed at : the freest development of the individual ; and for that reason Hellenism became the ideal of humanity. 3. The Reformation. In its origin it was quite different from the preceding movement. The deeply religious, pas- sionately truthful, thoroughly national soul of Luther re- belled against the system of dead works and dead dogmas, welded together by reason and authority, which, as he be- lieved, had, in the form of ritualism and scholastic theology, stifled the simple, living, vigorous, and happy faith of old Christianity ; it rebelled as well against the worldly, aristo- cratic life of pleasure and culture pursued by the high clergy, who were permeated with the conceptions of the Renaissance ; against the neo-paganism of Leo X. and Albrecht of Mayence, which seemed to him a mockery upon Christianity. Luther was by no means a man of modern culture and learning: these would have been much more in keeping with the Medi- cean Pope, at least with the incumbent, if not with the func- tion of the office. Nor was he a lover of enjoyment and a worshipper of civilization; these, too, were things for which Leo 130 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY showed a more refined taste and a deeper appreciation than he. Luther did not look upon the church doctrine as not ra- tional enough nor upon the church-life as not worldly enough ; nay, the reverse was the case : he absolutely repudiated reason in matters of faith, and he had only a very moderate opinion of the value of this earthly life and its civilization. He did not absolutely condemn pleasure, and he demanded that men labor to perform their earthly tasks ; but he would by no means have been willing to espouse the emancipation of the flesh and the complete devotion to the problems of civilization. Though he emphasized the positive side, he did not do this for the sake of civilization and happiness, but in opposition to the official view of the church, which characterized the monastic life as in itself meritorious and holy. Luther saw in it a false self-sacrifice, which, even when sincerely made, hindered the true sacrifice of the heart, and, when not sin- cere, encouraged a base worship of the flesh under the guise of self-denial. His attitude to the church was similar in this respect to that of Jesus towards the self-righteousness and worship of the Pharisees : he demanded not that we worship God less, but that we worship Him more and more deeply, and that we practise self-denial. The difference between the Reformation and the Renais- sance is also clearly seen in their historical relation. We can say that the Reformation robbed the Renaissance of the victory which the latter already saw within her grasp. The Reform- ation, at first in Germany and then in the other countries, forced the thoughts of men from worldly things, from literary and artistic culture, to which the higher classes of society had devoted themselves, back to religious affairs. The Humanists, who at first hailed Luther with delight, soon almost entirely deserted him again. They saw that they had been mistaken in the Wittenberg monk, that there was a different spirit in him than they had imagined. But when we examine the two movements, not merely in THE MODERN CONCEPTION 181 the form which they assumed at the outset and in the minds of their leaders, Luther and Erasmus, when we study their historical relations, the matter assumes a* different aspect. We shall have to confess that they both helped to free the modern spirit from its mediaeval covering, that the Reforma- tion, too, especially when we consider its more remote rather than its immediate effects, furthered the development of the subjective, individual spirit, and the intellectual civilization of man. And that was surely not an accident. In a certain sense, Luther undoubtedly agreed with Erasmus and the Renaissance: the craving of the age for freedom and indi- vidualism was alive in him also. Luther at the Diet of Worms: — that is certainly a figure deserving to be placed at the beginning of modern times, the free subject appealing from the authorities to his own reason and his own conscience. Herein lies the enormous difference between Luther and Augus- tine, with whom he has so much in common in other respects : he is wholly lacking in the humilitas towards the empirical church, the humble and obedient submissiveness to the faith of the church, which is so strongly marked in Augustine. In Luther there is a spirit of defiant independence. " My cause is God's cause " — with this he boldly and defiantly takes his stand against all authorities, and he is never afraid to draw the conclusion, and to proclaim it, with the greatest pos- sible emphasis : Hence the cause of those who are against me is the cause of the devil. And this explains the significance of the Reformation for the religious life : it makes the individual independent in his highest relation, in his relation to God ; it does away with the church as a necessary mediator, it does away with almost, the entire ecclesiastical apparatus, which the centuries had constructed in order to secure the salvation of the individual by works and formulas and sacred acts. Another effect is to be noted. The church, having thus lost its raison d'itre gradually disappeared, like an organ i32 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY that had become unnecessary. New churches were, of course, at first established, in the form of state churches ; but they did not possess the importance of the old church. They were not a great independent institution, but have always formed a kind of appendage to the state. The sovereign is the head of a state church, the clergy are officials, whose number is limited to the demand ; the mediaeval clergy, on the other hand, constituted a separate class within or rather out- side of society : their function was not to transact official business, but to glorify the name of God, for which reason there could never be too many priests, churches, and altars. This change manifests itself in all the forms of our life. A mediaeval city received its character from its churches ; the houses of the people were gathered around the houses of wor- ship, as the centres of life ; the old Rhenish cities, and the old Harz and Baltic cities, Cologne, Mayence, Hildesheim, Halberstadt, Wismar, Rostock, to this day take their impress from their church buildings. In modern cities like Berlin, Hanover, Altona, Darmstadt, Mannheim, the state-building predominates : the palace, the government-building, the court of justice, the post-office, the railway station, the barracks, the prison. Churches are not often seen, and what few there are look embarrassed and cramped in the midst of the im- mense houses which overtower them, or they stand upon great vacant places which they cannot command. But not only the architecture of our cities, our entire mode of life has been secularized. Asceticism has passed away with the monasteries ; through marriage the clergy have become members of society. The sacramental acts, the thousand sacred customs and ceremonies, with which the entire medi- ajval life was interwoven, have, with the exception of a few survivals which are also on the point of dying out, disap. peared; the numerous holidays have been transformed into working days, and the daily divine service has been sus- pended. Only on one day of the week have we " church," THE MODERN CONCEPTION 133 as popular usage characteristically expresses it, and as the church itself proves; on the other days it is closed up and deserted. All this seems to signify that we are living on the earth, and desire to live on the earth. Formerly everything reminded us of the Beyond, now everything reminds us of the Here. It can hardly be doubted that the thoughts and feelings of the age have also been secularized with the outward forms. However artificial the religious life of many may have remained in the Middle Ages, the countless references to the hereafter and eternity could not fail to make an impression upon the hearts of men. With the disappearance of the outward ecclesiastical forms, the hearts of the majority were weaned from the thoughts of eternity ; they confined themselves more closely and exclusively to the earth. It surely was not Luther's intention to exhort them to do this. He favored the aboli- tion of ascetic institutions, but not in the interests of civiliz- ation and good living ; on the contrary, the life of the canons and monks seemed to him a form of indolence congenial to the flesh, labor and marriage more suitable to the lusts. He approved of the restriction of ecclesiastical exercises and acts, not in order to gain time for more important worldly affairs ; on the contrary, he looked upon them as a mere compromise with heaven, to which, after all, our entire life ought to be devoted. For Luther heaven remained the home, the earth a vale of tears ; and these conceptions and feelings were for a long time, if not the prevailing sentiments, at least peculiar to particular individuals, in Protestantism. Nevertheless, if we consider the total effects, we can say that the Reformation helped to turn man's life earthward, towards civilization, and away from the hereafter and salvation. However untrue monasticism may often prove to its ideal, it nevertheless contributes to keep alive in the Catholic world the feeling — weak though it may often be — that the goal of life is not an earthly one. It still retains something of the spirit of 134 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY unworldliness characteristic of primitive Christianity. And those church exercises and duties, the confessional and peni- tential system, the prayers and fasts, have the same effect ; superficially though they are usually performed, and great though the danger may be of making the religious life ex- ternal and shallow, nay of corrupting the morality, they still direct the gaze to something beyond this life and its aims. We are in the habit of saying that Luther carried Christianity from the cloisters into the world, that he exalted fidelity to the daily calling into a divine service. This was certainly his aim, and we undoubtedly find something of this spirit even in our times. On the other hand, it would not be doing justice to the truth were we to deny that the great majority used their freedom from the duties of external worship to neglect every form of divine worship ; even Luther repeatedly com- plains that the freedom of the Gospel is abused as a free- dom of the flesh. Melanchthon praises Luther in his funeral sermon for having delivered us from the paedagogia puer- ilis of the old church. It is, however, not yet settled that religion can dispense with such a paedagogia puerilis, which admonishes us daily by means of petty practices. It is also a peculiar fact that men are more ready to believe in things and institutions which require something of them: they measure their value according to the magnitude of the investment. This surely has something to do with the strong attachment of the masses to the Catholic church. The Protes- tant church demands nothing, that is, nothing outwardly, but faith alone ; the conclusion which suggests itself to common- sense is : hence it has nothing to offer us, nothing at least for which we care. Just as little can we or will we deny that the Reformation furthered the development of subjective thought, of the criti- cal, rationalistic spirit. The downfall of the church shattered the great authority which had controlled the thoughts of men, not only outwardly, but inwardly, for a thousand years. The THE MODERN CONCEPTION 135 new churches had no authority ; they attempted to retain it, and even vindicated it against their opponents with the same external means employed by the latter ; but they were with- out inner authority. They owed their existence to revolution, to the destruction of the strongest human authority that the Occident had ever seen ; they could not hide their origin. Against authority they appealed to the Scriptures as the higher authority. But did not the old church first invest these writings with authority by establishing the canon ? And did she not have the right of interpretation on her side, according to the practice of centuries ? The appeal to a better interpretation of the Scriptures was therefore, ulti- mately, an appeal to individual reason and conscience. The new churches could not deny any one this appeal, upon which their own title was based, and whenever they did so, their refusal was an inner contradiction, and therefore without inner force. At any rate, the emancipation of subjective thought, not only in the Protestant, but also in the Catholic countries — whether we regard it as a merit or a fault — received a mighty impetus from the Reformation. 4. The three or four centuries that have passed since the beginning of the modern era, are pitched in the same key as these preludia. The desire for civilization, which lay hidden beneath the Christian-ecclesiastical surface during the Mid- dle Ages, is now openly and unreservedly recognized as the only legitimate ideal. True, the modern epoch, too, has its heavy-laden hearts, who, in their yearning for peace seek refuge from the turmoil of the world and find rest in Christian- ity. But they by no means meet with either the formal or the actual acknowledgment that they have chosen the better part. Everything that is really characteristic of the modern period, everything with which a history of modern life, of the modern state, modern society, modern civilization, modern philosophy, modern art and literature, is accustomed to deal, belongs to the other movement. Real Christianity is some- 136 ORIGINS OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY thing so foreign to the champions of the modern era that they are unable to understand how any one can feel and live in that way; they regard it as extravagant idealism and enthusiasm, as a symptom of disease, which has only a pathological interest. Even the Catholic world, which lias preserved the ascetic life in the cloisters, is not very out- spoken in confessing its principle. It is a noteworthy fact that the CathoHc historians do not answer the charge that the Catholic countries have not kept abreast of the Protestant nations in civilization by declaring that it is to the Catholics' credit to have still some thought of eternity, — unlike the Protestants, who, being merely intent on the mundane world, naturally excel them in that world's civilization. Instead, the reproach is really felt as a reproach, and the attempt is made to show that it is not well-founded, that the church has really done the most for civilization. The estimate which it places upon scientific knowledge may be used as a criterion of the spirit of an age. According to the old Christian conception, the worth of a man is absolutely independent of the knowledge and culture he possesses ; in the eyes of God, faith and love, and not culture and philoso- phy, have worth. The modern era unreservedly returns to the Greek conception that the highest and most important func- tion of man is the exercise of reason in scientific knowledge. The sciences are the pride of the modern times. The Middle Ages are despised as a barbarous and benighted period, be- cause they have done nothing for science. But we also find in the modern estimate of knowledge another peculiar trait, which is lacking in the Greeks : for the Greeks, knowledge was the highest good as such and desired for its own sake ; the moderns prize it especially for its practical utility. For them physics is a practical science, nay, the practical science ; for the champions of modern civilization do not think very much of that practical philosophy of which the Greek philosophers expected so much. Morality, Buckle believes, has always THE MODERN CONCEPTION 137 been the same, it has always been very much approved and very little followed ; the progress of the hupian race depends upon the progress of the natural sciences. So a great many of the leaders of modern culture believe with Buckle. When our newspapers, which reflect the opinions of their readers, by pre-established harmony, let us say, desire to praise the nineteenth century, they at once begin to speak of railroads and steamships, telegraphs and electrotechnics, armor-clads and breechloaders. 5. It is worth observing how soon the modern age became conscious — instinctively, one is tempted to believe — of its peculiar character. Francis Bacon dates the beginning of the modern era from the three great inventions of the mag- netic needle, gunpowder, and printing. These achievements characterize the spirit of the new epoch of the history of humanity ; its motto is : Knowledge is power. Inventions {ofera) are now made the test of knowledge. The old science gave its possessor skill in vanquishing opponents in debate; the new science gives him the power to conquer nature by art ( nhysici est non dinputando adversarium, Bed naturam operando vincere). Bacon has attempted, in his two main works, to lay the foundation and to outline the method of this new science. In a little unfinished essay, which is found among his works under the title Nova Atlantis, he has drawn a picture of the perfect civilization of the future. The undertaking has frequently been repeated since then ; it is worth while, however, to cast a glance at the first attempt of this kind. The JVova Atlantis is an island in the far West. The narrator, who had been driven out of the right course and carried to its shores, tells us that the noblest institution of the entire country is a natural-scientific society founded by an ancient king and called Domus Salomonis, or the Col- lege of the Six Days' Works. " The end of the foundation," so the guide explains, " is the knowledge of causes, and the secret notions of things ; and the enlargement of the bounds 138 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible." Among the great number of particular institutions which serve- this purpose are large and deep caves under the earth, some of them three miles in depth ; they are used " for all coagulations, indurations, refrigerations, and conservations of bodies ; " as well as for producing natural and new arti- ficial metals, from materials which lie there for many years ; also for curing certain diseases ; and for prolongation of life in some hermits that choose to live there, and indeed live very long, and possess wonderful knowledge. There are also high towers, the highest about half a mile in height, or in- cluding the height of the hill about three miles, which are used especially for meteorological observations ; lakes both salt and fresh for the production of fish and water-fowl as well as for experiments in the water ; artificial wells and fountains with all kinds of mineral waters, amongst them the so-called Water of Paradise (^aqua Paradiai), which is un- usually efiicacious for the preservation of health and the prolongation of life. They have also great and spacious houses, in which the meteorological occurrences, snow, hail, rain, and thunder-storms are imitated, and all kinds of animals are produced ; large and various orchards and gar- dens, " wherein we do not so much respect beauty, as variety of ground and soil, proper for divers trees and herbs," bear- ing the richest fruit ; " we have also means to make divers plants rise by mixtures of earth without seeds." " We have also parks and enclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds, which we use not only for view, or rareness, but likewise for dissection and trials ; that thereby we may take light what may be brought upon the body of man. Wherein we find many strange effects; as continuing life in them, though divers parts, which you account vital, be perished and taken forth ; resuscitating of some that seem dead in appearance ; and the like. We also try all poisons and other medicines upon them, as well of chirurgy as physic. By art, likewise, THE MODERN CONCEPTION 139 we make them greater or taller than their kind is, and con- trariwise dwarf them, and stay their growth ; we make them more fruitful and bearing than their kind is ; and contrari- wise barren and not generative. Also we make them differ in color, shape, activity, many ways. We find means to make commixtures and copulations of different kinds ; which have produced many new kinds, and them not barren, as the general opinion is. We make a number of kinds of serpents, worms, flies, fishes, of putrefaction ; whereof some are ad- vanced (in effect) to be perfect creatures like beasts or birds ; and have sexes, and do propagate. Neither do we this by chance, but we know beforehand of what matters and com- mixture what kind of those creatures will arise." Of course the most astonishing results are produced in their brew- houses, bakehouses, and kitchens, etc. : " we strive to have drinks of extreme thin parts, insomuch as some of them put upon the back of your hand will, with a little stay, pass through to the palm, and yet taste mild to the mouth." There are also places where experiments are made with lights and colors ; here lights of every strength and color are produced ; they have also "glasses and means to see small objects afar off and minute bodies perfectly and distinctly, such as heavenly bodies, or the parts of small animals, or corpuscles in urine and the blood." In other places experiments are made with sounds, smells, and tastes in the same highly practical way. There are also engine-houses, where wonderful cannons, fly- ing-machines, ships and boats for going under water, machines, as well as artificial men, beasts, birds, fishes, and serpents are made ; " item some perpetual motions {nonnulli motus perpetui)." ^ We see, these are new pictures which the new age paints upon the curtain of the future. The old Christianity raised its eyes from the earth, which offered nothing and promised ' [See Ellis, Spedding, and Heath's edition of Bacon's works, vol. V., pp. 359- 413. — Tb.j 140 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY nothing, to heaven and its suprasensuous glory. The new age is looking for heaven upon earth ; it hopes to attain to the perfect civilization through science, and expects that this will make life healthy, long, rich, beautiful, and happy. Bacon once called himself the herald of the new era. In- deed, it is a splendid army that follows him to the conquest of heaven upon earth. Let us hear another and still another leader of the host in regard to the goal and the methods of the enterprise. 6. Descartes, who has a greater claim than any other to be called the leader of modern philosophy, formulates the pro- gramme of his philosophical reforms in the little treatise on Method (1637). In the last part he tells that by his method he reached new notions in metaphysics and morals which pleased him greatly ; but that, owing to his hostility to writ- ing books, he had not published them. " But as soon as I had acquired some general notions respecting Physics, and, beginning to make trial of them in various particular diffi- culties, had observed how far they can carry us, and how much they differ from the principles that have been employed up to the present time, I believed that I could not keep them concealed without sinning grievously against the law by which we are bound to promote, as far as in us lies, the gen- eral good of mankind. For by them I perceived it to be possible to arrive at knowledge highly useful in life, and in room of the Speculative Philosophy usually taught in the Schools, to discover a Practical, by means of which, knowing the force and action of fire, water, air, the stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies that surround us, as distinctly as we know the various crafts of our artisans, we might also apply them in the same way to all the uses to which they are adapted, and thus render ourselves the lords and possessors of nature. And this is a result to be desired, not only in order to the invention of an infinity of arts by which we might be enabled to enjoy without any trouble the fruits of THE MODERN CONCEPTION 141 the earth, and all its comforts, but also and especially for the preservation of health, which is without.doubt, of all the blessings of this life, the first and fundamental one ; for the mind is so intimately dependent upon the condition and relation of the organs of the body, that if any means can ever be found to render men wiser and more ingenious than hitherto, I believe that it is in Medicine they must be sought for. It is true that the science of Medicine, as it now exists, contains few things whose utility is very remarkable ; but without any wish to depreciate it, I am confident that there is no one, even among those whose profession it is, who does not admit that all at present known in it is almost nothing in comparison of what remains to be discovered ; and that we could free ourselves from an infinity of maladies of body as well as of mind, and perhaps also even from the debility of age, if we had sufficiently ample knowledge of their causes and of the remedies provided for us by Nature. But since I designed to employ my whole life in the search after so neces- sary a Science, and since I had fallen in with a path which seems to me such, that if any one follow it he must inevitably reach the end desired, unless he be hindered either by the shortness of life or the want of experiments, I judged that there could be no more effectual provision against these two impediments than if I were faithfully to communicate to the public all the little I might myself have found, and incite men of superior genius to strive to proceed farther, by contributing, each accord- ing to his inclination and ability, to the experiments which it would be necessary to make, and also by informing the public of all they might discover, so that, by the last beginning where those before them had left off, and thus connecting the Hves and labors of many, we might collectively proceed much farther than each by himself could do." And in the preface to his system (Principia Philosophiae, 1644) he says, speak- ing of the utility of the new philosophy as opposed to the philosophy of the school, " that it is by it we are distinguished 142 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY from savages and barbarians, and that the civilization and culture of a nation is regulated by the degree in which true philosophy flourishes in it, and, accordingly that to contain true philosophers is the highest privilege a state can enjoy." The philosophy, however, which he means, he describes soon after : " All philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root. Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk, which are re- duced to three principal, namely. Medicine, Mechanics, and Ethics." 1 We may say, I believe, that no age has ever had a clearer idea of its goal and of the road leading to it: the goal is heaven on earth, the road to it, natural science. Through technology and medicine, the two great applications of natu- ral science, the future will reach a state in which men will, without work and in permanent health of body and soul, enjoy the fruits of the earth ; perhaps, as the serious Des- cartes no less than the somewhat charlatanistic Bacon antici- pates, medicine may even bring about a prolongation of life and an increase of all intellectual and moral powers. The fearlessness, nay we may say, the bold recklessness, with which the control and use of nature by science is planned for man, stands in remarkable contrast to the awe with which the Middle Ages contemplated nature. The Middle Ages, too, sought to gain control over things, they too suspected that it might be obtained through knowledge. But they had at the same time a secret dread of this knowledge and activity; they regarded it as an unholy business, as a black art, as the work of the devil, who as the prince and lord of this world could indeed grant sway over it. All those who had the repu- tation of possessing such effective knowledge, were looked upon as magicians : Albertus Magnus, Eoger Bacon, Pope Sylvester II. Soldan quotes a very characteristic narrative from Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks in his History) ' [Translation from Veitch's 10th edition.} THE MODERN CONCEPTION 143 »f the Trials of WitchesJ " The archdeacon Leonartes of Bourges suffered from a cataract, and no physician could cure him. At last he betook himself to the Basilica of St. Martin, where he spent two or three months in constant prayer and fasting. On a fast day his eyesight was restored to him. He hurried home, and sent for a Jewish physician, at whose advice he placed cupping-glasses on his neck to complete the cure. And then it happened that as the blood began to flow, his blindness began to return. Pull of shame Leonartes went back to the church, prayed and fasted as before : but in vain. Let everybody, so Gregory concludes, learn from this occur- rence that when once he has been blessed with heavenly medi- cines never again to have recourse to earthly arts." This fear, from which, by the way, the Greeks and Romans were not free, the modern times have wholly lost ; nothing is proof against them ; man has a right to do what he can do. The belief in transcendent powers, good and bad, by whose help man is supposed to exercise a magic influence upon the course of nature, has been constantly wanino; since the beginning of the modern era ; man's confidence in his natural powers has increased in the same proportion. 7. The modern science of nature is supplemented by the modern science of the state and society. The latter, too, is a practical science : it seeks first to construct the ideal of the perfect state and the legal order, and then to realize it in practice. Political Utopias are the counterpart of the physi- cal-mechanical Utopias; they accompany each other, being frequently connected with each other, through the entire age, from tlie beginning of the sixteenth century down to the socialistic Utopias of the nineteenth century. By the side of Descartes, the leader of modern natural philosophy, stands the Englishman Thomas Hobbes, the real leader in the field of political philosophy. He claims this position for himself : astronomy begins with Copernicus, physics with Galileo, 1 Geschichte der Hexenprocesse, I., 114. 144 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY physiology with Harvey, while the science of the state is no older than his own book Be cive.^ He has the highest opin- ion of the practical value of this science. In the dedicatory epistle which accompanies his work on the state, we read : " For everything in which the present excels the barbarism of the past we are indebted to mathematical physics ; when moral philosophy will have solved its problems with the same certainty, it will be hard to see what human labor can farther accomplish for the happiness of this life." For Hobbes the state is the earthly providence ; endowed with unlimited rights and powers, it bestows peace and welfare upon its sub- jects : " outside of the state there is passion, war, fear, poverty, ugliness, solitude, barbarism, ignorance, ferocious- ness ; in the state, reason, peace, security, wealth, beauty, society, elegance, science, benevolence." ^ So there is no doubt that, if to the perfect mechanics and medicine we add the perfect politics, we shall realize heaven on earth. 8. Finally, a man may be mentioned who paved the way for these views in Germany : I mean Leibniz. There was hardly a field of human thought and human action which Leibniz left untouched with his plans for the promotion of the happiness of the human race. With feverish haste he was constantly devising new projects : for the establishment of an improved German Empire, of a political system for Europe, of a peaceful church union, for the codification of all scientific and technical knowledge in encyclopedias, for the reform of the system of education, for the organization of the book trade, for the care of the poor by employing them in public workshops, for the improvement of mining. But one project especially occupied him during his entire life : the organiza- tion of scientific research. Leibniz endeavored to establish institutions in the North and in the East, after the pattern of the London and Paris societies. As his final goal he perhaps 1 Preface to De corpore, 1655. ' De cive, X., 1. THE MODERN CONCEPTION 145 had in view an intei-national federation of societies into a great association, whose aim should be to preserve all the knowledge of the human race, to regulate all research, and so to extend the empire of reason on earth, as far as possible. His endeavors in regard to the invention of a philosophical calculus and a universally intelligible, international sign- language, suggest such a project. The object of all science, however, consists in its application ; not curiosity, but utility determines the value of every science. In the memorial to the Elector of Brandenburg in which he proposed the estab- lishment of a Society of Sciences at Berlin (1700), we read : " Such an electoral Society should not be governed by mere curiosity or desire for knowledge, and occupy itself with fruit- less experiments, or be content with the mere invention of useful things without applying them, as has been the case in London, Paris, and Florence : but the object should be utility in both theory as well as in practice from the very start. The aim would therefore be to combine theoriam cum praxi, and not only to improve the arts and the sciences, but also the country and the people, agriculture, manufacture, and com- merce, and, in a word, the articles of food." ^ We are reminded of what the scientific society in the Nova Atlantis accomplished for the improvement of articles of food. These are the views of the leaders of thought with respect to the aim of their age : civilization ; above all, technical-scien- tific civilization, based upon scientific knowledge and secured by perfect political institutions — that is the programme of the modern era. 9. We must confess, it has labored earnestly and success- fully for the execution of its programme. As for the con- quest of nature by science, even Bacon, who was not modest in his claims, would hardly refuse to admit that astonishing results have been achieved. It is true, the elixir of life and the perpetuum mobile have not yet been found, and the flying 1 Leibniz, German Writings, published bj Gnhrauer, II., 267. 146 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY machine and the art of making gold are still in the future ; but many of our inventions would make a creditable showing by the side of those in the Atlantis. And in the field of poli- tics and law, some very serious beginnings have been made, to say the least. The entire seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies were filled with the desire to bring about the rational State by means of the science of the state, and thereby to promote the welfare of all. The names of Frederick William II. and Frederick II., Maria Theresa and Joseph II., prove the sincerity and the earnestness of these efforts. And the French Revolution really desired the same thing, though in a different way : the state in which reason and law should rale for the common good. With unmixed feelings of satisfaction and pride the Aufklarung contemplated its achievements, at the end of the eighteenth century. A few years ago a document was taken from the steeple-knob of St. Margaret's Church at Gotha, which had been placed there in the year 1784 ; this paper contains the testimonial which the modern era gave itself a hundred years ago. " Our age," it declares, " occupies the happiest period of the eighteenth century. Emperors, kings, and princes humanely descend from their dreaded heights, despise pomp and splendor, become the fathers, friends, and confidants of their people. Religion rends its priestly garb and appears in its divine essence. Enlightenment makes giant strides. Thousands of our brothers and sisters, who formerly lived in sanctified inactivity, are given back to the state. Sectarian hatred and persecution for conscience' sake are vanishing ; love of man and freedom of thought are gaining the supremacy. The arts and sciences are flourishing, and our gaze is penetrating deeply into the workshop of nature. Handicraftsmen as well as artists are reaching perfection, useful knowledge is growing among all classes. Here you have a faithful description of our times. Do not haughtily look down upon us if you are higher and see farther than we ; THE MODERN CONCEPTION 147 recognize rather from the picture which we have drawn how bravely and energetically we labored to raise you to the posi- tion which you now hold and to support you in it. Do the same for your descendants and be happy." i 10. When we compare the self-confidence of the dying eighteenth century, as expressed in these lines, with the opinion which the dying nineteenth century has of itself, we note a strong contrast. Instead of the proud consciousness of having reached a pinnacle, a feeling that we are on the decline ; instead of joyful pride in the successes achieved and joyful hope of new and greater things, a feeling of disap- pointment and weariness, and a premonition of a coming catastrophe ; in literature instead of the essential harmony of thought and feeling, a chorus of confused, excited, and dis- cordant voices, the like of which has never been heard before ; in public life, instead of the unanimity of all thoughtful and right-thinking men which we find in the age of enlightenment, such discord and vindictiveness in party strife, as has long ago discouraged all men of refine- ment and serious thought from participating in it ; but one fundamental note running through the awful confusion of voices : pessimism ! Indignation and disappointment : these seem to be the two strings to which the emotional life of the present is attuned. Schopenhauer is its philosophical choir- master, everywhere his voice is heard through the din. All 1 In Hettner, SiVory of Literature in the Eighteenth Century, III., 2, 170. With a similar statement a contemporaneous historian of modern philosophy, the clear-sighted J. G. Buhle, begins the exposition of the philosophy of the eight- eenth century: " We are now approaching the most recent period of the history of philosophy, which is the most remarkable and tlie most brilliant period of philosophy as well as of the sciences and the arts and of the civilization of humanity in general. The seed which had been planted in the immediately preced- ing centuries began to bloora into perfection in the eighteenth. Of no century can it be said with so much truth as of the eighteenth that it utilized the achieve- ments of its predecessors, to bring humanity to a greater physical, intellectual, and moral perfection. It has reached a height, wliich, considering the limitations of human nature and the course of our past experience, we should be surprised to see the genius of future generations maintain.'' 148 ORIGINS OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY poets and litterateurs have studied him, and have learned from him the great truth : the obverse represents the essence of things, the fa§ade is mere sham and illusion. What Rousseau hurled into the face of his times as an unheard-of paradox, namely, that culture and civilization do not make men better and happier, Schopenhauer teaches as a philosophical theorem : Civilization increases our misery, civilization is one great faux pas. What is the meaning of these phenomena ? Is pessimism a sign that the European family of nations is nearing its old age ? Have the modern nations reached that point in their history which the old world had reached at the beginning of the Roman Empire ? Are the pessimistic poets and philo- sophers the precursors and predicters of the end, of the dis- appearance of civilization? Is the yearning for deliverance taking possession of our age, as it took possession of the Hindoos and antiquity ? Does the phrase fin de siicle, with which our neighbors are playing, signify not only the century which is drawing to a close, but the end of this occidental world-epoch in general, — finis saeculi? Whoever leans to pessimism himself will affirm the ques- tion ; every philosopher of history obtains the key for the interpretation of things from subjective feelings. He, how- ever, whose personal feelings prompt him to take the other side, will deny it ; he will see in pessimism nothing but an expression of morbid discontent on the part of particular individuals, from which no age is ever free, but which happens to strike a more responsive chord to-day, owing to certain conditions of social-economic as well as political life. A purely theoretical philosopher of history, one who does not allow his personal inclinations and moods to warp his judgment, will perhaps regard both of these interpretations of the signs of the times as too extreme. Undoubtedly, he might say, for example, many phenomena may be observed in the life of the present which remind us of the Roman THE MODERN CONCEPTION 149 Empire, in the iield of art and literature as well as in the field of economic and political activity : the shallow, empty-headed virtuosity in the arts, which labors to satisfy the parvenu's craving for pomp, the romantic love of the " old German," which bears such a curious resemblance to the Empire's romantic mania for the old Roman ; the laborious and aim- less learned research, which in reality cares absolutely noth- ing for science itself, but which does care for the rewards offered for scientific work ; the literature, which seems to indicate extreme nervous weakness in the authors as well as in the readers, — just look at the outside of our books, the covers marked with inscriptions running in all directions and showing all the colors of the rainbow, the titles hailing the reader with exclamation points and question marks ; the luxury and the proletarianism of the great cities ; the cen- tralization of our entire life, by which the strength and indi- viduality of culture is suppressed ; the constantly growing necessity of basing the existing order, which cannot always depend upon its inner purposiveness, upon political-military powers ; and the like. On the other hand, the same philosopher of history might continue, there is no lack of vital energy or of important problems to occupy the future life of the civilized nations of Europe in the most worthy manner. Perhaps, he will say, the whole phenomenon is to be interpreted as a passing stage of depression, caused by the prevailing lack of universally recognized hopes and ideals, to unite the hearts of all. Nations like individuals are kept alive by hope and yearning, not by their fulfilment ; when the ideals are realized, there comes a time of restless seeking for a new goal. And it might perhaps be shown that we are at present passing through such a period. The German people particularly, who seem to be most affected by tlie feelings mentioned, have had their long yearnings satisfied by enormous achievements: they at last have their emperor and empire, and parliaments 150 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY in plenty ; and the year 1870 has at least freed our neighbors from a hated regime, from Caesarism and popery. Both nations are now repeating the experience, which is so common, that the hope was more beautiful than the realization. Thus our philosopher of history might reason, and add his belief that new problems, which are already beginning to announce themselves, will awaken new feelings of power and love of life : that they will bring more justice into our social institutions, more seriousness and truth, more substance and beauty, into the intellectual life even of the masses, and not merely of the masses. Nay, perhaps, so he might pro- ceed, we must regard the entire previous development of the modern nations as having been merely the prelude to an abso- lutely independent modern civilized life ; for evidently these nations, if we consider the Middle Ages as their appren- ticeship and school-days, have just left school, or rather have not even yet left it altogether, for do not all of those who are destined for the higher professions still go through the school of antiquity ? Hence, if the period of senility is not to come immediately after the period of boyhood in the modern nations, we must expect that their emancipation, which is presumably close at hand, will be followed by the period of perfect maturity. — A proof, however, so our philosopher would most likely add in conclusion, that will bind the intellect, is impossible here in the very nature of things; nations are still more in the dark concerning the future of their course than individuals. A little piece of the traversed road is faintly illuminated by history, and a dis- mal ray perhaps falls upon the steps immediately before us. But soon the path loses itself in the illimitable darkness with which eternity encompasses the present. Let me here say a word concerning another phenomenon, which has been exciting the German youth of the most recent years, Metzscheanism, the twin brother and antipode of Schopefa- hauerism. The ideas by which Friederich Nietzsche, who had THE MODERN CONCEPTION 151 Ijeen undergoing a constant change of heart, and had already passed through many stages of thought, first attracted the attention of wider circles, are contained in his latest collections of aphorisms : Thus Spahe Zarathustra ; On the Other Side of (rood and Bad ; and especially. The Genealogy of Morals ; to which should be added also his last work : The Tivilight of Idols, or How to Philosophize with the Hammer} The preface of this last little treatise bears the date of the day " on which the first book of the transformation of all values (^Bie JJmwertung aller Werte) was finished," evidently to announce the fact that this key-stone of his work marks the dawn of a new world-era. He apparently believes that the birthday of this book will rival in importance the birthday of Christianity, which inaugurated the first transformation of all values in the Occident ; that the transformation which once began with Jesus will be cancelled again by Nietzsche, and that a new evaluation will be made on the basis of a naturalistic "Immoralism" with individualistic-aristocratic tendencies. Nietzsche hates morality ; morality invariably seeks to thwart the instincts ; on the plea of bringing about the triumph of reason, it endeavors to make man sick and weak, in order thus to tame him more easily, or, as we say, to improve him. In Christianity, he says, this battle against the instincts appears in its most exaggerated form ; its morality is the morality of the slave, which sprang from the inveterate hatred of the oppressed Jewish nation against the victorious Romans, the morality of the weak, dependent, wicked, hence deceitful, revengeful, and malicious race, rising against the morality of the lords (^Herrenmoral) , the morality of the strong, fearless, brave, upright, high-minded, noble race. By producing Christianity and spreading it among the nations, Judaism took the most complete revenge imaginable 1 [Also sprach Zarathustra ; Jenseits von Gut und BSse ; Zur Genecdogie der Moral ; Gotzenddmmerung, oder me man mit dem Hammer philosophiert. Translation! edited by A. TUle. — Te.] 152 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY upon the Romans : it poisoned them morally, so to speak, compelled them in turn to regard the strong, healthy, brave, and proud as the bad ; the weak, humble, crushed, and sub- missive as the good, with whom God was well pleased. Tlie final deliverance of the Western mind from this infection, — that would be Nietzsche's mission. It is not my intention to criticise these thoughts ; aphor- isms cannot, in the nature of the case, be examined as to their objective validity; they do not aim to give an exhaustive explanation of the essence of the subject, but to view it, from some standpoint or other, in a startling light, — which, of course, does not hinder us from looking at it from other points of view in a different light. Had not this thinker, who was endowed with such brilliant, but dangerous talents, fallen into utter mental darkness, many symptoms of which are especi- ally discernible in his last work, he would, we may venture to believe, soon have followed different channels, since further exaggerations along the lines pursued by him were impossible. What now, we might ask, becomes of the superhuman being (^UbermenseJi), after he has exhausted himself in thinking, and has realized himself ? What is his real work in this world ? It used to be regarded as the mission of heroes and great men to lead their brothers to light and life. This new superhuman being seems to despise such a task ; he holds himself aloof from the masses and considers himself superior to them, he will have nothing to do with these worthless creatures, who simply exist to make him possible. But how does he spend his time ? Does he contemplate himself, write aphorisms, and marvel at the distance between himself and the masses ? Is that all he can find to do ? That would be rather trivial for a superhuman being ; and I am inclined to think that the philosopher himself would soon have shuddered at the emptiness of such an existence. And then, perhaps, he might have understood the littleness of his anti-Christ as compared with the Christ, in whom there was THE MODERN CONCEPTION 153 surely something more of the truly superhuman element than in this swaggering despiser of humanity and self-conceited boaster.^ However, let all that be as it may. The question that in- terests us is, What do these ideas signify as a sign of the times ? What makes the Ubermensch so attractive to the young? Nietzsche has become a staple article in the peri- odicals and newspapers; on the application-blanks of our public libraries the name of Nietzsche occurs more frequently , perhaps, than any other ; yes, I have been told by teachers in the gymnasium that traces of Nietzsche's spirit and writings may occasionally be found in the German compositions of their pupils, by no means of the least talented among them. What draws them to Nietzsche ? Is it his impressive style ? Is it his dazzling, blending, lightning-like, instantaneous illu- mination of things ? Or is it the fact that all the old truths have come to be regarded as trite by our youth, and that they are insanely fond of the most unheard-of paradoxes ? 1 An article by Gallwitz has just fallen into my hands : Nietzsche as a Prepa- ration for Christianity (Nietzsche als Erzieher zum Christentum) (Preussische Jahrbucher, February, 1896). The author admirably shows how far Nietzsche misses the mark, when he absolutely opposes his ideal of life to that of Jesus. There is a far-reaching formal agreement between them. The " gregarious im- pulse " may frequently play a prominent part in the churches which call them- selves Christian ; no one who is acquainted with them will look for it in Jesus and his first disciples ; on the contrary, primitive Christianity is really char- acterized by its extremely Independent attitude towards the established and prevailing opinions and customs, and even towards conventional values and standards. Nor is it inclined to overestimate morals and morality ; on the con- trary, the really important thing is, to use Nietzsche's words, " moralinfreie " [moralin-less 1] virtue ; legality, has no value ; as the son of God, as the free child of the Father, the Son of Man knows that he is superior to the law. And Nietzsche could also have found in Jesus and his teaching the truth that to rise above the world of sense and desire is the fundamental characteristic of perfection. One thing, to be sure, he would not have been able to find there : self-adoration, haughtiness towards the people, contempt for the masses. These qualities he would have been more likely to find among the Pharisees. He found them in Schopenhauer, not in Schopenhauer the thinker, but in Schopenhauer the man. And he always remained a true follower of Schopenhauer the man, even after he had repudiated the latter's philosophy. 154 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY The young always have a predilection for the new and un- heard-of ; it has at least the merit of being opposed to the old and established forms, under the weight of which we are groaning, to the trivial truths of the Sunday School class, the trivial truths of morals, and those upon which candidates for degrees are examined. Socrates the first Greek deca- dent ; Kant a deformed, intellectual cripple ; a good conscience the result of a good digestion ; morality the castration of nature by decadence-philosophers — indeed this is saying something, something different from the old, tiresome stories which have been heard and repeated ad nauseam. Are these paradoxes intoxicating our young men, who have grown tired of the everlasting disciplining and examining ? Are we like the Athenians, can we no longer bear the customary, and have we therefore become the slaves of every newest fad ? ^ Or has the biting sarcasm with which all the old heroes and time-honored truths are cast aside, a pleasant ring in the ears of an age that has been filled with distrust of all estab- lished institutions by the din of the penny-a-liners and the ofEciousness of the busybodies who are for stifling truth ? Or is it the obscure prophecy of something new and great that is to come that is making an impression? Pei'haps something of all of this. And the final and deepest reason is perhaps the one to which we alluded before : the lack of an ideal, of a ruling ideal, an ideal to elevate the hearts, to inspire the will, and to give the multitude a common aim. Hence the impatient unrest of the times, the feverish searching and groping after something great and unusual, after a guide to new and higher forms of life. What was it that attracted so many readers to Rembrandt as an Educator, if not the promise to show the helpless an ideal, an ideal of a freer, richer, greater German life ? What is it that gains credu- lous hearers and adherents for the other prophets, who spring ^ AoGXoi tvres t&v de! irSiruv, iwtp6vTat Si t«i/ claSiTuy, 80 Cleon calls the Athenians, in Thucydides, III., 38. THE MODERN CONCEPTION 155 up in a single night and preach to the German people in popular meetings and pamphlets, but the deep and universal longing to learn something of the path which we now ought to follow ? What else is it that is gathering around the name of Paul de Lagarde a little community of reverent admirers ? To point out to the German people new goals and new ideals : that is the ultimate purpose of his Q-erman Writings, which contain, besides much that is strange and harsh, so much more that is good and great. If it is this, the hunger for an ideal, that brings forth all these phenomena, then they are not — however much there may be in them that is unsatisfactory — symptoms of decline, but symptoms of the unrest which precedes the birth of a new age. In that case the struggle of art and poetry for new forms and a new content will also have to be interpreted as a struggle of the new ideal to reveal itself. The young men engaged in this struggle do not like to be referred to the past : their faces are turned to the future. Nevertheless, I should like to ask the disciple of Nietzsche to peruse with care the first book of the Platonic Repullic. He will meet in it a man who with great confidence and self-conceit teaches the doctrine that injustice, when on a sufficient scale, has more strength and freedom and mastery than justice ; perhaps he will be tempted to read on in this remarkable, so old and yet so modern book. And then, per- haps, he may also be induced to re-read his Goethe, the second part of Faust, the scene between Mephistopheles and the Baccalaureus, in which the eternal theme of the old men and the young men is so wonderfully worked out. 11. I cannot close this discussion on the modern conception of life, without directly adverting to a question which has already been partly answered, — the question concerning the modern spirit in its relation to Christianity. If we employ the name Christianity solely to designate a mode of life and feeling, a belief and conviction, absolutely 156 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY resembling that of the first Christian communities, then we cannot call our modern life Christian. To abstain from the world, to shrink from civilization, to turn to the Beyond : these are the characteristic traits of old Christianity ; no one will regard them as characteristic of the modern period of history. But if we do not take Christianity in this its narrowest sense, if we apply the term to the entire historical movement which begins with the life and death of Jesus — and that too we have a good historical right to do — then the case is dif- ferent. Then we shall have to confess, whether we like it or not, that the modern era is still so greatly dominated by Christianity that its history can and must be regarded is a part of the history of Christianity. David Strauss propounds the question in his Old and New Faith : ^ Are we Christians ? He answers it in the negative, and shows that the old creed no longer expresses the prevailing convictions of the modern times. Herein he is undoubtedly right. Does it not follow, then, that we are no longer Christians ? Certainly, if the creed has the force of a definition, excluding every one from Christianity whose belief it does not express, — which was indeed its original purpose. But the inference would be misleading if we were to conclude further: hence Chris- tianity has become extinct. In answer to this proposition we should have to say : Christianity is older than the creeds and is most likely destined to outlive them ; it has become a reality in the historical life of the European nations, and can never again become unreal ; it can only perish with these nations themselves. It has helped to fashion the will and the heart of these nations into what they are, and has left its mark indelibly impressed upon their character. Even those who feel decidedly opposed to Christianity cannot escape its influence ; it continues to determine their thoughts, feelings, and volitions. ' Der alte und neue Glaube, translated by M. Blind. THE MODERN CONCEPTION 157 The influence of Christianity upon the life and morals of the nations which, during the Middle Ages, were being pre- pared for their future mission within the bosom of the church, has already been slightly touched upon above (page 123) ; I do not wish to recur to it.^ Here, however, I should like to call attention to some traits in our mode of feeling and our conception of life which have their origin in Christianity. Three great truths Christianity has engraven upon the hearts of men. The first is : Suffering is an essential phase of human life. This truth really escaped the Greeks. They were familiar with suffering, but only as a fact which ought not to be. Their philosophers, at least, never got beyond this view; although the tragic poets divined its deeper meaning. Christianity has taught us to appreciate suffering ; suffering is not merely a brutal fact, but essential to the perfect development of the inner man : suffering withdraws the soul from too complete devotion to the temporal and perishable ; it is the antidote to vanity and the love of show ; it is, in Christian phrase, the great means of education by which God turns our hearts from the earthly and temporal upwards, to the eternal, to Himself. And so suffering leads to inner peace. Whoever is familiar with suffering will understand the significance of 1 Let me refer the reader to a work that shows the enormous power which Christian charity has exercised and continues to exercise even in our days, the admirable work of Uhlhorn, History of Christian Benevolence (Geschichte dcr ohristUchen LiebesthStigkeit). The third Tolume takes up the period from the Reformation to the present. It shows how many deeds of charity, not only money-offerings, but also personal ministrations, hare been performed, especially in the nineteenth century, the like of which has perhaps never been seen since the days of primitive Christianity ; the Protestant world particularly, which, for a long time, has been somewhat behindhand in this respect, is now rivalling the Catholic church. — May we not see in the impartiality with which the work of both churches is here described a sign that the time will come again when they will respect and esteem each other as different forms of pure Christianity ? Protestantism undoubtedly finds less difficulty in making this acknowledgment than Catholicism ; should it ever meet with a sympathetic response from the Catholic chnich, then only will the former defection, which caused so much Moodshed and suffering among the German people, be wholly justified. 168 ORIGINS OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY Christianity. Wherever sorrows are borne, a craving and seeking for Christianity usually soon manifests itself ; a healthy, vigorous, and active life is more apt to cling to the Greek conception of life. But, inasmuch as no life is wholly free from suffering, there will be times in every life when the heart is susceptible to the influences of Christianity. The second great truth which Christianity has impressed upon humanity is this : Sin and guilt are essential phases of human life. This truth, too, the Greeks did not see, or at least not in its entire force. They were familiar with the ugly and the base ; their comic poets ridicule these, and their philos- ophers show how men err with respect to the highest good, and how they miss the right road to happiness. For Christianity it is the most serious and most awful truth that the incli- nation to evil is deeply rooted in the essence of the natural man. Theology has formulated this conception in the doc- trine of original sin, whether happily or not need not con- cern us here ; but it is an undoubted truth that human nature contains, besides beautiful and good capacities and impulses, inclinations which justify the harsh remark that man is the wicked animal, V animal mechant, par excellence, Man is born with two venomous teeth which are wanting in the other ani- mals : they are called envy and malice. The Greeks, too, were skilled in their use, as the horrible picture proves which Thucydides gives of the self-laceration of this nation. But with the exception of particular personalities like Thucydides and Plato, the ancients were not conscious of the awfulness of the thing ; it did not seem to be incompatible with their demands upon human nature. Christianity has raised the standard; it measures man by the justice and holiness of God, which have become incarnate in Jesus. This way of feeling, too, has been indelibly impressed upon us. It is impossible for us to accept evil as complacently as did the Greeks, to contemplate our lives with such self-satisfaction as was possible to the Greeks and Romans. Occasionally^ at THE MODERN CONCEPTION 159 some neo-humanistic funeral, the Horatian Integer vitce sceler- nque purus, is sung ; I am inclined to believe that the song would sound oppressive to the dead man, if he could hear it ; perhaps it would remind him of the beginning of that prayer of the Pharisee : God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this pub- can ! And would the concluding lines of the song about the sweetly laughing Lalage be likely to have a pleasant ring in his ears at such a time ? Perhaps the old Good Friday hymn would be more to his taste : " Christ, thou lamb of God, thou who bearest the sins of this world, have mercy upon us." The proud words of the dying Julian — "I die without remorse, as I have lived without sin " — we too might possibly utter before an earthly tribunal, but can we utter them before the tribunal of our own conscience, before the tribunal of God? The third great truth which Christianity has impressed upon us is : The world lives hy the vicarious death of the just and innocent. Whatever system-loving theology may have made of it, it remains the profoundest philosophical-historical truth. The nations owe their existence to the willingness of the best and the most unselfish, the strongest and the purest, to offer themselves for sacrifice. Whatever humanity pos- sesses of the highest good has been achieved by such men, and their reward has been misunderstanding, contempt, exile, and death. The history of humanity is the history of martyr- dom ; the text to the sermon which is called the history of mankind is the text to the Good Friday sermon from the fifty-third chapter of the Prophet Isaiah. According to an old legend, an innocent life must be walled up in the founda- tions of a building if it is to endure. This belief might have been taken from history ; history, too, immures innocent lives in the foundations of its structures. Among the institutions of the Western world, the church has thus far proved to be the most enduring; its foundation is laid in the vicarious death of 160 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY Christ ; for which reason the old church followed the sugges- tive custom of placing the symbol of the eternal sacrifice in the centre of the religious church life. — The question has often been debated : What is the secret of the power of the Catholic church, which has often been reported dead and regarded as dead ? The superstition and ignorance of the masses ? Their childish fear of things which do not exist ? Or the firmness of the church organization? The prudence of its leaders ? The support which it receives from the lords of this earth ? Perhaps all of these contribute something, although we might also say these are the very things which more than once brought the church to the verge of ruin. The real secret most likely is that men and women have always found in it the strength to sacrifice their lives. Even though their number was not great, yet so precious and effective is sacrifice that it has been able to counteract the debasing and pernicious influence of the many who used the church as a means of good living. — Protestantism, too, owes what living force it possesses to this fact. And so it will also be in the future. Christianity will not be preserved by privy counsel- lors and professors, it can only be preserved by those who are ready to work, to suffer, and to die for it. That is the eternal meaning of the belief in the divinity of Jesus. Paganism endows its gods with happiness, beauty, splendor, and honor ; the kings and lords of the earth are most like them. Christianity recognizes God in the form of the lowliest of all the children of men ; He was the most despised and most unworthy among them, full of suffering and sickness. This form God chose when he became flesh. Whoever wishes to imagine God as man, says the Christian faith, let him not think of the victor on the field of battle, of the king in his purple, of a wise and honored man whom every one admires, but let him picture to himself a man who suffers everything and endures everything, who bears the sin of the whole race upon his shoulders, and who remains con- THE MODERN CONCEPTION 161 stant in all his sufferings, who exhibits infinite patience and kindness, who turns even upon his tormentors a look of infinite love and pity. That is the picture of the all-good in human form, that is God himself. " To be good is to do good, and to suffer evil, and to persevere therein to the end." Joined with these three elements is a fourth : the longing for the transcendent. Antiquity was satisfied with the earth ; the modern era has never been wholly free from the feeling that the given reality is inadequate. Something of the mood which Christianity introduced into the Occident — the feeling that the real home of the soul is not on earth, that this life is a pilgrimage in a foreign land — constantly confronts us in the poetry and in the life of the modern age, and not only among those who accept the teachings of primitive Christianity, but also among the children of the world. There are people who believe that the time for transcendent religion has passed, that a religion of morality will take its place. I do not believe that the future will bear them out. The old theolog- ical metaphysic of the dogma may indeed pass away, and I fondly hope with the friends of ethical culture that religious living will more and more take the place of religious believ- ing ; but I do not believe that the Western nations will ever be wholly free from the need of creating*, with prophetic long- ing, a reality of a higher order beyond the given world. Even for a man like Goethe, who stands firmly upon the earth and joyfully appropriates it with his entire being, it has always been the deepest yearning of his heart to gaze into a bound- less, purer realm, in which everything that the hazy atmo- sphere of our narrow earthly existence encompasses dissolves and vanishes. After all this, we may say : Tlie mixture, antagonism, and reconciliation of Christian and Greek elements is character- istic of the modern conception of life and the world. There are times when the former, and there are times when the latter, preponderates ; the time for which Paul Gerhardt sang 162 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY felt otherwise than the age of enlightenment, and the genera- tion for which Wilhelm Meister and the Roman Elegies were written. But even here hearts have never been wanting that have sought and found consolation and deliverance from earthly sorrow in the harsh sublimity of the church hymns. And not only do these contrasts exist together in the same age : they also exist together in the same heart. Friederich Lange, the author of the History of Materialism, who was a thorough-going disciple of the modern conception of the uni- verse and life, once, so we are told in his biography,^ had a conversation with the philosopher tjberweg concerning the future of religion or the religion of the future. Lange demanded that there be added to the cheerful modern build- ing in the Greek temple style, at least a Gothic chapel for troubled hearts, and to the national worship certain festivals, during which the happy mortal, too, might learn to plunge in- to the abyss of misery and again find that he was as needy of salvation as the unhappy and even the wicked. In our modern Christianity misery and contrition are the rule, the feeling of cheerful exaltation and the joy of victory the exception : he desired to reverse this order, but " not to ignore the gloomy shadow which, after all, accompanies our entire life." The church hymns, too, he wished to adopt into the new worship ; and to tJberweg's protesting question : " Which one, for example ? " he at once replied : Haupt voll Blut und Wunden. It seems to me, we may regard Lange as a typical repre- sentative of the modern man in his attitude to the opposition between Hellenism and Christianity, as a more typical repre- sentative than the somewhat one-sided tJberweg, who inclines to a harsh logical dogmatism. For the intellectually-trained logician the differences are irreconcilable, and he sees in the attempt to reconcile them a lack of consistency ; the psycholo- gist and sociologist, to whom nothing human is alien, sees the 1 By Ellison, 214. THE MODERN CONCEPTION 163 predisposition to both tendencies in the human soul, and ex- periences them himself in his own heart. Indeed, if man were a purely logical being, then he would have to draw the line sharply between these extremes ; the affirmation and the negation of this earthly life, Hellenic love of life and Christian yearning for deliverance from all that is transitory, would be regarded by him as contradictory opposites, between which there can be no middle ground. But man is not mere intelligence, his inner life is not a logi- cal mechanism which rejects everything contradictory ; he is also and primarily a willing and feeling being, a being that experiences pleasure and pain, hope and fear, love and hate, admiration and contempt. The judgments, too, which he pro- nounces as such a being he endeavors to comprehend into a system ; thus arise the different conceptions of life, and the interpretations of the world based upon them, the religious systems. The greatest opposition which exists between them is that obtaining between culture-religions, or world-affirm- ing religions, and religions of redemption. But extremes do not exclude each other here as in scientific systems. In cosmology one accepts either the Ptolemaic or the Coper- nican system. When, however, we deal with systems of world-conceptions and life-conceptions, which have their deep- est roots in feeling, the case is different ; here the lines are not so sharply drawn, there is more inconsistency, mixture, approximation, — nay these are in a certain sense natural and necessary. Every man experiences the great extremes of pleasure and pain, health and sickness, youth and old age, life and death ; he suffers good and evil from men, he arouses and feels love and hatred, trust and distrust, admiration and contempt. No one, therefore, is absolutely unfamiliar with the ex- tremes of happiness and worldly joy, and disappointment, disgust, world-weariness, and satiety of life. Inasmuch as 8very mood is absolute while it lasts, and steeps the whole 164 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY world and all life in its color, we may say that the tendency is temporarily present in every man to produce these two systems, the optimistic and the pessimistic. Every one has in his own experiences, the fundamental conditions at least for understanding both systems. It will depend upon his temperament and his experiences, which of them will gain the supremacy, and finally become habitual with him. But in some form or other both will be present; in some form or other he will employ them both to universalize his tem- porary mood. To men like Goethe and Wilhelm von Hum- boldt, who were able beautifully to develop and happily to exercise healthy and remarkable natural powers, under happy and appropriate conditions, the Hellenic conception of life, a worldly optimism, was becoming and natural. But moments were not wanting even in Goethe's life when he entertained other feelings towards Christianity than aversion to the cross, for did he not once call Saint Filipo Neri his saint ? And perhaps Humboldt was not always in the mood which once prompted him to write that even in the hour of death a few verses from Homer, even though they be taken from the cata- logue of ships, would be more consoling and elevating than anything in the world. On the other hand, whoever is endowed with a gloomy temperament and has suffered great misfortunes, whoever has been disappointed and ill-treated by men, whoever has erred much and sinned much, or perhaps looks back upon a wrecked life, will be more in- clined to seek and find rest in a view that absolutely repudiates this temporal life, and looks forward to deliver- ance and the hereafter ; Hamann and Schopenhauer were natures of this kind. But their lives, too, were not devoid of experiences which enabled them to appreciate the Hellenic conception of the universe. In the representations of art at least, Schopenhauer contemplates reality with pleasure and love. Moreover, the same mixture of opposites is not wanting in THE MODEKN CONCEPTION 165 the earlier civilizations. The Greeks, too, were not unfamiliar with the feeling of the transitoriness and nothingness of the earthly. How often the feeling of world-sorrow and weari- ness of life strikes a responsive chord in their poetry, in Homer, in the tragic poets ! And so, conversely, a naive love of nature is not wanting in the Gospels ; Jesus in the parables lovingly contemplates the life of nature; and with what love and pleasure his gaze rests upon the children ! And Saint Augustine surely did not always think, in his direct daily intercourse with men, of the system according to which the natural virtues are splendid vices. We shall therefore have to say, the systems of ethical nat- uralism and supranaturalism, carried out consistently, are logical schemes, that do not, like natural-historical defini- tions, directly express the life, thoughts, and feelings of the actual man. They mark a relation of the soul to reality as it would be if certain experiences and moods were the only ones. The real life oscillates between extreme moods, and the judgment on life and reality correspondingly wavers be- tween these extreme formulae. This is true of the life of indi- viduals as well as of the life of nations and times. The theoretical value of such conceptual schemes consists in this, that they are an indirect means of understanding and deter- mining reality. They have the significance of artificial lines, of co-ordinate axes, by which we may determine for the infinite variety of living forms their place in the historical-moral world. It is the same here as with the definitions of the temperaments or the forms of the state, which do not, as we know, immedi- ately express or describe the concrete reality, but serve, as logical schemes, indirectly to comprehend and describe it. More important than the theoretical value of these schemes is the practical value of the two great forms of life and their self-expression in poetry and art. They supply the modern nations with the spiritual forms for the great modes and moods of life. In the history of the Gospel, in the life of the 166 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY saints, the sister of charity finds the models which elevate and strengthen her in her calling ; from the songs of Paul Gerhardt the sick and troubled soul derives consolation and comfort. I wonder how a Greek consoled himself when he was sick and weak. Or were the Greeks never sick ? And, conversely, in the great figures of Greek and Roman history, in the vigorous eloquence of Demosthenes, the Germans sought and found the means to revive the courage of a vanquished people, and to direct it towards the goal of free- dom and greatness. And so even now the poems of Homer may inculcate in the souls of our boys the first examples of youthful love of honor and prudence, manly vigor and dig- nity. The advantage of this long and varied preliminary his- tory is that it offers us clearly defined conceptions, according to our different natures and talents, our different fortunes and life-experiences. And we are therefore unquestionably justified in introducing our young men to both worlds, to that of antiquity and that of Christianity, not merely in order to give them historical knowledge, but to enable them to contemplate the different lots of life, so that each one may prudently select that which is fitting for him. But for that very reason we should not obliterate and dull the opposition between those great historical forms of life, but should clearly define it. Each of them can supply us with figures of inner greatness and perfection, which, as typical examples, will forever preserve their power of attraction. So much for the subjective compatibility of the two types of a perfect life. It is really possible to admire Saint Francis and at the same time to feel a hearty and grateful sympathy with a nature like Goethe's, however far apart their ideals of life may be, objectively considered. Only we must not desire to canonize Goethe or look for philosophy and culture in the saint,— rather we should see the positive elements in both. Yes, we shall be compelled to say that a world composed of nothing but holy beggars would be as tiresome as it is impos- THE MODERN COlfCEPTiON 167 fiible ; the saints need the children of the world as a foil to set them off. In conclusion, let me say a word concerning an objective approximation, which becomes apparent when we compare the two types with a third, to which they are both opposed. We may distinguish between three conceptions of a good life, and accordingly between three forms of conduct. The first seeks the good in sensuous enjoyment ; the second finds it in the exercise of human-spiritual powers in a varied civili- zation ; the third, at last, transcends the earth and discovers the goal of life in the blessedness of the hereafter, which is here enjoyed in anticipation. The first view is, according to the Greek belief, the ideal of the Asiatic barbarians ; the second, that of the Greeks ; the third, that of the Christians. It is plain that the second and third views make common cause against the first. The rule of reason, the limitation and discipline of the sensuous desires, is demanded by both as the precondition of perfection. So far as that goes, an ascetic element is by no means wanting even in Greek morality ; it is strongly enough emphasized by Plato, the Stoics, and still more by the later philosophers. Indeed, the word asceticism is derived from the Greek language. — it signifies, first of all, the discipline of the animal nature, which was practised in the gymnasia, and also that of the inner life, which was practised in the philosopher-schools. It is well known that even Paul is familiar with the figure. — Of course, Christi- anity with its demand of self-denial and holiness, goes much further than Greek asceticism, which always remained more or less a form of self-preservation ; the development and exer- cise of the spiritual powers in philosophy and science formed the positive content of life, for the sake of which the discipline of the senses was demanded. On the other hand, however, we also find attempts at a positive treatment of the mundane world in Christianity ; among them, for example, the governance of human life ac- 168 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY cording to the principle of brotherly love, the perfection of a kingdom of God on earth. The love of neighbor becomes a definite and tangible thing only in case an earthly goal is pre- supposed, whicli it is the function of love to assist in attaining. And a Christian doctrine, a kind of science, also existed even at the beginnings of Christianity; and blessedness consists in contemplating God. When Christianity began to develop as a permanent historical form of life, when the expectation of an early end of the world failed to be realized, the positive elements were unfolded ; in the church a universal form of life was produced, in theology a Christian science, in wor- ship a motive and tendency to art. That the Graeco-Roman example exercised a highly important influence in all this was natural and inevitable ; living in the world and attempt- ing to pervade the world, Christianity adopted some of the forms of the world. Thus we have an approximation of the extremes from both sides. The inner fundamental opposition remains, the ideal of perfection is quite different in either case ; but still there are approximations and agreements, not only in minor points. And this made it possible, when the church abandoned its original exclusiveness as a community of saints, for a broad stratum to be formed, within the church, between pure Greeks and pure Christians, composed of such as sought to combine in their lives Christian and Hellenic elements, holiness and worldly beauty and culture, faith and philosophy. We can readily understand why such persons should have felt inclined to minimize, as much as possible, the differences between the two elements of their souls. Whoever looks at things histori- cally will, it is true, deny the similarity between Hellenic humanity and Christian holiness, but he will not doubt the subjective sincerity of conviction in those who do minimize the differences, and he will recognize the subjective possibility of reconciling these opposites in human nature, as well as its objective possibility in the two great historical forms of life. CHAPTER VI MEDIEVAL AND MODERN MORAL PHn.OSOPHT> 1. The theological moral philosoiphy. The supranaturalistic-religious conception of life and con- duct, representing, as it does, one of the two possible courses of life, is of very great interest to every thinking man. Not so great is our interest in the attempts of the theologians to construct a systematic ethics upon this view. These attempts lack the fundamental precondition of theoretical interest : the desire to solve, by means of an unprejudiced investigation, the problems which life propounds to the acting and judging man. Theology finds an answer for all questions in revela- tion ; the Sacred Scriptures determine with absolute authority not only the faith, but also the rules of life. The problem is, therefore, simply to establish, to understand, and to arrange the given content, to defend it against pagan and heretical errors, and finally and above all to make it fruitful for life. The moral sermon, the edifying interpretation, puts a check upon scientific research. The possibility of a really scientific ethics, an independent theory of action, is absolutely precluded by the fundamental principle of church Christianity. Greek ethics tries to dis- cover by what conduct the goal of all human striving, eudae- monia, can be naturally realized. The Christian, too, strives for happiness, if we take this term in the widest sense, but ' [For mediaeval ethics see the references on pp. 35 and 65 ; also the works of Stockl, Hanreau, and Rousselot on the history of scholastic philosophy. -Tr.] 170 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY he finds it not in this earthly life, but in transmundane blessedness, of which, it must be confessed, he already re- ceives a foretaste in this life, in the happy feeling of peace with God. Eternal blessedness is not, however, like Greek eudaemonia, the natural effect of a certain mode of life, but is bestowed by God as an act of grace upon those who do His will. His will, however, He has declared in the Sacred Scriptures. The function of the moralist is therefore not scientifically to investigate the conditions of happiness which are necessary in the very nature of things, but to interpret and systematize the existing divine commands. If the will of God is posited as the final and sole cause of the differ- ence between good and bad, then there is no recognizable natural connection between the goal of life and the conduct of life. The final consequence of this conception is drawn in the doctrine of predestination. I shall confine myself to mentioning a few of the most im- portant phenomena in this group of literature. We may regard as the first attempt at a systematic ex- position of Christian ethics the treatise of St. Ambrose on the duties of the clergy {de officiis ministrorum). In form he follows Cicero's work on duties ; the new content is, so far as possible, inserted into the scheme of the four cardinal virtues. The author candidly declares that he cares very little for the form of the investigation ; to the objection that he does not proceed systematically in his construction of ethics, he an- swers: "But that is the business of the art of logic, first to define the concept of duty and then to divide it into its kinds : we, however, shun theory (nos autem fugimus artein) ; we bring to view the examples of the ancestors, in order thereby most effectually to urge others to imitate them." ^ The ex- amples are mostly taken from the writings of the Old Testa- ment. This is quite natural ; the New Testament does not aim at the establishment of a worldly order ; far from it. In- 1 I., 25. MEDIiEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 171 deed, an ethics that adapts itself to a life in this world will find it hard to handle. The Old Testament is indispensable to a church that endeavors to regulate our daily conduct by means of moral legislation. Still, it remains a curious fact that Ambrose, himself a Roman, now finds it possible to refer the Romans to the patriarchs and kings of the Jews as their ancestors. The later moralists, and first among them Augustine, add to the four cardinal virtues the three theological virtues, faith, love, and hope, thus completing the sacred number seven. Corresponding to these seven virtues are seven fun- damental forms of sin : pride, avarice, anger, gluttony, licen- tiousness, melancholy, dullness (acedia, aKijSeia, satiety of life would perhaps be the most appropriate translation). The expositions are fond of describing the Christian life as a battle against these powers of darkness which obstruct the entrance to the kingdom of God. " Forces and counter- forces are arranged, the dangers are brought to light, a speci- fied number of virtues and sins are opposed to each other, seven to eight fundamental names on both sides, and the spiritual gifts of Isaiah besides ; this entire apparatus, which was capable of still greater elaboration, served to keep before the mind the thought of the constant conflict going on be- tween the two forces." ^ The rules of monachism were formulated according to the same principles. Their aim was to fashion the entire sur- roundings so that the realization of Christian perfection might be facilitated to the greatest possible degree. The state of holiness might also be attained outside of the cloister, it did not consist in the observance of the rules of monastic life ; but this life was supposed to be the easiest road to per- fection ; all obstacles and hindrances which life in the world placed in the way of the Christian were here removed, so far ^ Gass, Hittory of Christian Ethics, 1., 192. The two volumes of this work give a detailed account of theological morals. 172 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY as was possible. The monastery was the citadel in which the warriors of Christ defended themselves, under the most favor- able conditions, against the attacks whicli Satan directed against them in the form of the flesh and the world. The monastic rules circumscribed the life of Christian per- fection, while a lower limit was reached for the average Chris- tian life in the confessional and the penitential system, which were gradually more definitely formulated. When the church became state, and entire nations were received into Christianity, it was of course no longer possible to carry out the demand of a separation from the world. As the world became less objectionable, especially on account of the dis- appearance of idolatrous sacrifices, the church grew less timid in recognizing the institutions and aspirations of the world. Worldly feelings and a worldly mode of life became more and more compatible with membership in the church. On the other hand, a minimum of righteousness was demanded from all members as a new law, and ecclesiastical penalties were imposed upon unlawful acts and omissions. In the penance-books, which became necessary, especially when Christianity was transplanted to Germanic soil, we have the origin of a church morality in the form of a legal system. 2. It is not my purpose, nor am I able, to give even an outline of the history of theological ethics during the Middle Ages and modern times. I shall content myself with indi- cating the nature of this science. It was, as a rule, character- ized by the desire to combine Christian holiness and human perfection. Both the lex divina, the divine law, given by revelation and authentically interpreted by the church, and the lex natur(B, the law of perfection impressed upon the things by the Creator and recognized by the reason, were accepted as sources of knowledge. The universal human duties might be deduced even from the latter; here the attempt of Aristotle served as the pattern ; besides, this law was the subsidiary source in all cases where revelation failed MEDIiEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 173 to give express commands. The specifically Christian-relig- ious duties, on the other hand, were derived^ from the Scrip- tures and the laws of the church. "Within the Catholic church this form of moral theology has continued without change down to the present time. When we take up one of the more modern works in this field — for example, the widely-read and much admired book of the Jesuit P. Gury '■ — what first surprises one not acquainted with this literature is its impersonal-juristical character ; the author presents a legal system, giving proofs and motives, interpre- tations and precedents. The second surprising fact is that time seems to have made no impression upon such works. A number of authorities, continuing without interruption from the beginnings of scholastic theology down to the present, accompany the entire exposition ; writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are quoted by the side of those of the seventeenth and eighteenth, as living and recognized authori- ties. It is as though history had left no trace upon this sys- tem ; only occasionally do we notice that we are dealing with a work of the nineteenth century : namely, when an institu- tion or a defect of the present gives rise to a question and a response. — This branch of science owes its origin to the con- fessional and the penitential system. It is necessary for the father-confessor to know what is duty, what sin, what is the degree of the sin, and where on the other hand the domain of the allowable begins. This determines the form : sharply defined definitions, their logical consequences, finally the solu- tion of problems and difficulties. The formal principle of authority in this system is the will of God, as expressed in the ten commandments and the Sacred Scriptures in general. The aforesaid lex natures is recognized as a subsidiary source. There is manifestly a serious danger in such an exact jurist- ical formulation of morality : it tends to make our entire moral life artificial. The natural inclination is apt to inter- 1 Com/iendium theoloijine moralis, ed. vi., Romae, 1880, 2 Tols. 174 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT pret the system and its application in the confessional to mean that the fulfilment of the requirements will permit the agent to make the most of the allowable. And since, owing to the nature of morality, the lines cannot be drawn as sharply as in the case of the positive law, a wide margin is left for those inclined to extend the boundaries of the permissible, to evade the real demands by making fine distinctions and in- terpretations, and to rest satisfied with mere appearances. A large part of the Jewish formalism, which Jesus opposed with the true and spiritual worship has again found its way into the Catholic church. It cannot fail to act according to the tendency peculiar to it : and this tendency is to entice such natures as are not protected by an original sincerity of heart to deceive God and themselves with a "statutory pseudo- worship" (^Afterdienst) , to use Kant's expression. The section in P. Gury's work on the duty of Hearing Mass may serve as a sample of this moral theology's method of treatment. Three things are necessary for the performance of this duty : (I) Bodily Presence ; (II) Attention of the Spirit ; (III) The Appropriate Place. As for the first point, two things are demanded, (1) The Moral, and (2) The Uninterrupted Pres- ence. (1) Moral Presence ; that is, the person must be present in such a way that he can be regarded as one of the partici- pants in the sacrifice ; it suffices, however, that he be in a place from which he can follow the mass in its three main parts, either as a spectator, or as an auditor, or by watching the signs made by the other participants. (2) Uninterrupted Presence ; that is, from beginning to end, so that he commits a serious sin who misses a considerable part of the mass, a small sin who misses an inconsiderable part, unless excused by a good reason. — Now follow solutions of doubts : (1) The presence at the mass is valid even when the person does not see the priest, or hear his words, but still distinguishes the parts of the sacred act by the sound of the bell, the song of the choir, and the movements of the participants, and MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 175 " morally " joins them, even though he stand outside of the church because there is no room inside. 2, There is also a greater probability (jRit prohahilius) that he, too, lawfully hears the mass who is staying in a neighboring house from which he can see the altar or the assistants through the window or the door, or can distinguish the parts of the mass, provided the intervening space is but small; in case there is a large space or a street between, he cannot be said to be " morally " present. Some fix the limit at thirty steps. Then follow answers to doubts and questions in refer- ence to the Uninterruptedness of the Presence, with an exact definition of the degree of guilt, which the omission of each particular part involves. I omit these items, and pro- ceed to the second point, the Attention of the Mind. A dis- tinction is made between two kinds of attention : (1) Inner Attention, in which a person really observes what the priest is doing; (2) Outer Attention, which consists in avoiding every external act that hinders the mind from paying attention, as for example, talking, drawing, etc. The Inner Attention in turn is threefold : (a) that which is directed upon the words and acts of the priest; (b) upon the meaning of the words and mysteries; (c) upon God himself in prayer and pious contemplation. The definitions and distinctions are now followed by the principles of application : (1) For the valid hearing of the mass (ad Missam valide audiendarn) external attention at least is absolutely necessary. So all authorities. (2) Some inner attention is also requisite, at least the will to hear the mass. (3) But any one of the three forms of inner attention suffices (jufficif). (4) Loud prayers are not abso- lutely necessary, but commendable. And now come again questions (qucesita) and answers (responsa). Is the inner attention necessary in order to avoid grievous sin {suh gravi) ? The answer is in dispute : the afiirmation is prohabilior, but the negation too is prohabilis (that is, sanctioned by good authority), since the preseftce with voluntary, though merely 176 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY external, attention is an actus sufficienter religiosus. In prac- tice, the author adds, the difference is not great. For even according to the stricter view, a moderate attention (^attentio in gradu remisso) suffices, that is, if directed upon the main parts of the mass. But according to the other, the requisites are : (1) a pious emotion, or the real intention to honor God ; (2) such attention that the participant can say to himself that he is a real participant, and consequently that he pays attention to the main parts, at least confusedly {in confuso). Hence, believers should not be lightly accused of a lack of attention while attending mass, but should rather be admon- ished lovingly, devoutly, and diligently to turn their minds to the divine mysteries. — It is evident that all this is not much unlike a code of etiquette : for a social call a black coat, a high hat, and gloves are requisite, but one or the other may be dispensed with under certain circumstances. The entire field of duties is gone through in the same way : the duty of justice, which is really susceptible to this treat- ment, likewise the duty of love of enemy, the duty of charity, the duties of married life ; everywhere we find the same attempt to stake off exactly the boundaries of that which is required (requiritur) ; everywhere the unfortunate sufficit, according to the probable or more probable, or according to the opinion of all. The advice, too, concluding the examina- tion of the obligations in regard to the mass, is not infrequently repeated: Do not interrogate punctiliously and frighten the conscience, but admonish lovingly. But, on the whole, this juristical treatment of morality will leave a painful impression on one not accustomed to it, not on account of the harshness of its demands — on the contrary, the suffioit often comes surprisingly soon — but on account of its entire method of fixed prescriptions and outward compliance, and its attempt to appraise the most spiritual things in the world.^ ' It is customary to criticise such text-books severely on account of their treatment of the seventh commandment. Well, the perusal of this portion is cer tainly not an edifying task, and I am also of the opinion that the prescription and MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 177 Such a moral theology is, of course, a necessary conse- quence of the entire confessional and penj^iential system : it was necessary to furnish the father-confessor, who did not himself have the experience or the ability to settle such difficult matters, with the most careful possible instructions for his guidance. But it is undoubtedly well that the Prot- estant churches are relieved of this necessity by the abolition of the entire system. The individual confession is, of course, theoretically, the only real confession ; but the regular en- forcement of the individual confession was an awfully dan- gerous step. The power of the church over souls may have been strengthened by the practice and perhaps it also helped to establish external obedience and discipline ; but it is more than doubtful whether inner piety and conscientious- ness have been promoted by it. And one thing surely has not been promoted by the confessional — that is, man's truthful- ness to himself and to his God. Moreover, two things must not be forgotten here : first, that these moral books are not intended for the layman as text-books and books of devotion; their object is to give instructions to the father-confessor. Secondly, this morality does not formulate the ideal, but the minimum of what is demanded of every one on pain of punishment. The ideal to which the sermon constantly refers is the life of the saints. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas &, Kempis describes it : a book of such simplicity and such deep knowl- edge of the heart, and withal of such plainness and vigor of speech, as have scarcely been equalled in any work of its kind ; there is genuine inner monachism in it, and monachism of that sort surely contains a large element of real Christianity. presumably also the practice of the confessional here enters upon a subject which had better not be discussed, for some agreement might surely be reached with- out such discussion. On the other hand, it must be said that those who have in charge the care of souls cannot ignore these things ; if medicine and jurisprudence are compelled to deal with them, moral theology and the confessional will have to look them square in the face. 178 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY Moreover, that the type of true, inner monachism has not yet become extinct in the Catholic church the reader will learn from a book in which he may perhaps not look for it, in Kenan's Souvenirs de jeunesse. Renan was educated in theological seminaries ; he remembers the teachers and edu- cators of his youth with the deepest respect ; in four things, he says, they remained his models — in unselfishness and poverty, in modesty, in politeness, and in the preservation of morality. Besides, moral-theological works are not wanting in Catholic theology which conceive and present the Christian- moral life in a freer and deeper spirit. As such I mention J. M. Sailer's Handbook of Christian Morals'^ and J. B. Hirscher's Christian Morals? Within the Protestant churches, moral theology was over- shadowed by dogmatics and also lacked the logical con- sistency of an ecclesiastical system. Though it still followed the old scheme : lex divina and lex naturae, the desire for a juristical treatment of the subject, gradually diminished with the decline of church discipline. Moreover, the devel- opment of the Protestant principle of faith also led to a deeper conception of morality, but, of course, likewise tempted the new church to engage in theological speculations to the neglect of practical problems. On the other hand, owing to the absence of an external binding authority, Protestant moral theology entered into closer relations with philosophi- cal ethics ; since the middle of the last century, it has successively fallen under the influence of Wolff, Kant, and Speculative Philosophy. Schleiermacher, to whose system I shall return later on, betrays the influence of the latter. R. Rothe has constructed a very comprehensive theological ethics,' which is overburdened with an immense amount of ' Handbuch der chrislUchen Moral, 3 vols., 1817. ■ Die christUche Moral, 3 vols., 1835. " Second edition, 1867-71, 5 vols. MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 179 reading matter, upon Schleiermacher's principles. In addi- tion we may mention, Dorner, System of Christian Ethics^ and the work of the Danish bishop, Martensen, Christian Ethics?' 3. Modern moral philosophy. The following exposition, which expressly disclaims being a history of modern moral philosophy, simply desires to give a few typical examples of the chief modes of treatment of this subject in modern times.' At the head of modern moral philosophy we may place Thomas Hobbes.* The fundamental idea upon which he bases his practical philosophy is the concept of self-preserva- tion. He thus returns to the Greek mode of treatment. Although he does not always emphasize the fact, he is uni- versally conscious of his opposition to the system of ethics which demands self-denial. It seems that Hobbes derived this conception of human conduct from the science in which his age was pre-eminently interested : from mechanical physics. Galileo had based ' System der christlichen SUtenlehre, 1885 [English translation, 1887]. " [Fourth edition, 1888, 2 vols. (English translation in 3 vols., 1873-83). See also N. Smyth, Christian Ethics, New York, 1892.— Tk.] ' I refer the reader to Fr. Jodl's History of Ethics in Modern Philosophy (Geschichte der Ethik in der neueren Philosophie), 2 vols., 1882-89, an admirable work which gives the first connected account of the history of modern moral philosophy. G. von Gizycki's work on the Ethics of David Hume (1878) is also valuable ; it contains, besides a detailed account of Hume, an outline of the entire development of moral philosophy in England. An elaborate and thorough exposition of the history of ethics and jurisprudence in the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries, especially of the Speculative School in Germany, is given by J. H. Fichte in the first, historico-critical part of his System of Ethics (1850). [Consult the references on p. 35, note ; also Whewell, History of Moral Philosophy ; Vorlander, Geschichte der philosophischen Moral, Rechts- und Staatslehre ; Mackin- tosh, On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy during the ITth and 18(A Centuries; Stephen, English Thought of the Eighteenth Century ; Lecky, History of European Morals, chap. I. ; Guyau, La morale anglaise contemporaine ; FouilMe, Critique des systemes de morale contemporains ; Williams, A Review of Evolutionary Ethics. See also the histories of modern philosophy, especially Kuno Fischer's able work, and. for bibliographies on particular authors, Ueberweg and Weber-Thilly. — Tr.] * [For bibliography, see Weber, p. 301 , note 1 ; also Tonnies, Hobbes' Leben vnd Lehre, and Sneath's Selections from Hobbes's ethical writings. — Tb.] 180 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY modern physics upon the new fundamental law of the con. servation of motion. Hobbes expressly places himself by the side of Galileo, the founder of natural philosophy, as the founder of the philosophia civilis, the science of the state. He bases the latter upon the corresponding principle of ani- mal life : the law of self-preservation. Just as all physical processes are subject to the law of the conservation of motion, so all the processes in the living world are subject to the nat- ural law of self-preservation. Every living creature strives in everything that it does to preserve its life ; it desires what furthers this and shrinks from what hinders it. However, its acts do not always make for preservation ; it constantly aims at the latter, but does not always hit the mark. This is es- pecially true in the case of man. Hence arises the antithesis between good and bad acts. Man always desires what is good for him, but not infrequently does what is bad and pernicious. The cause is a false opinion of what is good and bad. Good action is therefore identical with prudent action, and to do wrong is to act imprudently, or against " right reason." Hobbes did not construct a system of ethics upon this basis, but his politics rests upon it.^ Man does not attain to what he strives after, that is, self-preservation, outside of society ; on the one hand, because his powers do not suilice to subject nature to his will, on the other, because individuals come in conflict with each other, and all therefore live in a state of continual insecurity. The natural state is a uni- versal state of war (helium omnium contra omnes). Since, in such a state, no one can obtain that which he desires, the preservation and perfection of individual life, right reason demands the organization of society ; its form is the state, which we may therefore designate as an institution for uni- versal self-preservation. In the status civilis are peace, security, wealth, welfare, in short, self-preservation. The state pre- supposes the absolute submission of the individuals to its 1 De cive, 1642 ; Leviathan, 1650. MEDUEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 181 will which prescribes to them by means of laws what to do ond what to refrain from doing. To act coratrary to the law is of course wrong, for it is contrary to the necessary means of self-preservation, hence contrary to right reason. But this does not at all mean, as some have misinterpreted Hobbes, that good and bad are wholly synonymous with in accor- dance with, or contrary to, law. The laws of the state may themselves be good or bad, according as they promote or retard welfare and hence are in accordance with or contrary to right reason. The agent as such cannot, of course, judge of this, but the philosopher as such can. 4. Spinoza ^ constructs a system of ethics upon this con- ception in the work, Uthica,^ which did not appear until after his death (1677). The starting-point of the truly ethical por- tion of the book is the sixth proposition of Part III : " Every- thing, in so far as it is in itself, strives to persist in its own being." This is true of the body as well as of the soul. Now, the essence of the mind consists in ideation. But ideas differ from each other ; we have active and passive ideation ; the former is scientific thinking, the latter, sensation and feeling, — the former gives us adequate, the latter, fragmentary and confused ideas, that is, ideas of which the causes do not, or do not wholly, lie within the soul itself, but in the things outside of it. Self-preservation is, therefore, for the mind, activity in scientific thinking ; self-denial and weakness, the suffering of things in sensation and feeling ; the former represents the freedom, the latter, the bondage of man. Hence, in so far as the soul is really master of itself, in so far as its striving is guided by the proper insight into that which agrees with its essence, it strives to preserve itself in pure thought, and to femove everything that is contrary to it. And so we are brought back again to the old proposition of Greek ethics : Philosophy, or scientific knowledge, is the function of life and the highest good. 1 [For bibliography, see Weber-Thilly, 323, note l.J » [Translations by White and Fnllerton.] 182 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT Spinoza shows the twofold value of knowledge : it is, on the one hand, the highest, freest, most perfect activity of life,_ the absolute end in itself ; on the other hand, it is a means of freeing us from the bondage to which the irrational man is subjected by his affections. The fourth book of the Ethics regards reason as the means of self-preservation. There are two great sciences, physics and psychology, corresponding to the two phases of reality, the world of bodies and the world of ideas (res — idece'). Physics forms the basis of two practical sciences, mechanics and medicine ; psychology (or the science of mind), the basis of ethics and politics. With these four practical sciences reason regulates life. Spinoza discusses the two latter. Ethics is the knowledge of the proper behavior of the individual in reference to himself and to other individuals. Animals and, as a matter of fact, most men, are determined in their action by feelings ; anger incites tliem to requite injury with injury, compassion impels them to assist those in need, and so forth. The wise man, on the other hand, lives according to reason (ex ductu rationis') ; he alone realizes the end of self-preservation, while those governed by their feelings often miss it: the desire for revenge, ambition, avarice, the love of enjoyment, — whatever their names may be, — frequently lead to ruin. He, however, who is governed by reason knows the value and the measure of things, in what respects they are wholesome, in what harmful. He sees that the requiting of evil with evil gives rise to lasting enmity, causing mutual insecurity, distrust, nay even destruction, while hatred can be overcome, and love and friendship produced by calmness and kindness. Likewise basing itself upon the knowledge of human nature, the science of politics shows how collective life must be fashioned in order that not war and insecurity, but peace and benevolence may be the result, and that all may co-operate to preserve and promote life. MEDLEY AL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 183 Knowledge, finally, accomplishes something else: it produces peace of mind ; it leads to the conviction that everything that happens follows by eternal necessity from the nature of things. The fruit of this conviction is tranquilitas animi. We cease to struggle against that the necessity of which we understand ; that is unbearable which seems to happen contrary to fate and justice: how men would rebel against death, if not all, but only a few had to die ! Above all, knowledge makes us tolerant in our judgment of men ; it is men's nature to be what they are, vacillating, ungrateful, vain, revengeful, a frail race ; the philosopher kno\^s that their conduct is the result of their nature, the weakness of reason and the strength of the feelings ; and to understand everything means to forgive everything. Hence, true knowledge is the means of the preservation and the perfection of life. Knowledge is at the same time, so the end of the fifth book declares, life's highest and most valuable content. Knowledge is, as distinguished from feeling, self-activity ; to become aware of one's power and independence arouses joy ; the knowledge of the highest in the highest form, the knowledge of God or nature, the sum total of reality or perfection, produces the highest joy. From joy arises the love of God {amor Dei in- tellectualis), who in knowledge fills the soul with blessedness. Thus closes with a religious turn the ethics of Spinoza. The union of knowledge, love of God, and blessedness, the beginning and end of all his reflections, is evidently the result of the philosopher's personal experiences. He excluded him- self and was excluded from the community of faith into which he was born ; he excluded himself and was excluded from practical life and public activity ; he excluded himself and was excluded from the competition for reputation and literary fame, and withdrew entirely to the world of his thoughts where he found peace, rest, and happiness. His system of ethics is the result of these conditions. At the beginning of the Trantatus de intellectus emendatione he himself declares: "After experi- 184 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY ence had taught me that al) the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anj'thing either good or bad, ex- cept in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be any- thing of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. I say ' I finally resolved,' for at first sight it seemed unwise will- ingly to lose hold on what was sure, for the sake of something then uncertain. I could see the benefits which are acquired through fame and riches, and that I should be obliged to abandon the quest of such objects, if I seriously devoted my- self to the search for something different and new. ... I therefore debated whether it would not be possible to arrive at the new principle, or, at any rate, at a certainty concerning its existence, without changing the conduct and usual plan of my life ; with this end in view I made many efforts, but in vain. For the ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads — Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of Sense : with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good." The quest for the highest good, therefore, could not be reconciled with these things. "However, after I had reflected on the matter, I came in the first place to the con- clusion that these things were not, as I originally believed, certain, but rather very uncertain goods ; nay I finally saw that they would have to be regarded as certain evils, for they are not only not means of preserving our being, but even act as hindrances, causing the death not seldom of those that possess them, and always of those who are possessed by them. — All these evils seem to have arisen from the fact, that hap- piness or unhappiness is made wholly to depend on the quality MEDIiEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 185 of the object which we love. When a thing is not loved, no quarrels will arise concerning it — no sadness will be felt if it perishes, no fear, no hatred ; in short, no disturbance of the mind. All these arise from the love of what is perishable, such as the objects already mentioned. But love towards a thing eternal and infinite fills the mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness, wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with all our strength." * 5. This ethical philosophy was essentially supplemented and developed by Lord Shaftesbury .^ He gives the ethics of self-preservation a broader anthropological foundation, by abandoning the rigid individualistic egoism of Hobbes and Spinoza, and thus bases virtue upon impulses and feelings, whereas the former seem to base it solely upon reason and calculation. His fundamental conceptions, the beginnings of which we find in many other contemporary English moralists, especially in Cumberland,^ the most important among the opponents of Hobbes, are about as follows. I am, in the main, following the Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit, 1699, contained in the second volume of the Characteristics.^ We may accept the proposition that every being strives to preserve itself, but must add : What we call an individual is not an independent being aiming solely at its own preserva- tion ; the species alone is independent in the full sense of the term, — the individual is related to it as a member to its organ. This is the case, considered from the purely biological point of view : the individual owes its nature and existence to the species ; by reproducing itself it serves as an organ for the preservation of the species. 1 [Translation in Bohn's Library.] * [See Gizycki, Die Philosophie Shaftesbury's ; Fowler, Shafieshury and Hutche- son ; Albee, Shaftesbury and Hulcheson {Phil. Review, vol. V.). — Tk.] ' [De legibus natural, 1672 (Engl, transl. by J. Maxwell, 1727). See Ernest Albee, The Ethical System of Richard Cumberland {Phil. Review, yol. IV.). — Tr.] ♦ [Edited by W. Hatch, 3 vols., 1869, — Tr.] 186 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY This highly important fact, which Hobbes and Spinoza absolutely ignored, is also noticeable in the soul-life of the human individual. His self-preservative impulse does not aim exclusively at the preservation of his own life, but just as directly at the preservation of the species. Shaftesbury expresses this truth as follows: two kinds of impulses may be distinguished in man: individualistic and social; he calls the former private, selfish affections, the latter, natural, hind, social affections ; by his successor, Hutcheson,^ the latter are also more appropriately termed sympathetic affections. The goal to which the selfish affections impel man is his own individual welfare (^private good); the goal to which the social affections impel him is the common welfare, the preser- vation of the system of which the individual forms a part {public good). Both impulses are equally original, both equally rooted in nature ; it is by no means possible to derive the social impulses from the individualistic impulse of self- preservation, say by the round-about way of prudence. Even in animal life the impulse which serves the preservation of the species in the reproduction and care of offspring, is as strong and original as the individualistic, self-preservative impulse, and uniformly asserts itself at the expense of self- preservation. In man as a rational being a third form is added to these two primitive motives of the will ; which Shaftesbury calls reflex, rational affections; they are the feelings which are produced by reflection on human actions. Just as the con- templation of works of art produces feelings of disinterested pleasure and displeasure, so the contemplation of human acts and qualities arouses feelings of approval and disapproval in the spectator, and he accordingly designates them as good or bad, just as he calls the former beautiful or ugly. We may regard a moral sense as the source of the latter, as we regard » [Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 1723; Phihsophia moralis institutis, 1745 ; A System of Moral Philosophy, 1755. — Tk.] MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 187 an aesthetic sense as the source of the former. The qualifying judgment is first pronounced upon the conduct of others, but it is also pronounced upon the agent's own conduct, and is then called conscience. — These feelings, too, impel the will to action, directing it towards the general welfare, which in- cludes individual welfare ; such acts are disapproved as tend to produce disturbances in the life of others and in the life of the agent himself. That is the result of the psychological analysis, or, as Shaftesbury himself once said, of the anatomy of the soul. The latter is the foundation of ethics, as the anatomy and physiology of the body are the foundation of dietetics. Now in what does the health or perfection of soul-life consist ? Precisely in what the health of bodily life con- sists. The latter consists in the harmonious co-operation of all the organs, the former in the harmonious co-opera- tion of the well-regulated impulses, in the regulated econ- omy of the selfish and social affections, as Shaftesbury once expressed it. There are no impulses which are bad in them- selves, — how could they have come into this God-created nature ? The selfish impulses, too, are good as such, they are indispensable to the preservation of living creatures; they become bad througli one-sided, excessive development. The impulse to acquire wealth is good and necessary in itself; only when as avarice it becomes the predominating motive, and dwarfs the other impulses, does it become bad. Compassion is good in itself : if, however — which, of course, does not frequently happen — it should gain such control over man as to prevent him from thinking of his duties, all on account of his pity and sympathy for the distress of others, it would ruin his life and soon render him in- capable of assisting others. Hence a soul has health or natural perfection, in which the selfish impulses are strong enough to urge the individual to perform all the functions essential to self-preservation, and in which the social impulses 188 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY are sufficiently powerful to arouse the proper regard for the universal welfare. In order to attain to true moral excellence (virtue'), it is necessary to fashion the moral sense into a strong regu- lative principle. When conscience (the sense of right and wrong) secures conduct against the fluctuations of inclina- tion which occur even in a good nature, then we call a man morally good or virtuous. We shall, therefore, also call a man virtuous who is endowed with an unruly temperament, say with strong selfish impulses, when he governs his nature according to principles ; and the greater the resistance, the more virtuous we shall consider him. The similarity as well as the difference between these con- ceptions and those of Hobbes may be easily seen. We have the same fundamental idea: that is good which makes for self-preservation ; but it is the self-preservation, not of the isolated individual, but of the species or society and within it of the individual, at which the will actually aims, and by which its objective value is measured. Shaftesbury is fond of emphasizing his opposition to Hobbes ; it is an opposition based not merely on principles, but likewise on personal feel- ings and judgments. Shaftesbury is an optimist, Hobbes a pessimist, in his judgment of men. The latter likes to look at the ferocious, the former at the lovable and benevolent sides of human nature. He is fond of emphasizing the fact that there is for man, according to the experience of every one, no greater and purer happiness than to contribute to the happiness of others. Hence the social virtues are a direct source of happiness to those who possess them. And the lack of them is just as certain to make men unhappy ; there could be no greater misfortune for a man than to live abso- lutely alone, without friends, without giving and receiving sympathy. Hence all feelings and qualities which tend to lead to such a state — anger, hatred, envy, coldness, selfish- ness — are suited to make their possessor unhappy. Ano MEDLEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 189 therefore, so he concludes his Inquiry on Virtue, virtue is the good, and vice the evil for every one. • In Shaftesbury we already meet that amiable optimism which forms such a prominent trait of eighteenth century philosophy : God is good ; the world is good ; man is good ; — his nature is not so unfortunately constructed that the phases essential to his happiness must first be artificially introduced by way of deliberation and calculation, as Hobbes main- tains. The only thing to do is to assist his real nature in overcoming all kinds of obstacles and perversions. It is this credulous optimism which Mandeville so keenly criticises in his Fable of the Bees^ a little satire of great force, to which a long commentary of little value was afterwards added. Modern moral philosophy reached its first climax in Shaftes- bury ; none of the essential elements is wanting in his system. It is the fundamental conception of ancient ethics enlarged and enriched by the Christian mode of feeling and looking at things. The social virtues and conscience have found their appropriate place by the side of the individualistic ex- cellences. The eighteenth century esteemed Shaftesbury very highly; Herder recommended to his son the Inquiry on Virtue as the most complete and best system of morals. Georg von Gizycki's opinion is : " Shaftesbury's system is the chief system of English ethics, for all later systems have, in reality, merely supplemented and developed his in particular respects, without, however, ever attaining to its great universality." ^ 6. Hume's Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals^ (1751) is conspicuous not so much for the originality and depth of its thoughts as for the clear, subtle, convincing pre- * [ITie Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices made Public Benefits, 1714.] » Hume's Ethics, p. 17. ' [Edited by Selby-Bigge. See also Green's edition of Hume's works. Selec- tions from Hnme's ethical writings by Hyslop. Bibliography in Weber, p. 41 7r note. - Tr.] 190 ORIGINS OF MORAL FHILOSOPHY sentation of the fundamental theory of English moral phil- osophy just set forth. Hume's question is : Why are certain characters and actions pronounced amiable or odious, praise- worthy or blamable ? He finds, after taking up the most important ones : Such qualities are praised as are useful or immediately agreeable to others or ourselves ; their opposites are censured. Hume's treatment of ethics already shows an inclination to neglect the biological for the purely subjective view, and accordingly to substitute satisfaction for preservation, a sub- jective standard of value for the objective one. But this tendency becomes still more pronounced later on, under the influence of one-sided psychological theories, and reaches its climax in J. Bentham, who declares: Pleasure is in itself a good, nay the only good ; pain is in itself an evil, the only evil. Everything else is good only in so far as it conduces to pleasure. Pleasure differs only in intensity, duration, cer- tainty, propinquity, fertility, purity, and extent, that is, the number of persons to whom it extends, or who are affected by it. The absolute goal and the absolute standard of all values is, therefore, the greatest happiness of the greatest number. However, Bentham owes his importance not so much to his work in theoretical ethics as to his political and legislative reforms ; the penal law, especially, engaged his attention. The principles are discussed in the work : Intro- duction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789.^ James Mill is closely and also personally related to Ben- tham. He deserves mention in the history of moral philoso- phy on account of his acute application of the psychology of association to the explanation of moral phenomena.'^ The will of every creature primarily aims at the attainment of pleasure and the freedom from pain. Gradually, however, things which were originally desired merely as means come to be > Also found in the first volume of the works, edited by J. Bowring, 1848. * Analysis of the Phenomena of Human Mind, 2 yo\s.,\629. MEDIiEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 191 directly desired through association. Avarice furnishes the classical example. Money is originally valued as a means, but for the miser it has become an end in itself, the idea of possible pleasure which it procures has become so firmly associated with the money that he will forgo every pleasure rather than part with a fraction of his gold. In the same way certain modes of conduct receive absolute value. Praise aud admiration arouse feelings of pleasure ; gradually by association we love the modes of conduct themselves which are praised, the desire for praise is transformed into the desire for the praiseworthy ; and at last we adhere to what is praiseworthy, even when the praise is not forthcoming, nay when it is threatened with obloquy and danger. Self-sacri- fice is explained in the same way, only here we have, in addi- tion to the love of honor, also sympathetic emotions which are likewise explained by processes of association. — These statements are not without an element of truth ; but they share the errors common to the entire psychological view from which they have been derived : they regard the indi- vidual as an absolutely independent being and consequently his relation to the species as accidental and secondary, while on the other hand, they make pleasure the starting-point, in- stead of impulse or will, which is prior to pleasure and not first produced by it. But to this subject we shall recur later on. John Stuart Mill,^ the son of James Mill , has given us in his treatise on Utilitarianism (1863) a brief but compre- hensive exposition of the principles on which this system of ethics is based. It was he also who gave the school the name by which it is generally known in England, Utilitarianism. Moreover, for Mill as for Bentham, the principle of utility was the guiding principle of political and social reforms. And it must also be mentioned that Mill was greatly influenced by Comte ; he has explained his relation to the French 1 [For bibliography see Weber-Thjlly, p. 581, note 2. — Tb.] 192 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY philosopher in the admirable monograph : Auguste Comte and Positivism} Besides utilitarianism there is another school of English moral philosophy, which is usually called intuitionalism. The former explains the distinctions in value between human modes of conduct by their effects, while for the latter good and bad are absolute qualities of human acts, which cannot be explained, but can only be immediately perceived and determined. Cudworth ^ and Clarke ^ advocate this theory against Hobbes, Whewell * against Mill. I shall consider the truth and falsity of this view later on. Moral philosophy has received a new impetus from the most recent development of the biological sciences. The theory of evolution carries us beyond the superficial reflec- tions of analytical psychology to the biological-historical conception : the preservation and development of life is the goal at which the will aims, not pleasure or the feeling of satisfaction. It likewise shows the insuiBciency of the rigid individualism of the older psychology : morality represents the experiences of the race, not the experience of the individ- ual, with respect to what is good and bad, beneficial and harmful. Charles Darwin^ has made an attempt at moral philosophy in the fourth chapter of The Descent of Man. 1 Volume IX. of the collected works. [Other adherents of this school are : A. Bain, Mental and Moral Science, 1868; A. Barratt, Physical Ethics, 1869; Hodgson, Theory of Practice, 1870; Fowler, Progressive Morality, 1884; Fowler and Wilson, Principles of Morals, 1886-1887. — William Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, 1785, is a theological utilitarian: "Virtue is the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the law of God, and for the sake of eternal happiness." — Tr.] 2 [Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, 1688. — Tk.] ' [Discourse concerning the Unalterable Obligations of Natural Religion, 1708. -Tr.] * [Elements of Morality, 1848 ; last edition, 1864. To the same school belong aiaoK.CMerwooi, Handbook of Moral Philosophy, 1S72 ; 14th edition, 1890; Mar- tineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 1885 ; Porter, Elements of Moral Science, 1885. -Tb.] ' [For an exposition and criticism of Darwin's ethical view', see Schnrman, The Ethical Import of Darwinism. See also in this connection, Huxley, Evolution and Ethics, 1893. — Tr.] MEDIiEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 193 Herbert Spencer gives a systematic exposition of the evolu- tionistic view in his Principles of Ethics. ' Henry Sidgwick {The Methods of Ethics, fourth edition, 1890), Leslie Stephen {The Science of Ethics, 1882), and S. Alexander {Moral Order and Progress, 1889) have also been influenced by this theory. T. H. Green {The Prolegomena to Ethics, 1883) and J. Macken- zie {Manual of Ethics, 1891, second edition, 1895) approxi- mate the Kantian view.^ 7. The new philosophy was introduced into Germany by Leibniz, and formulated into a system by Wolff. It obtained the mastery in German science and culture in the course of the eighteenth century, driving out and supplanting scholas- tic philosophy, which, in the form which it had received from Melanchthon, became the prevailing system in the German universities after the days of Humanism and the Reformation. Wolff's entire philosophy is characterized by its opposition to the scholastic-theological treatment of things ; this antag- onism is already indicated by the title which he gives his first works on philosophical subjects ; he calls them Rational Thoughts, a name by which he defies the entire past. The same spirit manifests itself in his ethics, the first systematic edition of which was published under the title. Rational Thoughts on the Actions of Men for the Promotion of their Happiness ^ (1720). At the very beginning, the fundamental concept of modern philosophy, the concept of self-preservation, is introduced in a somewhat modified form as self-perfection, and the definition given : That is good " which makes our inner as well as our outer state perfect;" the opposite is bad. And emphatically rejecting a theological substructure for morals, he adds : " Inasmuch as the free acts of men are good and bad 1 [With these two may also he classed ; Bradley, Ethical Studies, 1876 ; Dewey, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics, 1891; Muirhead, Elements of Ethics, 1892, ■econd edition, 1 895 ; J. Seth, A Study of Ethical Principles, 1896. B. P. Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 1893, is a follower of Lotze. — Tr.] * Verniinflige Gedanhen von der Menschen Thun und Lassen zur BefSrderuny ihrer Gluckseligkeit. 194 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY because of their effects, and what follows from them must necessarily follow and cannot fail, they are good or bad in and for themselves, and are not first made so by the will of God." In § 12 the most general formula of duty is then stated: " Do that which makes you and your state and that of others more perfect, refrain from that which makes it more imperfect ; " and in § 21 follows the very objectionable state- ment that an atheist, if only he is not foolish, and clearly understands the nature of free acts, can easily be a virtuous man. — A system of duties is then deduced from the above formula in more than a thousand paragraphs. 8. The reign of Wolffian philosophy lasted till about the end of the eighteenth century. Its place was taken by the philosophy of I. Kant.^ He presents his system of mo- rality in the Foundation of the Metaphysia of Morals (1785) and in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788),^ which was followed, at the beginning of his old age, by the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Kant's place in the history of ethics may be determined by a comparison with the English intuitionists : hia ethics is a reaction against utilitarian eudsmonism, in which Wolff and Hume, the rationalistic and empiristical schools, concurred. Kant himself was at first an eudaemonist ; as late as the year 1765 he spoke of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume as authors who had made the greatest progress in the dis- covery of the first principles of morality, and to whose inves- tigations he would give the necessary precision and supple- mentation in his lectures ; and he expressly promised to base morality upon anthropology. Just as his critical theory of knowledge was a reaction against his own empiricism, which had almost carried him to Hume's standpoint, so his critical ethics was a reaction against his own empirical eudaemon- ^ [Cohen, Kant's Begrilndung der Ethik ; Zeller, &ber das Kantische Moralprin- ctp; Schnrman, Kantian Ethics andtheEthics of Evolution ; Porter, Kant's Ethics; Forster, £>er Entwicklungsgang der Kantischen Ethik ; Paulsen, Kant. — Tk.] * [See the translation of Abbott, fourth edition, London, 1889. — Tk.] MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 195 ism. Tjie complete similarity of treatment in the moral- philosophical and epistemological problems, which by the way proved fatal to Kant's ethical writings,' cannot leave us in doubt about this matter. The fundamental conceptions are as follows. — Chief among them is the principle, which repudiates all eudffimonism or utilitarianism, that the moral worth of acts is absolutely in- dependent of their effects, that it is determined solely by the disposition. " Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world or even out of it, which can be called good without qualifica- tion, except a good will." " A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition ; that is, it is good in itself." With these propo- sitions Kant begins his first ethical work, which we men- tioned above. But what will is good ? Kant answers : A will is good when it is determined not by a material purpose, but solely by respect for duty : " the pre-eminent good which we call moral can therefore consist in nothing else than the concep- tion of law in itself, which certainly is only possible in a rational being, in so far as this conception, and not the ex- pected effect, determines the will." And what is duty ? What does the moral law command ? — It commands, stated in the most general formula : " So act that the maxim of the act may conform to universal law." That is, if the realm of human conduct or freedom were governed by universal laws, like the realm of nature or causality, then this maxim would have to be regarded as one of these laws. An example will make the matter clear. A man finds himself forced by necessity to borrow money. He knows that he will not be able to repay it, but sees also that nothing will be lent to him, unless he promises stoutly to repay it in a definite time. Is it lawful for him to make the promise ? He can tell at once ; all he has to do is to ask 196 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY himself the question : What would be the maxim of this action expressed as a universal law ? Somewhat as follows : When a man is in want of money and cannot obtain it except by making a promise which he knows to be false, he may do so. Then he asks himself the question : Is this maxim suited to be a natural law in the domain of human action ? He will at once see that it could never hold as a universal law of nature, but would necessarily contradict itself. For sup- posing it to be a universal law that every one when he thinks himself in a difficulty should be able to promise what- ever he pleases, with the purpose of not keeping his promise, the promise itself would become impossible, as well as the end that one might have in view in it, since no one would believe that anything was promised to him, but would ridicule all such statements as vain pretences. Hence falsehood can only occur as an exception, not as a rule or law of nature : if it were a law of nature that every one could, every time it were to his advantage, tell a falsehood, then no one would believe any one else, and lying would defeat itself. The same may be said of theft: if it were a law of nature for every one to take what he liked, there would be no property, and theft would, if it became universal, de- stroy both itself and property. Basing himself upon this process of logical generalization as the criterion, Kant next attempts to determine particular duties, or rather to show that they are included in the formula. It has often been pointed out that he accomplishes his pur- pose only by the most violent method of procedure, — in spite of the fact that he afterward makes the principle somewhat more elastic: Act so that thou canst will as a rational creature that thy maxim become a universal law of nature for conduct. By means of barren and often sophistical arguments he finally succeeds in bringing all the customary moral laws, including the duty to strive for the perfection of self and the happiness of others, under the formula. — His undertaking would have MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 197 proved more successful had he changed the formula as follows : The moral laws are rules which are adapted to a natural legis^/ lation of human life, that is, rules which, if they governed ( conduct as natural laws, would lead to the preservation and ', perfection of human life. And in a certain sense this is ' Kant's meaning. In the Critique of Practical Reason the , notion of a " kingdom of ends" is introduced by the side of the kingdom of natural causality ; all rational creatures are \ to be regarded as members of this kingdom of ends and the moral laws as its laws of nature. These are Leibnizian ', notions : the kingdom of nature is governed by physical- mechanical laws, the kingdom of grace by teleological-ethical laws. Had Kant made these notions the cornerstones of his system, his ethics would have been more fruitful. After all, ethics has not a very serious function to perform, according to Kant. It is not its business to prescribe what ought to be done, for every one knows in every case, without all science, what duty is. Nor must it give reasons for duties ; there is absolutely no reason why we should act thus or so ; the commands are categorical, not hypothetical ; if there were a reason for them, they would be conditionally true. All that ethics has to do is to collect the commands of duty, to arrange them, and to embrace them under a univer- sal formula. When a reviewer censured Kant for not set- ting up a new principle, but only a new formula, the latter did not regard this as a fault : " Who," he says in his preface to the Critique of Practical Reason, " would think of intro- ducing a new principle of all morality, just as if the whole world before him were ignorant what duty was ? But who- ever knows of what importance to a mathematician a formula is, will not make little of the value of my moral formula." Only, Kant should have compared his formula with the max- ims of the jurists, for the moral formula by no means accom- plishes what, according to the statements in the preface, the mathematician's formula accomplishes, which defines accur- ately what is to be done to work a problem. 198 ORIGms OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY How did Kant reach this forraalistic view ? In the first place, he was undoubtedly influenced by the analogy of a-prioristic rationalism in his theory of knowledge. The schema of natural philosophy — that the reason prescribes laws to nature, which possess absolute universality, regardless of the matter of sense-perception — is carried over into moral philosophy : the practical reason prescribes laws to the will which possess absolute universality, regardless of the matter of sensuous desire. — But we may, perhaps, also discover material reasons, reasons based on feeling, which had some- thing to do with his view. Two facts may be mentioned, one positive, the other negative ; the former, the degeneration of eudaemonism into a weakly sentimental praise of virtue; the latter, the influence of Rousseau. One of the numerous moral periodicals of the precedmg century — it had been published in Leipsic since 1745 under the title, Ergetzungen der vernunftigen Seele aua der Sit- tenlehre und der Gelehrsamkeit ilherhaupt — contained in its fifth volume, which was dedicated to the Prime Chancellor Cocceji, an essay entitled : Proof that the Virtues are Pleasant and Charming. In this we read : " Proper satisfaction with one's self is the greatest happiness which a thinking being can procure. Unless a man be a monster, he will feel how charming is a virtuous deed which springs from love of humanity ; I at least have so tender a soul that I do not possess the power to suppress my feelings even when I resolve not to give way to them. When I read books which vividly describe a virtuous act inspired by the love of human- ity, my soul is often carried away by such emotions, against its will." The author gives examples from Marianne of Marivaux, and then continues : " If the narrow space at our command permitted us to consider the particular virtues in detail, we should find how pleasant and charming each one is. How charming is affability ! Nothing is more pleasant than humility," etc. In the same way it is shown that the vices MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 199 are ridiculous, unpleasant, troublesome, and detestable. In conclusion, the author asks the clergy to exhort their congrega- tions to perform virtuous acts by showing how charming they are, and anticipates great results from such a method. These are the thoughts of English moral philosophy in tasteless popular form. Moreover, even Hutcheson, in his elaborate text-book, a German translation of which appeared in 1756 under the title. System der MoralphiloBophie, often mani- fests an alarming tendency to speak in this strain ; he, too, has much to say of the pleasure of being happy. And so Gellert hopes, in his lectures on moral philosophy, as the introductory lecture declares, to be able to assist his hearers in realizing virtue, that is, their highest welfare. " Would that I might feel this zeal keenly as often as I appear before you, and would that it might make me eloquent in represent- ing to you the duties of morality as the most charming and most sacred laws of our welfare." ^ Let us suppose that Kant read the aforesaid essay in the Ergetzungen der vemiinftigen Seele, or a similar one. In that case we can readily understand his emphatic repudiation of those who desired to serve as " volunteers of duty," and his sharp accentuation of the opposition between the moral law and the inclinations. A passage like the celebrated apos- trophe to duty — " Duty, thou sublime and mighty name that dost embrace nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest submission, what origin is there worthy of thee, and where is there to be found the root of thy noble descent which proudly rejects all kindred with the inclinations ? " — such a passage sounds like an answer to that sentimental praise of the charms of virtue which Kant could not but regard as a repulsive prostitution. — And this is surely a merit of Kant's which ought not to be underestimated. He revived in the hearts of the moral preachers the strong consciousness of the law of duty, which they had almost lost by their 1 Collected Works, 1770, vol. VI., p. 3. 200 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY efforts to allure and to charm, and thereby rendered a ser- vice, not to the science of ethics, it is true, but towards the education of his people. The second impetus was positive in character; it came from Rousseau. It is well known in what high esteem the latter was held by Kant. What attracted Kant to Rousseau ? He himself tells us in a passage that reads like a note from a diary : " I am myself an investigator from inclination. I feel the intensest craving for knowledge, and the eager im- patience to make some progress in it, as well as satisfaction with every step in advance. There was a time when I believed that all this might redound to the honor of mankind, and I despised the rabble which knew nothing. Rousseau has set me right. This boasted superiority has vanished ; I am learning to respect mankind, and I should regard myself as much more useless than the common laborers, did I not believe that this reflection [occupation ?] could give a value to all other occupations [namely scientific-literary works,] that is, re-establish the rights of humanity ." To re-establish the rights of mankind, then, of the common people — this he regards as his true mission and his work. The worth of a man depends on his will, not on his knowledge, as aristocratic and self-conceited cul- ture believes ; — that is the cardinal doctrine upon which Kant's entire philosophy really turns. And here Rousseau helped him ; he taught him — and for this he was thankful — not to overestimate culture, science, in short, civilization ; he showed him that goodness of heart and purity of thought were not confined to the most educated and most aristocratic, that simple and strong dutifulness might be found just as often, perhaps oftener, among the lowliest. Kant is following Rousseau when he speaks " of the masses who are worthy of our respect." In this way alone his scientific activity, which he had formerly regarded as possessing absolute worth, re- ceived its true value in his eyes : he could preach this great truth and thus assist in establishing the rights of mankind, MEDIEVAL AND MODEKN SYSTEMS 201 the rights of the masses, who are commonly despised as the rabble, on account of their lack of education. ^ And here we are also reminded of the fact that Kant himself once belonged to these masses by birth, however far he may have risen above them ; his parents were small tradespeople, without educa- tion; but his father was a true and upright man, and his mother a woman full of practical piety. Kant's democratic views — not his political creed, but his love of the people — were evidently rooted in the memories of his youth and the admiration which he felt for his parents. With all this his opposition to eudaemonistic morality had something to do. It is the latter which gives rise to those false standards, when for instance, as in Wolff's system, it sets up self-perfection as the absolute goal. According to Wolff, a man's worth depends upon his perfection, upon his culture, learning, and taste. This view, which by the way was not peculiar to the eighteenth century, but is presumably more common in our days than at any former time — for when has education counted for so much as at present ? — his view, which Kant had once accepted as a follower of Wolffian ethics, now alienated him from all eudaemonism and carried him to the other extreme : nothing in this world is good except the good will alone. To have emphasized this was also a great merit of Kant's, not so much, however, a merit of the moral philosopher as of the moral preacher. It was the renewal of the great truth of Christianity, that before God man is judged not for what he has, but for what he is : a truth which every one should make it his daily task to learn. 9. The revolution in moral philosophy caused by Kant coincided with a change in the German conception of life. The ideal of the illumination — utility for society — was superseded by the ideal of Goethe's age, perfection of the personality. In classical poetry,- especially in the poetry of '5oethe,this ideal, was everywhere at work as the goal and the 202 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY standard. Here, too, Rousseau's influence was felt. The in- dividual shall not be the slave of conventional circumstances and views, his education shall not, as is now actually the case, consist in training him for the rSle which he has to play in society ; the natural capacities must be developed from within and freely exercised according to the needs of the indi- viduality — that was the gist of the sermon which Rousseau, especially in the Smile, preached to his contemporaries with such passionate force. Goethe, too, and Herder and Schiller and all of the strongest and freest minds gave heed to his warning. Another sermon was preached, that of Greek antiquity ; neo-Humanism, as opposed to the older classicism, also called the age back to freedom and to nature. And the Greek ideal of life, which was now revived, is an iEsthet- ical rather than a practical ideal ; not general utility, but the perfection and the manifestation of the personality is the function of the free man ; a slave serves merely by his work and the products of his work. This view reached its climax in Romanticism ; its programme was to despise utility and prose, to worship the individual and poetry, in literature and in life. Kant bears a dual relation to this movement : he is both friendly and hostile to it. He agrees with it in rejecting utili- tarianism and eudaemonism. On the other hand, the worship of the individual, which always leads to a contempt for com- mon morality, would undoubtedly have been extremely dis- tasteful to him ; he was not at all attracted to the genius who will acknowledge no law as binding upon himself. These two phases plainly appear in Schiller's relation to Kant. The matter is clearly and distinctly brought out in the treatise tfber Anmuth und Wurde, in the passage in which Schiller develops the notion of the beautiful soul. He first emphasizes as the great merit of the immortal author of the Kritik that he has again restored the healthy reason by separating it from the (falsely) philosophizing reason, and has made duty and morality wholly independent of inclination' MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 203 and interest. " However," he continues, " though I am thor- oaghly convinced that the association of inclination with a free act proves nothing in regard to the pure dutifulness of that act, I believe that we can infer from this very fact that the moral perfection of man depends solely upon the part which inclination plays in his moral conduct." Kant became the " Draco of his age, because his age did not seem to him to be worthy of a Solon or capable of receiving him. But what had the children of the household done that he cared only for the servants ? " The children of the household, however, are those beautiful souls " in whom the moral sense has gained such control over all the feelings that it may without fear abandon to the affections the government of the will, and never run the danger of contradicting its decrees. Hence it is not really this or that particular act which is moral in a beautiful soul, but the entire character." The correction which Schiller makes in the Kantian ethics is in itself admirable and necessary, but it is doubtful whether it can be reconciled with the principles of the system. At any rate, it would have been much easier to deduce Schiller's views from Shaftesbury's presuppositions. It is certainly not according to the Kdnigsberg philosopher's way of looking at things, for he has a keener sense for the correctness and exactness of the jurist than for the freedom and beauty of the poet. 10. Now as for the progress of ethics in Germany after Kant, we cannot but regard Kant's reaction in favor of in- tuitionism as a disturbance, the effects of which have not yet been overcome in philosophy ; from that time on the Ger- mans have been constantly experimenting with new prin- ciples, often completely neglecting the results of historical development. Everybody's first and chief concern was to produce a new system, for to have one's own system was the mark of a philosopher. Speculative Philosophy was the direct historical successor oi 204 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY the Kantian philosophy, although, in many respects, it com- pletely contradicted its source : the scientific arrogance, which Kant regarded it as his mission to overcome, in order " to establish the rights of humanity," never flourished so luxuri- antly as in the systems of Schelling and Hegel. In ethics Speculative Philosophy abandons all previous con- ceptions. Ethics had arisen as the science of right conduct. For such a practical discipline Speculative Philosophy sub- stitutes the theoretical contemplation and conceptual con- struction of mental-historical life. Ethics becomes mental science or philosophy of history; it becomes a companion- piece to natural philosophy. Just as the latter, following the Kantian conception that the laws of nature are laws of our understanding, constructs nature or the sphere of causality a priori, so the former constructs history or the sphere of free- dom a priori. Of recent years, men who are far from accepting its prin- ciples, as, for example, Wundt and Jodl, have shown a high regard for Speculative Philosophy, not usual in former times. Wundt expresses the opinion, in the preface of his Ethics, that the attempts which he makes to approximate the funda- mental notions of Speculative Philosophy in his ethics, will also be made in other fields of philosophical inquiry. Per- haps we miy see herein, first of all, a sign that this phil- osophy has almost become historical in Germany. If instead of leading, a retired life in dusty books, it were an active living rival for the control of our thoughts, the attitude of these thinkers would presumably be an entirely different one. Nor is that which meets their approval in these systems what the systems themselves extolled as their peculiar merit: namely, the method of " scientific " deduction and demonstra- tion. The idealistic-monistic conception of the universe is an old philosophical heritage, and not merely a product of the Spec- ulative Philosophy and ita method. Nay, perhaps it might be MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 205 shown that this method has contributed, in no small degree, to the contempt in which that conception tas been held in Germany during the last half of the century. The peculiar characteristic of the Hegelian philosophy is its contempt for the causal investigation of things, and its substitution of the conceptual-logical metliod ; which is equivalent to despising science itself, for all science, with the exception of mathe- matics, which is not a science of facts, aims at the discovery of causal connections. The same may be said of practical philosophy ; its method of investigation is the teleological method, the inversion of the causal investigation. And exactly the same unfruitfulness which characterizes specula- tive physics characterizes speculative ethics. Take Hegel's NaturrecJit'^ (1821) and its empty juggling with concepts; the investigation of institutions and forms from the stand- point of their effects upon human life is ridiculed as a shallow argumentation of the understanding ; instead, the reader receives the simple assurance : It follows from the concept of the state, or of the right, or of the monarchy. And with this is connected the extreme reverence which these thinkers have for the forms of historical life, for the state, for the right : as though these forms and not the concrete personal life which thrives in them were the thing of absolute worth ! The underrating of what Kant regards as the truly moral element, the good will, likewise connects itself with this. 11. Instead of giving a detailed account of Hegel, let me set forth the fundamental principles of the ethics of Schleier- macher, so far as that can be done briefly.^ * [Selections from this work translated by Sterrett under the title, The Ethics of Hegel. For bibliography see Weber-Thilly, pp. 496-7. — Tr.] * Enlwwrf eines Systems der Sittenlehre {Sketch of a System of Morals), edited from his literary remains by A. Schweitzer, 1835 ; a few academic treatises in the second volume of the philosophical writings. Die christliche Sitte nach den Grundsatzen der evangelischen Kirche (Christian Morals according to the Prin- ciples of the Evangelical Church), edited by L. Jonas, 1843, discusses the same topics, often more concretely and fruitfully than the philosophical ethics [Die philosophische Ethik, edited by Twesten]. 206 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY In a treatise discussing the difference between the natural and the moral law, Schleiermacher advances the view that the theory is inadequate which regards the moral laws as merely prescribing what ought to be, for in that case ethics would be a science of the non-existent; but just as the natural law is the expression of the behavior of something real, the moral law must represent an actual occurrence. — This real thing is the effect of reason upon nature. Nature and reason, so the Sittenlehre teaches, material and spiritual being, constitute the greatest antithesis within the sphere of universal reality ; the former is the object of all natural- scientific, the latter the object of all mental-scientific, knowl- edge. All knowledge is twofold in form : speculative or contemplative, and empirical or observational. Thus Schlei- ermacher obtains the fourfold classification : contemplative knowledge of nature, or doctrine of nature (physics) ; obser- vational knowledge of nature, or natural history ; contem- plative knowledge of the action of reason, or the science of morals (ethics) ; and observational knowledge of the action of reason, or the science of history. Ethics, therefore, bears the same relation to history as speculative physics to the science of nature or cosmography: it defines in general the action of reason upon nature, which the science of history investigates in detail.^ The action of reason upon nature may be regarded as two-fold : as organizing and symbolizing. By acting upon things reason makes them the instruments of new effects. But in so far as it gives a thing form by means of every effect, reason makes the thing its symbol, in which it ex- presses itself and through which it is recognized.* There is another antithesis: reason exists and acts in individuals as one and the same and on the other hand as a peculiar and individually distinct reason. This antithesis runs parallel with the one mentioned above, and so we again have the *§§58ff. a§§124ff. MEDIiEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 207 favorite fourfold division : the activity of reason is identical and individual ; it is identical and dififerentiated organization and likewise symbolization.^ But these antitheses are not mutually exclusive, but so many points of view from each of which everything moral may be viewed. Now, in so far as identical organization takes place, those goods arise which each one may employ as the instruments of the activity of reason in the same manner: they constitute the sphere of intercourse ; this is the field ruled by the law and the state. — In so far as the formative activity is individual or peculiar, it gives rise to property, not to juridical property, which also embraces exchangeable commodities, but to real property, which cannot be separated from the person who has pro- duced it without losing its value. The narrowest sphere of property in this sense is one's own body ; the next the encircling home, which includes the objective environment belonging to the person, and is the more valuable the more individual and inalienable it is. In so far as the home is opened to others for participation, hospitality arises, corre- sponding to intercourse in the sphere of identical organization. The symbolizing activity, in so far as it occurs under the character of identity, is knowledge, which manifests itself in language. The social form in which it is produced is the academy. The place of intercourse is the school. The sym- bolizing activity, in so far as it occurs under the character of differentiation or individuality, is feeling. It at first mani- fests itself in gestures and in intonation ; it expresses itself in a general way in the work of art. Art bears the same relation to religion that language bears to knowledge ; the social form in which religion, the manifestation of the uni- verse in feeling, is communicated, is the church. — In the same manner the entire field of morality is then defined as the doctrine of virtue and the doctrine of duty, while the part just discussed is called the doctrine of goods. > J 133, 208 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY The wonderful skill with which Schleiermacher, not unlike a far-seeing chess virtuoso, moves his concepts around, until the whole of reality is surrounded and checkmated as it were, has something fascinating in it when one follows his moves with credulous and patient attention: it is really wonderful to see how apparently the most remote things, obedient to the will of the master, readily submit themselves to the most surprising arrangements and relations which the magic wand of his dialectics assigns to them. But after turning one's back upon the game and again looking at the real world, one is apt to feel that no permanent gain results from the labor put forth: the whole thing is merely an ingenious game. Lotze concludes his exposition of Schleiermacher's aesthetics with the words : " If it be praised as a model of acute dia- lectics, I hope that the predilection for this sort of perform- ances, which take no real interest in the essence of the subject, but become logical exercises, and portray anamorphotically distorted pictures from their obstinately chosen secondary standpoints, will gradually disappear in Germany."* This hope was realized even before it was expressed. 12. The moral philosophy of J. F. Herbart, presented in outline in the Q-eneral Practical Philosophy^ (1808), forms a complete antithesis to the speculative treatment of the sub- ject, in so far as it wholly separates ethics from the theoreti- cal sciences, from metaphysics and anthropology. However, it also agrees with the speculative method in that it wholly abandons the old form of investigation ; it makes ethics sub- sidiary to aesthetics. Herbart assumes the standpoint of the pure observer : human acts and motives arouse in the specta- tor feelings of pure aesthetic pleasure and displeasure ; these are absolutely independent of his interest: he may as a spectator be pleased with the act which from the standpoint of his interest he despises ; in so far he calls it morally good ; * History of JEsthetics, p. 166. ' Allgemeine praktische Philosophie. MEDIiEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 209 and he may, conversely, call bad what pleases and tempts him as an appetitive being. — General aesthetics Jias further con- vinced Herbart that particular elements as such never please or displease, but always as relations. And so he com^s to ask the question which constitutes the problem of ethics : What relations of the will please or displease us ? He discovers five such fundamental relations : (1) The harmony between the will and the moral judgment of the same person ; (2) The greater by the side of the smaller, the stronger will by the side of the weaker ; (3) The harmony between the wills of two persons, — all these relations please us. (4) The conflict between two wills displeases us, while (5) The requiting of good with good and evil with evil pleases us. Herbart then adorns these pleasing relations with the name of ideas : ideas of inner freedom, of perfection, of benevolence, of law, of justice, and bases upon them the forms of collective life : the legal order, the wage system, the administrative system, the system of civilization, the animated society. I shall refrain from criticising this conception of the moral phenomena. In my opinion, it is as futile in its general aspects as it is forced and laborious in the details. Herbart's in- ability to appreciate the real and the living, his incapacity for constructing a unified system of thought, which, by the way, is partly due to his aversion to the speculative philosophy of his contemporaries and their extreme monistic tendencies, is nowhere so pronounced and intolerable as in his attempt to break up ethics into this conglomeration of so-called ideas. 13. A. Schopenhauer^ presents his conception of life in the fourth book of the World as Will and Idea ; ^ he makes an attempt to construct a moral philosophy in his essay on the Foundation of Morals, which, together with the treatise on the Freedom of the Will, was published in 1841 under the title : The Two Fundamental Problems of Mhics. The first 1 [For bibliography see Weber-Thilly, p. 544.] 2 [Translation by Haldane and Kemp.] 210 ORIGINS OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY volume of the Parerga and Paralipomena contains Aphorigmt on Worldly Wisdom, which, though full of acute observations, is not in accord with the principles of his system. The system rests upon the pessimistic view of life. Life is sin and suffering, and not to live is therefore better than to live. Selfishness, intensified in malice, is the characteristic of the natural will. This mode of conduct is overcome in compas- sion. In so far as pity is the motive of action, it has moral worth. An act is called good when it has as its motive compassion for the sufferings of others, bad, when the agent rejoices at the woe of others, or at least attempts to promote his own welfare at the expense of that of others. The disappearance of the impulses which aim at individual welfare consequently is favorable to moral progress. In the saints of Christianity and Buddhism the selfish impulses are entirely suppressed, and their hearts thus opened to pity ; they themselves are unaffected by suffering, disappointment, fear, anxiety, and want ; with deep sympathy they view their brothers who are still fighting the useless battle for the vain goods of this world. I do not wish to enter upon a criticism of this theory at this point; we shall find an opportunity for that later on. But I should like to say a few words with respect to Schopen- hauer's personal relation to the morality of his system. It has often been pointed out that there is no harmony between Schopenhauer's system and his life. The system recommends renunciation of the world and negation of the will-to-live ; his life shows nothing of the kind ; he does not lead the life of an ascetic saint but of an Epicurean, who makes a study of good living ; look at the list of good things which he placed before his will as motives when, after leav- ing Berlin, he was casting about for a permanent place of residence, and was wavering between Frankfort and Mann- Sieim.i In his system he praises compassion ; but he seems 1 Gwinner, Schopenhauer's Life, 2d edition, p. 391. MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 211 to have been rather devoid of this feeling himself. No one ever pursued his literary opponents more unmercifully than did Schopenhauer. We may say he was actuated by the love of truth, and regarded his adversaries as the enemies of truth. Let us grant it, let us say that this was one of the motives, although it does not justify the aspersions which he cast upon their characters. But think of his behavior towards his mother and his sister, when they were in danger of losing their fortune, whereas he saved his, showing more skill in the matter than, in his opinion, geniuses are wont to have ; — he was, to say the least, very cool. During his entire life he was as careful as he was successful in guarding against sharing others' losses and sufferings. Then is not his philosophy of life one great lie ? It would be a mistake to say so. It is true, Schopen- hauer did not live the life which he praises as the best ; but he deeply and sincerely appreciated the value of such a life. Schopenhauer is a very transparent character ; the dualism of human nature, in which reason and desire form the two opposite poles, becomes unusually, nay, alarmingly discord- ant, in him. In so far as he is will, he lives an unhappy life. From his father he inherited a melancholy tempera- ment; he invariably sees things in the wrong light; little things, too, annoy him very much. He is full of violent desires, impetuous, high-tempered, ambitious, sensuous, and withal very diffident : he is constantly plagued by all kinds of vague fears of trouble, losses, diseases, which his sen- suous ego might suffer; he is extremely suspicious of all men without exception — in truth, a series of qualities, any one of which would have been sufficient to make his life unhappy. That is the one side of his life. And now look at the other ; he is also an intellect, nay a genius, endowed with a remarkable power of objective intuition. He has experienced 212 ORIGINS OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY the blessedness of the life of pure knowledge as purely and deeply as any thinker before him, nay perhaps more deeply than any other one, on account of the contrast between the intellectual side of his being and his restless, unhappy, volitional life. He can describe the tranquillity, the peace, and the joy of solitary contemplation, of the quiet commu- nion with thoughts, in the most affecting manner. Diirer has pictured this state of blessedness in a wonder- ful painting: Saint Jerome is seated in a quiet, wainscoted chamber, the cheerful sunlight falling through the round panes upon the wall of the deep window-niche. The companions of the Saint, the lion and the dog, anger and desire, are lying side by side, peacefully sleeping upon the floor; we hear their deep, quiet breathing. A gourd, which is sus- pended from the ceiling, a skull, which is lying on the window-sill, diffuse about them the stillness which proceeds from things perfectly matured and removed from the turmoil of the world. A happy thought has just seized the Saint, and he bends forward, in order to set it down in writing ; soon he will lean back again and lose himself in contemplation. A picture producing a remarkable effect upon the thoughtful observer ! — it shows the wonderful power of real art to ex- press a world of thoughts and feelings in a single perception. How poor by the side of it seems that art which feeds on imitation, which, when it has the task of portraying solitude, silence, and philosophy, hits upon the plan of representing a more or less aged, allegorical female figure ! Schopenhauer might have sat as Diirer's model for this picture. Freed from all desires and cares, pursuing his own thoughts, he enjoyed happy hours, without hurry and worry, without fear and hatred. But then came other times; the beasts which seemed to have been entirely tamed rose up again, destroyed his peace, and filled his life with trouble and anxiety. And he was helpless against them ; he often says so himself : it is a curious but undoubted fact that the MEDIAEVAL AKD MODERN SYSTEMS 213 clearest knowledge of the perverseness of the will can produce no change in it. ♦ This enables us to understand his ethical system : it is the confession of his failings and sins, it is the yearning of his better self for deliverance from the companion to whom it finds itself yoked. All this is neither surprising nor unusual. From what should a man seek to be delivered if not from himself? Petrarch writes De eontemptu mundi and praises the freedom and simplicity of the shepherd and peasant life in the remote valley: he lives at the courts of the spiritual and secular lords, purchasing participation in their luxurious pleas- ures with flattery ; he wanders through the cities of France and Italy in order to intoxicate himself with the fragrance of his fame. He praises pure love and unselfish friendship : he lives with beautiful women, and his friends are the heralders of his fame, or assist him in his chase for benefices. He inveighs against envy, and cannot pronounce the name of Dante, because he hates him as a rival. — Is he a liar ? Not at all ; he thoroughly appreciates the value of the things which he praises, he really feels a yearning for them, but he is likewise attracted to the vanities of life. G. Voight, from whose masterly characterization I have taken the above elements, presents us with a delicate and faithful picture of him in his History of the Revival of Classical Antiquity. " The gaze which he turned inward was keen enough to penetrate the abyss of vanity to its very depth. Then he shuddered at his own soul, and yet could not tear his love away from it. He desired to bring it into harmony with its ideals, and began the fierce struggle with himself; but he never got beyond the determined mien and the angry word; he could not turn the sharp weapon which seeks the heart of the opponent against his beloved self. He imagined that he was doing penance in thinking and writing, but all his thinking and writing simply intensified his self- 214 ORIGINS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY love. This vain soul, which he desired to hate, he finally loved all the more on account of its remorse and its painful struggles." So Rousseau : he preached against the corruption of morals, and pointed out the way to natural education : he lived with a concubine and sent his children to a foundling asylum, never to hear of them again. Was he a liar ? Certainly not. His passion for natural and pure human relations was perfectly sincere ; he really felt the degradation of unnatural relations, in which he had waded up to his knees ever since his youth, more keenly than any one of his contemporaries. A man that has never been sick does not know what health is. The hunchback is the most sincere admirer of a straight back, the bashful man of frank openness, the coward of martial courage. Was ever a man more in love with bravery than John Falstaff? Did ever a man prate more of princely virtue and royal duties than Carl Eugen of Wiirtemberg? And what nation speaks more of civic virtue and republican sentiments than the French ? I once heard a proverb full of profound meaning : The man who rings the bell cannot march in the procession. 14. The age of Speculative Philosophy was followed in Germany by an age of absolute contempt for philosophy. Historicism, the devotion to details, dominated science for a few decades. Metaphysics and ethics were forgotten. Of late the interest in these subjects is reviving. It is being centred on ethics from two sides. The modern biological theory propounds the question : How did custom and moral- ity arise, and what is their import in the economy of the nations and the individual ? On the other hand, the new social sciences invite us to take up the ultimate problems concerning the vocation of man and the conditions of its realization. Hence it happens that even jurists and political economists, physiologists and anthropologists, are beginning to philosophize again in our days. MEDLEVAL AND MODERN SYSTEMS 215 I shall content myself vith mentioning a number of titles of the rapidly increasing modern literature.^ • I E. Duhring, Der Wert des Lebens, 5th ed., 1894; M. Carriere, Die tttttiche Weltordnung, 1877, 2d ed., 1890 ; J. Baumann, Handbuch der Moral, 1879 ; E. von Hartmann, Phanomenologie des siltlichen Bewusstseins, 1879, 2d ed., 1886 ; W. Schnppe, GrundzUge der Ethik und Bechtsphilotophie, 1881 ; E. Laas, Idealismus md Positivismus, vol. II., 1882; G. von Gizycki, GrundzUge der Moral, 2d ed., 1889; H. Steiuthal, Allgemeine Ethik, 1885; P. Re'e, Die Entstehung des Gewissens, 1885; Th. Ziller, Allgemeine pkilosopkische Ethik, 2d ed., 1886; W. Wnndt, Ethik, 2d ed., 1891 (translated into English) ; Chr. Sigwart, Vorfragen der Ethik, 1886; Fr. Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887; H. Hiifiding, Ethik, 1887 (German translation, 1889); F. Tonnies, Gemeinschafi und Gesellschaft, 1887; A. Doping, Philosophische Gvierlehre, 1888 ; P. Viktor Cathrein, Moral- philosophie, 2 vols., 1890-91 ; Th. Ziegler, Sittliches Sein und sittliches Werden, 2d ed., 1890 ; H. Gallwitz, Das Problem der Ethik in der Gegenwart, 1891 ; G. Runze, Ethik, vol. I.: Praktische Ethik, 1891; G. Simmel, Einleitung in die Moral- wistenschaft, 2 vols., 1892 ; A. Dorner, Das menschliche Handeln, Philosophische Ethik, 1895. Finally I also mention here A. von Ottingen, Moralstatistik, 4th ed., 1887 ; and R. von Jhering, Der Zweck im Recht, 2d ed., 1884-86, 2 vols. BOOK II FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS AND QUESTIONS OF PRINCIPLE If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth, by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance. — Maectts Aukelius. METAPHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION I BEUEVE it will be wise to preface the following discussions with a summary of the metaphysical and psychological con- ceptions upon which they are based. A more detailed ac- count of some of these problems will be found in my Intro- duction to Philosophy.^ 1. Reality manifests itself in two phases. Seen from with- out, by the senses, it manifests itself as a corporeal world ; seen from within, in self-consciousness, as psychical life. 2. The two sides are co-extensive. Every psychical process has its equivalent in the physical world, and, conversely, every physical process has a psychical equivalent. 3. Body is a phenomenon and the symbol of psychical life, which is the true reality, or reality in itself. 4. Psychical life is immediately experienced only in our own inner life, of which our body is the phenomenon. 5. We reason by analogy from the form and movement of bodies, and so come to assume the existence of psychical life in things outside of us. But we reach an adequate and penetrating knowledge of the inner human processes only, and therefore regard the psychical world as co-extensive with his- torical human life. 6. The unity of all mental life we call God. God's essence transcends our knowledge. We conceive God by means of the highest human psychical life. This explains the anthro- pomorphic symbolism of all religions. 1 [Fourth edition, 1896 ; English translation by Frank Thilly. — Tb.] 220 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 7. Psychical life has two phases, will and intelligence. The will manifests itself in strivings and feelings, the intelligence in sensation, perception, and thinking. 8. Biological and evolutionistic reflections reveal the will as the primary and radical element of psychical life. Life originally consists in blind striving, without presentation of ends and means. The intelligence manifests itself as a sec- ondary development, as a growth, like its physiological phe- nomenon, the nervous system and brain. 9. Psychology also shows the will to be the primary ele- ment. A specific will, aiming at a particular form of life, manifests itself as the inner essence of man as well as of every living being. The will -to-live, the will to live a specific life, is not the result of previous knowledge or of the experi- ence which we gain of its worth through feeling. 10. The development of the will may be characterized by three stages : impulse, desire, and will in the narrower sense. The goal at which it aims in each of the three stages is the preservation and promotion of individual and generic life. 11. The original form of the will is blind impulse ; in con- sciousness it appears as a felt striving. In case the craving is satisfied, the successful activity is accompanied by pleasur- able feelings ; in case it is obstructed, pain ensues. 12. Sensuous desire is impulse accompanied by the percep- tion of the object or idea of the movement at which it aims. It presupposes a certain development of intelligence and a fusion of will and idea. The satisfaction or inhibition of the desire is likewise accompanied by pleasurable or painful feelings. 13. Will, in the narrower sense, or rational will, is desire determined by purposes, principles, and ideals. It arises in man as the highest development of the will, when the intelligence develops into rational, self-conscious thought. The will be- comes conscious of itself in the practical ideal of life. Feel- INTRODUCTION 221 ings of satisfaction accompany conduct which conforms to the ideal, while acts out of harmony with the ideal arouse feelings of dissatisfaction. 14. The rational will, governed by an ideal, subjects the lower forms of will, impulse, and desire, which persist even in man as natural predispositions, to constant criticism and to a process of selection. This criticism we call conscience. The faculty of educating and disciplining the natural will by means of the rational will is called freedom of the will. A being who thus controls his inner life is called a personal being. 15. The relation of will to feeling may be expressed as follows : Every act of will is originally also an emotion, and conversely, every emotion is at the same time positive or negative willing. In feeling, the will becomes conscious of itself, of its aim, and of its condition. Feeling is not the cause of the act of will, the will is already present in feeling as in its manifestation. 16. In the higher stages of development, the relation is somewhat different. Here we have volitions which are not at the same time feelings. A resolution or decision to do some- thing may take place without being accompanied by feeling ; indeed, it may be opposed to the immediate feeling. Con- versely, we have feelings, especially aesthetic feelings, which are no longer motives of the will, although the will i» still mirrored in them. CHAPTER I GOOD AND BAD. TELEOLOGICAL AND FOEMALISTIC CONCEPTIONS 1 1. As was said before (p. 34), two problems formed the original starting-point of ethical reflection; the same two problems must invariably carry the thinking man back to ethics again. The first springs from the function of moral judgment : What is the ultimate ground of moral distinctions ? The second has its origin in the volitional and active nature of man : What is the ultimate end of will and action ? The first question, as our historical review has shown, gives rise to two theories, the teleological and the formalistie. The former explains the difference between good and bad by the effects which modes of conduct and acts of will naturally produce upon the life of the agent and his surroundings. Acts are called good when they tend to preserve and promote human welfare ; bad, when they tend to disturb and destroy it. Formalistie ethics, on the other hand, claims that the concepts good and bad, taken in their moral sense, designate an absolute quality of the will, without any regard to the effects of acts or modes of conduct; that this quality can- not be further explained, but must be accepted as a fact. 1 [For the teleological view: Mill, Utilitarianism, chap. II.; Spencer, Z)a(o of Ethics, chaps. I.-III. ; Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 420 ff. ; Stephen, Science of Ethics, chaps. IV., V.; HofEding, Ethilc, chap. VII.; Ethische Principienlehre, IV. ; also Int. Journal of Ethics, 1890 (October) ; Jhering, Der Zweck im Reck, vol. II., pp. 95 ff. ; Wundt, Ethik, Part III., chap. II.-IV. Against the teleologi- cal view : Abbott's translation of Kant's Ethics, pp. 9 ff . ; Lecky, History of European. Morals, chap. I.; Bradley, Ethical Studies; Martineau, Ti/pes ofEthi- zal Theori/, vol. II. ; Galhvitz, Das Problem der Ethik in der Gegenwart. — Tb.] GOOD AND BAD 223 "That will is good," says Kant, "which is determined by respect for duty ; that will is bad which i£ determined by the opposite." — I am an advocate of the teleological view. The second question : What is the end of all willing ? has also given rise to different answers, which may be reduced to two fundamental forms: the hedonistic and the energistic. The former asserts that the will is universally and invariably bent upon pleasure (or avoidance of pain), and, hence, that pleasure is the highest or absolute good, which is not desired for the sake of anything else. The energistic view, on the other hand, holds: The will does not aim at pleasure, but at an objective content of life, or, since life consists solely of action, at definite concrete activities. I regard the latter conception as the correct one. My view may, therefore, be characterized as teleological energism. Our principle would then be : Such modes of conduct and volitions are good as tend to realize the highest goal of the will, which may be called welfare. I mean by it the perfection of our being and the perfect exercise of life. The two following chapters will set forth the reasons which seem to me to support this view. But first let me say a word concerning the terminology which I have chosen. It is customary to use the term utilitarian instead of teleo- logical. What induced me totally to discard the former ex- pression in the later editions of my book has been, aside from philological objections, the impossibility of guarding it against misconception. It originated in Bentham's school; John Stuart Mill confesses, in his Autobiography, that he coined the term. It is, in its origin, inseparably connected with hedonism; hence the critics who have had time for nothing but a superficial glance at the terminology employed in my ethics have insisted on confusing it with Bentham's system. In order to prevent the recurrence of this error, I have sub- stituted for the term utilitarian the term teleological. The latter has the additional advantage of suggesting the general 224 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES theory of the universe from which this form of ethics takes its rise, the Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy. Its fundamental idea is that every being and, hence, also man, has a purpose in the universe. This purpose, and the forms and functions of life arising therefrom, it is the business of ethics to ascertain. I have coined the term enerc/ism, in order to bring my view into sharp contrast with hedonism : the end of the will is not feeling, but action. Its resemblance to Aristotle's evipyeia may also serve to remind us of the origin of the con- cept. The word welfare, finally, seems suited to designate the highest good in its twofold aspect : it shows, first, that the highest good is an objective content of life, consisting in the perfect exercise of all human psychical powers ; then it also suggests that such a life is accompanied with pleasure, and hence that pleasure is not excluded from the perfect life, but included in it. 2. I shall first attempt to show what the teleological theory means, and give reasons for it. Popular opinion inclines more to the formalistic view : Acts are not morally good or bad according to their effects ; they are good or bad in them- selves. The disposition determines the moral worth of the act, not the effects.^ Even if the compassion of the good Samaritan in the Gospel had not saved the man who fell among thieves, nay, even if it had caused his death, that is, if the thieves had attacked and killed the rescuer and had then put to death the wounded traveller in order to destroy all evi- dence of their crime — this would not in the least affect our judgment of the moral worth of the act. Or, suppose that a slanderous remark, instead of finding ready acceptance, as is usually the case, is repudiated and simply deprives the calum- niator of the confidence which he has hitherto undeservedly enjoyed. And suppose that the episode causes a greater interest to be taken in the injured party and greater con- fidence to be reposed in him. Nevertheless, however desir- 1 [See Abbott's Kant, pp. 9 ff. ; Martineau, vol. II., pp. 53 f . — Te.] GOOD AND BAD 225 able such effects may be, they do not alter the baseness of calumny. We should answer : The statement is true, but it is not an objection against the teleological theory. The theory does not, of course, claim that the value of the particular acts is to be judged by their actual results, but that acts and modes of conduct are good or bad in so far as they naturally tend to produce favorable or unfavorable effects. It lies in the very nature of slander to deprive the victim of his good name and the confidence of his surroundings. In the case mentioned it was not the fault of the calumniator that the effect did not appear, it was due to the conscientiousness, vigilance, and knowledge of human nature of the person who saw through the trick. The slanderous remark, one might say, adapting the terminology of Aristotle, was causa per accidens, not causa per se, an accidental occasion, but not the cause of the favorable results. Morality, however, has to do not with the actual consequences, but with the effects flowing from the very nature of the act. Physics has to do with the law of gravitation and not with the infinitely variable actual move- ments of falling bodies ; it investigates the law of gravitation, ignoring the fact that the tendency to gravitation is not the sole cause of the actual movement of a body. Similarly, medicine seeks to determine the natural tendency of a remedy or a poison to act upon the organism, knowing full well that a thousand other causes may diminish, modify, or even counteract its effects in a particular case. In the same way, ethics seeks to determine the natural tendencies of modes of conduct and not the innumerable, variable, actual results of the particular acts. It asks: What would be the effect of calumny upon humanity if it alone determined the result ? and judges its worth according to the answer. Similarly, to take the other example, benevolence naturally tends to diminish human misery, and is therefore good. Or is this a mistake ? Is benevolence good in itself, regard- 226 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES less of its effects, and malevolence bad in the same sense ? Would not the Samaritan have been what he was if he had been wholly unable to render aid, if he had been compelled to remain at home, poor, sick and in need of help himself? Certainly; but the teieological view, rightly understood, does not dispute it. Here, again, it is a pure accident that a virtue does not realize its effects ; its tendency remains the same, and the tendency is what we judge. But suppose that it were impossible, in the nature of things, for one man to help another, suppose that each individual inhabited his own planet and could see the misery of the inhabitant of a neigh- boring planet without being able to help him in any way ? Then would compassion be good ? Should we not say : It is not good for him to feel pity, it simply doubles the sorrow ; it would be much better if he lacked the power to see the wretchedness of others ? Nevertheless, he would be a good man, you say. Very true ; but it is tacitly assumed that if he were near and could render aid, his being there would be a benefit. We have here an instance similar to what we find in the theoretical field ; we ignore a relation which is con- stantly and necessarily presupposed. We say. The stars are bright points, and believe that we are thereby attributing to them an absolute quality. Epistemological reflections first convince us that such a judgment presupposes a point of re- lation, namely, an eye that is sensitive to light. Here, too, common-sense would say : But the stars would surely shine even if all eyes were closed. Certainly ; but that simply means that if an eye were again opened, it would see them. If there were no eyes at all, there would be no shining points. Similarly, if men did not produce effects upon men, if they were metaphysically isolated from each other, like Leibnizian monads, it would be utterly absurd to say that malevolence was bad and benevolence good. The words malevolence and benevolence would be devoid of meaning. 3, But another objection is urged. Your theory does not GOOD AND BAD 227 meet the facts after all. The moral judgment is not con- cerned with acts and modes of conduct, but with the disposi- tion of the agent. The act is good when its motive is good, that is, when it springs from the sense of duty, be its effect what it may.' Nor is this statement untrue. It is a fact that the moral judgment of a particular act first considers the disposition of the agent. We try to ascertain the moral worth of the per- son, which manifests itself in the act, and therefore inquire into his motives. A physician performs a dangerous operation, and the patient dies from it. The public now pronounces judg- ment. Did the physician do it from a sordid motive ? No, the patient was unable to pay. Was it ambition that prompted him ? Hardly, for he had successfully performed the opera- tion a hundred times, and this was a desperate case. Well, then, he must have been extremely careless ! No, it took him a long time to make up his mind to do it. He simply felt that it was his duty to make a final attempt to save the patient's life. — When that conclusion has been reached, it means that the act was morally unassailable. But it does not necessarily follow that the operation was justified by the facts. This is a point that must be settled by the physicians ; and if they find that the outcome of the case could have been foreseen, they blame the physician and say : He should not have done it. And, hence, it is not the dis- position, but the result that decides after all. That is, not the actual, particular result — no one can be held accountable for an accident — but the result which was to be expected from the nature of the case. The same thing meets us everywhere: a distinction is made between a personal and an objective judgment aroused by the same act. Every act gives rise to two judgments, a subjective, formal judgment of the disposition of the person and an objective, material judgment of the act itself. * [Kant, ibid. ; Martinean, vol. II., Part II. ; Bradley, Eih'cal Studies.— Tm.] 228 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES In the former case, we inquire into the motive, in the latter, into the effects following from the nature of the case.^ It is of the utmost importance that we clearly understand this difference, and also that we see that these two judgments are independent of each other and may even contradict each other. An act may be objectively wrong, and yet the agent may be personally irreproachable. It is said of St. Crispin that he stole leather to make shoes for the poor. Does that make Crispin a thief and a rascal ? We shall hardly be will- ing to say so. He would surely never have taken the mean- est thing for himself. But when he saw poor children with sore and half frozen feet, his heart was grieved, and having nothing himself he took a piece of leather from the rich merchant in order to help them. Not without some reluc- tance, we may imagine ; for he, too, had learned the com- mandment, "Thou shall not steal." But so great was his pity that he risked the danger of the gallows. Of what use, he may have thought, is his wealth to the rich usurer ? It will merely lead to his damnation. Perhaps, God in his mercy will credit him with the act of charity which he will thus involuntarily perform. And so Crispin went and took with a good conscience as much as he needed. If pity and good will are absolutely good, they are certainly good in this case also. The subjective formal judgment must be: The will of Crispin, who served others with a clear conscience and by sacrificing his own interests, was a good will. But this judgment is not the only one to which the act gives rise. The act itself is made the object of a judgment which is formed on the basis of the effects naturally belong- ing to it. Objectively considered, the act is undoubtedly theft : depriving a man of his property without the consent of 1 ["An act is materially good when in fact it tends to the interest of the sys- tem, so far as we can judge of its tendency, or to the good of some part consistent with the system, whatever were the affections of the agent." "An action is formally good when it flowed from good affection in a just proportion." (HntcheaonJ — Tr.] GOOD AND BAD 229 the owner. Such a mode of conduct has, from the very nature of the case — whatever may be the . motive — effects which are extremely dangerous to human welfare. If such conduct became general, if everybody were to act according to the maxim : If in your opinion you can do more good by taking a commodity from its owner and giving it to another, then it is your right or your duty to make the transfer, re- gardless of the owner's wishes, what would be the result ? Evidently, the complete abolition of the institution of prop- erty, and with it, the disappearance of the desire to acquire more than momentary needs call for, and the destruction of human life. Hence, the effects which follow from the nature of such an act are ruinous, and the act is bad. And so uni- versal is this belief that such acts are prohibited and pun- ished as stealing. Had Crispin been brought before a judge, the latter would have been compelled to condemn him with- out hesitation. Not only because the law required it; nay, even if he had made the law himself, he could not have acted otherwise. He would not have been willing to insert a clause into the code in favor of Crispin's theft, to wit : But every encroachment upon the property of another shall go unpun- ished, provided a third party thereby receives a benefit exceeding the damage done to the owner. No, the formula : Interference with the property rights of others is punishable, holds unconditionally. The most that the judge could have done would have been to take into account extenuating cir- cumstances. And he might, perhaps, have told the accused privately how sorry he was to have been compelled to sen- tence him. I know that your intentions were good, he might have said, but I should like to show you that your mode of procedure was not the proper one, so that you may not con- sider yourself unjustly treated. And he might then have proved to him that his act, innocent though it may have seemed, was absolutely incompatible with the general welfare. The historian will frequently find himself placed in a 230 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES similar position. He will condemn an act without therefore condemning the character of the agent, and conversely. So far as we are able to judge from his letters and the testimony of his friends, K. L. Sand, the murderer of Kotzebue, acted in the firm belief that he was sacrificing himself for his country. He believed that it was his duty to destroy the enemy who was corrupting the soul of his people. And if it is harder to die on the scaffold than on the field of battle, we cannot underrate Sand's devotion to what he felt to be his duty. But the same act was, objectively considered, highly reprehensible. If every man were allowed to sit in judg- ment upon the life of his neighbor, and to kill him in case he considered him a menace to the community, all law and order would disappear, and the war of all against all would become inevitable. There is hardly a man, at least not in public life, whose activity is not regarded by some one in the community as a curse, and whose death some one would not welcome as a blessing to humanity. Hence, the sentence of death pronounced upon the murderer of Kotzebue was en- tirely just and necessary. The inquisitors persecuted her- etics and brought them to the stake. It is conceivable and probable that some of them at least did what they did with a heavy heart : not because they rejoiced in the sufferings of others — nay, they suffered themselves — but because they felt it to be their duty, because they were firmly convinced that it would be better for a heretic to die than that a whole people should be tempted and corrupted by him. Subjectively con- sidered, their conduct was without blame, no less so than that of the judge who sentenced poor Sand. The difference is a material difference only : we are no longer convinced that the safety of a people demands the persecution and execution of those who differ from us in matters of religion. The inability to keep these two views apart causes much confusion. Whoever condemns the act believes that he must assume an evil motive in order to justify his disapproval of GOOD AND BAD 231 the character, that he must attribute love of power and cruelty to the inquisitors, vanity and a craving for notori- ety to Sand. Conversely, whoever approves and under- stands the character of the agent feels bound to approve of the act, and gives it an innocent or even praiseworthy name. The moralizing party-eloquence of the historians finds an excellent field here. Such names and motives are selected for acts as arouse the love and admiration or the hatred and indignation of the reader. As a rule, writers of this class do not care so much for the truth as to make things appear good or bad in the eyes of the reader. We now come back to our question. It is clear that the objective, material judgment is justified teleologically : the value of acts and modes of conduct depends upon their ability to solve the problems of life, or upon their effects upon the conduct of life. But the same may ultimately be said of the subjective, formal judgment. First, however, let me say that it is the real business of ethics to determine the objective value of modes of action and conduct, not to decide upon the subjective, personal value of the disposition of the agent. It is manifestly not the function of the science to deter- mine the motive and disposition in a particular case ; and it is not its function, or at least only to a very small degree, to establish the principles underlying this judgment. The prin- ciple of the subjective, formal judgment is : An act is good in so far as it springs from a will determined by the con- sciousness of duty. In saying this we say everything that can be said upon the subject. It is morally right to act conscientiously, it is morally wrong to act contrary to one's conscience, be the content of conscience whatever it may. But there never was an ethics that stopped here ; it has in- variably attempted to find an answer for the other question also : What is it that duty really enjoins ? For no ethics can, without ignoring the most patent facts, get around the fact that conscience commands and permits different persons to 232 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES act differently in the same case ; nay, that its dictated are not infrequently different for the same person at different times. Now, it is surely not the object of ethics merely to command the individual to obey his conscience, but above all to guide his conscience, that is, to teach him to decide what is the content of a normal conscience. And if scientific ethics cannot follow the example of theological ethics and appeal to the commands of a transcendent law-giver, or to the absolute decisions of an infallible court, and if it cannot, with- out renouncing its scientific character, do what Herbart and Lotze show an inclination to do, that is, appeal to the categor- ical formula — My, the moralist's, conscience, the normal con- science, decrees as follows — then it has no other course than to measure the content of the conscience or of the duties which it enjoins by an objective standard ; and this objective standard, again, can only be the value which modes of action and conduct derive from their relation to an ultimate and highest good. Finally, however, the subjective, formal conception itself is reduced to the teleological view. To act from respect for duty, from conscientiousness, is morally good. Why is con- scientiousness good ? Or is this an absurd question ? I do not believe it. Conscientiousness is objectively good, the moral philosopher will find, because conscience tends to determine the conduct of the individual to the end that he may promote the welfare of the agent and his surroundings. Inclinations are variable and untrustworthy ; conscience is, on the whole, the same in all the individuals of a people, and there- fore makes their conduct uniform in so far as it has power over them. Even this formal point is a gain. Moreover, the con- tents of the individual conscience represent positive morality, the objective morality of the people, which is inculcated in the individual during his entire life, by example, by praise and blame. But the general moral code, in turn, contains the cus- toms (Sitten) and laws of a people or an entire sphere of civili- GOOD AJfD BAD 233 zation. Customs, however, so anthropology tells us, are to be regarded as a kind of social instinct, by whioh all the individ- uals of a particular, historical society are impelled to perform acts tending to the preservation of individual and social life. Hence, conscience, thus interpreted, would have to be re- garded as a principle which impels the individual to promote his own most vital interests and the interests of the commu- nity of which he is a member. Let this suffice, for the pres- ent, upon this point. I shall return to it in the fifth chapter of the second book.^ The principle of teleological energism then would be : The objective value of human conduct is ultimately de- termined by its relation to a final and highest end or good, which consists in the perfect development of being and the exercise of vital functions ; and the worth of a good will, of a will actuated by a feeling of duty, ultimately depends upon its power to influence action for the highest good. 4. Before entering upon a more detailed definition of the highest good, I should like to answer a few objections which might be urged against my view. In the first place, Is not this principle identical with the oft-quoted maxim which, in spite of their protestations, we are in the habit of attributing to the Jesuits : The end justi- fies the means? If the value of a mode of conduct depends upon its effects, must we not also grant it of a particular act? Indeed, I do not see how teleological ethics can deny the proposition. But I see no reason why it should wish to deny it. When rightly understood, the proposition is harmless and necessary. When misconstrued, of course, it becomes absurd and damnable. If we mean by it : So long as the end is per- missible or good, any means may be employed to realize it, — then, indeed, there is not a crime which might not be justi- fied by it. It is lawful and good to acquire money for one's ' [See Stephen, Science of Ethics, chap. IV., § 4. — Tr.] 234 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES self and one's family. Now, if the proposition be interpreted in the sense just indicated, then it would be right not only to work for wages, but even to hire out as an assassin, pro- vided It were done for the sake of the good end. It is good to help your neighbor in need ; if the proposition were entirely true, it would be right to perjure one's self in order to acquit a good friend in court. This is evidently the interpretation which the opponents of the Jesuits accuse them of having put upon the maxim. The idea is : The Jesuits act according to the principle that any means, as for example, the murder of heretical kings, breach of faith, perjury, where heretics are concerned, etc., which furthers any end which the Jesuits themselves consider good, say the increase of papal power and the advancement of their own order, or the annihilation of Protestantism, is right. It is easy to understand why the Jesuits are unwilling to acknowledge the proposition either as the actual maxim of their acts, or as the principle of their morality. If, on the other hand, we interpret the proposition to mean : Not any lawful end you please, but only the end justifies the means ; and there is only one end which determines all values, namely, the highest good, the welfare or perfection of humanity, then it is not only harmless, but inevitable. An act that realizes this purpose is not only permissible, but good and necessary. Everybody, with perhaps the exception of a few philosophers who have a principle to defend, will acknowledge this. There can be no controversy on the point whether it is right to do what is proved to be neces- sary to realize this end ; the only question is, whether an act that violates a universal law may, under certain condi- tions, produce such an effect. If that were proved, every- body would admit the objective goodness of such an act. If an intentional falsehood had and could have only beneficial effects, it would not be a reprehensible lie. If by depriving a man of his property, we should and could injure no one; GOOD AND BAD 235 neither the owner nor the community, by the bad example, nor the thief, by creating a habit in him — if the act resulted in the greatest good, it would not be theft. When a physi- cian removes a patient's eye in order to save the other eye, or cuts o£E his leg to save his life, his act is not criminal as- sault and battery, but a means justified by the end. Should the same physician yield to the fervent entreaties of an absolutely hopeless patient afflicted with an incurable and highly contagious disease contracted in a foreign land, and give him a fatal poison, and then bring the matter to the attention of the authorities, it would not be murder. The physician would, of course, be culpable before the law, and it is obvious why the law which punishes such offenses could not be suspended. But, morally considered, the case is the same as when an ofi&cer, after the necessary formalities, shoots down the ring-leader of a riot. How else could we justify the latter act if not by the end which it subserves, that is, the maintenance of public order ? If the killing of a man were in itself bad, a command of the state could not make it good, for a command cannot make black white, or change the nature of things. Then shall we say that falsehood, deceit, and murder are justifiable, or even meritorious, provided they have nothing but beneficial effects upon the welfare of humanity ? There are two reasons why it is impossible to afiirm this question without further comment. In the first place, on account of the contradictions involved in the meaning of the terms. The words, murder and falsehood, signify not merely an objective fact, intentional killing or deception, but likewise imply condemnation. The judgment. Murder is wrong, is an " analytical " judgment ; it means an act of homicide that is legally and morally wrong. Hence, in order to obtain a pure judgment, we must eliminate the condemna- tion expressed in the term, and pronounce judgment upon the objective fact alone, that is, upon the intentional act of 236 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES homicide. Now homicide can unquestionably be a lawful and even dutiful act ; indeed it is enjoined by statute, the execution of which is enforced. — Very true, we hear the objector say ; nevertheless, the individual as such is prohibited from killing any one except in self-defense ; the killing of a foreigner or a native for the sake of the welfare of the people would be punished as murder. And yet, even such killing would be justifiable according to the principle, provided we were thoroughly convinced that it is essential to the welfare of humanity. Our answer is : The mere conviction is by no means suffi- cient to justify the act ; nothing but the actual impossibility of a different effect can do that. This brings us to the second reason why we cannot accept the above proposition. We may say, the proposition : The welfare of humanity is an end which justifies, without exception, every act that is a means to that end, is in theory wholly unobjectionable, but cannot be applied in practice We can never figure out whether an act of this kind, for example the killing of a corruptor of the people, a revolutionist, or a tyrant, by a private person, will have only favorable or approximately favorable effects upon the welfare of humanity, or even upon the permanent welfare of a particular people. When Napoleon I. trampled upon the nations of Europe many a brave man must have felt a desire to kill him and so to free his oppressed people. Let us suppose that such a person had succeeded in assassinating the Emperor at Erfurt, in 1808, at the sacrifice of his own life. Would he have rendered humanity, the oppressed and down-trodden, a service ? Many of his contemporaries would probably have believed it. We of the present day, however, should feel inclined to say : It is well that such a thing did not happen. It is well that the nations of Europe were compelled to win their freedom in open, honorable battle. Had Napoleon fallen by the hand of an assassin, the bad example might have GOOD AND BAD 237 corrupted the moral judgment of men for centuries, it might have had a pernicious influence upon the relations existing between the different nations, the German people would not have experienced that inner regeneration which gave back to them their national consciousness and made possible their political existence in the new Empire. True, we cannot absolutely prove it. — Some one may reply : If the tyrant had been killed in time, much bloodshed would have been avoided, there would have been no Holy Alliance of notori- ous fame, and the feeling of national pride which has taken such hold upon the nations of Europe, and is now terrorizing them with the fears of war and weighing them down with armaments, would not have gained such an unfortunate as- cendency over the feeling of universal brotherly love, and so on. This view too, may be true, and we cannot prove by any form of reasoning that it is false. Nay, we cannot even prove that the battle of Sedan was a blessing for the German people. All that we can do is to believe these things, and faith rests upon the will. It is just as impossible to make an absolute calculation of the effects of a movement in physics, because every effect continues ad infinitum, as it is to determine the objective value of a particular act from its relation to the highest human end, in moral philosophy. Here, as in the former case, we are dealing with infinite quantities. We can merely estimate the general tendencies of motion in physics, and the tendencies of modes of action to further or retard welfare in morals. Still, we must confess that circumstances may arise under which the end justifies exceptions to the rule, just as poisons may sometimes be used as remedies. It is the same in morals as m politics. No statesman, no historian, will refuse to grant that a breach of positive law may, under certain cir- cumstances, become a necessity. But no one will dare to claim, unless he is a partisan and not a theorist, that he can strictly prove the necessity of a particular revolution. Such things 288 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES can be believed, but not proved. No one can ever estimate all the consequences of a violation of law, especially not the more remote ones. A revolution as such invariably tends to destroy the legal order, and to weaken the authority of law. To what extent this actually occurs no one can tell. The feeling of insecurity produced by the example of such a vio- lation of law may continue for centuries after its occur- rence. We can no more calculate the unfavorable effects than we can calculate the favorable ones ; we can never prove that the sum of the latter exceeds that of the former. The same may be said of infractions of the moral laws. There may be cases in which these become necessary, but we can never prove it in a particular instance. It will never be pos- sible to prove tliat the sum of all the evil effects which a breach of law may directly and indirectly produce in one's own life and that of others, is overbalanced by the im- mediate good effects which are aimed at. Consequently, whoever breaks the law, always does so at his own peril. The man who remains within the bounds of the law can malie no mistake. Of course, energetic natures do not care chiefly for their own safety. The men who have brought about great crises in history have, as a rule, in some way or other, departed from the safe course of universal morality and law. The most serious thing about our proposition is its tendency to make us forget the more remote consequences, and empha- size the immediate ones. The end justifies the means, says the partisan to himself, when he attempts to secure the victory for his party at an election by slandering the opposing can- didate. The end justifies the means, says the politician who strives to gain an advantage for his country by fraud or by force. The end justifies the means, says the churchman who calumniates and disgraces an honest man because he does not accept the "sound doctrine." The maxim in its evil meaning finds the freest scope in partisan activity. Party GOOD AND BAD 239 morality is always and everywhere inclined to identify the advantage of the party with the welfare of the people or humanity. The cause of the party is, of course, the good cause, hence whatever conduces to it is lawful I Did the Society of Jesus innocently employ this mode of reasoning ? It is commonly assumed that it did, and indeed the proposition, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, suggests the conclusion : Whatever tends to increase the power of the church, to shatter the power of its enemies, or to advance the power of its friends — among whom we are the most faithful and the most zealous — is good, whether it be brought about by the suppression of truth or the circulation of falsehood, by the assassination or the public burning of human beings. We may presume that the history of the order shows acts which were performed according to this principle, and that some of its members thought and acted in accordance with it. It is but fair to say, however, that such persons exist in every party. Indeed, we may say that every party, be it merely a literary sect or a school of philology, in a certain sense ac- cepts the motto : There can be no salvation except in us. But, we must also add, the order surely contained members whose consciences did not permit them to draw such a con- clusion. Most liliely the Society of Jesus, like other societies, was neither made up of saints only, nor yet of scoundrels or "men in wickedness" (Manner an Bosheit), as a Protestant historian calls them, but of human beings. And, a defender of the order might add, there is a very obvious reason why such a maxim should have come to be regarded as their special property. The stronger a party, the more trouble- some it is to its opponents ; and the greater and more sur- prising its victories, the more surely will they be attributed by its opponents to the employment of dishonest means.^ ' I call the reader's attention to a book written by a Jesuit, Father B. Dnhr, Jesuit Fables (Jesuitenfabeln), 2(1 edition 1892, which gives a long list of ex- amples, extending to the present, to show that the enemies of the order have themselves acted in accordance with the principle that the end juBtifies the 240 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 6. Another objection to the teleological moral philosophy is the following. It is contended that the teleological view can- not explain the absolute importance attached to particular acts by genuine ethical feeling. If the violation of the moral laws is to be avoided solely on account of the effects, why should an offence whose effects are manifestly utterly insignificant, pro- duce such violent emotional reactions in the agent and the spectators. Pestalozzi tells us an interesting story in his Lienhard and Gertrude. The oldest son of the mason's starving family takes a few potatoes from the field of a rich neighbor, bakes them in ashes, and shares them with his brothers and sisters. His old grandmother, who is on her death-bed, becomes alarmed and excited at the discovery of the theft ; she cannot die in peace until the boy confesses his sin to the neighbor and obtains his forgiveness. Now, if the teleological theory is correct, how shall we explain the dis- proportion between the intensity of the emotion and the insignificance of the harm done ? The neighbor will not miss the few potatoes, and it is somewhat fantastic to fear that a boy might, by taking them, undermine the institution of property. Hence, the objector might continue, making a practical application, if the theory were to become universal, it would result in shaking the authority of the moral laws, or lessen the fear of violating them. I shall not attempt to offer a psychological explanation of the emotional reactions following the infraction of the moral law until I reach the chapter on Duty} All I can say here is that they do not result from a computation of the damage done or feared, and that it is hardly to be supposed that this will ever be the case. I shall simply endeavor to justify the means. The annihilation of the Jesuits is a consnmmation devoutly to he •wished, hence everything that is calculated to lower them in the eyes of men is a priori believable ; at all events it is unnecessary to make any investigation, and one ia doing the world a service by circulating the slanders about them. [For some of the literature on the subject see Ennze's Ethik, p. 208. — Tn.] > Chapter V, GOOD AND BAD 241 intensity and absoluteness of the feelings of aversion and re- morse, which are aroused by intended or accomplished offences, from the standpoint of teleological ethics. It is said that a Greek sage, when asked by a friend why he had punished his son so severely for some trivial offense, re- plied : And do you regard habit as trivial ? His words con- tain the answer to the objection urged against our theory. If the particular act were an isolated act, it might, indeed, be of little moment. The important thing, however, is that it tends to form a habit, from which similar acts afterwards result. I once read a striking remark made by a Frenchman : Conse- quences would not be so important if they did not in turn become causes. It is true, the trivial act of the boy in our ex- ample may not have injured the neighbor, indeed, it may not have harmed any one, no one might ever have heard of it. But one person it would certainly have injured, the boy him- self, had not the damage been averted by penitence and punishment. He would have remembered how he once suc- ceeded in overcoming want, and if he had ever found himself in trouble again with the same opportunities of getting out of it, he would have recalled his past experience and acted in the same way. Having stolen once, he would have become an habitual thief, and then a professonal thief. Perhaps, it would not have come to this. Nevertheless, the first, apparently harm- less, transgression was the first step in that direction. No one ever stole anything for the first time with the intention of becoming a thief ; certainly not, he simply wanted this one thing, this so desirable, so absolutely necessary thing ; but the result was inevitable. — No one ever told his first lie intending to become a liar ; no drunkard ever began as a drunkard, — he began with a single spree, and with the firm resolve to guard against its recurrence in the future. And every subsequent state of drunkenness began with the first glass and the firm resolve that it should be the last. But the second glass and the second spree and the second lie and the second theft came 242 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES of their own accord, finding the door wide open to admit them. Innocence is a negative term, but a positive thing. The first trangression breaks down the barrier which separates the good path from the evil one. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the sphere of sexual life, as the term innocence ( Unschuld') in the narrower sense implies. With the first false step we enter upon the downward path which leads to an abyss. You will be careful and not fall down ? That is what the thou- sands believed who were dashed to pieces at the bottom of the pit. " The first is free to us ; we 're governed by the second," ^ is the law of the evil spirits. And of the good ones too. After the first temptation has been overcome, the danger of the second is only half as great. The first victory which we win over ourselves is the hardest, every ensuing struggle becomes easier, until at last we do the right without effort. This is the first reason why each particular act has such great moral Influence. In performing it, we are not merely deciding the case at hand, but somehow determining our whole course of life. This is true not only of the first decision, although it is of especial importance, but of every subsequent one. Each decision leaves a deeper imprint upon our nature, until it becomes absolutely impossible to counteract it.^ But there is another reason. Not only does every act tend to create a habit in the agent, but it likewise tends to produce a similar habit in the surrounding individuals, and thereby to make the habit of the individual a characteristic of the race. This is brought about in two ways: by imitation and retaliation. Everybody knows how great is the force of example. Cer- tain plants produce germs which are carried through the air until they fall upon fertile soil and grow. Similarly, we may say, good and evil deeds produce germs which permeate the moral atmosphere until, passing through the eyes and ears of men into human souls, they fall upon rich ground and thrive. 1 Faust. ^ [See James's chapter on Habit.] GOOD AND BAD 243 This mode of dissemination is peculiar to acts which do not immediately affect the agent himself, but others. An attempt is made " to get even," first, with the person who has done the good or evil deed, and then with any one who may happen to come along. Darwin tells us of an Australian whose wife died, and who could find no rest until he had killed a woman of another tribe, in retaliation for her death, so to say. This seems to be a very unnatural method of pro- cedure, and yet it is practised, to some extent, by all human beings. "When a man has been injured or treated unkindly, and cannot revenge himself upon the responsible party, either because the latter cannot be reached or is not known to him, he usually visits his anger upon the first individual who happens to cross his path. We all know this, and get out of such a person's way. Some one or other has palmed off a counterfeit half-dollar on a man. You may wager ten to one that, however honest he may be, he will attempt to pass it on. The " public " has swindled him, it is a lawful act of self- defence to return to the public its counterfeit coin. But acts of politeness and kindness are no less contagious. A stranger does me a favor ; I have forgotten my pocketbook and he pays my car-fare ; I feel impelled not only to thank him, but also to be kind to other strangers. Nowhere are good and evil more easily transmitted than in the family ; nowhere is the power of example more effective, and retribution more sure to follow. What we receive from our parents we pay back to our children. Good training and bad training are both hereditary. Hence, an examination of the moral judgments pro- nounced upon human acts and qualities universally leads to the conception of universal welfare as the principle which governs all determinations of value. 6. Let me supplement these reflections by briefly showing that the other path which moral philosophy can pursue and has pursued leads to the same goal. The question : What is 244 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES the ultimate end of willing? likewise suggests the answer: The welfare of the individual and of his surroundings. There is a view which claims in opposition to this that the will naturally aims, not at universal but at egoistic or indi- vidual welfare. Everybody strives for what is agreeable or useful to him, regardless of whether it hinders or furthers the welfare of others. This idea formulated into a theory is egoistic or individualistic utilitarianism. Hobbes is the first modern representative of the view that the will of every animal is directed towards self-preservation ; that self-preser- vation is the law of its nature; that whatever benefits it is good, and whatever is good for others is good for it only in so far as it is a means to its own preservation. I do not believe that we can maintain this theory without flying in the face of the facts. The egoistic, self-preservative impulse undoubtedly plays an extremely important part in life ; and only too frequently does it assert itself at the expense of others' interests. But no one is an egoist in the sense of caring exclusively for his own weal and woe, and of being utterly regardless of the welfare of others. There are at least a few persons in his immediate surroundings whose good is as dear to him as his own, whose welfare he is ready to pro- mote, at least if it can be done without endangering his own interests. Indeed, most persons will, in a measure at least, even be ready to sacrifice their own interests for the sake of a small group ; they will be willing to give up some of their comforts in order to help it. Some men, finally, are so deeply interested in the weal and woe of others, not only of those closely related to them, but even of utter strangers, as to be governed by sympathy in their entire conduct. We also notice that individuals are directly interested in the wel- fare of society as a whole. Whenever an individual betrays his country for gain, the indignation aroused shows how violently the instincts of the masses resent it. Hence, we may say in general : The will universally aims at individual GOOD AND BAD 245 and general welfare, in quite different combinations, it is true, but yet so that neither element is ever entirely lacking. We call those persons unselfish who, in an unusual degree, sub- ordinate their own interests to those of others ; we call those egoistic whose regard for the interests of others falls consider- ably below the average. The union in one will of selfish and social impulses, of idiopathic and sympathetic feelings, is an expression of the biological truth that the individual is not an independent individual being, but a member of a collective whole. This objective relation appears subjectively in the constitution of the will and the feelings. Even in the animal world the impulse of self-preservation is invariably accom- panied by the generic impulse, the impulse to produce and preserve offspring even at the sacrifice of individual life. In human life, the generic impulse, if we may so designate all will-impulses that are rooted in the relation of the individ- ual to the species, is expanded and intensified. The individual is conscious of forming a part of the whole ; he regards him- self as belonging to a family, a community, a people; he adopts their purposes into his own will ; his interests are so closely interwoven with the general interests as to be insepar- able from them in his consciousness. We may therefore designate, as the goal of his willing, the universal welfare inclusive of individual welfare, or individual welfare within universal welfare. There are, it is true, certain persons whose social impulses are so poorly developed as to be almost entirely absent, persons who are indifferent to the weal and woe of their surroundings, nay, who delight in the injury of others' interests. But this is no more an objection to the view than the existence of idiots is a contradiction to the truth of the proposition that man possesses reason and speech. Physicians and anthropologists agree that an in- dividual incapable of sympathetic feelings is as much of a monstrosity as an idiot. So much, for the present, in reply to the theory of Individ- 246 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES ualistic egoism. After the concept of welfare has been more clearly defined, I shall come back to the antithesis between egoism and altruism. Here I should simply like to state that I cannot ascribe the importance to the matter which many moral philosophers ascribe to it. Schopenhauer and his fol- lowers regard it as the cardinal question in morals. The natural man is absolutely egoistic and therefore without moral worth; only such acts are moral as have for their sole motive the weal and woe of others. But since such moti- vation is really impossible in nature — for how can the will be influenced by what does not concern it ? — all morality is really supernatural. I do not believe that the world in which we live is so mys- teriously arranged. There is a place for the will even within the natural order. Only so pessimistic a judge of empirical human nature as Schopenhauer can regard compassion as supernatural. Schopenhauer somewhere says in one of those climaxes by which he loves to dazzle credulous readers : " The natural man would, if forced to choose between his own de- struction and that of the world, annihilate the whole universe merely for the sake of preserving himself, this drop in tlie ocean, a little while longer." — I do not know whether any one would make such a choice on the spur of the moment. But I do know that there is not a man living who would not regret his choice immediately after the destruction of the world, and who would not wish to be freed from a useless and unbearable existence. Even the greatest egoist would then see that he was not intended by nature for complete isolation. He would need other beings if only to be admired, feared, or envied by them. But the individual hardly exists whose relations to humanity are completely exhausted by these feelings, who has not some one whose weal and woe is not altogether immaterial to him or merely fills him with antipathy. And we may say that the welfare of the overwhelming majority is so closely interwoven with the welfare of others, of their relatives, GOOD AND BAD 247 friends, and people, that they cannot fare well, either objec- tirely or subjectively, without these. Such absolute egoists exist only in theory and not in reality ; they are mere speci- mens, so to speak, prepared by moral philosophers to prove a theory, and a false theory at that. In a certain sense, of course, egoism is inevitable. Even the most unselfish man desires the welfare of others because their welfare is not immaterial to him. The furtherance of the weal of others or the alleviation of others' woe is a source of satisfaction and relief to him. Indeed, if it were not so, if the welfare of others did not concern him, it could not become an object of his willing. My will can be moved only by my feelings ; I cannot have and feel the feelings of others. In this sense the ego remains the centre of things. It will not, however, be necessary to show that this is not what we mean when we speak of selfishness or egoism in the usual acceptation of the term. These words mean the inability to feel the misfortunes of others, or to rejoice at their welfare. Only an abstract moral philosopher, one who regards the con- tradiction of the natural will as the essential characteristic of duty, or the exclusion of all satisfaction as the condition of moral worth, will be troubled by the fact that the promotion of others' welfare is invariably accompanied by a feeling of selfish satisfaction. These are fruitless quibbles indulged in by an intellect that no longer deals with the things tliemselves, but merely endeavors to uphold a system. Let me add another statement. It has been said that the teleological moral philosophy cannot explain self-sacrifice, that a man like Regulus in the Roman legend contradicts the theory. I can see no difficulty here, provided we do not regard absolute egoism as a part of the theory. Regulus, who returns to his Carthaginian captivity after having warned his friends against concluding a peace which would have given him his freedom, may be explained as easily by the teleological 248 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES as by the formalistic theory of ethics. He was undoubtedly actuated by a grand purpose, a purpose that bore him up and gave him strength ; he desired to give to his people a glorious and never-to-be-forgotten example of heroic sacrifice of private interests for the public weal, and at the same time to show the enemy the proud dignity and grandeur of his country in his own person : Behold, such sons are begotten by Rome, who know how to die for the glory of the city, not only on the field of battle, but under the hands of the torturers ! The consciousness of such a purpose, the conviction that such glorious effects will follow, produces heroes. I do not regard it as proved that the dry consciousness of duty: One must not break one's word, can do the same. Besides, it might be added, every real sacrifice is at the same time self-preservation, namely, preservation of the ideal self. What did Regulus want, what was the real aim of his willing ? His life ? Why, of course, but that does not mean the preservation of this particular physiological mechanism, but action in peace and in war, in the service of his country. To increase the greatness and glory of the Roman people : that was all that life meant to him, that alone would satisfy his will-to-live. And how could his purpose have been better realized than in the way marked out by fate — than by glori- fying his people and himself in bravely and proudly choosing to die. 7. Let me sum up. The conduct of a man is morally good when it tends to further the welfare or the perfection of the agent and his surroundings, and is accompanied by the con- sciousness of duty. It is, on the other hand, morally repre- hensible when it lacks both of these characteristics of goodness, or at least one of them. In case the objective quality is absent, it is called wicked (^schlecht^, and in case the agent is conscious that it is contrary to duty, it is called bad (base), especially if it tends to injure the welfare of others. We call a man good when he fashions his own life in GOOD AND BAD 249 accordance with the ideal of human perfection, and at the same time furthers the welfare of his surroundings. We call him bad when he has neither the will nor the strength to do anything for himself or for others, but, instead, disturbs and injures his surroundings. Virtues and vices, then, are to be explained as the different aspects of the good and bad man. Corresponding to the different problems of life we have a number of different capa- cities or virtues, which represent so many forces of the will tending to solve them. Opposed to them are the vices which express so many incapable wills. The concept good, therefore, always presupposes a relation ; it means good for something. According to common usage, a thing is good when it is capable of doing its work properly, of realizing its purpose. Similarly, when applied to man, the term signifies the ability to accomplish something. A good manager, a good soldier, a good citizen, a good friend, a good father, is one who efficiently performs the functions of a father, citizen, friend, soldier, or manager. The word good means the same in morals : a good man is a man who effi- ciently solves the problems of individual and social human life. The term loses its relative character only when applied to the whole ; the perfect life of society, perfect reality in gen- eral, is not good for something else, but good in and for itself. But every individual thing is good for something ; every par- ticular act or virtue, every particular human being, is good for something ; they have a purpose or object in the whole, and are therefore good in so far as they realize it. ^ But we must add : In so far as, in the moral world, the individual thing is not an indifferent means of realizing an external end, in so far as the individual man is himself a member of the moral whole, he forms a part of the highest good, and is, as such, an end in himself, like the highest 1 ISee Spencer, Data of Ethics, chap. III. — Te.] 250 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES good. And the same may be said of the virtues : In so far as they represent aspects of the good man, they are not merely external means to an external end, but themselves a part of the perfect life and highest good. Similarly, moral acts, the expressions of virtues, are at the same time realizations of the purpose, and not merely external means. As in a work of art or fiction everything is both a means and an end, so it is in the moral world. In neither case are the means external : they are always also parts of the end. In both cases, however, the whole is the absolute end, and the worth of the parts depends upon their usefulness for the whole. We show the necessity of a verse or scene in a drama by proving that it is indispensable to the whole. So, too, we prove the necessity of a virtue or a duty by showing that it is indispensable to life, to the perfect life of the individual and society. It must be observed, however, that the individual need not be conscious of this relation in order that his conduct have moral worth. The good old mother mentioned above, who despised theft simply because it is against the eighth com- mandment, is as moral in her willing as the philosopher who understands the teleological necessity of the institution of property for human life. For, after all, it is not his insight that keeps him from stealing, but his inherited and acquired, instinctive aversion to theft. CHAPTER II THE HIGHEST GOOD. HEDONISTIC AND ENEKGISTIC CONCEPTIONS 1 1. In the preceding chapter we were led to the notion of welfare. By that term we meant the highest goal of the will and the ultimate principle underlying our moral judgments. It is also called the highest good. In what does welfare or the highest good consist ? We have already declared that the highest good of an indiv- idual as well as of a society consists in the perfect development and exercise of life. This, of course, is a purely formal defin- ition, but we cannot make it more specific. It is as impossible to define the perfect life as it is to define a plant or animal species. We can simply give a description of it : this it is the business of the doctrine of virtues and duties to do. Before giving a more detailed account of this conception, however, I deem it wise to discuss another view of the nature of the highest good. An influential ethical school contends that welfare or the highest good does not consist in the objective 1 [For criticism of hedonism, see : Plato's Philebus and Bk. IX. of the Republic ; Aristotle, Ethics ; Kant ; Lecky, chap. I. ; Darwin, Descent of Man, chap. IV. ; Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, Pleasure and Desire ; Bradley, Ethical Studies, Essays III. and VII. ; Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, Bk. II., chap. II., Bk. III., chaps. I. and IV., Bk. IV., chaps. III. and IV. ; Martineau, vol. II. ; Murray, Handbook of Ethics, Bk. II., Part I., chap. I. ; Simmel, Einleitung in die Moral- wissenschaft, vol. I. chap. IV. ; Hyslop, Elements of Ethics, 349-385 ; also the ethical works of Calderwood, Bowne, Mnirhead, Mackenzie, J. Seth. For hedon- ism, see Democritus ; Cyrenaics ; Epicurus ; Locke, Essay, Bk. II., chap. XX., §§ 1 ff., chap. XXI., §§ 42 ff. ; Bk. I., chap. III., § 3 ; Bk. II., chap. XXVIII., §§ 5 ft. ; Hutcheson ; Paley ; Hume ; Bentham ; James Mill ; J. S. Mill ; Sidg- wick ; Barratt ; Bain ; Hodgson ; Fowler ; Gizycki ; all of whom are mentioned in the historical part of this work. See also Santayana, The Sense of Beauty, 1896. — Tr.] 252 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES content of life, but in the feeling of pleasure which life pro- cures ; that pleasure is the thing of absolute worth, and that everything else has value only in so far as it conduces to pleasure. This view is commonly called hedonism; the theory opposed to it we have called energism. The antagonism between these two schools is of long stand- ing ; it runs through the entire Greek philosophy. On the one side are the Cyrenaics and Epicureans ; on the other, the followers of Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics. The same antithesis appears in modern philosophy. On the one side we have the empirical psychologists ; on the other, the older rationalistic thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the German philosophers who follow Kant. According to the former, the subjective feeling of pleasure, regardless of how it is produced, is the absolute good ; accord- ing to the latter, it is the objective development of individ- ual and social human life, regardless of whether it yields pleasure or not. Of course, they add, such a life is actually experienced with inner satisfaction. I do not regard it as superfluous to preface my examination of hedonism with the statement that the question at stake here is : Is the hedonistic view true or false ? and not, Is it good or bad ? The attempt to prove the falseness of this theory by calling it immoral is old. In an old maxim of the Stoic school both hedonism and atheism are repudiated in this way.^ That is not a legitimate argument. Theories are bad only in so far as they are false. The orator will hardly be willing to abandon the method of proving their falsehood by their immorality, but philosophy cannot afford to employ it. Let me add that pure and moral men have never been wanting among the representatives of this view. Epicurus lived a blameless life, while Bentham and Mill battled zealously and 1 'HSoi')) T^Xos, lro|>vr|^ S6ytia • ovk tan itpovoia, oASJ ir6fvrit iiyua. A Gellius, IX., 5. THE HIGHEST GOOD 253 energetically for the realization of practical ideas, and have a better claim to the title of idealists, if that is a title of honor, than many of those who arrogate it to themselves. How can the assertion that pleasure is the thing of absolute worth be proved ? It seems to me, only by showing that human beings actually prize it as such. Here, at least, the function of the moralist is not that of a lawgiver, but that of an interpreter of nature. It would be absurd to say : True ; human nature does not esteem pleasure of absolute worth, but it ought to do so. And as a matter of fact all hedonists assert that all men, nay, that all living beings, invariably and universally strive after pleasure ; and that pleasure (or freedom from pain) is the only thing which is desired abso- lutely ; that all other things are desired not for their own sake, but as a means to the end of pleasure or freedom from pain. I do not believe that this view is substantiated by the facts. Let me first attempt to point out that the will does not aim directly at pleasure, but at a particular content of life, which in man is a human and at best a spiritual-moral content.^ What is the evidence of self-consciousness on this point ? Does it reveal pleasure as an end and everything else as a means ? Let us first make clear to ourselves what we mean by ends and means. I am cold and desire to get warm. I can accomplish my end in different ways. I can take exer- cise, I can put on warmer clothes, or I can light a fire. For the latter I can use wood or turf or coal. Here we have a pure relation of means to end : the end is warmth, and I desire it for its own sake. The means I desire only for the sake of the end ; in themselves they are totally indifferent ; I * [For the psychology of willing see the standard works on psychology ; especially, HofEdiug, pp. 308-356 ; Jajnes, ch. XXVI., esp. pp. 549-551 ; Ladd, Descriptive Psychology, chaps. XI., XXV., XXXVL ; Baldwin, vol. II. Bain is the chief advocate of psychological hedonism: Emotions and the Will, pp. 304-504; Mental and Moral Science, Bk. IV., chap. IV. See also Jodl, Lehrbuct der Psychologie, chap. XII.— Te.] 254 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES choose that one among them which will help me to realize my purpose in the quickest manner possible and at the least expense. Now, does the same relation obtain between all human activities and pleasure ? We sit down at a table hungry. Is pleasure our end, and is eating related to it as an absolutely indifferent means, like the coal in our example ? The lover of music goes to a concert. Is pleasure his end, and music the means ? Did Goethe — applying Bentham's formula that " the constantly proper end of action on the part of every individual at the moment of action is his real greatest happiness from that moment to the end of his life " — select as the means to his greatest happiness poetry and prose, amours with girls and women, business affairs and travels, scientific and historical investigations ? — Well, that is manifestly absurd, and no one will make such a claim. No, impulses and powers slumbered in him which craved for exer- cise and development, just like the forces dwelling in the seed of a plant. And when these powers were exercised and unfolded, pleasure ensued, but this pleasure did not pre-exist in con- sciousness as an end of which the other things were the means. The impulse and the craving for activity preceded all conscious- ness of pleasure. The consciousness of pleasure did not exist before the impulse, and produce or arouse it. Only the blas^ and worn-out idler first experiences a desire for pleasure, and then looks about him for some means of procuring it. Healthy men do not act that way. Or must we ignore this apparent absurdity and boldly say that all desires actually aim not at the thing or action, but at pleasure ? James Mill, a bold and acute thinker, claims that we must. In the nineteenth chapter of his Analysis of the Phenomena of Human Mind, he teaches that desire is solely another name for the idea of pleasure. There is an am- biguity, however, he points out, caused by a process of asso- ciation ; the term desire is also applied to the ideas of the causes of our pleasures and pains. We have a desire for THE HIGHEST GOOD 255 water to drink ; that is, strictly considered, a figure of speech. Properly speaking, it is not the water we desire, but the pleasure of drinking. The illusion that we desire to drink is merely the result of a very close association. This reminds me of an anecdote which appeared in the Fliegende Blatter. An Englishman is seated on the bank of a lake, fishing. A native approaches him and informs him that there are no fishes in the stream. Whereupon, the Englishman stolidly replies that he is not fishing for fish, but for pleasure. This man had evidently dissolved the asso- ciation, and regarded fishes, fishing, and pleasure in the light of means and end. Do other people do the same ? It seems to me that the mirth occasioned by his answer is a sufficient reply. Indeed, so far as I know, the will or desire is never directed upon a quantum of pleasure, but always and immediately upon the thing itself, the action, the change of condition. An idea of the thing frequently precedes the desire, but I never find in consciousness an idea of the pleasure as such, to which the thing is related as a mere means. Moreover, we may even say that, as a rule, the desire produces the idea of the thing. The following argument also seems to make for the view that the idea of pleasure does not set the will in motion. If it were so, we should have to expect that the more vivid and distinct the pleasure in consciousness, the greater the im- pression which it makes. Now, the pleasure is usually intensest immediately after the enjoyment. Hence, the desire for pleasure ought to be most intense at that time. The reverse is obviously the case. After the meal the idea of the enjoyment does not excite the will at all, which plainly shows that the impulse precedes the pleasure. The idea of pleasure is not the cause of the impulse or desire, but the impulse becomes the cause of the pleasure when it realizes its objective end. Consequently, hedonism would at least have to modify its claim and say : Altliough pleasure is not the conscious aim. 256 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES it is the actual goal which, unbeknown to consciousness, acting like a concealed weight, really sets the machine in motion. The things which appear in consciousness as tlie ultimate ends — food, honor, riches — are therefore mere pre- texts deluding the intellect, while the will in reality always pursues one thing alone, and that is pleasure. A lover leaves his home to attend to some business. Much to his own surprise he comes to a place where there is a chance of meeting his sweetheart. And now he sees that his business was a mere pretence on the part of his desires to anticipate the objections of his reason. Does the same hold true of the case in hand ? Is pleasure the mistress of the will, so to speak, whom the will incessantly strives to meet, deluding the understanding with all kinds of pretexts.^ I know of no other way of proving this assertion than by showing that the will invariably realizes not the pretended but the real end, as happened in our example, in which the lover's hidden yearning was revealed by the actual attain- ment of the goal secretly desired by him. Can that be done? I do not believe it. Nay, it would be easier to claim the reverse : it is not the alleged secret end that is realized, but the ostensible one. The miser may acquire wealth, but the pleasure and satisfaction which he promised himself fail to appear. The ambitious man succeeds in obtaining rank and honor, decorations and titles, but the sum-total of pleasure procured is meagre, his desires always exceed the satisfaction. The reproductive impulse may lead to the propagation of the species, but its satisfaction brings disappointment and trouble to the individual. But, some one may say, perhaps all that is so ; neverthe- less the fact remains that whatever we do or strive for, we do or strive for because it yields or promises satisfaction. If it were not so, should we do it ? If there were no satisfac- tion and its opposite, all striving would cease, everything 1 [See Sidgwick, Methods, pp. 53 f. — Tk.] THE HIGHEST GOOD 257 would be indifferent to us. — But what else does this mean than that feelings of pleasure ultimately determine all dis- tinctions of value ? Indeed, of that there can be no doubt ; if there were no feel- ings of satisfaction and their opposites, there would be no distinctions of value. Good and bad would be meaningless words, or rather we should never use them. The proposition : That is good which satisfies a will, is so true that we may call it an identical one. But the proposition : Pleasure or sat- isfaction is the end for the sake of which all things are desired, does not seem to me adequately to express it. It is not satisfaction or pleasure that is desired, but pleasure is a sign that the will has realized what it wills. It is pure tautology to answer the question. What is the final goal of the will ? by saying that satisfaction is the goal, — as much so as to answer the question. How is the will ultimately satisfied ? by saying : By satisfaction. Of course, that is true ; but the information will hardly satisfy the questioner. What he wants to know is : What is the objective content that satis- fies the will ? Aristotle long ago discovered the true relation obtaining between pleasure and the will : Pleasure is not the goal, but a uniform accompaniment of the will, a sign, as it were, that the end has been realized. In pleasure the will becomes conscious of itself and its realization ; but to call this consciousness the good itself is as tautologous as to say : Not the thing, but the value which it has is valuable, not the activity or the sport, but the satisfaction which it yields, is satisfactory. The hedonistic theory appears in another phase, that is, in a negative form. What uniformly prompts living beings to action is not the idea of pleasure, but the pain or discomfort experienced by them. Freedom from pain is, therefore, the final and universal aim of all striving.' * [This IS the view of Hegesias, the Cyrenaic, and of Schopenhaner. See the chapter on Pessimism, pp. 291 ff. of this yrork ; also Eolph, Biologische Prct^ iim«.— Tb.] n 258 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES But this form of the theory likewise seems to me unable to explain the facts. Pain and discomfort doubtless frequently appear in consciousness as spurs to action. The burning wound impels the sufferer to seelc relief ; tedium {Langeweile) consumes the idler and compels him to seek diversion or troubles. But is this universally the case ? Is it always an actual or anticipated feeling of discomfort that urges us to action ? Was it a feeling of discomfort that compelled Goethe to make poetry, and Diirer to paint ? Is it pain that forces the child to play ? I do not believe we can say so. No, the impulse is at first painless ; the pain ensues only in case tiie impulse is not satisfied ; very often there is no sign of pain even at the moment when the impulse begins to act itself out. The peasant does not wait until hunger impels him to cultivate his fields ; he sees the sun rise, he breathes the air of spring, and can hardly wait for the time to go to work. Is this a feeling of pain ? It may become so when obstacles are placed between the desire and its satisfaction, but it is not pain. On the contrary, the hopeful impulse is a joyful feeling ; to look forward to something with pleasure is not to experience pain. / Hence, I do not believe that a feeling, be it a conscious pain or an anticipated pleasure, is the invariable cause of striving and action. Nay, the reverse is the case : Impulse or will is primary; feeling, on the other hand, secondary. Pleasure accompanies the realization of the objective end; pain, its obstruction or failure. This is what biology teaches, as I shall show presently. 2. The hedonistic theory also presents its thesis in a slightly modified form : It is not pleasure in the abstract that is uni- versally desired, but a pleasurable activity or a pleasure- giving good. Every creature at every moment decides to strive for and to do that of which it happens to have the most pleasurable idea at the time. This notion undoubtedly comes much nearer to the truth than the other. And yet I cannot THE HIGHEST GOOD 259 accept the statement as a satisfactory explanation of the facts, because it lays too much stress on presentation. I believe, Schopenhauer is right in saying that Ihe will does not originally presuppose presentation. Certainly not in animal life, where action is originally governed by blind striving. Nor does ideation play such a very prominent part in human life. It neither creates the original goal of the will, nor docs it always guide the will in action. Habit is the greatest guide of action. Perhaps it would be safer to say : Man invariably does that which agrees with his purposes and wishes and at the same time meets with the least resistance from the con- stitution of his inner life and his external circumstances. This naturally yields him satisfaction, but whether it gives him the greatest amount of satisfaction possible for him at that moment cannot, of course, be proved. He may decide in favor of a life of ease ; and it is at least doubtful whether that would give him the maximum of pleasure. Moreover, I should say, the formula is apt to obliterate the distinction between wishing and willing. We may will what does not appear in presentation as pleasant or pleasurable, and may, conversely, reject that which, for the moment, has the greatest attraction for our desires. I will not deny that such cases may also be explained from the hedonistic stand- point. Nevertheless, the difference between sensuous fear and the respect for duty, between animal desire and moral voli- tion, between the pathological feeling of pleasure and the feeling of satisfaction with a noble deed, is so great that we can easily understand why many moralists regard it as a generic difference, which will not allow us to embrace these feelings under a common head. This is the view of Kant and Herbart, with which Steinthal agrees when he distin- guishes between formal and pathological pleasure. Finally, it must also be added that pain and painful activity are indispensable to human life. Hence, the notion of pleas- ure or satisfaction would, in a measure, have to be extended 260 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES so as to include the painful. We cannot, in my opinion, doubt it. If a god were to offer to eliminate from our lives all pain and everything that causes pain, we should most likely at first be strongly tempted to accept the offer. When we are overburdened with work and care, when pain lays hold upon us and we are transfixed with fear, we feel as though nothing could be better than a life of rest and security and peace. But I believe a trial would soon cause us to regret our choice, and make us long for our old life with all its troubles and sorrows and pains and fears. A life absolutely free from pain and fear would, so long as we are what we are, soon become insipid and intolerable. For if the causes of pain were eliminated, life would be devoid of all danger, conflict, and failure, — exertion and struggle, the love of adventure, the longing for battle, the triumph of victory, all would be gone. Life would be pure satisfaction without ob- stacles, success without resistance. We should grow as tired of all this as we do of a game which we know we are going to win. What chess player would be willing to play with an opponent whom he knows he will beat ? What hunter would enjoy a chase in which he had a chance to shoot at every step he took, and every shot was bound to hit ? Uncertainty, diffi- culty, and failure are as necessary in a game, if it is to interest and satisfy us, as good luck and victory. Well, the same holds true of life. The lion in the desert, suffering from hunger and thirst, frost and heat, may perhaps think : How happy I should be if only I could dwell in a safe cave with game enough about me to satisfy my daily needs. Before he knows it, he is lodged in a most comfortable house in a beautiful garden, where he receives the best possible treat- ment. Even his lioness has not been forgotten. At first he likes the arrangement. But soon he finds his beautiful cage, which is constructed according to all the rules of lion-hygiene, somewhat narrow and tiresome. His keeper observes his dissatisfied mien, so a large park is placed at his disposal THE HIGHEST GOOD 261 with the finest game for him to prey upon. But he soon wearies of the ease and certainty of the chase. He has every- thing, but he does not feel at ease. What is lacking ? Well, he is without the very things which he desired to get away from ; what he wants is to prowl around and to be hungry, the excitement of the real chase and the fight ; he misses the desert. — Who knows but what the sons of the desert who fell in the battles of Mohammed yearned for the desert and the strife, after enjoying the pleasures of Paradise for three days ? Poetry is a mirror of human life and of the will which manifests itself in it. What productions do we like best? Those which portray a life of ease and peace, comfort and universal benevolence ? Wieland's ArisHppus is one of the few books of this kind. Aristippus and Lais, Cleonidas and Musarion, and whatever the names of the characters in the novel may be, have everything that the heart can desire. They are rich, they live in beautiful mansions and villas, equipped with everything that nature and art can supply. They are beautiful and strong, they are intelligent and witty, possessing such powers of observation and expression as never to be at a loss for the best sort of amusement. They have the happiest temperaments in the world, being equally willing to entertain others and to be entertained themselves ; they love each other tenderly but without passion, and therefore look upon what would excite pangs of jealousy in others with the equanimity of the sage, who is no more affected by the alteration of love than by an interesting event in nature. Finally, both Lais as well as Aristippus have constructed a system of philosophy adapted to their lives : " It is my natural mission," thus Lais philosophizes in a letter to her friends,^ "to make men happy without being married to them. It would be foolish modesty on my part were I to deny that I understand the art of making happy whomever I please, and I Vol. III., fragment 26. 262 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES that nature was not niggardly in bestowing upon me the gifts necessary to accomplish this. I am also willing to confess that the consciousness of having made a worthy man happy may, for a short time, arouse in me the pleasant illusion that I am happy too. But that both the pleasure which I give and the pleasure which I receive in return is indeed a mere illusion, — of that the few persons with whom I have experi- mented are as convinced as I am. This must seem unnatural to you honest housewives, but it is nevertheless a fact, and I would not have it otherwise. Nature, who, like a good mother, takes care that none of her children shall be treated too niggardly, has arranged things so that no one would vol- untarily exchange his ego for another's. So it is with me; being what I am, I gracefully yield to Cleonis and thank her for having taken from me the burden of making my friend Aristippus the happiest of men." Accompanying the letter is a casket of pearls : " You will be somewhat frightened, but I am so rich in such trifles that you need not worry about their value. The pearls are absolutely alike in purity, size, and form. You will therefore simply have to count them and divide them among yourselves in a sisterly fashion. You can cast lots for the casket." ^ Why is Aristippus such a tiresome book ? Because it is ' Some biographies remind us of Wieland's Aristippus; for instance, J. C. Bluntschli's autobiography {Denktmirdigkeiten aus meinem Leben, 3 vols., 1882). Bluntschli was a talented and amiable man, a healthy optimistic politician and philosopher. He took part in everything : he was grand master of the Masons, founder of the Protestant Society, member of the congress for the codification of international laws, he was First Speaker and honorable President in all the meetings of both societies. President of the Rhenish Credit Bank, a member of the Upper House in Baden, a famous Professor at the Heidelberg University, a celebrated writer on jurisprudence and politics, a member of seven academies, an honorary doctor of five universities (Vienna, Moscow, Oxford, Lahore, and member of the University of St. Petersburg), knight of eight or more orders, he was honored and congratulated on numerous anniversaries, his works were translated into eight languages, he was successful in everything, he met with only one little disappointment : in spite of repeated attempts, he never succeeded in becoming Prime Minister; but he bore this disappointment gracefully. — A happy life in truth, and an enviable one. And yet — THE HIGHEST GOOD 263 untrue ? Perhaps. But why, aside from the trivial senti- mentalities of Lais, are we not gratified at t^e illusion of such perfect happiness ? I think it is because we ourselves should find such a life unbearable. It would fail to exercise and satisfy the most powerful impulses of our nature. Who would care to live without opposition and struggle ? Would men prize truth itself as they do, if it were attained without effort and kept alive without battle ? To battle and to make sacri- fices for one's chosen cause constitutes a necessary element of human life. Carlyle states this truth in a beautiful passage in his book on Heroes and Hero- Worship : " It is a caljimny to say that men are roused to heroic actions by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense, — sugai'-plums of any kind in this world or the next. In the meanest mortal there lies some- thing nobler. The poor swearing soldier hired to be shot has his ' honor of a soldier,' different from drill, regulations, and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true deeds, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man." To be sure, they are not the only influences, we must add ; yet they influence all. And that is why Wieland's novel is tiresome, why epics and dramas which deal with passions and conflicts, with victory and death, irresistibly attract and move the hearts of men. Here they find their life's ideal portrayed and not in the idyllic and the bucolic. Aristotle discusses the question why the contemplation of the painful and horrible in the tragedy pleases us. He thinks it is because it arouses feelings of fear and compassion. These emotions, too, must be exercised, and, by affording an opportunity for this, the tragedy gives us relief. To tell the whole truth, Aristotle 264 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES should have added that the tragedy also excites other power- ful emotions — anger and indignation, love of power and revenge, remorse and despair, love and sacrifice, magnanimity and mercy, triumph and courage ; in short, all the deep feel- ings and impulses which slumber in the heart of every human being. Nature, which yearns for the realization of these feel- ings and impulses in actual life, finds relief when they are sympathetically aroused by the poem. Then shall we say that even fear and pity may, at times at least and under certain circumstances, be pleasurable feel- ings ? And is the sorrow which we feel at the death of a beloved one, and which the heart would not exchange for all the treasures of the world, not a feeling of pain, but a feeling of pleasure ? I believe that would be a rather curious notion. No, if we may accept the evidence of self-conscious- ness, a maximum of pleasurable feelings or a minimum of painful feelings is not the goal which attracts the will of man ; what he strives after is to live his life in accordance with his ideal. Pleasure and pain are not revealed by introspection as the positive or negative ends of life, but as states of conscious- ness which accompany actions and in which the will becomes aware of itself and its bent. 3. The testimony of self-consciousness concerning the significance of pleasure and pain is confirmed by biology. The naturalist has little trouble in explaining the part which pleasure and pain play in the economy of life. As for pain, we may say that it originally accompanies the destruction of vital processes, which may be caused by violent injuries or by the disturbance of the inner equilibrium. Its significance is obvious : it tends to preserve life by impelling the animal to seek safety in flight or defence. Let us suppose that two living beings resemble each other in every respect, except that one is sensitive to pain, the other not. The former would evidently stand a much better chance of being preserved, provided, of course, the conditions of life were THE HIGHEST GOOD 265 equal. The latter animal would be surprised by danger and perish, while the former would be warned bj pain and strive to escape from the disturbing cause. Insensitiveness to pain would have the same effect as the absence of a sense-organ. — Pleasure seems to be the original concomitant of two animal functions, nutrition and reproduction. In more highly developed animals, the pleasurable feeling extends to allied functions. Thus the movements which precede the taking of food, the chase, using the term in its broadest sense, includ- ing the scent, the pursuit, the seizure, the laceration of the prey, are also accompanied by feelings of pleasure. The pleasure which accompanies the function of reproduction also extends to the care of offspring. The significance of both these functions in the animal economy is very plain. They are the immediate conditions of preservation ; in the former case, of the preservation of the individual, in the latter case, of that of the species. Organic life consists in a continuous process of disintegration and reparation. Waste material is constantly given off, and new elements are taken up and assimilated. In case the latter process does not take place, death soon ensues. The social life of the species reveals a similar behavior : the waste material is constantly passing out, — that is, individuals die ; but the equilibrium is main- tained by the reproduction of offspring ; otherwise the species would soon disappear. What, then, is the significance of pleasure ? The biologist will not hesitate for an answer. Just as pain serves as a warning, pleasure serves as a bait. In pain the will becomes aware of danger, in pleasure it becomes aware of the further- ance of life. The former warns it to seek safety in flight, the latter, to continue on its path. Pain and pleasure are, we might say, the most primitive forms of the knowledge of good and evil. The will or impulse as such does not presuppose the pres- ence of feelings or of intelligence. The newly-hatched chick 266 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES immediately begins to pick up grains of ■wheat. It surely does not bring along with it into its new stage of existence a feeling of painful hunger, or an idea of the pleasure produced by the introduction of food. Impulses govern action just as other natural forces govern the falling of a stone, or the formation of a crystal, or the growth of a plant. The same may be said of the sexual impulse. The individual who has just arrived at the age of puberty is driven by a blind impulse to exercise the functions which result in the preser- vation of the species, without knowing beforehand the feelings that will arise. Perhaps, scarcely any feeling accompanies the function in the lower stages of animal life. But as life develops, the sensibility increases ; in the higher animals and in man every activity is accompanied by a specific feeling. This feeling has either a painful or a pleasurable tone, accord- ing as action is retarded or furthered, according as it impedes or promotes life. The division of the feelings into painful and pleasurable is as unsatisfactory to the biologist as the classifi- cation of plants as herbs and weeds. Pleasures and pains are merely characteristic tones of feeling, which correspond to the different functions, or in which the functions first become conscious of themselves. In a higher stage of mental evolution intelligence rises from feeling and above it. Its original purpose is merely to accom- plish more perfectly what feeling accomplishes, that is, to in- struct the will concerning what is wholesome or unwholesome. Sensations may be characterized as anticipations of feelings. The sense of touch anticipates the pain occasioned by bodily injuries. Taste is a kind of predigestion ; it decides, before the object is taken into the body, whether it is wholesome or not. Taste is the specific feeling which accompanies the function of nutrition, and depends upon the peculiar nature of the food, or to be exact, upon the process of assimilation which begins on the tongue. It is always either pleasant or unpleasant, and consequently either excites or inhibits the THE HIGHEST GOOD 267 will. Smell is a kind of preliminarj taste, a taste acting at a distance. From the minutest particle .emitted by an object, it tells whether the object can be assimilated or not, as well as whether it is friendly or hostile. The eye and the ear do not have to come in contact with matter ; they recog- nize the nature of the distant object from its slightest move- ments. Originally they, too, are a means to the knowledge of what is wholesome and unwholesome ; hence, their sen- sations still have feeling-attachments, pleasure and pain. These, however, are not very prominent ; the sensations of the objective senses, as the eye and ear have aptly been called, can hardly be regarded as direct motives of the will ; they guide the will by furnishing it with more remote signs of what is beneficial or dangerous. The understanding, finally, or the faculty of deducing the unknown from the data of perception, is almost entirely without feeling. Its primary purpose, however, is to assist the will in obtaining what is beneficial and avoiding what is harmful. The biologist, therefore, will not regard pleasure as the ab- solute end of life, but will consider both pleasure and pain as means of guiding the will. In the feeling of pleasure the will becomes conscious of the furtherance of life by the exercise of a function. Hence, pleasure is not a good in itself, but a sign that a good has been realized. Indeed, it is hard to un- derstand why the question. What is the significance of pain ? did not prevent the hedonistic conception of the significance of pleasure. Both of these feelings evidently belong to the same category. Now, if pleasure is an absolute end, what is pain? Something with absolutely no purpose ? Manifestly not. Pain is evidently a very purposive means of warning the an- imal against the harmful. Pleasure will, therefore, have to be explained similarly. Finally, the biologist might also point out how decidedly opposed nature is to being interpreted in the hedonistic sense. When the impulse is satisfied, the pleasure ceases. After the 268 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES food needed for preservation has been eaten, the feelings of pleasure cease, and opposite feelings soon arise. Pleasure can be aroused to a certain degree, only by stimulating the organs which are secondarily connected with nutrition. The same may be observed in the impulse which tends to the preservation of the species. But whenever the organs of preservation are used as instruments of pleasure, nature pun- ishes the abuse with disturbances and disease, and in case her hints are not followed, with the destruction of the organs and ultimately of the individual who obstinately persists in mis- understanding their purpose. 4. Pleasure, then, is not the absolute goal of the will. Nor does the evaluating judgment of the impartial spectator seem to me to make pleasure in itself, regardless of its cause, the thing of absolute worth. Let us suppose that we could distil a drug like opium, capable of arousing joyful dreams, without, however, producing harmful effects in the intoxicated one or his surroundings. Should we recommend the use of the drug, and praise the discoverer as having made life more valuable ? Perhaps not even a hedonistic moral philosopher would do that. Why not ? Because the pleasure is illusory ? But pleasure is pleasure, whatever be its cause. Or, because the philosopher has found out by computation that the pleas- ures of our sober waking life are still greater ? It would not be easy to prove it in the example assumed. The simple rea- son is that such pleasures would be " unnatural," and a life composed of them would no longer be a "human" life. How- ever rich in pleasure it might be, it would be an absolutely worthless life for a human will and human standards. Perhaps the philosopher will reply : Yes, but that is simply because a person addicted to such pleasures would neglect his duties to others, and consequently decrease the maximum of pleasure, even though he might greatly increase his own pleasure. Well, then, let us change the example a little ; let tifl siippose that the drug will, without expense and trouble, THE HIGHEST GOOD 269 arouse in an entire people a permanent state of pleasurable dreams. Should we celebrate the discoverer as a benefactor of the human race ? Perhaps it might be shown to our sat- isfaction that a nation's best means of realizing permanent happiness would be to submit absolutely to an absolutely be- nevolent government. Let us suppose that a man, the Pla- tonic philosopher for example, had discovered the secret of making a nation absolutely obedient. Should we be willing to place our people in his power ? The Jesuits are said to have thought and acted for their native subjects in Paraguay in every regard, and to have guided them, daily and hourly, and according to all the rules of hygiene, in their labors and in their enjoyments, in their waking and sleeping. Let us sup- pose that they succeeded, as we are told that they did, in absolutely satisfying the governed. Will the hedonistic philosopher grant that such a r%ime is the most perfect and desirable solution of social and political problems, and that the life of these well-behaved and contented Indians repre- sents the highest goal of human striving ? If so, he will most likely also regard German statesmanship as having performed its mission when the entire German people shall have been transformed into a lot of well-behaved and obedient Philis- tines, who drink their mug of beer every morning and play their little game of Skat, and in the evening play their little game of Skat and again drink their beer, in the meantime reg- ularly attending to their duties in the bureau or the work- shop, and sleeping soundly at night. And, finally, he will also be compelled to recognize the sorceress Circe, who changed the visitors of her island into swine, into well-fed and thoroughly contented swine, as a benefactress of humanity, and deem it as the greatest blessing for any one to have been cast on her shores. Unless he is willing to acknowledge this, he must, it seems to me, confess that pleasure or satis- faction is not the thing of absolute worth. It is valuable only in 80 far as it follows as the result of virtuous activity ; w0 270 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES regard it as base, when it is obtained by stimulating the lower, sensuous side of our nature and by suppressing our higher spiritual capacities. " 5. Now that we haye rejected the hedonistic theory, let us attempt to give a positive definition of the highest good. We may say in a most general way that the goal at which the will of every living creature aims, is the normal exercise of the vital functions which constitute its nature. Every animal desires to live the life for which it is predisposed. Its natural disposi- tion manifests itself in impulses, and determines its activity. The formula may also be applied to man. He desires to live a human life and all that is implied in it ; that is, a mental, historical life, in which there is room for the exercise of all human, mental powers and virtues. He desires to play and to learn, to work and to acquire wealth, to possess and to enjoy, to form and to create ; he desires to love and to ad- mire, to obey and to rule, to fight and to win, to make poetry and to dream, to think and to investigate. And he desires to do all these things in their natural order of development, as life provides them. He desires to experience the relations of the child to its parents, of the pupil to his teacher, of the ap- prentice to the master; and his will, for the time being, finds the highest satisfaction in such a life. He desires to live as a brother among brothers, as a friend among friends, as a com- panion among companions, as a citizen among citizens, and also to prove himself an enemy against enemies. Finally, he desires to experience what the lover, husband, and father experience — he desires to rear and educate children who shall preserve and transmit the contents of his own life. And after he has lived such a life and has acquitted himself like an honest man, he has realized his desires ; his life is complete ; contentedly he awaits the end, and his last wish is to be gathered peacefully to his fathers. — This outline, however, receives its concrete content from the historical life of the people. Hence we may also say: Man's will seeks to ex- THE HIGHEST GOOD 271 press the life of his people in an individual form, and thus at the same time, to preserve and enrich the life of the people. In this way, it seems to me, the impartial anthropologist and biologist would look at the matter. The will of a living being is nothing but a system of impulses, the exercise of which constitutes the life of the species. Every individual shares the desire of the species to preserve and promote its life, or rather, the species merely exists in the individuals, which live and act as its members. The same holds true of man. In his case, however, an ideal self-preservative impulse grows out of the primitive animal impulse of self-preservation. The will-to-live, which in sub-human creatures appears as blind impulse or striving, becomes conscious of itself in man. Man has a conscious idea of the life aimed at by his will ; the type which his life desires to express and to realize hovers before him as an ideal. This he strives after, this is the standard by which he measures himself and his activity. The ideal of perfection assumes a different form in different human beings. The ideal is different for the Greek, Roman, and Hebrew ; different again at Athens and at Sparta ; it is not the same for man as for woman, for the warrior as for the scholar, for the sailor as for the peasant. Only in certain fundamental features is it the same in all, just as the funda- mental anatomical-physiological type of the human body is common to all men. The higher the development of mental life, the more differentiated and individualized the inner life becomes ; just as the outward form, corresponding to the inner development, becomes more and more individualized. The ideal is also conceived with different degrees of clearness by different individuals. Individuals also differ in the power and certainty with which they guard their ideals against the action of particular momentary impulses, and govern their lives according to their ideals. But in some form or other such an ideal is present and active in every man ; the will has before it some picture or other of what his innermost nature desires, 272 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES a picture which reveals itself in his mode of life and in his judgment of himself. Vor jedem steht ein Bild des, das er werden soil ; So lang er das nicht ist, ist nicht sein Friede volL* Not only the individual, but the nation too has an ideal of what it desires to be. The ideal expresses itself in its religion and poetry. The gods and heroes represent the types of per- fection. At a later stage of development historical recollec- tions are added, and paint a comprehensive picture of the nation's past, a picture which forms a poetical ideal in the popular consciousness. But the historical collective life of an entire period of civilization and of the aggregate of nations is also governed by ideas. Types of character and life spring up, gain possession of all hearts, move the thoughts of men, and, at last, control affairs. Think of the Humanistic move- ment in the fifteenth century and its new ideal; of the Reformation and its new type of Christian faith and life ; or of the age of Louis XIV. and its ideal of power and dignity, of the French Revolution and its new ideal of a natural and rational mode of life. New ideas of human culture realized themselves in these great historical epochs, and seizing the individual wills, forced them into harmony with it. Here we plainly see that the will unconditionally strives to realize the idea or the type. A people desires freedom, or power or honor, or whatever catch-word may designate the cherished ideal, and desires it absolutely, not for the sake of something else, say pleasure or happiness. True, all action tending towards the realization of the ideal yields satisfaction. But no one cares whether this represents the greatest amount of pleasure obtainable by the whole. A nation does not reckon the cost of its ideal, it does not compute how much happiness may be won or lost in a war for its freedom or its honor, or even for its position among other nations. . In order to realize its controlling ideal, it recklessly sacrifices , the. 1 Eiickert. THE HIGHEST GOOD 273 interests and lives of individuals. And the individuals them- selves desire it ; even though they dread the sacrifice as indi- viduals, as members of the nation they desire that their country remain true to itself and its ideal. The historical judgment, like the historical will, is deter- mined by this goal. A nation does not judge its own past by the standard of pleasure ; it judges historical persons and events by the ideal which it happens to have at the time, and determines their worth accordingly. Thus our judgment of Frederick the Great and his wars is not based on a computa- tion of the pleasures and pains which they caused, but upon the honor and dignity which the German people achieved through them. We ask ourselves, has the nation made any advance towards its objective goal ? Our age answers the question in the affirmative ; the prevailing notion of the objec- tive end is the German Empire on a Prussian basis. The scientific historian follows the same plan. It never enters his head to balance pleasures and pains against each other. Indeed, this notion is a mere fancy in the heads of a few philosophers. But, so far as 1 know, not one of them has ever tried to apply it in practice. 6. The view here advanced of the final goal of the human will and the ultimate standard of our judgments of value is not new. It was thought out and definitely formulated long ago, by Greek moral philosophy. Indeed, we may say that all great ethical systems, with the single exception of hedon- ism, advocate it. Plato and Aristotle expressly state : The highest good is life and action in harmony with the idea ; the eudaemonia of a man consists in the possession and exercise of all human virtues and capacities. The Stoa teaches the same : Life according to nature is the end of every being ; for man, therefore, a life conforming to human nature, that is, to reason, is the absolute end ; in it he finds his welfare {evpoia ^lov). Thomas Aquinas teaches the same : Every being seeks its perfection in accordance with its nature ; rational creatures 274 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES seek it through the rational will, sensible creatures through the sensuous impulse, insensible ones through the natural impulse. The same conception reappears in Hobbes and Spinoza. According to them, self-preservation is the goal; only, a living being preserves itself by living and acting, and a thinking being, Spinoza insists, by thinking. Similarly, Shaftesbury and Leibniz declare that the harmonious devel- opment of capacities and powers is the law of man as well as of the universe. Kant, too, might be called as a witness for this theory : The real and innermost essence of man expresses itself in a will, determined by the practical reason or the consciousness of duty, and acts in accordance with its nature. Likewise Hegel and Schleiermacher regard the great histori- cal content of human life as a thing of objective value ; in so far as the individual participates in it he gives a meaning and value to his life and at the same time satisfies the deepest longings of his nature. Darwin, who in a certain sense continues the attempt of Speculative Philosophy to reach an historical conception of the entire universe, and tries to solve the problem by new methods, reaches a similar conclusion from the biological standpoint. In the fourth chapter of his work on The Descent of Man, he examines the hedonistic theory and flatly contradicts it. Pleasure-pain, he concludes, is neither the motive nor the end of all action. I quote the passage in question : " In the case of the lower animals it seems much more appropriate to speak of their social instincts as having developed for the general good than for the general happi- ness of the species. The term, general good, may be defined as the rearing of the greatest number of individuals in full vigor and health, with all their faculties perfect, under the conditions to which they are subjected. As the social in- stincts both of man and the lower animals have no doubt been developed by nearly the same steps, it would be advis- able, if found Dracticable, to use the same definition in both THE HIGHEST GOOD 275 cases, and to take as the standard of morality, the general good or welfare of the community rather tjian the general happiness."^ Finally, I should like to mention that John Stuart Mill, unconsciously, so closely approximates the thoughts developed above that there is no longer an essential difference between the two views. By assuming qualitative differences in pleasures besides quantitative differences he at last reaches the following formula : " It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." ^ It seems to me that Mill thereby tacitly abandons the principle that pleasure and satisfaction are the only absolutely valuable things. It is no longer pleasure as such that is valu- able, but the functions to which it is attached. When Mill speaks of the different kinds of enjoyment, he really means the different functions, the exercise of which is accompanied by different feelings in different creatures. Hence, the old Aristotelian definition of the final goal or the highest good seems to me to be as satisfactory to-day as it ever was : Eudcemonism or welfare consists in the exercise of all virtues and capacities, especially of the highest? 1. But, some one may say, has not this entire discussion been moving in a circle ? At first it was said that the value of virtue consisted in its favorable effects upon the development of life. And now it is held that the value of life consists in the nor- mal performance of all functions, or in the exercise of capac- ities and virtues. Is not the exercise of virtue thus made an ultimate end again, after having first been conceived as a means ? I repeat what was said before : the statement is true. But the same relation everywhere confronts us in the organic ' [Part I., chap. IV., Concluding Remarks, p. 120. — Tk.] " [Utilitarianism, 11th ed., p. 14. — Te.] » [See also Stephen, Science of Ethics, chaps. IV., IX., X. ; Jhering, vol. 11., pp. 95 ff. ; "Wnndt, Ethik, pp. 493 ff. ; Hoffding, Eihile, VI. ; Williams, Beview of Evolutional Ethics, Part II., chap. IX.; Ziegler, Sittliches Sein und sittliches ITerden. — Tb.] 276 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES sphere; here everything is both a means and an end, or a part of the end. Heart and brain, hands and eyes, muscles and bones, are means of preserving bodily life; but they are at the same time parts of the body. The body does not exist apart from its organs or the means of its self- preservation ; it is composed of these. The functioning of each organ is a means of preserving life, and life at the same time consists in the functioning of all the organs. The same remarks apply to a work of art. The particular, scenes in a drama are essential to the whole, otherwise they would be mere superfluous episodes, but they are at the same time necessary parts of the whole, which is simply made up of all its parts. So, too, in the moral sphere, every excel- lence or virtue is an organ of the whole, and at the same time forms a part of life ; it is therefore, like the whole, an end in itself. The mental-moral life is an organism in which every power and every function is both a means and an end ; everything is valuable in itself, but everything receives additional importance from its relation to the whole. Courage has value for life as a means of solving certain problems ; it cannot be conceived as an isolated element, any more than the eye can exist for itself, but only as the organ of a living body. Just as sight, however, is valuable in itself, so is the exercise of courage in battle, from which no life can be free, for, as the poet says : Ein Mensch sein, heisst ein Kdmpfer sein. The same may be said of all virtues, that is, of all positive virtues, for the negative virtues, if we may call them so, the virtues of not-lying, not-stealing, and not-committing- adultery, are valuable solely as means. To refrain from such acts is not good in itself, but merely a means to the goods which they subserve : truth and property and marriage. The positive virtues, on the other hand, the love of truth, the sense of justice, and the domestic virtues, are all both meains or instruments of the perfect life and parts of its content. Virtues or capacities which are exercised in the acquisition of THE HIGHEST GOOD 277 knowledge and in the service of the truth, in labor and in the accumulation of wealth, in the regulation of social affairs, in family life and in the rearing of children, are means to life and at the same time constitute important parts of it. The Stoics long ago observed this truth. They divided goods .into three classes — goods which have absolute worth, goods which have value as means, and, finally, goods which have value both as means and ends (jcov a/ya6v ra jxlv elvai, tsXiko., ra Se irotrjriKd, to, Se ireXtKa xal TroirjTiKa).^ All external goods are efficient goods QiroiT^riKd), All kinds of actions done according to virtue and the accompanying feelings of sat- isfaction are final goods. Virtues are both efficient and final ; for inasmuch as they produce perfect happiness (evBaifiovla), they are efficient, and inasmuch as they complete it by being themselves part of it, are final. ^ And naw, we may go on and say : All virtues and excel- lences are both means and ends in themselves, but not all of them are so in the same degree. Not all the m&mbers or or- gans of a living body are equally necessary, just as some scenes in a drama more nearly express the leading thought or idea of the play than others. Similarly, some functions in moral life occupy a more central, others a more peripheral, position; some are secondary means, while others. have their purpose in themselves. Aristotle recognized this truth. The central purpose of a creature is the exercise of its specific nature or power. Now, man's peculiar characteristic is the exercise of reason. Hence, the function of scientific knowledge, that is, philosophy, con- stitutes the central purpose of human life. The exercise of the ethical virtues, all of which are based on practical reason, comes next ; further down in the scale comes the exercise of the economic and finally of the animal functions ; they are 1 [Of goods some are final, some are efficient, and some are both final and efficient.] " [Diogenes Laertins, VII., 57. Engl, translation by C. D. Yonge, pp. 294 f. — Tb.] 278 CONCEPTS ANB PRINCIPLES the necessary pre-conditions or natural foundations of real human life. The naturalistic view is confirmed by the direct testimony of feeling : man finds the greatest satisfaction or eiiSai/iovla in a life consisting of the exercise of the theoretical and practical reason. The evolutionistic theory, with its principle that the later form is at the same time the higher one, suggests a similar arrangement. In the lowest stages of animal life, action consists solely in the search for food and the endeavor to es- cape unfavorable external conditions. Gradually the repro- ductive functions, with the care of offspring in rudimentary form, and, on the other hand, intelligence, at first in the form of sense-perception, are added. The foundations of social and intellectual life are now laid. They reach their highest de- velopment in man. Their evolution forms the chief content of the only part of the history of progress of which we have some direct knowledge, — namely, through historical recollec- tion, — that is, the history of humanity. Now, what has taken place in the historical life of humanity, what is its essential content ? We have reached a more comprehensive and deeper knowledge of reality, and we have developed a more compre- hensive and more complicated social organization. Corre- sponding to this growth of function we necessarily have a perfection of powers: reason, the function by which the knowledge of things is attained and the will is guided in the kingdom of ends, and social virtues, the functions upon which the family, the state, and society depend, constitute the essence of man as a historical being. That human life will therefore be the most valuable which succeeds best in developing the highest powers of man and in subordinating the lower functions to the higher. A life, on the other hand, in which the vegetative and animal functions, sensuous desires and blind passions, have control, must be re- garded as a lower or abnormal form. A perfect human life is a life in which the mind attains to free and full growth, and THE HIGHEST GOOD 279 in which the spiritual forces reach their highest perfection in thought, imagination, and action. This is, of* course, possible only in human-historical surroundings. Hence, we must in- clude among the essential faculties of life the social virtues, whose purpose it is to create peaceful and mutually beneficial relations between the agent and his immediate and remote human environment. Wisdom and kindness, so says common- sense, are the two sides of perfection. Yet we must guard against a false spiritualization. The sensuous and even the animal side have their rights. The pleasures of perception and play which throw such a glamour around childhood, also belong to life ; nay, we shall not exclude the pleasures of eating and drinking and kindred functions from the perfect life ; only they must not presume to rule it. We may now extend this conception of meaps and ends be- yond the limits of individual life. A perfect human life is an end in itself. But it is at the same time a part, and hence, a means of a larger whole, a national life, a sphere of civiliza- tion. In his Republic, Plato conceives the state as a human being on a larger scale, and discovers in it the same general functions and powers. The individual is related to the com- munity as means to end, as a means, however, which is, at the same time, a part of the end, for the whole merely exists in the totality of individuals. We now obtain a new standard of value for the individual : the greater and higher the services which he renders to the whole, the more he contributes to the mental-historical life of his people by providing it with good institutions, by honoring it with noble deeds, by enriching it with true and good thoughts, by adorning it with beautiful and elevating works and symbols, the greater is his value and the more highly will he be appreciated by history. Moral worth in the narrower sense does not depend upon this ; it is deter- mined by the faithfulness and devotion with which the indi- vidual fulfils his mission, be it great or small. Here the good will is the standard of measurement, and this even the poor 280 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES in spirit may fully possess. Here, again, we must guard against a false spiritualization. We are not to understand that the value of a nation is to be judged solely by what it achieves in science and philosophy or in art and poetry. Our times are perhaps inclined to overestimate these things. A nation likewise needs its warriors and statesmen to defend it and to advance its external interests, its merchants and sailors to open up new countries and oceans to commerce and to create fruitful relations with foreign nations, its inventors and arti- sans to discover and practise their countless arts, its peasants and laborers to till the fields and to feed the steeds, and its mothers to rear its children in love and faith, and the children themselves who play about the streets. All these belong to the nation ; they are not merely the external basis without which there could be no spiritual life, but form a part of its life. Indeed, this perfect spiritual life is produced by them as well as for them. The creative leaders and the receptive masses exist for each other. We may, iinally, also regard the nations themselves as members of a higher unity. Mankind, the concrete expres- sion of the idea of humanity in the infinite variety of the peculiar and beautiful forms of which the latter is capable, is the ultimate goal in our empirical conception of the highest good. Perfect humanity, or, in Christian phraseology, the kingdom of God on earth, is the highest good and the final end to which all nations and all historical products are related as means, not as indifferent means, it is true, but as organs or parts of the end. This will also furnish us with the highest criterion for judging the nations and different stages of civilization : their value is measured by the degree in which they serve to realize and express the idea of humanity. Although no nation and ho stage of civilization is absolutely worthless, they nevertheless differ in value and importance according as the development of their social-political, mental- moral, artistic and religious life approximates this idea. THE HIGHEST GOOD 28f It is not hard to see, of course, that we have now reached a concept which we cannot realize. We cannot give a con- crete exposition of the idea of humanity ; all we can do is to outline it by means of the general concepts of a historical- mental life. All anthropological and historical investigations furnish us with materials, but we cannot construct the idea: we cannot form an idea of the contents of the humanity-life in which the contents of the lives of all races and peoples, of the Greeks and Romans, Egyptians and Babyloiiians, Chinese and Japanese, of the countless Negro and Indian tribes, shall be included as teleologically necessary means of realizing the idea. The divine poem, as the history of humanity has been called, surpasses our comprehension ; we observe isolated fragments and compare them, but we' cannot grasp the unity of the poem, the idea of the whole, which will explain the necessity of the members or frag- ments. The so-called philosophy of history has attempted to gather the fragments into a whole, and to interpret them from the standpoint of the whole. It has, however, not succeeded in doing more than making a schematic arrange- ment of them ; taking the narrow circle of civilization em- bracing antiquity and the Middle Ages and the beginnings of modern times, it has at most been able to point out a historical connection here and there which may, to a certain extent, be regarded as teleologically necessary. And there is evidently little hope that this science will ever attain to greater perfection in the future. Even the history of the past is highly fragmentary ; literature, which Goethe once called the fragment of fragments, is apparently the best preserved portion of historical tradition. But even if we had a clear and complete survey of the entire past history of the human race, we should probably possess but a very insignifi- cant fragment of the whole : the future would be lacking.' Perhaps the history of humanity is in its first begfnningsV perhaps the historical' life of particular nations and civiliza- 282 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES tions is but a prelude to the real historical life of a united humanity, for which the modern era is preparing, and which in our age, with its enormously developed means of com- munication, seems so close at hand. Perhaps the centralized world-market and the universal postal system are the fore- runners of the coming unification of the mental-historical life of humanity. Under these circumstances, how can we presume to understand the plan of universal history which shall enable us to assign to each particular element of his- torical life its place within the whole, as we understand the particular parts and verses of a poem, which are essential means of realizing the idea of the whole ? It is still more difficult to give a concrete conception of the ideal when we insert the life of humanity into another greater and more comprehensive reality, and characterize it as a part of a total life of the All-Real. Here we are dealing entirely with schematic concepts which absolutely transcend the imagination. The inconceivable and ineffable we can express only symbolically ; in so far as we desire to char- acterize the All-Real as the highest good we call it God. And its manifestation in a world of mental-historical life, which is embraced in the unity of its spiritual essence, we call the kingdom of God. These concepts do not, like the concepts of science, comprehend reality as it is given to us in perception. Nay, they do not really belong to the domain of knowledge ; they merely indicate the direction in which we, as feeling and willing beings, are moving when we attempt to complete our conception of reality. They express our belief that all reality tends to some highest end. If the idea of a divine plan in the history of humanity already transcends our comprehension, how much more must this be the case with the divine world-plan! All attempts to define it theoreti- cally result either in the trite enumeration of a few empiri- cal facts and the reversal of the causal order, as in the teleology of the last century, or in the barren logical con* THE HIGHEST GOOD 283 struction of general concepts, as in Hegel's philosophy. The understanding can never grasp the contents of the highest good. The symbols of religion and art endeavor to render it accessible to the feelings; by means of the finite and comprehensible, they suggest the infinite and incomprehensible. Im Innern ist ein Universum auch ; Daher der Volker loblicher Gebrauch, Dass jeglicher das Beste, was er kennt, Er Gott, ja seinen Gott benennt, ILm Himmel und Erden iibergiebt, Ihn furchtet und womoglich liebt. 8. G. von Gizycki has entered a protest against the views expressed in this chapter, in the name of the hedonistic theory.! I confess that his remarks have not changed my opinion ; nor do I dare to hope that my reply will induce any one to give up his theory. There is something like habit even in our thinking; whoever has become accustomed to look at things in a certain way will regard different concep- tions as a meclianic regards a tool to which he is not used, and will reject them as unsatisfactory. I am, of course, like other people in this respect. It is impossible for me to think that the thing of absolute worth is not the objective content of life, but the feeling of satisfaction with which it is expe- rienced, and that the former is merely an indifferent means to the latter. The value seems to me to lie in the thing itself and not in the recognition of the value by the feeling of satisfaction. By the objective content of life I do not at all mean the vegetative organic processes constituting bodily life, as another somewhat too hasty critic has as- sumed. I mean by it, above all, the mental life, which ap- pears in human beings as rational thinking and rational willing and acting, plus the feelings which are attached to all ^ In an elaborate review of tbis book in the Snnday snpplement of tbeFetnteX* Zsitesj, February, 1889, 284 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES conscious processes. I deny that this feeling element is the" thing of absolute worth ; it belongs to the phenomena of inner life, but not as their absolute end. However, 1 do not desire to repeat what has already been said ; I simply wish to say a word on one point. Gizycki con- tends that my system of ethics has no criterion for measuring tlie worth of acts and qualities, since it rejects the only pos- sible one : the feeling of pleasure or happiness. Hence, he declares, it has no right to speak as it does of higher and lower powers and actions. I believe, however, that it possesses such a standard : the standard is what has been called the normal type, or the idea, of human life. To be sure, this type cannot be defined as accurately as a mathematical concept, and yet it exists and has its function. Our judgment of the symmetry and beauty of the bodily form is based upon the fact that we uncon- sciously compare it with a normal type. Similarly, our judg- ment of the mental-moral form rests upon comparison with a normal type of the inner man. The same is true of the conscience, which pronounces upon one's own life ; its judg- ments are based upon the comparison of actual life with an ideal. So far as I can see, we never measure the value of a life, be it an individual or a social life, by employing a method which might be designated as the method of computing the balance of pleasure. The same fact may be observed in practical affairs. In choosing his remedies, the physician does not first consider the balance of pleasure, but inquires into their effect upon the functions of life. "What, he asks, is the effect of bodily exercise, of baths, opiates, etc., upon the functions of life and upon the organs ? Nor does the educator ask whether such and such methods of discipline or instruction will give the pupil the greatest possible amount of pleasure, but whether they will develop his intellectual and moral" capacities. The • politician, dojes the,8ame. . A. measure is discussed in a legislative gathering ; one party fa^Qrs it; THE HIGHEST GOOD 285 the other opposes it ; neither party bases its conclusions upon a computation of pleasures, but upon the supposed favorable or unfavorable effects of the measure upon the development of the people along the line of their ideal. Is this a defect ? Is such comparison with a normal type a crude and merely provisional method, and must philosophy substitute for it the more perfect method of tlie balance of pleasures ? It appears to me that if this is so, then the problem of phi- losophy is a rather hopeless one. Our means of finding such a balance of pleasure are, in my opinion, exceedingly poor, and I do not look for any great improvement along these lines in the future. Bentham's scheme of measuring the quantum of pleasure is still waiting for some one to apply it, and will, I believe, have long to wait and in vain. What ethics actually and universally does is this : it at- tempts to analyze and describe the normal type of which we have spoken. The doctrine of virtues, the fundamental part of ethics, gives such an analysis, and the doctrine of duties differs from it only in form ; it gives us a general description of the function of the virtuous character. Just as dietetics describes the normal functions of the body, and points out their importance for life, so moral philosophy describes the normal functions of man as a rational, volitional being, and shows their value for individual and collective life, calling at- tention, at the same time, to disturbances and deviations, and indicating how they may be avoided and counteracted. It like- wise distinguishes between the more and the less important phases of life, between the controlling and the subordinate functions. Dietetics is satisfied, without entering upon a computation of pleasures, that the spinal column is a more important part of the body than a finger or a tooth, that the action of the heart has a greater significance for life than the tear gland, that the proper care of the functions of nutrition is more important than the cut of one's hair. Similarly, 286 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES ethics, considering the conditions and relations of human his- torical life, is convinced, without calculations of this kind, that self-control and justice are more important than polite man- ners, that the functions of the teacher and judge are worth more to a people than those of an opera singer or acrobat. In his Ethics Gizycki modifies the hedonistic theory as fol- lows : The highest subjective goal of life, he says, is the sat- isfaction produced by the consciousness of having done the right, or the feeling of a good conscience. Coring agrees with him when, in his Gilterlehre, he defines the highest good as the proper regard for self, or the satisfaction of the desire for indi- vidual worth. — We see thus that the difference between the various conceptions of morality may be practically insignificant or may entirely vanish. The question is a purely theoretical one. But for this very reason it seems proper to me to say : Life itself and its healthful, virtuous, and beautiful activity is the absolutely desirable and valuable thing, not the isolated feeling-reflex accompanying it. Feelings, of course, exist and belong to life, but not as the absolute good ; they are not the final motives of the agent's will, nor the truly valuable ele- ments in the judgment of the spectator. The difference between Gizycki's conception and my own has, as he himself assumes, its ultimate root in psychology. He attributes my error to a false psychology, and corrects it by referring me to Bain and others. Well, I confess, despite all my respect for the English thinkers, I do not believe that the analytical psychology has said or will say the last word on this subject. A mere analysis of conscious processes — which, moreover, fails to confirm the hedonistic view — does not go to the root of the discussion. It must be supplemented by biological reflections, and these do not show us that the will is primarily determined by pleasures and pains, and is their product, as it were, but favor the view advocated by Schopen- hauer : that a particularly determined will, a specific will .(ein Wesenwille), to use Ttinnies's term, is the fundamen- tal fact of all psychical life. CHAPTER m PESSIMISM 1 1. Before taking up the second fundamental concept of ethics, the concept of duty, I should like to consider a theory which occupies an important place in the thoughts and delib- erations of the present: pessimism. Pessimism opposes the view advanced in the foregoing chapter, that life itself, or the normal exercise of all vital functions, is the thing of absolute worth, and asserts : Life has no value ; or, if it contains valu- able elements, their sum is so far exceeded by the worthless ones that the total value falls below zero, and hence, it is better not to live than to live. The Italian poet Leopardi pathetically expresses this mood in the lines " To Myself" Let me quote them : " Rest forever heart ; enough Hast thou throbbed. Nothing is worth Thy agitations, nor of sighs is worthy The earth. Bitterness and vexation Is life, and never aught besides, and mire the world. Quiet thyself henceforth. Despair For the last time. To our race fate Has given but death. Henceforth despise Thyself, nature, the foul Power which, hidden, rules to the common bane, And the infinite vanity of the whole." ' 1 [Sully, Pessimism, A History and a Criticism ; Sommer, Der Pesiimismai and die Sittenlehre ; Pliimacher, Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, (History and Criticism.) — Tk.] ' f I have taken this translation from Sully's Pessimism, p. 27. — Tb.] 288 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES In so far as these lines represent the real feelings of the poet, they are, of course, incontrovertible, — just as incon- trovertible as the lines of Matthew Arnold; " Is it so small a thing To have enjoyed the sun, To have lived light in the Spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done ; To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes?" * Feelings are not true or false ; they are facts which can be analyzed and explained, which may be considered praise- worthy or detestable, but not refuted. The case is different where pessimism aims to be a phil- osophical theory. Schopenhauer does not merely desire to express the feeling that he finds nothing in life, but he tries to prove that there is nothing in it, and that whoever finds anything in it deceives himself. He gives reasons, and reasons, unlike feelings, can be examined, and may, if false, be refuted. The argument will not necessarily change the per- sonal mood of the pessimist, but it will destroy the validity of his theory. Such an examination I propose to place before the reader. Unless I mistake its value, it will show that philosophical pessimism is not a proved theory, whose propo- sitions can lay claim to universal validity, but the expression of individual feelings, and as such can be merely subjectively true.* We may divide the attempts which have been made to prove pessimism into two classes : the sengualistic-hedonistic and the moralistic. By the former I mean the argument which en- deavors to show that life yields more pain than pleasure, and concludes from this that it is worth less than nothing. 1 Poems, n., 32 : Empedocles on Etna. ' [For philosophical pessimism see : Schopenhauer, TTie World as Will anil Idea, vol. I., Book IV. ; vol. II., Appendix to Book IV. ; Parerga, chaps. XL, XII., XIV. ; MainlSnder, Die Phihsophie der ErlHsung ; Hartmann, Die PkUo- Sophie da Unbewussten ; Zur Geschichte und Begriindung des Pessimismus, eie-" T».] PESSIMISM 289 The latter adds that life, considered objectively and morally, has no value, and that it is therefore not only unhappy, but deserves to be unhappy. I also mention a third form : the proof from the philosophy of history, which tries to show that as life develops, especially with the progress of civilization, pain and immorality increase. 2. The hedonistic argument contends that human life yields more and greater pains than pleasures. It is evident from the very nature of the case that such an assertion can be proved only by statistics. A phrase frequently used by the most recent pessimistic writers would seem to imply that such an argument can really be made ; they speak of a balance of pleasure, which is against the value of life. The term is borrowed from commercial language. The merchant adds up the debit and credit accounts of his ledger, and strikes the balance. It would appear from the phrase that the pessimistic philosopher employs a similar method, that he keeps books, as it were, entering on opposite sides, under the headings, pleasure and pain, the respective amounts yielded by life ; that some day he posts his books, and finds that the total of the pain-columns exceeds the total of the pleasure- columns. I do not know whether such an attempt has ever been made ; I have discovered nothing of the kind in the writings of the philosophical pessimists with which I happen to be acquainted. And yet it seems to me no method could furnish 80 convincing a proof that the thing is possible as the attempt to post the items even of a single day of a human life. Imagine the average day of an average human life treated according to such a scheme ! We might have an account like the following : A. Receipts in Pleasure : 1. Slept well — equal so many units ; 2. Enjoyed my break- ' fast — ; 3. Read a chapter from a good book — ; 4. Received \ a letter from a friend — ; etc. B. Pain: 1. Read a disagree- , able story in the paper — ; 2. Disturbed by a neighbor's 290 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES piano — ; 3. Received a tiresome visit — ; 4. Ate burnt soup — ; etc. — The philosopher is requested to insert the amounts in the proper places. But that is an absurd and childish demand, you say ! I certainly agree with you that it would be an absurd under- taking. But the demand itself does not seem to be absurd. If it is wholly impossible to make a statistical estimate of the pleasure and pain quanta, how can the assertion be proved that the pains exceed the pleasures ? If it is impos- sible to fix a definite value for the separate items, how can tiie value of the totals be compared ? If we are utterly unable to handle the simplest cases, if we cannot even say whether the pleasure yielded by a good breakfast is greater or less than the pain occasioned by burned soup, how can we make even the faintest conjecture in more difficult cases ? How can we, if we are unable to compute the results of a single day, dare to assert anything concerning the results of an entire life, and then not of a single individual life, mind you, but of all human lives ? In his novel, Four Crermans, Melchior Meyer gives the his- tory of two young men who grow up together under the same conditions, with the same prospects and demands on life. They study together, they are friends, and hold essentially the same views. At the end of their college days, the differ- ences in their natures begin to manifest themselves. The one enters the government-service ; he becomes an affable and capable official, and soon discards such notions as are considered objectionable in high circles. He begins to rise more rapidly ; he enters the Cabinet, becomes the son-in-law of the Prime Minister, and finally Prime Minister himself. His friend, who has a more reflective nature, follows a uni- versity career ; he becomes a privat-docent and a writer. Caring only for his own convictions, he refuses to be gov- erned by the prevailing opinions. Before knowing it, he becomes unpopular, the orthodox thinkei;s begin to shake PESSIMIs.M 291 tlieir heads. His influence wanes, his books are not read, as is natural, for he has written them for himself. At the age of thirty and thirty-five, he is still living in destitute circum- stances. His father grows impatient, his mother grieves ; then comes the year 1848, and places both young men in new circumstances, — which we need not mind now. What shall we say of the balance of pleasure in these two lives up to this point ? I do not believe that these are particularly difiScult cases ; and yet who would dare to decide which life had yielded the most happiness ? Who can measure the ratio, in the life of the former, between the pleasures following the satisfaction of ambition and the pain inseparable from the fears and hopes of preferment, the disappointment accom- panying the attainment of vain goods ; and who can compute the relation, in the other life, between the quiet joys of the thinker and the pains caused by neglect and outward failure ? The pessimists, therefore, have never even attempted to prove their assertions, as demanded by the nature of the case. They offer us general phrases instead. Listen to some of them. First we are told the old story that pleasure is in the last analysis nothing hnt freedom from pain ; that it invariably arises only when a desire is satisfied, when a disease is cured or a fear removed. Pleasure, so it is held, is therefore nega- tive in its character, while pain alone is positive ; there are in reality no figures in the pleasure-column of our imagi- nary ledger ; one hour differs from another merely in the amount of pain suffered. — Now if this were really true, if we really regarded as pleasure what is only freedom from pain, would that in the least alter the fact that pleasure and pain are positive feelings ? And is not the feeling, after all, the final and absolute judge ; would it not be absurd to claim that pleasure is nothing but freedom from pain ? All that we could say would be that it never arises except when preceded by a painful desire. This statement, however, 292 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES would be obviously false. Is appetite pain? Is it not rather an anticipation of pleasure, and is it not felt as such by the healthy man ? With eager eyes the child watches his mother baking cakes; does he experience pain, and is this silenced only after he has eaten the cake ? Does he, after waking from a healthy sleep, soon experience painful tedium, and does he get rid of the feeling only after it has forced him to play ? No one can believe such a thing unless he ignores the facts and makes up his mind to see nothing but the pro- positions of his system. — Besides, the falsity of the view may be shown in another way. If pleasure were freedom from the pain of desire, it would have to be the greater, the greater the desire has been. That is by no means always the case. On the contrary, the individuals who have the strongest desires experience the least pleasure after realizing them. The people who wait most patiently enjoy the purest and intensest pleasures, when they obtain what they neither asked for nor expected. We see this in children; I believe it always happens that the greater the desire, the less pleasure its satisfaction yields. Schopenhauer proves pessimism by reference to the nature of the will, which per se is unintelligent, aimless striving. It is not originally moved by the idea of an end, but appears as a blind will-to-live. Hence, he says, there can be no state, no good, which can give the will definite satisfaction. This determines the nature of the feelings : pain and misery, dis- appointment and tedium are the inevitable result. The pain which is caused by need urges the will to action; in case it does not realize its end, the pain becomes torture. If it realizes its end, the relief is momentarily felt as pleasure. But soon this disappears ; possession, which from a dis- tance promised permanent satisfaction, soon fails to arouse feelings of pleasure ; hence the end of all pleasure is disap- pointment. In case the will endeavors to put an end to this restless striving, tedium soon goads it into preferring misery PESSIMISM 293 and torture to a state of rest. These are the feelings between which the will constantly oscillates. We might, therefore, compare life to a foot-path running between two thorny hedges, a path so narrow that when the wanderer attempts to avoid one of the hedges, he is invariably torn by the other. Impartial judges will regard this view as extremely one- sided. Perhaps no life is absolutely free from suffering and tedium, but many an existence will, for some days, be almost entirely without them. The path between the hedges is not so narrow as to make it impossible for any one but an unusually awkward man to pursue it without serious injury. A healthy child, reared in simple, healthy surroundings, will not know very much about distress and tedium when leaving the parental home. And if the conditions of life continue half-way favor- able, he may not experience them to any great extent for many years to come. The peasant does not wait for want to urge him to his work. In the daytime he rejoices at what he has accomplished, and at night he enjoys his rest. It would be a vain undertaking to make him believe that the former is pain and the latter tedium. And so work-days and holidays, summer and winter may come and go, year in and year out, without bringing great troubles and without leaving much opportunity for tedium. Of course, some sorrows will come, but we also find that sorrows turn into blessings. Hence, we might perhaps quote, at the end of such a life, the words of the Psalmist, in a slightly modified form : The days of our years are threescore years and ten ; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, and if their strength be labor and sorrow, yet they have been sweet. — Are such lives mere isolated exceptions ? Inasmuch as we have no statistics on the happy and unhappy lives, the successes and failures, I am for the present inclined to put as much faith in the judgment of a plain man of the people as in the eloquence of a pessimistic philosopher. The plain man would 294 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES most likely argue somewhat as follows : If an honorable and V healthy life is not an exception, then a happy life is not an isolated exception either. The will, as described by the phi- losopher of pessimism, is not the will of a healthy human being, but that of a moody and spoilt child, and such a will may perhaps experience the things mentioned. But, Schopenhauer replies, it may be that some lives are fairly successful in avoiding collisions ; but does that change the fact that life as a whole is an empty, aimless striving? We may, he believes, compare life to the struggles of a shipwrecked mariner, who for a few moments struggles with all his might to save himself from drowning, only to be en- gulfed by the waves at last. Life is a ceaseless battle with death, to which we are approaching nearer and nearer every day. And the hopelessness of this futile business is increased by the cruel irony of nature, which deludes us with the con- stant promise : " To-morrow there will be a change for the bet- ter ! " If only I were a man, sighs the unhappy schoolboy ; if only ray examinations and apprenticeship were over, and I had an independent position and fortune, says the youth chafing under restraint ; if only I were a millionaire or a privy coun- sellor, cries the troubled man, how I should enjoy life ! And all these wishes are ultimately fulfilled, but the satisfaction never comes. Yet the illusions continue, until old age car- ries the last ones into the grave. But long before this, the cycle has begun anew in children and grandchildren. Does not the will-to-live play us a miserable trick ? The tortures described by Greek mythology, the Sisyphus stone, the barrel of the Dana'ides, the wheel of Ixion, represent life itself, not the exceptionally unhappy life, but the average life of all mor- tals, whose absolute futility is experienced every day and yet remains forever new. Indeed, it is true that the will-to-live is aimless in the sense of never attaining to a state of absolute satisfaction ; it is true that it daily looks forward to the morrow, expecting from it PESSIMISM 295 what to-day has failed to bring ; it is true, also, that deatli comes at last, and that life does not produce.as a recompense for its troubles an absolutely permanent good that may be possessed and eternally enjoyed or bequeathed to others. — But does that not prove the worthlessness of life ? — It seems to me that an error has crept into the argument. Life is here conceived as a function which has its end, not in itself, but external to it. This is an inadequate conception. It is customary to compare life to a journey. We regard the latter as futile when the purpose for which it was under- taken fails to be realized, and we look back upon our fruitless troubles with dissatisfaction. But does life resemble a busi- ness trip ? I do not think so. It has not, like the latter, an external end, an end of which it is the means. Nay, life is not )( a means, but an end in itself. We could, with much better right, compare it to a pleasure trip. The latter too, we may say, is aimless, and yields no lasting gain. We may also say that we are never satisfied while it lasts, in the sense of being willing to remain at one place forever. The desire is always in advance of the traveller, fixating a point in the dis- tance, and when this is reached, new desires arise. Even before setting forth he thinks of the remote summit, and when he ascends the mountain, groaning and perspiring, his longing eyes, deceived by many a projecting ridge, are turned in the direction of the goal. But hardly has he reached his destina- tion, when his desires again temptingly point to the inn with its promise of rest and recreation and final satisfaction. Tired, exhausted, and foot-sore, the traveller at last reaches his abode, and hardly enjoying a few moments of the hoped-for rest, begins to make plans for the morrow. So it goes day after day, until he comes back to his home, and rests his weary limbs under his own roof. Now, was the entire journey merely one continuous torture, and will our trav- eller swear never to enter upon such a foolish undertaking again ? No, indeed ; he has had an excellent time ; he joy- 296 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES fullj remembers every part of his travels, especially the most dangerous and difficult parts, and enjoys the pleasure of mak- ing plans for another trip next year. Well, the arguments against the value of life prove no more than the same arguments against the value of a pleasure trip. In spite of its aimlessness, in spite of its illusions and disa{)- pointments, in spite of its pains and exertions, in spite of the fact finally, that we never reach a stopping-place where we could bear to abide permanently, it may be a very enjoy- able affair on the whole. So long as it is full of action and change in work and in play, full of care for self and others, the mind will delight in recalling the memories of the past, lingering with special satisfaction upon the dangerous and f tempestuous, troublesome and difficult parts of the traversed journey. In achieving this the will realizes the goal at which ^ it aims : an honorable human life with all the experiences belonging to it. Old people delight in narrating incidents from their lives, either by word of mouth to their friends, or to the world at large in printed autobiographies. Would they feel inclined to do so if life were a Sisyphean labor ? They evidently re- gard it in a different light, as an interesting drama, perhaps, full of action and excitement for both actor and spectator, which, in spite of its troubles and conflicts, its happy and dangerous crises, at last comes to a peaceful ending. The excitement is over, the actor in the play breathes more freely ; as a spectator he now rehearses the contents of the drama in his mind. — Would he be willing to play the role again ? Schopenhauer believes that if we were to ask the dead in their graves whether they would be willing to live again, they would shake their heads. Perhaps he is right ; who would be willing to witness a play once more, immedi- ately after having seen it performed ? But that surely does not prove anything against the value of the drama. We should not be willing even to repeat the experiences of the PESSIMISM 297 most delightful journey, immediately after having reached home. — Besides, is it so rare a thing to^ hear old people expressing the wish to be young again ? The mature man does not desire to be a youth again, the youth does not wish to be a boy again, the boy does not wish to be a child again ; but many an old tnan wishes to be young again. Is it not because he has enjoyed his rest, and now has the courage to begin the journey afresh ? I cannot, therefore, convince myself that the statement: Life uniformly brings more pain than pleasure, more disap- pointment than satisfaction, — the subjective evidence of feel- ing declares it to be valueless, — is proved by these reflections of the philosophers of pessimism. 3. The moralistic argument asserts that life is as worth- less as it is unhappy, that it is absolutely devoid of any- thing that, objectively considered, can make it worth living. Virtue and wisdom are the exception, wickedness and fool- ishness the rule. Schopenhauer does not weary of abusing mankind in this strain. Nature, he is fond of saying, produces human beings in bulk, like worthless factory wares, and throws them away in bulk, in accordance with the maxim of wholesale production, as cheap and bad. Malice and ignorance are the two characteristic qualities of the average man. Mediocrity is more conspicuous among the masses; the many are poverty-stricken wretches, with no higher spiritual desires, intent only upon eking out their miserable existence to the very last. Their sole aim is to procure food, and perhaps to produce progeny for the same unhappy lot. Grovelling in the dirt, they live on, and when they are gone the very trace of their existence is wiped out. Nor are they free from an admixture of malice : they look with envy and hatred upon those who excel them in mental and physical gifts, or in wealth and rank. Only with great ef- fort can the police keep them from attacking each other. As wild beasts must be kept apart by cages, men must be pro- 298 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES tected against each other by criminal laws, cages whose bars are forged by fear. Whenever an opportunity is offered of cheating a fellow sufferer or inflicting damage upon an envied one, without danger of punishment, it is immediately embraced. Even their so-called virtues are, when rightly viewed, made of the same stuff. They are sociable from van- ity, compassionate from self-love, honest from fear, peace- loving from cowardice, benevolent from superstition. — There is a small minority among whom malice preponderates over ignorance, and since greater intelligence is usually connected with a stronger will, the laws are invariably powerless to re- strain them from pouncing upon the others, like beasts of prey. The many are like sheep, cowardly, stubborn, and nar- row ; the few like wolves and foxes, ferocious and deceitful. — Wisdom and virtue, on the other hand, are rare products. Nature scarcely succeeds in producing two or three geniuses in a century, and saints are equally few and far between. Thus Schopenhauer, the despiser and accuser of the human race, describes, with passionate eloquence, its moral and intel- lectual shortcomings. He is not the only man who entertains this opinion. Ever since the old Greek sage declared that "the most are worthless," the sentiment has been con- stantly repeated. Hobbes holds the same view of man, and La Rochefoucauld has given us, in his Reflections and Maxims, a kind of hand-book of philosophical »n6(iisanee, which, in ever- changing periods, proclaims selfishness and vanity as the real motives of human nature. Nor did Kant have a very favor- able opinion of human beings. Are these views correct ? Again I ask : How can their truth be proved ? In my judgment, ultimately by statistics alone. The assertion that there are more wicked men than good ones, more fools than sages, can be proved only by a census. We have only to make such a demand to see the impossibility of the undertaking. Interesting though such an investigation would be, the classes bad, wise, and stupid PESSIMISM 299 will never appear in the census lists. We may measure age, height, and wealth ; for moral and intellectual qualities there is no method of measurement. Every judgment concerning the average value of men is therefore purely individual and subjective ; it depends upon the experiences of the person judging, and the standard which he applies to man. The judgment can lay a certain claim to universality only in case it can be proved that the investigator's demands were normal, and that he had such favorable means for making observa- tions as to give his personal experiences an average value. Have those who proclaim the unworthiness of the great mass of mankind fulfilled these requirements ? We may divide the accusers of human nature into two groups : on the one side, we usually find courtiers and men of the world ; on the other, philosophical recluses. We are in the habit of saying that people who live at court have a knowledge of the world and human nature. Is court- life a suitable environment for the study of human nature ? At court we become acquainted with men who live at court. Is the life of these men a normal life, and can we expect from them a normal behavior ? It seems to me to be more than doubtful. La Rochefoucauld made his observations at the court of Louis XIV. Perhaps there never was a better medium for breeding vanity and selfishness than the court at Versailles. Read Taine's description. The entire nobility of France were gathered together at this place, not for work, but in order to reflect the grandeur and splendor of the monarchy by their mere presence. The entire life was one of idle representation ; no one lived at home and for himself, but everybody was con- stantly in the public gaze. Courtiers were chiefly occupied in pocketing, in the form of pensions and endowments, as much as they could of the proceeds which the laboring people poured into the royal treasury. The daily business of each individual was to enjoy himself with the aid and at the expense of the rest. It is not surprising that of all the human vices, vanity 300 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES and malice should have flourished most under such condi- tions. — Frederick the Great is quoted as having said to Sulzer that he, Sulzer, did not know the accursed trihe to which they belonged. This was not a chance remark, the outburst of a temporary mood, but revealed a contempt for humankind which had become habitual with the king during his old age. Did Frederick possess a knowledge of human nature ? He undoubtedly did ; but with what kind of people had he come in contact? With people, of course, who gathered at his court : with diplomats, whose business it was to outwit him and each other; with literati and savants, who begged for favors and support, and envied each other for what they re- ceived ; with servile and beggarly office-seekers, who vied with each other to get the best places ; with a crowd whose pur- poses the practical eye could not fail to fathom. There were doubtless good people around him too, honorable officers and upright officials ; but the others took the greatest pains to attract his attention. The great majority of his subjects who were quietly cultivating the fields or making shoes, he did not see ; they merely represented so many units in the census lists. The philosophers, too, have the reputation of knowing, if not men, at least man. Did Schopenhauer, Kant, or Hobbes have favorable opportunities for studying human nature ? I doubt it. Their point of view was abnormal in more than one respect. Above all, they lacked the environment in which are developed the most important relations of man to humanity : they had no family ties. Surrounded by strangers whom they distrusted, they reached a helpless old age as lonely and disconsolate old bachelors. Frau Martha Schwert- lein is certainly right: "^« hat noch keinem wohlgethan." ^ We cannot read without the deepest pity the descrip- tions of Kant's old age, of his worries over household affairs, of his troubles with his servant; of Schopenhauer's * Goethe, Fautt. PESSIMISM 301 efforts to conceal his money from burglars, of his despair of ever enjoying a decent conversation at the hotel table. These men not only needed some one to care for them; more than that, they needed some one for whom to care. Man is even more attached to those for whom he cares and whom he loves than to those who love and care for him. Wliat wonder is it, then, that these men could not sympathize with mankind at large when their relations to individuals were so unsatisfactory ? A man's confidence in and love for humanity depends upon a few experiences. Should any one of us lose the five or ten persons who are near and dear to him, he would be a stranger in the world ; he would be- come an enemy to mankind if these five or ten should prove false to him. We must also remember that these pessimists were writers and scholars, and that their knowledge of human nature was acquired in the world of authors and scholars. But where are we more apt to find vanity and dogmatism, flattery and an inability to recognize the merits of others, than in such surroundings ? I believe also that Schopenhauer would not have formed so low an estimate of the intelligence of men, if he had paid less attention to book and newspaper writers, and more to the common-sense people who are en- gaged in the practical pursuits of life. Let us now hear the opinion of healthy, unprejudiced men, of real men of the people. Take Goethe. His was a rich and healthy nature, and few persons came into such direct personal contact with, and gained so deep and wide a knowledge of, the life of the German people as did he. Indeed, we can say that hardly a single phase of it was entirely unknown to him. He also possessed remarkable powers of perception, and had the happy faculty of describing his impressions with unusual force. His letters and autobiographic writings acquaint us with the world in which he lived ; we are introduced to the parental home and the surroundings of his youth in Frankfort ; then to the circles at Leipsic, Strasburg, Sesenheim, Wetzlar, and X 302 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES Weimar. What kind of people does he meet ? We find agreeable and disagreeable characters among them; most of them are not troubling about their morality ; they live as human beings usually live, as their natures dictate. Few of them resemble the descriptions of the moralistic pessimist. Here and there, of course, we notice a little perverseness and some malice, but more often we find ourselves face to face with natural, amiable, honest, and sensible human beings. Goethe's poetical creations, in which he typifies his conceptions of human nature, impress us similarly. In Gotz, in Egmont, in Hermann und Dorothea, works in which he portrays the popu- lar phases of German life, everywhere we discover vigorous, calm and energetic, cheerful and contented characters. True, the petty, effeminate, deceitful, and violent natures are not lacking; but, after all, they merely serve as foils for the others. Was Goethe unacquainted with the other side of the pic- ture ? Did he fail to see what constantly aroused Schopen- hauer's anger and indignation ? Surely not. In his Xenien, in his Sprilche in Versen und Prosa, in which Goethe settles accounts with his literary contemporaries, many a harsh word is uttered against vanity and emptiness, against narrow- mindedness and baseness. It would not be hard to form a complete catechism of pessimism by collecting different pas- sages from Goethe's writings ; think of what might be done with Mephistoplieles alone ! But all this did not prevent him from going right on loving and trusting humanity. If now we are not satisfied with the testimony of this wit- ness, let us turn to Jeremias Gotthelf and his charming stories of Swiss peasant-life, or to Fritz Renter's incomparable Stromtid. Here we become acquainted with the base scoun- drel, the reckless idler, the vain fool who ruins himself ; but we also come in contact with modest, quiet, fruitful labor, rugged honesty, healthy common-sense, a wholesom^ love of everything beautiful and good, Eictive devotion to. the welfare PESSIMISM 303 of others, stern oppoaition to falsehood and rascality, and we are not made to feel that the latter virtues are in the minority ; they by no means give up the battle in despair, but unite in making a brave and successful attempt at resistance. Or look at the human world portrayed by Ludwig Richter's pencil, and do not fail to read, at the same time, this ex- cellent man's Autobiography, — the most charming of all autobiographies. Are these men self-deluded and deluding optimists ? I do not believe it. I do not believe that the virtuous and healthy men are in the minority in the world. Viewed from the outside and in the mass, human beings do not make a particularly favorable impression. The observer who sees them pushing and crowding each other on the trains and in the streets of the metropolis, at entertainments and theatres, in public gatherings and meetings of all kinds, and notices their flat- teries and backbitings, their self-conceit and envy, will not be favorably impressed with the tribe. But when we follow the particular individual into the narrow home and into his family and workshop, we often find a quite different person, a sensible workman, a prudent manager, a loving father. Even the clamorous and offensive partisan quietly and mod- estly converses with you here ; the high-sounding phrases which he used in his speech at the mass meeting scarcely occur in his talk ; he can listen, deliberate, and doubt, — things which no one, knowing him in his public capacity, would ever have / thought him capable of. I believe that the nearer we ap- proach the real life of the individual, the more, as a rule, we shall find to appreciate and to love, or at least to understand and excuse. That is what the poet does. Schopenhauer, '^ however, saw mankind only from the distance and in the mass ; like Wagner in Faust, he heard the distant noises of the throng and turned away in disgust. Of course, there are other poets, who see things in a. dif- ferent light. Byron and Thackeray and many among the 304 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES more recent French and Northern poets, seem to believe that , the closer we come to life, and the clearer the view which we r get of it, the more completely the beautiful illusion van- ishes. Splendor and happiness, amiability and cordiality, are but the theatrical masks of life ; behind the scenes we come face to face with its wretchedness and brutality. — "Who would deny that this is often the case ? But is it not true that this description applies to circles in which the chief business of life is to appear upon the stage of publicity, be it in the garb of the politician or actor, the artist or society man, the promoter or author ? It has been said that politics ruins the character. I believe we must say that all forms of public life have a tendency to destroy character. Osten- tation and sham are almost inseparable from publicity. But these persons, who, it is true, particularly attract the public ] eye, do not constitute the essence of a people ; a nation con- sisting merely of such actors could not live. Is this craving for theatrical effect a peculiar product of our age ? It almost seems so. And yet what age has ever been free from it ? And when have persons been wanting who made it their business to destroy the illusion by giving us a glimpse at the life behind the scenes ? It is doubtful, however, whether any age has ever taken such delight in disenchanting us as the present. To cast aspersions upon mankind and to expose the less beautiful phases of our nature is one of the most popular literary occupations of the times ; it has become a fad to show up falsehood and coarseness, in poetry and in prose. Is this a favorable sign ; does it mean that the public mind is turning towards the truth ? I confess, I am not wholly convinced of it. Besides the craving for truth, there is another impulse in us that may be satisfied by these things ; it is the craving which feeds upon gossip and scandal. I therefore doubt very much whether the new school of art, which calls itself the realistic school, is to be welcomed as a healthy movement. To be sure, falsehood is not good, aud PESSIMISM 305 we should not close our eyes to the real. No doubt, there are penitentiaries and hospitals, and insane asylums to boot, and perhaps not all are in them who ought to be there. But that most persons ought to be there, as our pessimistic litterati try to maite us believe by carefully selecting the material for our study of human nature, cannot, as yet, be regarded aa proved. And perhaps even those who really ought to be in these institutions do not like to visit them. We cannot advise every one to visit the dissecting room. George Eliot some- where beautifully says : " Poor outlines and shadows of souls that we are, with but a quickly passing glimpse of the perfect and the true, well would it behoove us to help each other in beholding the blessed light of heaven, instead of searching each other's eyes in order to detect the motes in them.''^ And August Francke utters a no less valuable truth when he says : " We may praise the works of God, but we must be very careful in speaking of the works of the devil. For the human heart contains sparks of evil which easily catch fire." Besides, we cannot, perhaps, abandon ourselves to pessi- mistic reflections without some danger, — provided, of course, we do not aim to destroy the will-to-live, as Schopenhauer intends that we should. It is undoubtedly wise not to expect too much of life, hence we shall do well to familiarize our- selves with the thought that not all our wishes will be ful- filled, and that not everybody can be trusted. Thus we shall guard against disappointments. On the other hand, continued concentration of the attention upon the shadow-sides of life and human nature will help to create an habitual contempt for humanity and a hatred of life even in cases where these would not necessarily have ensued. Pessimistic reflections will have but little influence upon an energetic and healthy nature, but where the person is disposed to be pessimistic, he will, by brooding upon these things too much, develop an abnormal • [I have not been able to find this passage in the original, and have therefoia ieen compelled to translate it from the German. — Tr.] X y/ 306 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES state of miud in reference to tliem. If a man were constantly to watch the weather, to see whether it was not too warm or too cold, too moist or too dry for him, he would most likely soon discover that not three days in the year were suitable for a walk. Similarly, if a man should take Schopenhauer's advice, and carefully treasure up in his mind, as alimenta misan- thropice, all the disagreeable experiences which he had had with human beings, brooding over them day after day, he would certainly come to regard all men as scoundrels and abor- tions, or " factory-wares of nature," and succeed in making himself miserable. If you are not willing to do this, it will be wiser for you to contemplate the sunny sides of life, and to search for what will raiso your estimate of mankind, or at least serve to excuse them. Schopenhauer advises us to be constantly on the lookout for the baseness of men, and to use it as a means of feeding our hatred of humanity. Perhaps the following would be sounder advice : Do not expect human beings to serve you without asking something in return, but X rejoice nevertheless when you find an exception, and believe firmly that there are not only persons who will take advantage of their fellows, wherever they can do so with impunity, but also that there are some who will delight in being able to help them without being asked. Likewise do not count upon gratitude ; but rejoice when you meet a man who cheerfully and sincerely accepts your help, and whose eye betokens his appreciation of the gift as well as of the giver ; and firmly believe that such men still exist, pessimism and social-democratic arrogance to the contrary notwithstanding. And I should regard it as one of the functions of poetry to arouse such sentiments. To be sure, it ought to portray people as they are, and not shadowless phantoms. The sugar-dolls of sentimental novels destroy our taste for reality and produce moral dyspepsia, utterly cor- rupting the taste. The present, t seems, is afflicted with this very disease. During the days of Auerbach's and Preytag's novels, we flattered the vanity of the virtuous hourgeoitie and PESSIMISM 307 professorial tribe too much ; under the influence of socialistic criticisms of society we are now experiencing the reaction. We shall recuperate, of course ; and then art will again recognize that it is its mission to portray healthy, active, and energetic life, using baseness and mendacity simply as a foil. A poem which contemplates and portrays the base for its own sake must be regarded as a pathological phenomenon, and can only serve as a means of spreading disease.^ But let us return to our subject. In view of what we have said, it does not seem to me that pessimism can claim to be a ; scientifically proved theory. It is, in the last analysis, nothing but an expression of the individual's experiences with life and man, presented in the form of universal judgments. The conclusion. Life is worthless, means, when reduced to its simplest terms : It did not yield what I expected. The proposition. Men are worthless, means : Men have treated me badly ; I take no pleasure in them and do not care for tlieir welfare. We are generally inclined to express our individual experiences in the form of universal propositions. A parti- cular person has met three Englishmen during his lifetime ; he did not like them ; he will invariably say : Englishmen are unmannerly or crazy people. It is as Spinoza says : Et dum iram evomunt, sapientes videri volunt. There is another fact which encourages men to form univer- sal propositions in regard to the baseness of life and mankind. There is something quieting and consoling in the thought. When a man has been deceived by his wife, he declares that women are good for nothing. When a writer is ignored by the public, he says : The masses have never been able to tell ' If I interpret the play correctly, Shakespeare's 5am?ei aims to show — at least it does show — how a great soul may be rained by constantly attending to the Tulgar and base. Hamlet's entire life is devoted to the detection and unmask- ing of evil, to the analysis and microscopic examination of the low, to the rhetorical exaggeration of the repulsive ; and the paralysis of his own being is the result. I have developed this idea in an article in the Deutsche Rundschau. (May, 1889), Hamlet, Die Tragtidie des Pessimismus. 308 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES the difference between the good and the bad. It intensifieB our pain to tell ourselves that what we have suffered is an exception, and contrary to fate, as it were ; our grief is assuaged by the reflection that it is the universal lot. Schopen- hauer made a theory for all the pains he suffered, for those caused by women and by men, by street arabs and university professors. His pessimism is the general theory of his partic- ular theories. It undoubtedly helped him to endure his sorrows. Pessimism was his household remedy against his chronic ill-humor which resulted from his temperamental defect, dyscholia. The remedy did not succeed in removing the disease, but it acted like an opiate, it assuaged his pain. Who does not use it in the same way occasionally ? It has another property : it quiets the conscience. The universal proposition acquits the ego, so to speak. If I were the only one having a hard time of it, if I alone were unable to get along with men, it would be hard to deny that not the otliers, but that I myself was at fault. In case, however, everybody meets with the same experiences, then they are perfectly natural, and I am not to be blamed. Besides, I am inclined to think that the most pronounced egoist usually complains most of egoism. He accuses others of egoism when they refuse to lend themselves to his selfish desires. Goethe seems to have noticed the same thing : he dedicated the following lines to the " Crotchet-mongers " ( G-rillenfdnger) : Fiirchtet hinter diesen Launen, Diesem ausstaffierten Schmerz, Diesen triiben Augenbraunen Leerheit oder schlechtes Herz. 4. The Mstorical-philosophieal argument aims to show that as civilization advances, mankind becomes more and more unhappy and bad. Schopenhauer represents historical- philosophical pessimism on the hedonistic side, Rousseau on the moralistic side. The former is fond of telling us that civil- ization tends to increase pain, while the latter emphasizes the PESSIMISM 309 other aspect, and claims that civilization tends to destroj morality. It is worthy of note that the pessimistic view of history can, in a certain measure, appeal for support to common- sense. The conception of historical life which has been cur- rent among European nations since the advent of Christianity follows the Jewish myth, and places perfection at the begin- ning of things. The original state of the human race was divided between the happiness and innocence of Paradise. History really begins witli the fall of man, and the end towards which it is moving is the judgment day. Sin, misery, and corruption will continue to increase until they reach their maximum in the kingdom of the Antichrist, and inaugurate the end of the world. — The Greeks, too, were familiar with this conception of the progress of human his- tory. Hesiod gives expression to it in his description of the ages of the world, beginning with the golden age and ending with the iron age, in which the poet complains that he has been condemned to live. — Perhaps the conception may be explained psychologically. The temperament of old age is optimistic in reference to the past. The old man is unable to keep in touch with the present ; he is powerless to accom- plish anything, and seeks the cause for it, not in himself, but in the times, which, in his opinion, are growing worse and worse. The past, on the other hand, glows with the memo- ries of youth. Old age is the bearer of historical reminis- cences ; from it the young receive intelligence of the past, and are taught to view the past in the light of old age. The ten- dency to admire, which is peculiar to youth, and the tendency to believe in a great and glorious descent, assist in the pro- cess. Finally, the tendency to employ history as an instru- ment of moral preaching has the same effect. Whoever, for any reason or other, is dissatisfied with the present, loves to humiliate it by holding up to it the picture of a better past. With the rise of historical research, the splendor with 310 CONCEPTS AND PRENCIPLES which legend surrounded the beginnings vanished. The scientific investigations of modern times have begun to throw light upon the real past. As a consequence, our historical con- ceptions have been completely changed. The leaders of the seventeenth century transferred the golden age from the past to the future, and the eighteenth century systematized the new view, conceiving history as a steady progress from meagre beginnings to a state of glorious perfection, which, it was supposed, would be realized in tlie period of Enlightenment. Eousseau inaugurated a reaction against the optimistic con- ception of history. Romanticism created the notion of a wise and perfect primitive race, which also haunted the philosophy of Schelling. Schopenhauer too is a genuine child of Roman- ticism in his philosophy of history. He absolutely fails to see a change for the better in history ; indeed he is inclined to deny that there is any logic in history. The names and cus- toms change, but the contents of the play remain eternally the same. Only in one respect does Schopenhauer find un- mistakable evidences of development : pain is certainly in- creasing. Brutes are the happiest, or, rather, the least un- happy creatures ; while increase of knowledge means increase of sorrow for man. Qui auget scientiam, auget dolorem. His reasons for this view may be summarized as follows : (1) With the increasing complexity of its nature, a creature becomes more and more sensitive to pain. Now, every ad- vance in civilization means a multiplication of needs and the necessary means of satisfying them. Hence, as civiliza- tion advances, desire, misery, and disappointment increase. (2) Intelligence develops, and man gains an insight into the future. The animal lives in the present ; it feels the pain of the moment only. In case the conditions of life become too unfavorable, it dies without really experiencing the death which it did not foresee. Man sees the evils coming upon him ; he foresees old age and death ; fear and anxiety are added to pain, and they are greater tortures than pain itself. PESSIMISM 311 Indeed, the fear of death may lead to suicide. (3) Man's per- sonality is doubled, as it were ; in addition, to his real self he has an ideal self. The ideal ego is no less vulnerable, no less susceptible to pain, than the real ego. Defeated ambition, wounded pride, unrequited love, are inexhaustible sources of torture ; calumny and dishonor wound us more deeply than bodily hurts. This vulnerability also increases with the prog- ress of civilization ; the higher the stage of civilization, the more complex society grows, and the more dependent men become upon each other. The higher the social rank of an individual, the more he is exposed to the criticisms of others. How unconcerned the peasant lives in this regard ; and how much sorrow falls into the life of the politician and author! (4) In still another respect is the life of man expanded, and his vulnerability increased. The sympathetic feelings develop, and he now feels the sorrows of others as well as his own. The animal is unaffected by the sufferings and death of its companions, while even the brutal man sympathizes with his surroundings. He is moved by the sufferings and death of those he loves, and so dies many deaths. And the best men suffer the most : in addition to their own particular sorrows they feel the universal sorrows; we can hardly imagine great and good men without a trace of melancholy. These statements are not untrue, but they are onesided, j^ Not only is the susceptibility to pain increased : sensibility is intensified in both directions. Pleasures as well as pains become more manifold and intense. We undoubtedly inter- pret the phenomena of bodily life correctly when we assume that vertebrates suffer more violent pains than invertebrates. The tearing of the body of a worm surely causes pain, but this can hardly be compared to that suffered, say by a dog, when a single nerve tract is severed. It is also unquestion- ably true that the pleasurable feelings aroused in a dog by the chase are incomparably more intense than those experi- enced by the rain worm in searching for its food. 312 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES We must therefore supplement the above pessimistic reflections if we would reach the truth. It is said : (1) As life develops, needs and therefore pains increase. Very true ; but the means of satisfying the needs also increase. To this end action becomes more and more complex, greater and more developed powers and capacities are set in motion, and as a consequence the accompanying pleasures are also increased. Compare the life and activity of the prehistoric inhabitants of our coast, who have left the traces of their existence in the so-called Kjokkenmdddingern, with the life and the activity of the peasants and mechanics, the fishermen and sailors, who at present inhabit the same regions. We are surely justified in saying that for the increase of trouble, want, and wretchedness in their lives, there has been a corre- sponding increase of pleasure in their work and its results. I do not wish to claim that the increase in pleasure exceeds the increase in pain ; this may be so, but it cannot be proved. But it is surely just as hard to prove the reverse. (2) It is held that the fear and anxiety caused by the pre- vision of future pain increases pain. Indeed, if all pains consisted merely in momentary feelings, they would not be hard to bear; privations, sorrows, and even physical pains oppress us so because they are regarded as the beginning of a long series. But pleasures, too, owe their real human char- acter and worth to the fact that they are anticipated by hope ; and we may say that the human heart is not so unhappily constituted as to be more susceptible to fear than to hope. Temperaments differ; but perhaps our expectations of the future are falsified by hope more often than by fear. And perhaps memory is a still greater falsifier, if you please, than hope, in giving us a cheerful view of life. The happy and joyful days which we have spent linger in memory as a source of pleasure ; nay, memory idealizes them : it retouches the picture by removing the unpleasant and disturbing ele- ments which are seldom wanting in reality. Days, on the PESSIMISM 313 other hand, which were full of misery and struggle, sorrow and care, lose their sting in memory ; sorrow at the loss of a good is transformed into a mild, tender sadness ; the remem- brance of miseries and troubles endured fills us with pride : olim meministe juvabit, — so the Roman poet consoles the heavy-laden. Are not autobiographies almost always biodicies ? Die Freuden bluhn mir noch, Die Leiden sind erblichen.i (3) As for the pains caused by hurts to the ideal self, we may also say that they are supplemented by the pleasures which result from the recognition we receive from others, and from the successful struggle for the prize bestowed upon merit. And could the higher human functions ever have been developed if men did not strive after honor and distinction ? We may also call to mind that human nature possesses a cure against ideal wounds. Injury and neglect make us proud, and pride heals pain. Schopenhauer had ample opportunity for observ- ing this truth in his own case. (4) The same may be said of the pains which arise from sympathy : they, too, are supplemented by the pleasures which arise from our participation in the weal and woe of others. If we may believe an old proverb, sympathy with the lot of others has a very favorable efCect upon the happiness of the parties concerned : Geteilter Schmerz ist halber Schmerz; geteilte Freude ist doppelte Freude ; ^ which would make a four- fold gain. To sum up : As civilization advances, the sorrows and the pleasures grow in extensity and in intensity. Does the pleas- ure exceed the pain ? Historical optimism confidently asserts that the progress of history increases happiness. Pessimism with equal confidence sets up the counter-claim that it in- creases sorrow. I regard both assertions as equally incapable * Riickert. » A divided pain i» half a pain ; divided pleaanre is double pleasure. 314 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES of proof. Both of them may be made very plausible by rhetorical arguments, but there is really no way of definitely deciding the matter. One thing alone seems certain to me, that as sensibility increases, sorrows and pleasures become more intense. In the same ratio ? Perhaps. But this would not mean that the sum-total of the pains and the pleasures, considered and added as negative and positive quantities, was always equal to zero. I rather incline to the view that, just as health and normal forms are more common than disease and malformations, pleasure is more common than pain. But let me repeat : We cannot measure and add the feelings or their intensities. Nay, I believe that if any one, with a view to gathering statistics, were to ask particular individuals whether they felt pain or pleasure at that particular moment, he would frequently receive the answer : I have not paid any attention to the matter ; and if he were to persist in interrogating his subjects, he would be told: I really do not know myself — which would plainly show that they did not attribute the im- portance to pleasure and pain which hedonistic and pessimistic philosophers ascribe to them. 5. Let me say a few words in reference to the moralistic phase of historical pessimism, which Rousseau preached with such impassioned eloquence during the second half of the last century. He regards the primitive state of man as a state of innocence and virtue, from which civilization is deviating more and more. The nearer we approach the original state, the more purity and virtue we find. These virtues may, in Rousseau's opinion, still be found among shepherds and peasants ; we shall seek for them in vain in Parisian society,^ at the court of Versailles. In his celebrated maiden work, in which he discusses the question whether the revival of science and letters has contributed anything to purify morals, he is in- clined to seek the causes of moral decay in the development of the sciences and the arts. A second question, proposed by > [Discours sur les sciences et let arts, 1749. t-Tr.] PESSIMISM 315 the Academy of Dijon, concerning the origin of the inequal- ity among men, gave him an opportunity to modify his state- ment to the effect that the development of ■Social classes is the immediate cause of moral decay.' As civilization advances, 80 we may summarize his views, differences arise between the rich and the poor, the high and the low, masters and servants ; and thus human nature, which is fundamentally good, deterio- rates. On the one side arise the lordly vices : haughtiness, arrogance, and cruelty. Social differentiation likewise tends to destroy our natural judgments of value. The natural value of things consists in their satisfying genuine needs. In society a conventional value takes the place of the natural one ; things are prized in so far as they confer social distinction. Diamonds and pearls have no natural value, or, perhaps, only a trivial one as ornaments. In society, however, they are highly prized as marks of wealth and nobility ; they owe their value to the fact that others do not possess them. So knowledge receives a conventional value in society ; under the name of culture it confers social distinction. But such knowledge is not the same as that which is really valuable for life. That knowledge has true worth which makes its possessor wiser or more prudent. Culture and learning often do the opposite ; they suppress healthy common-sense and natural power of judgment. In the same way polite manners and good form usurp the position which belongs to virtue alone. Thus false- hood and semblance corrupt the life of society. Nous avons de Thonneur sans vertu, de la raison sans sagesse, et du plaisir sans bonheur: thus Rousseau's Contrat Social sums up his opinion of the culture and enlightenment of his age, in one of those epigrams which leaye such a vivid impression upon the memory. These statements, again, are not untrue, but they are one- sided. Civilization, with its accompanying social differentia- tion, undoubtedly creates new perversities and vices, but it also 1 [Discours $iir I'oriffin? et hfondemeni de Vin^galiU parmi les hommes, 1754.] 316 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES produces new virtues. There are lordly virtues as well as vices : courage, magnanimity, self-control, dignity, circum- spection, benevolence. And servants, too, have their virtues as well as their vices : loyalty, devotion, faithfulness. When his social position corresponds to the natural endowments of a man, when every man takes the place for which his natural capacities fit him, there can be no more favorable conditions for the development of character, and both sides will regard the relation as a happy one. Just as little reason have we to believe that the commodities which civilization produces have merely an artificial value. Science and art surely possess natural and genuine worth, even though perverse forms of pedantry and pseudo-culture are not infrequent ; nor have the commodities produced and made accessible by trade and com- merce mere artificial value. — Rousseau's dream of a happy and innocent state of nature belongs to the past; it is the dream of the age of Louis XV. ; it does not reflect a real world found in the South Sea Islands or among the Indians, but represents the exact opposite of the society which dreamed it. Contact with uncivilized peoples never reveals the proud and sincere, the virtuous and happy savages who are mentioned in the novels of the eighteenth century. J. S. Mill holds, in an essay On Nature, that no remarkable human quality is a natural endowment, but the result of civilization. Courage, veracity, cleanliness, self-control, justice, benevo- lence are acquired characteristics ; fear, mendacity, filthiness, intemperance, brutality, selfishness, — these ^re the character- istics which impartial observers discover in the physiognomy of the savage. Shall we, then, say that the race grows more moral as civil- ization advances ? I should not deny it, but historical pessi- mism might bring some powerful arguments to bear against Mill's view. It may be that tlie uncivilized do not possess the virtues referred to, but they also lack the vices of civilization. If we look at the criminal life of a European metropolis, or PESSIMISM 317 peer into the secrets which hide behind the name of polite society, and which the writers most popular, with that class are so fond of divulging, we shall have to confess that the vices of the savage are childish pranks compared with the subtle forms of repulsive pleasure, deceitful malice, and utter baseness to be found there. — Can we say that these are unfortunate exceptions ; that, generally speaking, there is a greater gain on the side of virtue than on the side of vice ? How hopeless it would be to attempt to prove such an assertion may be seen by asking a concrete question : Are the Germans of the new Empire better or worse, morally con- sidered, than the Germans of the Avfkldrung, the Reforma- tion, the Crusades, or of the days of Hermann? — All that can be said with certainty in this connection is, again, that there is an increase in moral differentiation. Just as the v pains and pleasures are growing in intensity, the virtues and ^ vices are becoming greater and more specific. Animals, we might say, stand at the zero-point ; they are neither good nor bad. Moralization begins with humanization. In the lower X stages the differences are insignificant, the individuals resem- ble each other, they are exemplars which, on the whole, express the genus in the same way. As civilization advances, indi- vidualization increases ; good and evil stand out in greater relief. The masses, to be sure, do not rise beyond a colorless mean ; they have good as well as evil impulses. But in par- ticular personalities good and evil stand out in bold relief. On the one hand, we have deep and reverent love, self-sacrific- ing loyalty, passionate devotion to truth and justice ; on the other, complete and total depravity. Nevertheless, nothing prevents us from believing that there is more good than evil in the world, that the evil, as the abnormal, is the less fre- quent. One thing alone seems undeniable, and that is that the contrasts are becoming more marked. And perhaps this will continue to be the case. Just as, according to the Hebrew myth, the natural world began with the separation 318 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES of darkness from light, so, according to the same profound story, the historical world began with the distinction between good and evil. And according to the Christian conception, which adopts this myth, history consists in continuing the process of separation. In the kingdom of God and in the kingdom of the devil the opposition between good and evil is most highly marked. Humanity stands between the two, and gradually divides into two groups, some being attracted and wholly absorbed by the kingdom of God, others by the king- dom of the devil, until the judgment day shall bring about the absolute and final expulsion of the evil. 6. But, some one may ask, if all this is so, if one thing alone is certain, namely, that as civilization advances sensi- bility and consequently the intensity of pleasures and pains increase, and moral differentiation and a corresponding increase in the intensity of good and evil take place ; and if it is doubtful whether the gain on the side of virtue and happiness exceeds that on the side of vice and unhappiness, if the natural course of historical development does not lead to the expulsion of evil, but this must await the coming of the judgment day, that is, the end of our temporal earthly life, — if all this is so, then is not pessimism in the right? Then is not Schopenhauer's statement concerning the aim- lessness and un worthiness of life correct ? Are not all work and care, all struggle and sacrifice, in vain ? I do not think so. It would not be the case, even if we granted that good and evil, pleasure and pain, were always present and increased in the same ratio, so that their sum, as positive and negative quantities, would always be equal to zero. We shall be still less willing to decide in favor of pessimism when we make an assumption which cannot be proved, but which nothing hinders us from believing, namely, that virtue and welfare always overbalance vice and failure, and that this preponderance is always in the same ratio. The pessimistic argument falsely assumes that the worth PESSIMISM 319 of historical life consists in its realizing a final state of absolute happiness and absolute perfectionj But, in the first place, there can never be such a final state. Life, his- torical life, is inconceivable without oppositions : absolute v^ happiness and absolute perfection make striving and there- fore life impossible. Moreover, the value of life is not determined by the end which it reaches, but by its entire course. So it is with an individual life. Boyhood and youth are valuable not only because they lead up to manhood, but valuable in themselves, just as valuable as manhood and old age. The same may be said of historical life. Let us sincerely hope that later generations will be happier and more virtuous than their predecessors ; but it will be no reproach to history if they are not. The preceding ages are not merely means to an end, not merely so many stages over which the last one passes to perfection and happiness : — they lived their own life, and this had an independent value. The Greelis and Romans did not live in order to leave us a few remnants of their civilization ; they lived for their own sakes, and their life merely receives additional value from the fact that it forms a part of the larger life of humanity. Had history ended, as primitive Christianity expected, with the first century of our era, the value of the historical life preceding it would not have been destroyed and annulled, as it were ; but just as each day of historical life has its own cares, so it has its own worth, of which no subsequent occurrence can deprive it. It can only be enhanced in value by being rationally connected with the next day. Historical life has often been compared to a drama ; indeed, it is the great drama, of which all the dramas of the poets are but small imitations. No one believes that the drama on the stage receives its value from the last act or from the final state realized by the persons in the cast. Its value is determined by the contents of the entire play; each scene contributes to it. We, of course, demand that the scenes of 320 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES the drama be more than disconnected fragments ; vre expect them to make a rational whole, in which each particular ele- ment shall have its teleologically necessary place. We expect , a similar connection and progress in history. The particu- lar events and the particular actors must not merely form a disconnected aggregate or succession, but a natural and har- monious whole. It is true, as I have repeatedly pointed out, we cannot reveal the logical connection in the history of humanity, as we can interpret a drama, and show how the different parts necessarily follow from the idea of the whole; this would be the business of the philosophy of history. But to this branch of knowledge the Pythagorean maxim that God alone has philosophy is particularly applicable. We human beings look at history as the multitude, according to Goethe, look at a play ; they see the particular occurrences and are pleased with the constant change of scene, but they do not grasp the meaning of the whole. So our historical science brings together a lot of fragments ; but the master who will form them into a whole, who will rethink the divine thought of the history of humanity and give it expression, has not yet appeared, and will perhaps never appear. Only occa- sionally do we seem to see rational connections. This may strengthen our faith that there is a universal reason per- vading the universe, which combines the elements of histori- cal life according to an inner necessity. I said above that autobiographies were usually biodicies. If ever humanity writes its autobiography at the end of its days, replete though it may be with accounts of work and struggle, misery and failure, it will, we believe, be a biodicy and a theodicy.^ Die Menschheit selbst in ihrem dunklen Drange War sich des rechten Weges wohl bewusst. 1 [Wmiams, A Review of Evolutionary Ethics, Part II., chaps. VII, Vm.; Mackenzie. Manual, Moral Progress, chap. XV. See also, Lessing, Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (Engl tr. in Bohn's Library), and K^nt, Das mag in dti Thevrte nchlig sein. — Tb.] CHAPTER IV THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY > 1. Theodictes are not in favor in our times. We derive more pleasure from the analytical contemplation of evil and from reviling the nature which produces it. Nevertheless, 1 shall venture to make the untimely attempt to justify the evil in the world. Of course, we cannot prove that the world as it exists, is absolutely good, or even that it is the best of possible worlds — we do not know much of the absolute or the possible ; but we can endeavor to say what it is for us. And it may, in my opinion, be shown that the universe, as it is, is essentially adapted to our nature. It supplies us with appropriate conditions of growtli, furnishes our capacities with the necessary tasks, and gives to our life, if only we wish it, a rich and beautiful content. We could not, being what we are, have any use for, or tolerate, a world differently constituted. Whoever regards this as self-evident, holding that our nature no less than the organism of every animal species is suited to its environment, may dismiss all dis- cussions concerning the evil as superfluous. I desire to add, however, that the evil in the world can be justified only in a general way. It will always be impossible to point out the teleological necessity of a particular evil in a particular case, ' [See the writings of the Stoics, Plotinns, Augustine ; also Spinoza, Tractatus pohticus ; Leibniz, Theodi'ce'e ; Kant, Beh'gion innerhalb der Grenxen der hlpsser Vemunft (First Part tr. in Abbott), Uber das Misslingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodic^e ; J. Miiller, Die Lehre von der Siinde ; Hoffding, Eihik, VT., Das ethisch Bose ; Runze, Ethik, §§ 13, 18; Paulsen, /nfrorfuc/ioii to Phil- tsophy, pp. 262 ff. — Te. ] 21 322 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES just as physics cannot explain the causal necessity of every particular movement. But it may be shown that human historical life with all the truly valuable elements it contains, as a rule, demands the very conditions under which it actually exists. Take away all evils, and you abolish life itself. Evil remains evil, none the less, and bad, bad, but they are not things that ought absolutely not to be.^ They must be, not for their own sake, however, but for the sake of the good. Yet it cannot be denied that, however we may look at the matter, our think- ing is confronted with peculiar difficulties. We are, in a meas- ure, compelled to form the notion of a life that is wholly free from evil, but every attempt to give it concrete expression fails. The kingdom of God and eternal blessedness are tran- scendent concepts. 2. It is customary to distinguish between physical and moral evils. We may subdivide the former according as they are caused by nature outside of us or by the nature within us. To the first class belong all the things in nature which oppose the needs and wishes of man : the barrenness of the soil, which condemns a people to abject poverty, extreme cli- matic conditions, oppressive heat or severe cold, which dwarf the vital powers ; also all those unfortunate accidents which destroy the fruits of labor and endanger life: floods and droughts, which ruin the crops, lightnings which consume houses, earthquakes which overturn cities. All evils of this kind may be embraced under a common head : they thwart our plans or purposes. Let us first con- sider the normal impediments. It is easy to see that there could be no action and purpose without them. All work, all civilization, consists in overcoming such obstacles. If the fields yielded harvests of their own accord, if the forests pro- duced an abundance of all fruits, there would be no agricul- 1 [For the distinction'made in the Germaii language between evil and iad, tea Kant, Practical Reason, Bk. I., ch. II. (Abbott, pp. 150 f.)— Tb.] THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 323 ture or horticulture; if the climate were always absolutely suited to the comforts of mankind, there would be no need of houses ; if tools of all kinds grew upon trees, or shoes fell from heaven once a year, we should need no trades, — we 'should be living in Utopia. What distinguishes the real world from such a dreamland is the obstacles and the labor made neces- sary by them. Now, no one can doubt that our own world is more adapted to our nature, constituted as it is, than Utopia. As for the extraordinary calamities, it is easy to see that they have the same effect : floods teach us the art of dike- building ; hailstorms, the art of insurance ; earthquakes, the art of public aid. Of course, we cannot prove to the indi- vidual that his misfortune was necessary and good for him in a particular case ; nor would the attempt to do so meet with a favorable response. On the other hand, we may advise him and help him to make the most of his troubles. And perhaps he may at some future time see the evil in a new light. An evil that has been overcome through one's own exertions and with outside help is not only no longer an evil, but has been transformed into a genuine blessing, upon which the memory loves to linger. Who has not at some time or other made the discovery that time transforms evils into blessings ? The same may be said of the evils which are peculiar to human nature, all weaknesses and infirmities of body and soul. We can imagine a body that is much more capable of resisting all kinds of harmful influences, one whose strength and endurance is greater, than our own. We can likewise imagine an intellect that far surpasses human intelligence, one that is not forced to wrest every advance in knowledge from error, prejudice, and superstition. But it is easy to see that this brings us to the same conclusion we reached above : the increase of power has the same effect as the decrease of impediments ; the former would lead to Utopia. We prize the products of the soil because we have acquired them by the sweat of our brow. We should not prize truth as we do if it 324 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES were to fall into our laps without any effort on our part. The Pater Seraphicus at the end of Faust speaks of his eyes as " organs of the earthly sphere." This holds of our entire nature ; it is adapted to the universe and the earth, and hence the latter are adapted to our feelings and volitions. Other creatures may require other organs ; ours are suited to our tasks. What was said above of accidental misfortunes may also be said of those which dwarf our nature and our powers, of disease and infirmity and blindness and other organic de- fects. Disease has produced the art of medicine and the science of the body and of life ; it educates the patient and his surroundings, it warns and impels him to economize his vital powers, it is the great school of patience, resignation, tender love, and mercy, qualities which are valuable not only in time of sickness.^ Similarly, blindness and deafness give to man new and unusually difficult problems to solve ; but they thereby awaken new powers and invent new aids. An ingenious legend deprives Homer of the light of his eyes, merely to endow him with a more brilliant light. Nor can we prove in this case that every evil is invariably necessary to develop- paent and education, but we may say here as before that it is by nature fitted for such a purpose, and that it is a good for him who turns it to good account. At all events, it is wise to in- terpret it so, to regard evil as religious faith regards it, as a trial intended for our salvation. And we must also learn from faith the lesson of modesty, and not claim to understand the connection between evil and salvation in particular cases. Only in a general way can we understand that evils are not only real, but necessary, teleologically necessary. " The light dove dividing the air in her flight and feeling * How much surgery, the care of the sick, and the humane regard for life owe to the recent great wars, so that we may perhaps say that the lives of more people have been saved through them during the last twenty-five years of peace than have been lost in the wars, has been shown by Dr. Brinkmann in a beautiful essay in a work published by Licentiate Weber ; Gp.ichichte der sittlichm, relig- iSsen und sozialen Entwicketung Deutschlands in denletzlen 35 Jahren (1895). THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 325 its resistance, might perhaps imagine that she could succeed much better in a vacuum." Thus Kant illustrates the neces- sity of the facts of experience for the activity of our under- standing. In the same way, the will needs the resistance of the object, evil : there can be no action without resistance, no happiness without obstacles. " Pure " happiness, like pure truth, exists for God alone. We need the additional impetus of ignorance and error, of opposition and evil. 3. But could not, and should not, at least, moral evil, the bad, have been left out ? I believe we must answer the question in the negative, curi- ous though it may sound. Moral evil, too, is, in a certain sense, teleologically necessary. If it were wholly eliminated, human historical life would lack an indispensable element Moral evil appears in two fundamental forms, as sensuality and selfishness. The former embraces all the weaknesses and vices which result when reason and morality surrender the control of life to particular sensuous impulses : intemperance, dissipation, indolence, frivolousness, cowardice. Selfishness is the root of the vices which threaten the welfare of the surroundings : avarice, injustice, malice, haughtiness. We cannot conceive of the possibility of exterminating evil in either form without at the same time striking at the good. The virtues of the first class, prudence, perseverance, cour- age, all presuppose the existence of sensuousness as a medium of resistance. Without the sensuous man's fear of sensuous pain or evil, there would be no courage, without the stimulus of pleasure, no moderation ; hence without potential badness, no virtue, that is, no human virtue. The virtues of the angels may be of a different type, but we can form no notion of them. So, too, the social virtues presuppose the natural self- ishness of the sensuous man : without this there would be no virtues of justice and benevolence in their particularly human form ; they, too, possess an element of self-denial. But not only is the potential evil in our own nature an in-' 326 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES dispensable means of realizing the good, but the actual evil outside of us is the same : in battling against it virtue grows strong. Injustice arouses in the spectator or victim the idea of the right and the sense of justice ; falsehood and deceit maiie truth and veracity valuable ; cruelty and malice form the foil for kindness and nobility of soul. In a poem entitled My Teachers, Robert Hammerling brings out the thought that we first become conscious of the true worth of goodness through evil.^ All the great heroes of humanity became what they were only by struggling with evil. The sentence and execution of Socrates gave his life the proper setting. Jesus had to be glorified by death. He himself tells us so : " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory ? " Nothing in this world so moves the heart of man, nothing has aroused greater reverence and has given greater consolation to humanity than the picture of the Crucified One. ^ I quote a few lines from the poem, which waa published in the journal Deutsche Dichtung (1889): Von wem ich wahr sein lernte ? Von den Liignern, Den Heuchlem, Schmeichlern, Doppelziingigen, Klatschbriidern und Skandalgeschichtenjagern, Nicht minder von Phantasten, Phrasendrechslern, Schonfarbern, geckenhaften Faselhansen. Bis in den Grund der Seele so zuwider Ward mir die Unwahrheit. durch alle diese, Selbst die geringste, dass ich hassen sie Und meiden lernte fiir mein ganzes Leben. Von wem ich Milde lernte ■? Von den Splitterrichterii, Von rucksichtslosen Spijttern, bosen Zungen, Meinungstyrannen und Parteiwiitrichen. Von wem ich lieben lernte t Von den Hassern, Von Egoisten, Menschenfeinden, Neidem, Von Seelenmaklern, Thier- und Menschenqnalem, Vivisektoren, seelenlosen Weibern. Von wem ich schweigen lernte ? Von den Schwatzern I Von wem ich treu sein lernte ? Vou Flatterseelen ! Character/est ? Von Wind- und Wetterfahnen. Habt Dank, ihr meine Lehrer ! Was als Lehrgeld Ich euch entrichtet, nicht zu theuer acht' ich'a. THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 327 But it cannot be presented without its historical surroundings, without the Pharisees and the scribes, without the bigoted high priest and the cowardly procurator, without the fanatical mob and the brutal soldiers ; these form the foil for the bright figure of Christ. The old church hjmn speaks of a happy fault, a felix culpa, which gave us such a Savior. Hence, if we eliminate all evil from history, we at the same time eliminate the conflict of the good with the evil, and lose the highest and grandest possession of humanity : moral heroism. But not this alone ; we lose the entire content of historical life. All historical institutions are the product of a struggle between good and evil. Without rapacity and the love of war on the part of neighbors there would be no defensive union ; without injustice and violence among confederates, no legal order ; the original function of the state is to preserve unity and order : it is an armed union against violence and injustice. Eliminate these, let justice and peace, prudence and benevolence, become perfect on earth, and there will be no more work for armies and diplomacy, for courts and police, for governments and officials. The perfect state defeats itself. The church, too, like the state, was established as a power for good, to battle with sin. It, too, would cease to exist if it had completed its work, if it had entirely sanctified humanity: without sin, no church, no forgiveness of sins, no ministry, no missions. On earth there can be only a militant church, the church triumphant belongs to heaven. Hence goodness can thrive and grow strong upon earth only in the struggle for existence with evil. We cannot even imagine a history without this antithesis.^ But shall we, in acknowledging the teleological necessity of * This is the kernel of truth in MandeviUe's remarkable reflections, Private Vica Public Benefits. Hasbach calls attention to the importance of this man in an interesting article in Schmoller's Jahrbuch (1890), and also points out that Pierre Bayle, the great lover of truth and paradox, adranced the same tuadar mental ideas before him. iJ5i8 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES evil, also recognize it as one of the legitimate constituents of realit}', equal i'.i value to the rest ? That is not my meaning. The evil has po value whatever as such, and no claim to existence. It exists only for the sake of the good, to enable it to act and realize itself. Wo have the same relation here as between light and darkness. The painter cannot paint without employing shadows : his aim, however, is not to paint shadows, but lights and colors. So, too, the poet cannot paint without shadows, he needs the ugly, the vulgar, and the base. It is not his purpose, however, to portray these, but the beautiful, the good, and the grand, and in order to bring them out more clearly he places the base by the side of the good, to confound the evil and exalt the good. So, too, the good exists in history and in life for its own sake, and evil for the sake of the good, as a stim- ulus, as an obstacle, as a foil. It is a negative quantity, valueless as such ; it receives a kind of power and reality only through its opposite, the good. But its power does not benefit it, for it is characteristic of evil that it has no con- structive force, because it is divided against itself. It has, as Kant once said, " the quality, inseparable from its nature, of being opposed to itself and self-destructive." This is also shown by the fact that there can be no positive anti-morality ; immorality is, like error, without law. All truth forms a unified system, but there is no system of errors. There is no mark, says Epictetus, for the misses. Goethe has a similar conception of the purpose of evil ia the world : it is the principle of negation and destruction, the nothing which constantly opposes the something, reality. But Mephistopheles confesses : So viel als ich schon imternommen, Ich wusste nicht ihr beizukommen.* 1 [That which to Naught is in resistance set, — The Something of this clumsy world, — has yet. With all that I have undertaken, Not been by me disturbed or shaken. — Bayard Taylor's Translatit- , THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 329 On the contrary ; the spirit which invariably denies, always wills the bad and always works the good. And the Lord expresses the same idea in the Prologue :* Des Menschen Thatigkeit kann allzu leicht erschlaffen, Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh ; Drum geb' ich gern ihm den Gesellen zu, Der reizt und wirkt und muss als Teufel schafEen.i The inherent unworthiness and failure of the evil also mani- fests itself in self-consciousness : the consciousness of good- ness is peace and joy, the consciousness of evil is discord and unhappiness. This is Mephistopheles' experience. From his first meeting with Faust, in which he bitterly complains that so far everything has gone wrong with him, down to the very end — man md'chte rasend iverden ! — to his last appearance at the conclusion of the second part, when he feels Hiobsartig, Beul' an Beule, Der ganze Kerl, dem's vor sich selber graut Und triumphiert zugleich, -wenn er sicli ganz durchschaut — ^ his mood remains the same : discontent and self-derision are the feelings which he harbors against himself. Whatever he undertakes — though at first it succeeds admirably — finally turns out against him. Both parts of the poem end with the rescue of the soul already caught in his meshes. The last word uttered by him is : Du hist getaiischt in deinen alten Tagen, Du hast's verdient, es geht dir grimmig schlecht.' Goethe interprets the history of mankind in his poem. The memory of man favors this interpretation. History readjusts 1 [Man's active nature, flagging, seeks too soon the level ; Unqualified repose he learns to crave ; Whence, willingly, the comrade him I gave. Who works, excites, and must create, as Devil. — Bayard Taylor's translation] * [Like Job, the boils have cleft me From head to foot, so tiiat myself I shun ; Yet triumph also, when my self- inspection's done. — lb.] ' [Tricked so in one's old days, a great disgust is ; And I deserve it, this infernal spite. — lb.] 330 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES the good and the bad, which so often seem to change places in the present; she exalts the good and great which dur- ing life appeared in the servant's garb and sat in the prisoner's dock, and proclaims it to all the world ; she confounds the evil and base, which once bestrode the world in pomp and glory, and which was proclaimed so loudly by its satel- lites as the great and real, and reveals it in all its noth- ingness. Thus she derives good from evil. "Ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good : " that is the great lesson of history. That is the teaching of the greatest history that was ever lived on earth, the history of Jesus. There is no more elevating and consoling history than the history of the passion. How great Pilate seemed to himself when he sat in judgment upon Jesus : Do you not see that I have the power to condemn you or to set you free ? The poor mad fool, arraigned before him as the Jewish pretender, surely did not look like a dangerous man, like a man destined to influence the history of the world. Surely, there was no need of killing him, he would not disturb the peace of the Roman Empire. But, Pilate might have been saying, it is a very provoking affair. If I turn him loose, I shall have this band of fanatical priests with their troublesome complaints at my back ; the hounds will not lose the scent of the game. And, after all, what difference does it make whether the fool lives a day more or less ? Therefore take him away and put an end to this business ; I don't want to be annoyed with it again. — And now how the r6les have changed ! Long ago Pilate would have been consigned to the great sea of oblivion which had engulfed so many procurators and high priests before him, had not his name attached itself to the memory of the man whom he nailed to the cross : the his- tory of this crucifixion cannot be told without the name of Pilate. And so the story of the sentence pronounced upon Jesus by this easy-going procurator, who was, without doubt, anxious to please his superiors and at the same time to THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 331 be popular with the masses and if possible also to be a just man, will be told as long as historical memory lasts upon this earth ; and so, too, the story "will be told, till the crack of doom, of the extremely cautious high priest, who succeeded so admirably in proving to his own satisfac- tion and that of the worthy college of counsellors that it was better for one man to die than that a whole nation should perish. The story will be told, not because of any merit on the part of these men, and not to their credit, but in order to impress it strongly upon all high priests and procurators of justice in all the corners of the earth that their judg- ment is not the final judgment upon the value of men and things ; and conversely, in order to give to all those accused and condemned for the sake of truth and justice the con- soling certainty that their cause will be decided before a still higher tribunal than that of their present judges.^ So moral evil is constantly annihilated in the memories which mankind preserves of its life; it is degraded to the rank of the worthless and non-existent, serving merely as a foil for something else. Would it be foolish to imagine that this memory is a frag- ment of an absolute divine memory, and that the true reality of spiritual things consists in their existing in such an eternal consciousness, and not in their being parts of a passing, temporal consciousness of individuals ? — and that the good alone constitutes the real in the absolute consciousness, while the evil appears merely as the non-existent, just as darkness is not a reality as compared with the light, but merely its negation ? ^ Thomas Carlyle, the great poet-historian, develops this thought in all his historical dramas. Whatever is real, true, and just is honored by history, not merely by written, but by actual history ; while falsehood and selfishness and vanity are consigned to the nothingness to which they belong. The universe itself constantly strives to do away with the worthless institutions which have no more vitality ; a monarchy or an aristocracy that no longer labors but merely enjoys, is cast off. Only that which labors is real ; that which does not labor does not deserve to be real. 332 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES This conception reminds us of an old remark which Augus- tine, following Aristotle, addressed to the Manichaeans : " The evil has no real essence, but the loss or the absence of the good has received the name of evil."^ Both Spinoza and Leibniz are of the same opinion. Perfection and reality alone are in God. We make a distinction between good and evil simply because our way of looking at things is inadequate; we simply judge the world by its relation to a peripheral point, that is, to ourselves. Everything is necessary and perfect in relation to the unity of reality, that is, God. — True, it must be added, we continue to be peripheral points and cannot get away from ourselves. But we can understand that such is the case, that our conception of things is no more absolute in these matters than in others. And we shall at all events adhere to the view that evil is not on a par with reality and does not possess the force of a negative quantity over and against reality. Hence, we can- not by adding up the good and evil prove that the world is worthless. 4. Does this conception of the nature and import of evil make us quietntic ? It has been charged that it does. I do not believe that the charge is well founded. Our conception does not encourage a man to fold his hands, to recognize the evil as inevitable, and to give it free scope, but rather incites him to combat it and overcome it wherever he finds it ; — indeed, its sole purpose in the world is to be antagonized and over- come. Only in this way can its existence be justified, not by letting it alone. An evil that is given full sway misses its mark. A disease that fails to stimulate the science of medi- cine, that is not employed as a means of exercising patience and benevolence ; poverty which is stolidly borne ; falsehood which is not opposed by the truth ; wickedness which is not confounded, which is not overcome by the good with good- ness, — all these are really evils. You make evils of them, 1 De Civ. Dei, XL., 9. THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 333 you who ought to turn them to good, but surrender to them instead, and give them free scope. But, it is said, if evil will abide with us, and, in a certain measure, must abide with us so long as the earth stands and humanity has historical problems to solve, will not the struggle be a futile one ? Of what use is it to strike off a few heads from Hydra if new ones are constantly to take their place? Will not those who understand the nature of evil necessarily grow tired of the game, and resign themselves to fate? My answer is : The impulse to combat evil does not spring from a conception of a perfect state to be realized by the con- flict, but from the feeling aroused by the pressure of the particular evil at hand. The general belief that the satisfac- tion of every need, the removal of every evil, will invariably be followed by new ones will neither hinder action nor weaken its effects. Even if we should be convinced that want and misery, injustice and falsehood, will exist world without end, we shall not cease combating them wherever they show themselves. And this is as it should be ; the struggle can never be absolutely ineffectual. One result is bound to follow under all circumstances : our antagonism places us in the ranks of those who are fighting for the good and the right. The immediate and real purpose of every human being is not to obtain happiness and perfection for the human race, but to live his own life worthily, and this end he can realize under all conditions. " The important thing to the man of action is that he do the right ; whether the right is done or not need not concern him." ^ Whoever is guided by these thoughts will realize sometliing besides. Whoever weakly succumbs to evil as to something that cannot be overcome, will surely be over- come by it ; inaction is followed by discouragement and weariness. So soon, however, as a man begins to defend him- self, he becomes conscious of his own activity and strength, ' Goethe, Spriiche m Prosa, 99. 334 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES and feels that the evil which he is attacking recedes. The satisfaction thus experienced by him is not destroyed by the thought that another evil may take the place of the van- quished one. Let the coming generations cope with the un- known evils in store for them as best they may. That is not our concern ; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Only in a certain sense will our conception make us, not quietistic, but calm and patient. It makes us hopeful of the final outcome ; the good will conquer, for it is God's cause, it is the only true reality. And it softens our anger, it trans- forms it into the deepest pity. If the evil-doers were really and ultimately successful in the world, it would be difficult or impossible to tolerate them or to forgive them. But the evil does not benefit itself ; nay, it benefits the good, it serves as a means to its perfection, in spite of itself. Jesus does not part from the world with a curse upon his lips, but with a prayer : Forgive them, for they know not what they do. They will not accomplish what they desire, my death ; but they are working for what they do not desire ; the curse will fall upon them ; not my curse, but the consequences of their own deeds, as the eternal order of things demands. " It must needs be that offences come ; but woe to that man by whom the offence Cometh." So, too, the great poet lets his good characters depart from the world without hatred and bitterness, after they have suf- fered the deepest and most cruel wrongs : Cordelia and Des- demona die in peace, without hatred. Thus they overcome evil with good, the evil has no power over them, it cannot destroy their inner peace, it is a means of testing and purify- ing them; the evil defeats itself and is annihilated. The proper use, therefore, which we should make of evil and wickedness is this : we should antagonize it honestly and energetically, and make it a means of our own perfection and, so far as we can, of that of others. On the other hand, it may also be put to a false use. We THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 335 may either endure it stolidly and ill-humoredly and permit it to conquer us, or we may exercise our wits 19. contemplating and analyzing it. The latter was Hamlet's art, and the cause of his ruin. 5. I wish to add a few words concerning an experience which we naturally regard as the greatest of all evils, death. Individuals die, nations die, humanity will die. Does not this seem like a judgment in which reality pronounces upon the vanity and nothingness of life ? That is a false view in my opinion. It is true that death at first sight seems to be an external necessity for the indi- vidual. But it is not hard to convince ourselves that its necessity is not an external, but an inner, teleological neces- sity. A saying of Goethe's is often quoted : " Death is an artifice of nature to have much life." It is certainly the arti- fice which nature employs to have historical life. Without change of generations, there would be no history. Immortal men would lead an unhistorical life, a life of whose contents no mind could form a picture. Moreover, witliout the relation of parents and children the virtues would be lacking which give human life its greatest value : love, care, reverence, piety. Hence, whoever desires life, historical human life, also desires its condition, death. Furthermore, a human life is not infinite in its nature ; it exhausts its powers and its contents. Every action, so physiology and psychology tell us, leaves behind it a tendency to repetition. Thus arise fixed habits of thought and action, the conditions of efficient activity. But the same principle that leads to evolution also leads to involution, and at last produces torpor. The will and the understanding gradually lose the flexibility which they must have to adapt themselves to the ever-changing problems and conditions. The old man at last completely loses the faculty of receiving new impres- sions from the external world, and, with it, the power to act upon them. He becomes a stranger in the world ; he has lived 336 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES himself out of it, so to speak ; his exit is the last necessary step in a long journey. A timely death is not to be inter- preted as the overthrow of life by an external force, but as its inner necessary conclusion. So it is regarded by the friends of the dying man, and not infrequently also by the dying man himself. After the completion of his life he desires to be gathered to his fathers ; he parts from life with thanks to its giver. If such a death were the rule, no one would call it an evil, neither the survivors nor the dying man. He has realized his desires, and that for which he lived abides ; — his descendants, his nation, the true, the beautiful, and the good ; everything for which he lived, abides. It is different when death cuts off a life before its time, be- fore it is completed, perhaps even before it has begun. Here we stand as before an insoluble riddle. An epidemic breaks out in a town ; like a blind fate it steals through the multitude, attacking now this person, now that one, as chance decrees. Even the most cocksure interpreters of the ways of Providence are in the habit of confessing here that God's counsels are inscrutable. Indeed, it would evidently be presumptuous for the human mind to attempt to understand the teleological necessity of the particular cases. Here humble resignation alone is fitting. And it is possible. For no one knows what might have been in store for him who, as we say, dies before his time. Many a man would have been esteemed happy if an early death had spared him from outliving what was the joy of his life. As may be gathered from Solon's remark, a beautiful death in the bloom of youth was not regarded by the Greeks as necessarily a misfortune. And the teleological necessity of the universal law that death does not merely take away the old and decrepit, but also cuts down youth in the full power and enjoyment of life, may also be explained in another way. The Greek sage, Bias of Priene, is said to have uttered the following wise remark : " So seek to live as though you were fated to live a THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 337 long and a short time."^ The thought which this maxim wishes to convey is this : You do not know when the end will come, hence arrange your life so that you may cheerfully die to-morrow, and also so that you may have the strength and the courage for a long life. To be prepared is everything ; you ought to be ready for life as well as for death. If you are, you will believe what the hymn says, that the best time for dying is God's time. When the individual dies he is uplifted by the thought that his life and its achievements will benefit those who come after him ; he himself is perpetuated in the life of his descendants and people. But suppose we are forced to assume that our people, too, will die ; yes, that the time will come when there shall be no more life on the earth ? Does not this break down the last support, the last prop, as it were, upon which all values are based ? And it seems hardly possible to escape the thought. That the peoples repeat the stages of life passed through by the individual, on a larger scale, or rather, that the individual repeats the evolution of the race on a small scale, is a fact which forces itself upon us. History sliows us that nations, too, grow old and stand still. The stock of fixed habits of thought and action, traditional con- ceptions, institutions, rights and customs, gradually increases. Tradition robs us of the power and courage to act upon the world; the past weighs heavily upon the present. The ina- bility to adapt themselves to new conditions causes the death of historical institutions, although the individuals may, say by receiving new blood into their veins, perpetuate themselves and be employed with the elements of the old civilization, to form a new historical being. It is true, history does not show us that the same thing will happen to humanity as a whole — namely, that it will exhaust itself; but that, indeed, ' I find the qnotation in one of the able addresses of Franz Kern, Schulreden bei der Entlassung von Abiturienten, 2d ed., 1887 : oStih iretpa (rjv Sis koI oXlyoy ko) Ko\iv xpivov Pmtrifievos [See Diog. Laertius, Book I. — Tu.] 338 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES has it hardly begun to live as a self-conscious whole. Anal« ogy, however, suggests this thought, while physical reflections also seem to lead us to it. A world-body, too, a stellar sys- tem experiences something like birth, growth, and death. It arises through separation from a mother body, it develops, ripens, produces thousands of living forms; then grows old and dies. The whole earth with all the living forms upon it, humanity included, undergoes this process. Would these thoughts, if they were inevitable, prove the worthlessness of humanity and all life ? Does the transitori- ness of the world prove its nothingness ? I do not believe it. The flower blooms but for a moment, and we have no fault to find. A drama, a tone-poem, has an end ; we do not believe that lessens its value. A finite thing cannot extend its real- ity into infinity, so to speak. The same may be said of the life of a man. It will also hold of the life of a people, nay, of the life of humanity ; its essence, too, is finite and is ex- hausted by a finite evolution. Everything finite is perish- able ; God alone, the Infinite One, fills all times with His presence. — But would not the destruction of humanity mean the destruction of all goods and values? For what, then, have the untold generations labored, battled, and suffered ? — Well, surely not for a final generation, for one that is not to appear until the end of things. If tlie life of a gen- eration has no value in itself, if its relation to its immedi- ate ancestors and descendants cannot make it valuable, then its relation to those most remote successors cannot give it worth. The value of our science and philosophy, of our art and poetry, depends upon what they do for us; it is ex- tremely doubtful whether a remote future will have any use for them. Scholastic philosophy has passed away ; we no longer prize it. That is no argument against its value. If it made the generations who lived in the second half of the Middle Ages wiser and more prudent, if, besides, it prepared the forces which were capable of rising above it, it did every- THE EVIL, THE BAD, AND THEODICY 339 thing that could be expected, and it was perfectly proper for it to die after having completed its work ; no philosophy has eternal value. And the same may be saM of poetry and art, of states and laws. Nothing that is earthly is imper- ishable, nor is its value dependent upon its imperishability. Life is, as a whole as well as in part, an end in itself. Or are we afraid that death will destroy life and its con- tents by hurling it into the past, and hence into nothingness ? But it is n't death that does this ; the passing of time does it at every moment. Every moment of life passes over into the past ; it is destroyed, if going into the past is equivalent to annihilation. If the past life is nothing, death does not have to destroy it. If, however, it is not destroyed and anni- hilated by being past, if it still has reality and significance, death can no longer destroy it. For death has no power to react; nay, it is nothing but cessation, the absence of con- tinuance. Or is the past really worthless and nothing, is only that real which exists now, has only that part of myself and my life reality which is in my consciousness at the pres- ent moment? If you think so, beware lest reality dissolve before your very eyes. The moment has no breadth, it is a point in which no life can be extended. Life can exist only in a process of time which includes the past and the future, not in a moment of the present. If to be past in life means to be unreal, then life cannot possibly ever be a reality. But we shall return to this subject in a later discussion.^ ' Chapter VIII. [See Fechner, Zend-Avesta and Das BicUein vom Leben nach dem Tode. — Tb.] CHAPTER V DUTY AND CONSCIENCE! 1. The Origin of the Feeling of Duty. In the preceding chapters we reached the conclusion : That is good which satisfies the will, or toward which it is by nature directed. We found that the will aims at the preservation and perfection of individual and social life. With this view the results of our analysis of the judgments of value which are expressed in language agreed: Such human acts and qualities are called good as have the tendency to promote the welfare of the agent and his surroundings. Here, howevei", we seem to be confronted with a contradic- tion : Good, we may also say in conformity with popular usage, is not to do what we will to do, but what we ought to do. To do good means to do our duty, and our duty does not seem to coincide with the natural will ; hence there is a ^ [For explanations of conscience, see : — Rational intuitionists : the medisBTal schoolmen ; Cudworth ; Clarke ; Kant ; Fichte ; Janet, Themy of Morals, Bk. III., chap. I. ; Calderwood, Handbook, Part I., chaps. I.-VI. Emotional intuition- ists : Shaftesbury ; Hutcheson ; Hume ; A. Smith ; Rousseau ; Herbart ; Brentano, Vo7n Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntniss ; Schwarz, Grundzuge der Ethik, Percep- tional intuitionists : Butler, Sermons on Human Nature ; Martineau, Types, vol. II. ; Lecky, chap. I. Empiricists : Hobbes ; Locke ; Paley ; Bentham ; James Mill ; John Stuart Mill ; Bain, The Emotions and the Will, The Emotions, chap. XV., The Will, chap. X., also Mental and Moral Science. Evolutionists : Darwin, Descent of Man, chap. IV. ; Herbert Spencer, Data of Ethics, §§ 44 ff.. Induc- tions of Ethics, Social Statics ; Stephen, Science of Ethics, pp. 311 ff. ; Hciffding, Ethik, IV. ; Jhering, vol. II., pp. 95 ff ; Wundt, Ethik, Part III., ch. I., 4, pp. 480 ff. ; R^e, Die Entstehung des Gewissens ; Miinsterberg, Ursprung der Sittlichkeil ; Simmel, Einleitung in die Moralwissenschafi, vol. I., chap. I. ; Baldwin, Social Interpretations. — See also Hyslop, pp. 250-348 ; Gass, Die Lehre vom Gewissen -Tr.] DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 341 conflict between duty and inclination. Before the act, the feeling of duty opposes the inclination : it acts as a deterrent ; after the act, if the inclination has triumplied against the feeling of duty, it condemns : it was had to do what the inclination characterized as good. We call that phase of our nature which opposes inclination and manifests itself in the feeling of obligation and duty, conscience} What is the meaning of this phenomenon, and how can we resolve the antinomy : That is good which I will, and that is good which I ought to do ? Or is our entire previous conception false ? Is the truly moral good, after all, abso- lutely different from the other good, the end of the natural will, and only like it in name ? An examination of the origin of the feeling of duty will assist us in answering this question. How does obligation arise in the willing being ? Whence this conflict between natural inclination and duty ? Is it something supernatural, something breaking into the unity of the willing being from without ? According to the religious view it is : for it, conscience is the voice of God. This notion contains a germ of truth, but it has no value as an explanation. We have no more right to appeal to God as the cause in morals than in physics. Both the natural law and the moral law may point to something beyond them, to something transcendent. But we cannot assume the transcendent in order to deduce from it the facts of experi- ence ; we must seek for the explanation within the empirical world ; and I believe that we can find it there. Darwin attempts such an explanation in the fourth chapter of his Descent of Man. He refers to the traces of similar processes among animals. A female dog is with her puppies ; 1 [For the psychology of conscience see especially : Sully, The Human Mind, vol. II., pp. 155 ff. ; Baldwin, Feeling and Will, pp. 205 fE. ; Hoffding, Psychology, VI., 8, 9 ; Ladd, Descriptive Psychology, pp. 579 ff. ; Jodl, Lehrbuch der Psychologic, pp. 715ff. — Tr.] 342 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES she sees her master getting ready for the chase ; she hesi« tates for a while and finally slinks away to them. Upon the return of her master she meets iiim with all the signs of shame ; she feels remorse for having proved unfaith- ful to him. A struggle may often be observed in domestic animals between different instincts, or between an instinct and some habitual disposition. Here we have, Darwin believes, the phenomenon in its most primitive form; it is the result of a conflict between an acquired habit of the will and an original natural impulse. The feeling of inner compulsion to obey the acquired habit instead of the natural impulse is the feeling of duty in its most primitive form; the feeling of discomfort and shame which arises after the original natural impulse has been satisfied in spite of this opposition, is the most primitive form of re- morse. We might, therefore, define the latter as the reaction of a persistent social or artificial instinct against the gratifi- cation of an original impulse, which, though not permanent, is for the time very powerful. The condition of its appear- ance is a memory sufficiently developed to retain vivid impressions of past acts. Now, these feelings necessarily become especially intense in man. His memory retains the past longer and more faithfully, while his will is permanently and powerfully determined by customs, which, to a large extent, emancipate his conduct from temporary impulses. The objection is urged : This cannot explain the authorita- tive character which belongs to the human feeling of duty.^ The peculiar compulsion characteristic of obligation does not spring from the impulsive nature of the individual ; re- actions of conscience are totally different from the feelings aroused by the non-satisfaction of impulses.^ Duty opposes the individual will with an authority which cannot be derived from the natural impulses. 1 [See, for example, Schurman, Ethical Import of Darwinism, chap. V. — Tr.] " [Martineau, vol. II. p. 419 ff. — Tk.] DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 343 I do not believe that it is impossible to explain this fact on the evolutionistic hypothesis. The authority of duty springs from the relation of the will to custom \Sitte), or, what amounts to the same, of the individual to society. By the term custom (^Sitte) I mean the acts performed by all the members of a tribe, which correspond to the instincts of animals. The actions of animals are governed by three principles : impulse, instinct, and individual experience. Impulse regulates the vegetative-animal functions — nutrition, respiration, reproduction. The term instinct is applied to uniform modes of behavior which solve more complicated prob- lems of animal life, like nest-building, migration, etc. ; such as are acquired by the species in the course of its life, trans- mitted to individuals by heredity, and practised by them without knowledge of their purposiveness. They have been characterized as the organic intelligence of the species.-* In addition to these, the animal also acquires a small measure of individual intelligence through its own experience. The same three principles again meet us in man. The instincts undergo the most peculiar transformation, — they appear as customs. The latter resemble the instincts in that they are stereotyped modes of conduct for the teleological solution of complicated life-problems, as well as in that they are followed without a knowledge of their purposiveness : they represent the intelligence of the race, in which the individual participates. But they differ from instinct : the individual knows of them ; in obeying them, however, he is not conscious of their purposiveness, but of their existence and obligation. He insists upon their observance by others as well as by himself, formulating them into those universal rules which begin with a " thou shalt " or a " thou shalt not." We may therefore define customs as instincts that have become conscious of themselves. The difference is that customs are ' [For the psychology of instinct, impulse, etc., see Ladd, James, Baldwin, SuUy, Hoffding, etc. — Tr.] 344 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES not, like instincts, inlierited organically as natural charac- teristics, but transmitted by conscious activity, through educa- tion. Moreover, customs are upheld by the conscious action of the community : an animal that does not obey its instincts is left to suffer the natural consequences of its behavior ; a man who acts contrary to custom causes a reaction in his surroundings, which may assume many forms, all the way from a scarcely perceptible form of disapproval to extermination.^ Let us take an example. Among many higher animals tlie sexual function is governed by a peculiar instinct. Their intercourse is not promiscuous, but one male lives with one or more females, at least during the breeding season, jealously excluding other males. This habit is noticed in anthropoid apes, among others ; they are either monogamous or polygamous, each family living separately, or several families living associated in a body ; but under all circumstances the male jealously excludes all rivals.^ Hence, instinct regulates the function of reproduction so as to hinder promiscuous intercourse as much as possible ; an arrangement which doubtless tends to preserve life. — In man we find the same thing in the custom of monogamous and polygamous marriage. The custom is impressed upon the succeeding generation by education, particularly upon the female ; it is established in the individual by the virtues of modesty and chastity. Whatever offends against these is kept out of reach, and every open breach of propriety is frowned upon as abominable and detestable. The social environment continues the process of education : deviations from the rules of chastity are severely censured, especially in women and by women ; the disapproval of the surroundings is shown by the change in their attitude towards the offenders. In case the custom itself is violated, 1 "Wundt also compares instinct with custom, EthiJc, pp. 88 ft. [Eng. trans, pp. 127 ff.]. See also in the same place interesting discussions on the relation be- tween custom and law, usage, habit, fashion, and worship. '' Darwin, Descent of Man., ch. XX. DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 845 a stronger reaction ensues ; the unmarried woman is excluded from marriage, and a man who marries her ^nd thereby abro- gates the punishment is himself punished with contempt. In case, however, the offender is a married woman, custom demands the punishment of each of the guilty parties, the punishment being especially severe among polygamous nations. We may, perhaps, find a similar basis for other customs in natural instincts. Thus, for example, the custom upon which the oldest legal codes were universally based, the custom pro- hibiting the killing, assault, or robbery of a member of the same tribe, may have sprung from the instinct which hinders the individuals of a herd from attacking each other. The relation of authority and obedience, which reaches its highest perfection in the state, is also present, in germ, in the animal herd. We can now understand why duty does not appear to be rooted in the will of the individual, but seems to be some- thing external to him, something opposing him with absolute authority. Custom form% the original content of duty . In the higher stages of development the relation between duty and custom changes; duty gradually assumes a more personal and individual character ; a point to which I shall return later on. But, originally, duty enjoined a life in accordance with custom. Popular usage follows the old conception when it calls dutiful behavior sittlieh (customary ; moral), undutiful conduct, unsittlich. Hence we may say: Duty is invested with the authority of custom. In it the will of parents and educators, the will of ancestors, the will of the people, speak to the individual will. To these highest human authorities, a still higher and final authority, the authority of the gods, is universally added. The gods, who are made in the image of man, admit into their nature the will of the people that creates them. As religion develops, they uniformly become the guardians of custom and law. This triple authority of 346 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES parents, people, and gods, reveals itself in the sense of duty : it is a feeling of obligation to a higher will, which sets a limit to the inclinations. To be sure, this higher will is not supra-powerful, like one governing by force or fear; it is acknowledged internally by the individual will as one having absolute right to command, as one which must, under all cir- cumstances, be obeyed, even where it has not the power to compel.^ 2. Relation between Duty and Inclination. We return to the question raised at the outset. What is the relation between the good in the sense of the dutiful, and the good as something which agrees with our inclinations and promotes welfare ? In the light of our previous discussions, we may now say : The two conceptions of the good are harmonized in the inter- mediate notion of custom {Sitte). Customs are, like in- stincts, to which they were found to be analogous, purposive modes of behavior for solving the various problems of life. They conduce to the preservation of the social whole which creates them, and to the normal development of the individ- uals of whom the whole consists. In so far as duty requires the individual to regulate his acts according to cus- tom, dutiful conduct will tend to promote the welfare of the individual and his surroundings. And inasmuch as the will of every individual primarily aims at this end, the will ulti- mately aims at what duty demands. Inclination and custom, the individual will and the social will, tend, on the whole, to determine conduct in the same way. — Thus, to come back to our example, custom demands that sexual life conform to monogamous or polygamous marriage. In reality, the will of the individual naturally aims at the same thing ; only in ex- ceptional cases do our inclinations deviate from the normal. Custom prohibits the individual from killing, robbing, or ' [For a more detailed account of the view advanced in this paragraph, see Spencer and Bain. — Tr.] DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 347 injuring his fellows. In the last analysis, the will of the indi- vidual is also opposed to this ; he desires the life and welfare of his tribe, he also desires to live in peace and friendship with the members of his tribe. That is the meaning of the ancient phrase : Man is by nature an animal sociale ; only in rare, ex- ceptional cases is injury done to a member of the tribe, namely, when the individual will cannot gain a particular pri- vate end in any other way. Custom as such aims at the preservation and welfare of the collective body. Fixed, well- regulated domestic relations, inner peace and security, are ap- parently essential conditions of the welfare of a community as such. If a tribe or people were wholly without them, or if de- viations from them were the rule, the tribe would necessarily succumb, in the struggle for existence, to neighboring tribes ' having a firmly established moral order. But the welfare of the community includes the welfare of the individuals, indeed the community does not exist apart from its mem- bers. Hence we may also say that custom aims at the pres- ervation and welfare of the individual. And in so far as the individual desires the preservation and welfare of his own life, he desires exactly what custom desires. Indeed he can- not realize his welfare except as custom prescribes, — on the one hand, because this is the most appropriate means of solving a particular problem of life, on the other, because departures from custom would produce a conflict between him and the whole, which would necessarily react unfavor- ably upon his individual welfare. Hence custom and the individual will, duty and inclination, really affect conduct in the same way. Conflicts between the two are accidental and exceptional. What a firm hold custom has upon the will of the individ- ual may be noticed when a custom is violated. All the mem- bers of tlie community at once rise in its defence ; they must consequently desire the stability and supremacy of custom. Only in occasional isolated cases does the individual desire an 348 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES exception to be made in his favor. A custom obeyed by no one and supported by no one would no longer be a custom. The law of custom is therefore also a natural law in the sense that the formula is an expression of actual, universal occur- rences, and not merely of pure obligation. But how does it happen that duty and inclination oppose each other in consciousness, if not uniformly, at least fre- quently ? — I believe this may be explained as follows : The individual becomes clearly conscious of custom only when his inclinations are directed towards something contrary to cus- tom. So long as they conform to custom, conscience has nothing to say to him ; silence gives consent. Conjugal affec- tion is not felt as a duty, but when the impulse takes a differ- ent direction, custom arises in consciousness and declares that the satisfaction of such impulses is contrary to duty. The inclination to marry is not felt as a duty ; only in case the impulses no longer tend in the direction of matrimony, as happened during the decline of the ancient nations, is mar- riage regarded as a duty by the community, and felt to be such by the individual. We do not speak of the duty of liv- ing, because the will naturally aims at life. But whenever a man feels an inclination to abandon life, he becomes conscious of the fact that suicide is immoral, and that it is a duty to live. We do not look upon the satisfaction of hunger as a duty, but if it is a duty to live, it surely must be a duty to satisfy hunger. So long as we satisfy our hunger according to custom and usage, the voice of duty is silent, but when we feel inclined to violate custom, it appears in consciousness, say for example, as a prohibition against excess or a parti- cular kind of food. So, too, we feel it to be our duty to acquire and preserve property only when the natural impulse to acquire and possess is absent ; as a rule, we regard it as a duty merely to limit the impulse ; hence the command : Thou shalt not steal, cheat, be avaricious, greedy, or extravagant. We do not feel that it is our duty to speak ; inclination impels DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 349 us to do it ; it is a duty to limit tlie desire ; hence the com- mand : Thou slialt not be garrulous and indigcreet, thou shalt not lie. — It may therefore be said that duty uniformly arises as a limitation of impulses, whose existence it presupposes ; without impulses there would be no duty. It is in its origin essentially negative: Thou shalt not is the formula with which custom, law, duty, originally oppose the indi- vidual when his impulses go too far. The positive formula does not read : Thou shalt, but : I will. Only when the natural impulse or will is lacking does the formula of duty make its appearance, and change the : I will, into the : Thou shalt. Hence a contradiction between duty and inclination is to be explained as an exception. The commands of duty or the moral laws are formula expressing the nature and direc- tion of the real will of a community, which, as a rule, mani- fests itself in all the members of the same. It is no more strange that there should be exceptions in these rules than in physiology ; they are empirical laws of exceedingly com- plicated phenomena. There are blind men and deaf men, and yet it is the rule that men have sight, hearing, and speech. Similarly, the existence of adultery, theft, and falsehood does not do away with the rule that men live in permanent families, possess property, and give expression to their inner states in speech. When we look at a people as a whole, the matter be- comes perfectly plain : obligation and will coincide, the people wills its customs and laws, for these are not imposed from without ; — they are the expressions of the nation's particular will. Will and obligation do not entirely coincide in the in- dividual ; there are cases in which he wills what he ought not to do, and conversely : then he looks upon the law as some- thing outside of him, as something limiting his will. Generally speaking, however, he too wills what custom wills, and is always ready to assist in hindering deviations on the part of others, if not in deed at least in word and thought. 350 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 3. Critique of the Kantian View?- According to Kant the conflict between inclination and the feeling of duty is essen- tial to morality. An act, in his opinion, has moral worth, only when the feeling of duty determines the will, in the absence of all inclinations or in spite of them. Hence he does not re- gard it as meritorious to do good from inclination. The Vicar of Wakefield confessed that nothing gave him greater pleasure than to make people happy ; and that he was not unsuccessful in his efforts his friends are well aware. But, according to Kant, the moralist would have to say that " an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations. . . . For the maxim lacks the moral import ; namely, that such actions be done /row duty, not from inclination. Put the case that the mind of that philanthropist were clouded by sorrow of his own, extinguishing all sympathy with the lot of others, and that while he still has the power to benefit others in distress, he is not touched by their trouble because he is absorbed with his own ; and now suppose that he tears him- self out of this dead insensibility, and performs the action without any inclination to it, but simply from duty, then first has his action its genuine moral worth." ^ The same is true of the preservation of one's own life and the promotion of one's own happiness : " The anxious care which most men take for it has no intrinsic worth." " On the other hand, if adversity and hopeless sorrow have completely taken away the relish for life ; if the unfortunate one, strong in mind, indignant at his fate rather than desponding or dejected, wishes for death, and yet preserves his life without loving it — not from inclination or fear, but from duty — then his maxim has a moral worth." * * [Janet, Theory of Morals, Book III., chap. V. ; Mackenzie, Manual, chap. IV., §§ 8fE. ; Muirhead, Elements, § 56 ; Bradley, jE:Mtco; 5*u(ftes, Essay IV. — Tb.]; 2 Gtundlegung zur M_etqphi/sik der Sitten, Hartenstein's edition, IV., p. 246 [Abbott's translation, Kant's Theori/ of Ethics, p, 14] ' Ibidem. DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 351 This view of Kant's called forth the ridicule of Schiller's well-known lines. A pupil of the critical etljics reveals to the master his scruples of conscience : " Grern dien' ich den Freunden, doch thu' ich es leider mit Neigung, Und so wurmt es mich oft, dass ich nicht tugendhaft bin." i "Whereupon he receives the following advice : " Da ist kein andrer Rath, du musst' suchen sie zu verachten, Und mit Abscheu alsdann thun, was die Pflicht dir gebeut." ' This ridicule, we must confess, is not undeserved. Accord- ing to Kant's theory, a man's worth depends entirely upon his ability to eliminate inclinations and impulses from his will, and to determine it solely by the feeling of duty. Such a ^ human being, doing his duty solely for duty's sake, is tlie P most wooden mannikin ever constructed by a system-builder. Nevertheless, there is a germ of truth in the view. The con- flict between duty and inclination is not the rule, and the suppression of inclination by the feeling of duty is not the condition of all moral worth. Still we may say that the true moral character is plainly revealed in such a conflict. When a rich man finds a purse on the street and restores it to its iawful owner, we look upon his conduct as perfectly natural, without regarding it as an evidence of remarkable honestv. The man is perhaps on his way to the stock exchange, where he may, by skilfully manipulating the market, deprive a fellow- speculator of his entire fortune without feeling the slightest compunction. When, however, a poor man finds himself in a similar position, and, actuated by the feeling of duty to return the money, resists his desire to appropriate what is not his, we recognize this as a strong proof of his honesty, nay of his morality. So it is everywhere : where there has ^ [Gladly I serve my friends, but, alas ! I do it from inclination, hence I am plagued with the doubt that I am not virtuous. — See Schiller's distich-group, Die Philosophen. — Tn..] ' [Tour only resource is to try to despise them, and then to do with aversion that which duty enjoins upon you.] 352 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES never been a conflict between inclination and duty, where the will has never had an opportunity of deciding against incli- nation and for duty, the character has not been tested. We have no assurance of moral trustworthiness until the will has shown itself proof against temptation. On the other hand, we shall not concede that a will which always naturally inclines to the right, is on that account less worthy than one which has had to battle for its rectitude against an unwilling or dangerous temperament. Kant leans to this view. " If nature," we read in the same place, " has put little sympathy in the heart of this or that man : if he, supposed to be an upright man, is by temperament cold and indifferent to the sufferings of others, perhaps because in respect of his own he is provided with the special gift of pa- tience and fortitude, and supposes, or even requires, that others should have the same — and sucli a man would cer- tainly not be the meanest product of nature — but if nature had not specially framed him for a philanthropist, would he not still find in himself a source from whence to give himself a/ar higher worth than that of a good-natured temperament could be ? Unquestionably. It is just in this that the moral worth of the character is hrought out which is incomparably the highest of all, namely, that he is beneficent, not from inclination but from duty." 1 Such a man would certainly be an estimable man, much more so than an effeminate, will-less person, who yielded to the promptings of a compassionate heart ; it does not seem improbable to me that Kant was thinking of himself when he drew this picture ; nevertheless such a character would not be the highest and most perfect type of human nature imaginable. An angel from heaven would, according to the Kantian for- mula, necessarily lack the moral worth " which is incom- parably the highest of all," in so far as his " temperament " would not be in need of and capable of being improved by the will. And yet who would reproach him for this defect ? 1 [Abbott's translation, pp. 14-15.] DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 353 In the poem Bas Grluch Schiller contrasts two persons : the one has, through his own exertions, made i^n honest man of himself, while the other has been endowed by the gods with a beautiful and noble nature. He calls the latter happy, and assigns to him the higher rank in the moral order : Vor Unwurdigem kann dich der Wille, der ernste, bewahren, Allea Hochste, es kommt frei von den Gottern herab.* He expresses the same idea in a similar poem : Der Crenius : Muss ich dem Trieb misstraun, der leise mich warnt, dem Gesetze, Das du selber, Natur, mir in den Busen gepragt, Bis auf die ewige Schrift die Schul' ihr Siegel gedriicket, Und der Formel Gef'ass bindet den fliichtigen Geist ? * He answers the question : Hast du, GlUcklicber, nie den schiitzenden Engel verloren, Nie des frommen Instincts liebende Warnung verwirkt : O dann gehe du hin in deiner kostlichen Unschuld I Dich kann die Wissenschaft niohts lehren, sie lerne von dirl Jenes Gesetz, das mit ehernem Stab den Straubenden lenket, Dir nicht gilt's. Was du thust, was dir gefallt, ist Gesetz." Indeed, Kant, and Fichte still more, exaggerate the r5le which the consciousness of duty is destined to play in life. Not only is it not true that we are impelled at every step we take by the consciousness of duty, but we cannot even regard this as a fault. It is neither conceivable nor desirable that the natural impulses should be replaced by the " respect for the moral law " as the sole motive of the will. The moral phil- * [The will, the serious will, can guard thee against unworthy things ; but eveij- thing great is freely bestowed by the gods.] 2 [Must I distrust the impulse which silently warns me, the law which thou thyself. Nature, hast written upon my heart, until the school has set its seal upon the eternal impress, and the rigid formula binds the soaring spirit ?] ' [If thou hast never, thou blessed one, lost thy guardian angel, and hast never Jnppressed the loving warning of the pious instinct ; O then go on in thy precious innocence ! Science can teach thee nothing, nay, let her learn from thee I That law, which with an iron rod rules the resisting ones, is not meant for thee. What thou dost, what pleases thee, is law.] 354 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES osophers, to be sure, are all inclined to regard that as the most perfect state in which the action of the will is solely de- termined by the idea of duty. Spinoza's sage is governed wholly by the dictates of reason (ex dietamine rationis ducitur), the impulses no longer influence his conduct ; and the wise man of Bentham or Mill does not essentially differ from him. Indeed, they are both modelled after the Stoic and Epicurean sage. In the real world, the reason or the idea of duty does not play so important a part. It is a necessary regulator of tlie natural impulses, but it cannot replace them ; the im- pulses are the weights, so to speak, which keep the clockwork of life in motion ; the reason cannot take their place, it has no motive force of its own. Kant is here still entangled in the notions of the old ration- alism, whose power, it must be confessed, he did so much to break. In the following period, nature again received her due, the fundamental conception being that the highest and best is not invented by the reason and made according to conscious rule, but is the result of an unconscious growth. This holds true of the good no less than of the beautiful ; the beautiful is not thought out and produced by rational reflection, ac- cording to the rules of esthetics, any more than the good and perfect is planned and manufactured according to the rules of ethics. The true work of art is unconsciously conceived and produced by the genius ; aesthetics docs not play an im- portant part in the process. So, too, the moral genius, " the beautiful soul," safely guided by instinct, lives a good and beautiful life, without constantly reflecting upon the moral law. The rules of aesthetics and ethics possess no inherent motive power. It is their province to guard against trans- gressions ; they are not productive, but restrictive. And it is by no means necessary that the rule be present in con- sciousness during the production of the work of art or moral act, or even occupy the centre of attention ; this would impede and disturb the process of organic growth. It is a well- DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 355 known fact that when we begin to reflect upon rules of spelling in writing, we become confused and uncertain. The easiest way to answer a question in orthogfaphy is to write the word mechanically. Similarly, many a man decides a moral question better and with greater certainty by perform- ing the act than by reflecting upon it. As Goethe says : All unser redlichstes Bemvihn Gliickt nur im unbewussteu Momente. ' Hence the unbiassed mind will not make the moral worth of a man dependent upon whether he thinks much of duty and is conscious of it as a motive. The designedly -moral character is apt to possess something of that " intentionality " which makes such an unfavorable impression upon us, when com- pared with the natural disposition. I do not know whether the descriptions which are given of Kant's life are absolutely faithful, whether Kant really was such a living clockwork, having duty as the mainspring ; but I must confess that these descriptions have never pleased me. The feeling of duty may have prevented much evil in the world, but the beautiful and the good have never sprung from the feeling of duty, but from the living impulses of the heart. The creative artists are all familiar with this thought ; it is constantly emphasized by the poets, by Goethe and Schiller, as well as by Riickert : Mein Herz, sieh an den Baum in seiner Bliitenpracht ; Es wird ihra gar nicht schwer, was iiin so herrlich macht Aus seinem Innern scheint, er braucht sich nicht zu zwingen, Ein Strom von Lust und Licht und Liebe zu entspringen, Mit Miihe ringt er nicht, das Einzle zu gebaren. Das Ganze lebt und wirkt, er lasset es gewahren, Du solltest deine Pflicht, wie er die seine, thun, Dann w'arest du so licht, und bist so triibe nun. 4. Let me add a remark concerning a few other errors of the a-prioristic-intuitionalistic moral philosophy. It asserts ' [AH our best eudeavors succeed only in the unconscious moment. — Tk.J 356 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES that the laws of duty are axiomatic formulae, which are recog- nized with immediate and intuitive certainty, like the mathe- matical axioms. The propositions : Just and honest action is good. Lying and cheating is bad, are accepted as absolutely true as soon as they are understood. It is neither necessary nor possible to prove their validity. We shall have to concede that the moral laws are im- mediately and universally recognized as valid propositions. They are nothing but the positive or negative expressions of custom, and every member of the community is conscious of custom, if he has any part in the life of the community. He knows of custom (Sitte) through the countless particular judg- ments by which others and he himself have approved and dis- approved of acts ; the certainty with which he immediately decides in individual cases depends upon practice. He also knows of custom through universal formulae ; commandments and prohibitions have been impressed upon him from child- hood up ; and Schopenhauer says, not without reason, tliat truths which we do not remember having learned are regarded as innate. Moreover, language has incorporated moral judg- ments into the meaning of the words which designate modes of conduct: the terms falsehood and avarice express disap- proval, just as frankness and frugality express approval. Hence the proposition : Falsehood is bad, is an " analytic " judgment which is formed a priori. Finally, it is no less cer- tain that the moral laws arise in consciousness as " categorical imperatives " : they do not counsel us to promote individual or universal happiness, but appear as absolute commands and prohibitions. So far, therefore, intuitional ethics asserts facts which cannot be doubted. But it is in error when it goes on to claim that these imperatives are objectively groundless, and that the sole business of ethics consists in systematizing the particular commandments and prohibitions, and perhaps in subsuming them under a universal principle, say for example, their fitness to become universal law. There is unquestion- DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 357 ably an objectiTe ground for the existence and validity of the moral laws, which appear in consciousness in the form of ab- solute commands and prohibitions ; their observance is the condition of the welfare of the individual and tlie species. And it is the business of moral philosophy to discover this ground, just as it is the business of a philosophy of law to ex- plain the raison d'etre of law, that is, to prove its teleological necessity by indicating the problems of human collective life which it solves. Inventories and codifications will never make a science, least of all a philosophical science. Another error to which intuitional ethics inclines is the error that conscience invariably reveals to everybody, with subjective certainty and objective infallibility, what duty de- mands. Thus Kant contends that " the commonest intelli- gence can easily and without hesitation see " what the moral law requires to be done; or, "what duty is, is plain of itself to every one ; but what is to bring true durable advantage, sucli as will extend to the whole of one's existence, is always veiled in impenetrable obscurity." ^ The latter statement is certainly true ; but it is as cer- tainly not true that no one is ever in doubt as to what duty demands. In many cases, of course, our duty seems perfectly clear immediately, but by no means in all. An official of an insurance company, in violation of the rules of his corporation, shows partiality to an insurer, and receives compensation for his act. That is theft, says con- science. He does the same thing, to please a colleague, or because of his friendship for a neighbor, but without gain to himself. That is contrary to duty, says his conscience, you are employed to use your best endeavors to promote the interests of the company and to protect it against loss. But let us again change the conditions, let us say that the insured has fulfilled all his obligations to the company, but has ' See Critique of Practical Reason, Book I., ch. I., § 8, Remark II., Abbott'j traDslation, p. 126, 358 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES overlooked a trifling, purely technical detail, and that this oversight legally releases the company from its obligations. Let us imagine that, upon the day of payment, tlie official acci- dentally discovers the mistake. He knows that the company can refuse payment. But he also knows that, unless the payment is made, the insured or his heirs will suffer extreme hardships. The company, however, is paying a dividend of eighty per cent. What shall he do ? Has he the right to overlook the mistake ? Or shall he appeal to the company's sense of justice ? As though he did not know that corpora- tions have no souls ! His conscience does not tell him what to do. — Can a Kantian with his magic formula : Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature, reach an unambiguous conclusion? It is undoubtedly contrary to duty to gain possession of my neighbor's property by burglary or theft. But there are other means : he is in trouble, and I can lend him money, and I can by skilful operations get hold of his property in a lawful way. That is usury, says conscience. But to another man's conscience it may seem perfectly proper: what is not pro- hibited is allowable ; business is business, and everybody will have to look out for himself. But let us modify the case. Is it right for me to lend a man money at interest, when I know that it is to my advantage, but not to his, to do so ? Must I at least first convince myself that I am not benefit- ing myself at his expense ? And how about commercial transactions ? A banker is in possession of a piece of news that is not yet known to others; say, for example, he has heard of a revolution in Spain. He sells his Spanish bonds, and the buyers, instead of him, lose a million, as the next morning shows. Is that right ? A beginner on the stock- exchange may feel somewhat ill at ease after such a venture. His conscience reminds him : Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you ; he would presumably not like to look his customers in the face the next day. But DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 359 shall I first inquire, every time I make a trade, whether the other party is going to suffer thereby ? But that is impossible. Commerce is possible only on the assumption that both parties are tacitly agreed that each is guarding his own interests, and expects the other to do the same. Even the most honest woman buys where she can buy the cheapest, without asking whether the seller can exist under the cir- cumstances ; and every seller takes what he can get without asking whether his goods are worth so much to the buyers or not. Where shall we draw the line between that which is unquestionably right and that which is unquestionably wrong ? The above cases are taken from the sphere of common honesty, and are comparatively simple. The diificulties be- come still more apparent when we consider more com- plicated, delicate, personal relations. A young man has promised a girl to marry her; must he keep his promise? Certainly, he has given his word — his word is sacred. But it happened at a time and under conditions in which he was not wholly master of himself; he now sees that he cannot keep his word without getting into all kinds of trouble. Can he break the engagement without her consent ? But what would promises be worth if they could be broken as soon as we found it inconvenient to keep them ? But he was de- ceived in the person, he was deluded into taking the step by all sorts of feminine artifices, and now he finds, upon closer acquaintance, that it would be intolerable for him to live with her, that it would be as much of a misfortune for her as for him : what ought he to do ? She will not give him up ; ought he to marry her, or to keep putting it off from year to year, or shoot himself through the head ? Or would it be right and dutiful to say, I cannot and I will not? A politician or a statesman differs from the party or the government to which he belongs. A platform is made or a manifesto published in which the point at issue is emphasized 360 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES as an essential doctrine of the party, or as a special aim of the government. He is asked to sign the paper. What ought he to do ? Sign it ? But then he would be subscrib- ing to a lie. Leave the party ? By doing this, he would not only end his public career, but perhaps also seriously damage the cause which he is supporting. What shall he do ? Will an appeal to the Kantian formula of duty tell him ? I do not be- lieve it. He will ask himself whether it is a matter of great importance. If not, then it will be possible for him to com- promise ; for how could there be co-operation without compro- mise ? If, however, the matter is of vital importance, he will say to himself : It is better for me to separate from my col- leagues than to be an insincere and half-hearted follower. — But what are the essentials? — When the German bishops who opposed the dogma of infallibility, accepted the dogma after the decision had been rendered, they were bitterly re- proached. Ought they to have continued in their opposition, and left the church ? But could they not justly have said the church is more than a piece of church constitution ? Still, does any one among them recall those days with any degree of satisfaction ? And has any one of those who took the opposite course reproached himself for it ? But, it may be retorted, this makes all moral questions uncertain, and subjects them to unbridled casuistry. I do not believe that it makes them uncertain, they are uncertain, and will always remain so. The matter is really not so simple as those imagine who hold that an innate power, called practical reason, or conscience, infallibly regulates a man's conduct by subsuming each case under a general rule. The problem surely does not consist merely in deciding given cases according to a ready-made formula. The mistaken idea that there can be no doubt in particular cases concerning what is dutiful or undutiful connects itself with another error, peculiar to intuitional ethics, that the laws of morality are laws with absolutely/ no exceptions, and DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 861 that every act not agreeing with the formula of the law must be contrary to duty, and immoral. We have already touched upon this point above (pp. 233 ff.). Inasmuch as it most clearly emphasizes the difference between the two schools of moral philosophy, I shall again consider it here. Kant regards the absolute logical necessity of the moral laws as the backbone of his entire theory ; according to him, uniformity (^Qesetzmasiigkeif) is inseparable from morality. For teleological ethics, on the other hand, the moral laws are empirical laws, like the laws of physiology, or the rules of dietetics based upon them. Like all empirical laws they are open to exceptions. Although it is undoubtedly true that certain modes of conduct have the tendency to promote or, as the case may be, to injure the life of the agent and his sur- roundings, it is always possible, owing to the great complexity of human relations, for circumstances to arise in which the natural effect is changed into its opposite. Hence the formal breach of a moral law may become morally possible, nay necessary. We are never in doubt about this when it comes to actual practice. That intuitional ethics cannot explain this fact is a further proof of its insufficiency. Let us take an example. The first duty of the soldier is obedience, unconditional obedience in the service. Military obedience is a fundamental condition of the existence of the modern state. With what terrible seriousness we regard this duty may be seen from the severity of the penalties imposed for the slightest infraction of the rule. Nevertheless, circum- stances can arise under which this duty may be violated with- out remorse and without reproach. In the convention of Tauroggen General York made a treaty with the enemy on his own responsibility, basing his action upon his individual opinion of the political situation, in open opposition to the commands of the king, and, therefore, openly breaking the rule of military obedience. Was the act contrary to duty, and therefore morally wrong ? Certainly, according to the 362 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES Kantian formula. York surely could not have willed that the maxim of his action become a universal law of nature and determine the actions of the Prussian soldier, as, for instance : When the situation of the country seems to you to demand a different course of conduct from the one ordered by the com- mander-in-chief, then act according to your own judgment and contrary to his command. Nevertheless, York decided after much hesitation, to do that very thing. The outcome was doubtful ; his conduct might, to say nothing of the breach of obedience and the bad example, have caused the ruin of the State. And yet he acted as he did. It seemed possible to him to save the country from a humiliating and unten- able position at that particular time, perhaps only at that time and only by his independent action. The results justi- fied his conduct ; the king himself afterwards recognized this, and history now praises York's decision ; even a French historian will hardly blame him. This amounts to a con- fession that cases can occur, in which the safety of the country may demand of an officer what the fundamental law of the service prohibits : independent action in political questions, against the express command of the government. No general rule can state when such an emergency exists. We can lay down as the only possible universal rule : The soldier must obey, and under no circumstances shall he be impelled by independent political reflections to act contrary to his orders. But nevertheless a condition is tacitly added: Provided the welfare of the country does not make a different procedure absolutely necessary. Salus populi suprema lex: an awfully dangerous, yet never- to-be-abolished proviso of all particular laws, even of the most inviolable. It is just that a mistaken appeal to this law on the part of the soldier should be punished with death. There is no moral law which is not subject to the same condition, none, therefore, that does not admit of exceptions. Like tlie Sabbath, the moral laws are made for man, not man DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 363 for the moral laws. The jurists have an old maxim : Fiat justitia,pereat mundus. In accordance with this, the Kantian moral philosophy says : Fiat lex, pereat vita. I'here is a good reason for tlie formula : the stability of law is more important than such and such a particular purpose ; but, ultimately, the law exists for the sake of the people, to preserve them and not to destroy them. And the same relation obtains between the moral law and human life. Ultimately it owes its value solely to the fact that it has the tendency to preserve life and not to destroy it. Should a case arise in which obedience to the law would produce permanent ruin, the form must give way to the content, the means to the end. We sliall have oc- casion, later on, to show that the particular moral laws are subject to this condition ; the lie of necessity, the necessary wrong, which the jurists call the law of necessity, are such exceptions. 5. Conscience. We defined conscience as the consciousness of custom or the existence of custom in the consciousness of the individual. The authority with which it speaks is the au- thority of all those who support and protect custom and law against the particular deviating will : first, the authority of parents and teachers, who impress custom or objective moral- ity upon the soul of the child ; then the authority of the wider circles, which pronounce judgment upon the conduct of the individual by the bestowal of praise and blame, honor and disgrace ; further, the authority of the law and the magistracy, which deters the offender by threats and punishments ; finally, the authority of the gods, which surrounds custom and law with religious awe. The individual compares his conduct with the standard thus sanctioned and protected, and regulates his individual will according to the universal will, which, after all, is his own general or fundamental will. Hence arise those emotions which are experienced before the deed as the de- terrent or impelling conscience, arid aftei* the deed, as remorse or moral satisfaction- The content of conscience is 364 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES varied, as varied as the customs themselves, which the differ- ent tribes and nations evolve according to tlieir different natures and different conditions of life. The form, however, is universally the same : a knowledge of a higher will, by which the individual will feels itself internally hound. This higher will, is, in the last analysis, universally regarded as the will of a superhuman, of a divine power. Those who interpret conscience as a voice from above, and regard their conception as an explanation of its origin, reject the historical-psychological explanation, not only as an unsat- isfactory, but even dangerous theory : it robs conscience of its sanctity, and hence also destroys its efficacy. And this con- clusion is not infrequently accepted by those at whom it is aimed. Thus P. R^e, in his subtle work on the Origin of Conscience^ holds : " The practical consequence of the his- torical-psychological examination is that the commands of conscience will lose their sanctity ; whoever knows how human were the agencies which produced conscience loses the abso- lute fear of violating its commands." ^ I cannot share this view. It does not seem to me that the loss of the authority of conscience is either a logical conse- quence or a necessary psychological effect of the anthropolog- ical explanation. It is not a logical consequence, for why should the moral laws lose their validity because we are con- vinced that they express the experience gradually acquired by the race in regard to what is wholesome and harmful ? On the contrary, what stronger proof can we desire than the hereditary wisdom of a people ? In conscience we have the subjective reflex of the objective natural order of moral life, as it has developed in custom and law ; surely this knowledge cannot destroy the validity or the teleological necessity of the ^ Ursprung des Gewissens. * [See aleo Guyau, Esquisse d*une morale sans obligation n{ sanction : " The scientific spirit is the enemy of all instinct; it tends to destroy the sense of obligation on which instinct is baaed. Every instinct disappears upon conscions' ness." — Tr ] DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 365 order. Nor can the psychological effect of the view be indifference to custom. Not even when w^ have convinced ourselves of the falseness or absurdity of inherited or educa- tionally acquired elements of soul-life, do they cease to influence us. I should like to know how many of our most en- lightened natural-scientists are absolutely free from supersti- tious fear ; people who do not believe in ghosts in the day-time are plentiful, but how is it at night ? And here, in our case, we are not dealing with false or meaningless elements of pre- sentation and feeling, but with highly essential and important ones. Surely no one believes that a nation wholly devoid of what we call custom and conscience, in which the individual is governed in his actions by prudence and fear, could live a single day. Even the most enlightened philosopher is guided in his daily conduct, not by moral philosophy, but by impulses and feelings, by custom and conscience, by his love for the good, his avei'sion to the vulgar and bad. Chemistry is good and useful, but it does not make taste and smell superfluous ; we shall continue to employ these senses in discriminating substances ; indeed they often prove to be vastly superior to the re-agents of the chemists. And who would rather obtain his kitchen recipes from a chemistry of foods than trust the hereditary wisdom of the race concerning what is wholesome and palatable, which has been transmitted and increased from generation to generation ? It is the business of chemistry not so much to invent as to explain these subtle things ; which, of course, will not hinder it from giving us something better now and then. But if any one should decide to throw away appetite and hereditary wisdom, and trust himself solely to chemistry, we should regard him as very foolish. It would be equally foolish for a man to discard conscience and custom, and to regulate his life solely by moral philosophy .1 * "The painful feelings of shame or a had conscience serve the practical ends of nature. They are the preventives, as it were, which hinder us from doing what is injurious to the totality of our organism, just as animals can distinguish 366 CONCEPTS AUD PKINCIPLES But the transcendent sanction would surely disappear! — Here let me simply say that in my opinion the time will never come when men will cease to regard the morality and holi- ness which they have evolved from their innermost being as derived from the essence of God or the nature of the All-Real. How could these enter into the heart of man were they not rooted in the very nature of things ? Is man an anomaly in the universe ? Is he merely an accidental or external object iti it ? — Are not he himself and his entire essence grounded in the All-Real ? The words of Hippocrates, with which Stein- thal prefaces his treatise on the Origin of Language, are applicable to every historical-psychological view of human affairs : All things are divine and all things are also human (irdvTa 6ela kol avBpannva TravTo). Certain individuals may, no doubt, when enlightened as to the origin of conscience, come to believe that everything is right that can be done without danger of falling into the hands of the police. When a person who has been accus- tomed to look upon the moral laws as the arbitrary commands of an almighty being, who has declared his intention of pun- ishing all violations sooner or later, begins to doubt the exis- tence of such a being or to disbelieve in him altogether, he will necessarily conclude that these laws have no meaning. And I do not know how we can escape the conclusion if we accept the premises upon which it rests. Indeed, I know of no way of escaping it, except by showing that these laws are not the accidental injunctions of an arbitrary being, but that they are inherent in the nature of things, in the nature of man. So teleological ethics conceives them ; and conscience it con- ceives as the reflection of the objective uniformity of moral life in the consciousness of the individual. Hence it regards between wholesome and unwholesome food by means of their more finely devel- oped nerves of taste. Whenever an individual or a nation is deprived of the in- stinctive feelings of shame, dissolution follows." — ZoUner, Ueber die Nalur det Kometen, 3d edition, 1883, p. 4. DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 367 conscience as a highly important organ for preserving life, as an organ which cannot be destrojed by sjJeculations con- cerning its origin ; any more than the value of language can be impaired by abandoning the old superstitions which explained it as a direct communication from heaven. Or do the rules of grammar lose their validity, as soon as we become convinced that they originated in a human way ? Well, then, neither will the moral laws lose their validity. Whoever desires to parti- cipate in the intellectual life of his people must speak their language and obey their laws, whoever desires to participate in their moral life must follow their customs and obey the dic- tates of his conscience. And he must not merely do these things as though he could refrain from doing them if he chose : he must do them because the language of the people is his conscience, because he with his entire volitional and emotional nature is the product of the popular soul. — A representative of the age of Enlightenment, like Voltaire, who regards the " annihilation of infamous superstition " as the sole great object of science, might perhaps triumphantly exclaim, after having satisfied himself as to the falsity of the theological explanation of con- science : Hence, conscience is nothing, it is but a clever invention of unscrupulous priests to enslave the souls of men. The historical school, which starts from the hypothesis that everything has developed naturally, the evolutionistic anthro- pology of the nineteenth century, will view with surprise this outburst of joy : as though the falseness of the theory implied the falseness of the thing itself, as though the latter would have to stand and fall with the former ! Nay, it will be convinced on a priori grounds that an organ so universal as this, must perform a function essential to the preservation of life ; otherwise, how could it have arisen ? And it will regard it as the business of science to show the importance of this organ for human life. But if science also has a practical function to perform here, it will by no means be to destroy, but to preserve and develop 368 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES the organ. To destroy the conscience — and this may unques- tionably be done to a certain extent, not only by false methods of education, but by false theories, namely by the half-enlightenment resulting from a false theological ex- planation — is the most serious injury which can be done an individual or community. As Sidgwick admirably says : "For, though the imperfection that we find in all the actual conditions of human existence is ultimately found even in morality itself, still, practically, we are much less concerned with correcting and improving than we are with realizing and enforcing it. The Utilitarian must repudiate altogether that temper of rebellion against established morality, as something purely external and conventional, into which the reflective mind is always apt to fall when it is first convinced that its rules are not intrinsically reasonable. He must, of course, also repudiate as superstitious that awe of it as an absolute or Divine Code which intuitional moralists inculcate. Still, he will naturally contemplate it with reverence and wonder, as a marvellous product of nature, the result of long centuries of growth, showing in many parts the same fine adaptation of means to complex exigencies as the most elab- orate structures of physical organisms exhibit : he will handle it with respectful delicacy as a mechanism, constructed of the fluid element of opinions and dispositions ; by the indis- pensable aid of which the actual quantum of human happiness is continually being produced ; a mechanism which no politi- cians or philosophers could create, yet without which the harder and coarser machinery of positive law could not be permanently maintained, and the life of man would become — as Hobbes forcibly expresses it — * solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.' " ^ 6. Individualization of Conscience. Conscience is originally the manifestation of custom or objective morality in the con- sciousness of the individual ; it acts essentially as an in- 1 Methods of Ethics, pp. 470 f. DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 369 hibition of particular will-impulses which deviate from the normal. But this is not its final and highest form. It exer- cises a more positive function in that it rfeflects an ideal of the perfect life. The elements of this ideal it first obtains from the objective morality of the people. In its religious and poetical creations every nation produces concrete images of perfection ; these take possession of the consciousness of the individual, and fashion his nature and will. He measures himself and his conduct by the ideal ; he is pained when he falls short of it, pleased when he approximates it. With the development of mental life, this life-ideal gradu- ally assumes a more specific and individualistic form. All historical evolution proceeds by differentiation. From the original unity of the human species, which we must presup- pose, the different types of races and nations have gradually been differentiated ; different religions and different customs express their mental individuality. As civilization advances still further the individuals also differentiate themselves from the mental life of the people, and lead separate mental existences. In the lower stages of civilization the different members of a people are wholly alike ; they have the same ideas, thoughts, opinions, habits, modes of conduct ; in short, their lives are filled with the same content, determined by their religion and customs. As the race develops, its life becomes richer and more varied, and at the same time greater differences appear among the individuals. The in- dividual begins to think his own thoughts ; he is no longer satisfied with the general conceptions of the world and life, offered by his religion and mythology ; he begins to philoso- phize. All philosophy begins with the emancipation of the individual from commonly accepted opinions. And in the same way, the individual's attitude to custom and to the opin- ion of his surroundings changes ; he begins to follow his own bent and to mould his own life's ideal. The sphere of free, individual action expands. The richer and more varied the 370 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES activities and relations of the individual become, the less able is custom to rule authoritatively ; the more personal the life of the individual and his relations to others become — for instance the relations existing between husband and wife, parents and children — the more difficult is it to subject them to rule, the more they call for special laws. Conscience thus acquires a new meaning : at first it measures the value of the individual life solely by custom ; now it measures the actual life by its special ideal. This individual ideal will exhibit the traits of the particular national life of which it is the product, it will not be unrelated to custom ; still it may differ widely from the universal conception and mode of life, so widely, indeed, that it may even bring the agent into conflict with custom, and that this conflict may not arouse pangs of conscience, but be recognized as a moral necessity. Objective morality is now opposed by a subjective morality, a higher form, which applies a new standard to things. Whenever the personality whose individual ideal brings it into antagonism with the objective morality of the times and leads to a recasting of moral values is endowed with remarkable powers of intellect and will, those conflicts arise which form the dramatic climaxes in history. The real heroes of man- kind have fought such battles. They rebel against the con- ventional values, against the ideals which have become useless and false, against sham and falsehood, against the salt that has lost its savor. They preach new truths, point out new aims and new ideals, which instil new life into the soul and raise it to a higher plane. Jesus fought this fight. He rose above the religion and the customs of his nation ; he conceived of a different and higher relation to God than that recognized by his people ; and hence he was not satisfied with the right- eousness of his people, with their punctilious and yet scant and self-sufficient fulfilment of the law. So he placed himself and his disciples outside of the law of his people ; he broke DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 371 the Sabbath, he did not fast, and taught his disciples to follow his example ; he gave them instead a new commandment : " Love ye one another." And when the establffehed system, the objective righteousness, protested against the revolt, he entered upon the struggle of annihilation which ended in his death. What sustained him in his battles and sufferings and led him to victory was his firm conviction that he had a special mis- sion to perform, that he was sent by the Father to proclaim the new kingdom of love and mercy. " My meat is to do the will of him that sent me." Thus Jesus has become the eternal prototype of all those who are thirsting after and battling for the kingdom of God, for truth and justice, of all those for whom life, as they find it, has too little force and spirituality, too little love and freedom, of all those who from the fulness of their hearts reveal their feelings and thoughts, and are then crucified and burned by the rabble, high and low.i The counterparts of these highest heroic types of mankind are furnished by those monstrous criminals, of whom Plato, 1 Such an indrndual conscience we find, remarkably developed, in the man who occupies such a peculiar position in the moral history of the Greek people, — Socrates. The Socratic dcemon is essentially nothing but Socrates's con- viction that he has a particular, individual purpose to realize, a mission to fulfil. As L. Schmidt admirably declares in his Etkik der alten Griechen, I. 224 : "Natures with strongly marked individualities and clearly conscious purposes in life feel it as a moral necessity to abstain from that which is contrary to theii individual dispositions : I cannot and must not, although other persons would, if they were in my place, be allowed to do it. The universal conscience, on the other hand, commands : I must not do it, nor would it be right for any one else in my place to do it." He adds an apt quotation from Vilmar ; " It (the daemon ) is nothing more nor less than what Goethe called the lines of fortification of his life, a gift peculiar to every noble and finely constructed soul : to know and to keep firmly in mind what one cannot do without exceeding and transcending one's capacities and powers. This gift is indeed closely related to conscience, not only because of its originally negative and prohibitive nature, but also because its dictates cannot be violated or even temporarily ignored without arousing a spiritual reaction similar to ethical remorse : whenever we occupy ourselves with things which (without having any great significance in themselves or being morally reprehensible) transcend our capacities or do not come up to our spiritual powers, we cannot suppress our dissatisfaction with ourselves, a feeling which almost amounts to aversion.'' S72 CONCEPTS AiSTD PRINCIPLES for instance, gives us a poetical though apparently faithful picture in the tyrant of the Republic, or whom J. Burck- hardt describes with historical accuracy in his History of the Renaissance in Italy: those terrible characters, the Sforza and Borgia, who, fearing neither God nor man, accomplish their nefarious designs with superhuman efforts and absolute recklessness. Perhaps we may say that every one of these tremendous personalities has in him the making of a true hero as well as of a criminal tyrant. Goethe's Faust portrays the transforma- tion of one of tliese beings into the other. In the first part Faust appears as the titanic individual who has emancipated himself from the beliefs and customs of his people, and now seeks satisfaction for his desires : that which is allotted to the entire race he desires to enjoy in his own person, and then, like the race, to perish. He destroys the peace of a family, he sacrifices the happiness of an innocent and lovable girl to his lusts ; through him Gretchen murders her mother, her brother, and her child. He forsakes her, and joins the cavalcade which moves upon the Blochsherg. There is un- doubtedly something of Goethe's own nature in all this; we find similar traits in the Prometheus poems. The second part of Faust aims to show how the " superhuman being " QUhermenscK) again subjects himself to measure and lavr. The execution of this plan, however, falls far below the mark. Faust could have been purified and " saved " only by great sufferings, or by struggling zealously to attain some high end. His salvation by the " eternally feminine " is in truth a rather easy solution of the problem ; nor are we satisfied with the curious hydraulic enterprises of the old man. It is true, Goethe's own life was free from great sufferings and great struggles, and he was either too honest or too subjective to introduce into his poem anything that did not form a part of his own experiences. The two types, however, which outwardly resemble eanh DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 37^1 other in ignoring custom and law, differ in their inner rela- tions to customs and the people. The tyrant despises and breaks the moral laws in order to give full play to his de- sires ; he wishes to enjoy and to rule. Jesus announces as his mission not the destruction of the " law " but its fulfil- ment ; his object is to give it a higher content than the pro- fessional interpreters can give it. He knows what his fate will be, he does not anticipate splendor and power, but humiliation and death. " The son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." 7. Moral nihilism. The distinguishing mark of moral nihilism in concrete, individual cases is a complete absence of conscience both in the form of the consciousness of duty as well as of a life ideal. As a theory or argument it denies the validity of all rules of duty or moral laws. It declares : Duty is an empty word ; life is a struggle for existence, and in the struggle for existence all means are permissible. Mur- der, falsehood, violence, are good provided they are success- ful; they are merely decried as bad by weaklings and gre- garious beings, because these are made to suffer by them. Or : Justice and law and religion were invented by despots to enslave the minds of the oppressed ; the enlightened man knows that nothing binds him. And just as there are no duties towards others, there can be no duties towards self. So-called ideals are soap-bubbles to delight children, or in- tended by clever people to delude the fools. Goodness con- sists in doing and boldly carrying out what our momentary desires demand. Some one has quoted as the motto of an aristocratic Russian : Je ne crois rien,je ne crains rien, je n'aime rien ; or. Nothing binds me, neither morals nor duty, neither fear nor hope, neither love nor ideals ; the free sover- eign individual lives in the moment, regardless of the future as well as the past.^ 1 [See the Greek Sophists ; Plato's Gorgias, 481 ff. ; Stimer, Der Einzige und tein Eigenthum, 1845, 2d. ed., 1882; Nietzsche (pp. 150 ff. supra); Steiner, 374 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES Is it possible to refute nihilism ; can we prove to any one who reasons thus that he is in the wrong ? I do not believe it. We can tell and show him that others feel differently, but he will answer : What do I care ? You may find feelings of duty and ideals in yourselves ; in me there is nothing of the kind, and I do not regret it either. If we say to him: That is a defect; a human being capable only of momen- tary pleasures is a contemptible creature, he will reply: I do not agree with you ; on the contrary, he is contemptible who has not the courage to do what he pleases, but lets all kinds of imaginary scruples defraud him of the pleasures of the moment. — This position may be logically maintained. We cannot force the nihilist to confess its falseness ; this we could do only in case there were some point of agreement between us, a common regard for that which gives life its value. Without this all reasonings are vain, nay, perhaps evil, because they simply confirm the nihilist, who is in love with his opinions and his own astuteness, in his error. The feeling that he cannot be refuted will simply intensify his con- viction that he is in the right. Aristotle did not regard the following hint as superfluous : " It is not necessary to exam- ine every problem or every assertion, but only such about which some one is really in doubt who needs instruction and not punishment or sharpened wits ; " — a truth of which the age of paradoxes in which we live also needs to be reminded.^ It is quite a different question, however, whether nihilism, which cannot be refuted logically, can be consistently applied in practice, and whether any man really feels that only the satisfaction of momentary desires has worth. Perhaps he Philosophic der Freiheit, 1894. Compare Kreibig, Geschichte und Krilih des ethischen Scepticismus, 1896 ; Nordau, Degeneration, vol. II. See also Turg^nev's novels, New ; Fathers and Sons (English translations by Mrs. C. Garnett). — Tb.] ' Aristotle, Topics, I., 1 1 ; o4 Se? irSf irpoffXriiia oiSe iraaav Bimv iirtrKoirtii', Aw' ^y iiropiiaetfv Hv tij tuv \6you ieoiifvav, Kai fiii Ko\dir(as tj oifffl^ffiwi • "< ^ec yap atropovvres, iroTfpov StT robs deoifs rifiav ^ oit, KoKaffius Seovratf ot if, ttr DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 375 believes it, but is mistaken about himself and his own will. Perhaps it will be possible to change him by appealing from his understanding to his will : You really do not mean what you say ; in you, too, the impulse of self-preservation exists, as more than a desire to satisfy your momentary cravings ; in you, too, there is something of an impulse of ideal self- preservation ; it manifests itself when you combat and despise whatever you regard as falsehood and sham. The epitaph of Sardanapalus or of the Count Zaehdarm (in Carlyle's Sartor Remrtus) would not wholly suit you after all. You are not so indifferent to the welfare of others as you yourself say and imagine. Nay, perhaps your belief that customs and the feeling of duty have no influence over you is a delusion. You may really be convinced of it for the time being ; under suitable circumstances you would perhaps discover to your surprise that you still have a conscience. I cannot prove this to you ; I cannot force the " ought " into you by means of arguments ; but perhaps it is in you without your knowing it.^ 1 In Dostoievski's novel (Raskolnikow, Eng. title. Crime and Punishment), which is of unnsual interest to moralists and psychologists, moral nihilism forms the cen- tral theme. The hero of the novel is a student, whom all kinds of unhappy condi- tions have made miserable and tired of life. In this frame of mind he develops the disease of moral nihilism : All moral judgments and feelings which educat- tion has implanted in him now seem to him ridiculous, childish prejudices, contemptible weakness, to emancipate oneself from which is the mark of a free and strong mind. Encouraged by such reflections, he kills an old repulsive usuress, in order to obtain money, but at the same time also to test his theory : " I wanted to know," he afterwards says in discussing the matter, " whether I was, like all of them, merely vermin, or a man, whether I was able to break through the harriers or not, whether I would really dare to stoop to gain power or not, whether I was merely a trembling creature, or whether I had a right — ." The reaction of human feeling and conscience against these nihilistic sentiments and reflections before and after the deed is described with thrilling truthfulness. He finds it impossible to turn his thoughts from the crime ; it is ever before his mind, in his waking and in his dreaming, when he is alone and with others. As a kind of counterpart to this novel, let me call the reader's attention to an admir- able story of country life by Anzengruber, Der Stemsteinhof. The heroine of the narrative is a poor girl, full of natural vitality and a strong desire to assert her- self. She encounters many moral dangers, and even commits crime, and passing over more than one broken heart makes straight for her goal, which is, to become the peasant mistress of the Stemsteinhof. She is not troubled much with S76 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES It is just as impossible to force the nihilist by argument to abandon his position as it is logically to refute a man who denies the existence of the sun in the heavens. But this does not mean that nihilism is a valid theory. We cannot prove to the fever-patient that he sees only hallucinations, or to the madman that his fixed ideas are crazy notions. That does not prevent the former from being sick or the latter from being crazy. An anthropologist, a biological observer of the genus homo — let us assume, in order to insure his perfect impartial- ity, that he has descended from Saturn to the earth, as in Voltaire's Mikromegas — would soon convince himself that a man really living according to the principles of moral nihilism was abnormal. He would say : He lacks an organ which is usually present, namely, conscience. And he would add : It seems to be an organ of some importance, for individuals in whom it is lacking invariably perish. And if he were to investigate more closely, he would perhaps find that, as a rule, such abnormal natures at the same time exhibit dangerous perversions of impulse; alcoholism and perverse sexual de- sires, which are often hereditary, are the usual concomitants or the causes of such perverse feelings and volitions. The usual consequences of the disease, however, he might say, are disgust with life, and suicide.^ Only in case the abnormal moral reflections ; and pangs of conscience affect her only for a moment. The law of her being proves to be stronger than the moral law : it ignores her own conscience and the opinion of her surroundings. As soon as she reaches her goal and establishes herself in the place for which nature intended her, she labors freely and ably, without worrying much about the past. 1 Some psychiatrists regard "moral insanity" as a peculiar form of disease. It is characterized by a complete lack of conscience. KrafEt-Ebing (Leiirbuch der Psychiatrie, II., 65) describes the disease as complete moral insensibility- Moral notions and judgments are apprehended by the understanding and the memory, but they have absolutely no feeling-accompaniments, and are therefore wholly incapable of moving the will. " Without interest in anything that is noble and beautiful, dead to all feeling, these unfortunate malformations show a woeful lack of filial and domestic love, of all social instincts, indifference to the weal and woe of their surroundings. They are utterly insensible to the moral approval or disapproval of their fellows, wholly devoid of feelings of conscience and remorse. They do not know what morality means ; tlie law they look upon DUTY AND CONSCIENCE 377 feelings are not the result of organic conditions, but of intel- lectual error, of half-truths, can the diagnosis' be more favor- able. Here a more thorough knowledge, based upon wider experience, new problems of life, and advancing age may lead to the removal of the erroneous views and consequently to a change of feeling and volition. 8. In conclusion, let me answer a few questions suggested by the notion of duty. What do we mean by meritorious con- duct ? Can a man do more than his duty ? What is allowable ? Are there acts which duty neither enjoins nor prohibits — that is, indifferent acts ? Are there duties towards self ? Such and similar questions deal with difficulties which arise more from the ambiguities of language than from the nature of the subject itself. They may be easily answered by a more careful definition of the terms. Duty in the narrowest sense means the performance of acts or the abstention from acts in which others have a legal inter- est. It is your duty to pay your debts, to keep your contracts, not to steal or defraud. On the other hand, it is not a duty in this sense to do a man a favor, to help him when in trouble. The former is an obligation, the latter a purely voluntary affair. — According to this meaning of the term, there can, of course, be no duties toward self. merely as a police regulation, and the most heinous crime they view about as an ethically sound person would regard the violation of a police ordinance. This defect renders such inferior beings incapable of living permanently in society and makes them fit candidates for the workhouse, insane asylum, or penitentiary. — Besides this lack of ethical, altruistic feelings, they manifest formal affective derangement, great emotional irritability, which in conjunction with the absence of moral feelings impels them to acts of great brutality and cruelty." On the other hand, these patients seem to be unaffected intellectually, if we regard formal logical thought, prudence, action according to plan, as decisive. Hallucinations and illusions are absent. Still, intellectual degeneracy is never entirely lacking. " Not only are they ignorant of what is immoral, but they do not even know what is detrimental to their interests. In spite of all evidence of shrewdness they often surprise us by their total disregard of the simplest rules of prudenc* in their criminal acts. On the formal side, we must especially emphasize the defective way in which they reproduce ideas." Finally, perverse impulses are common in the organic and particularly in the sexual sphere. 378 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES Duty in a wider seme means conduct in accordance with the demands of custom, or the laws of morality. According to this interpretation of the term, it would, undoubtedly, be a violation of our duty to humanity to refuse to answer a stranger's polite question concerning the road to take: the duty of love of neighbor enjoins kindness. On the other hand, duty does not demand that I save another's life at the risk of my own : whoever does this performs a meritorious act, but whoever refrains from doing it violates no duty. Heroism and holiness are not duties. In this sense we also speak of duties to self. It is a duty to develop our own capacities ; it is a violation of duty for one to ruin his health by acts of imprudence, to waste his mental powers in idleness and dissipation. But here, too, there is a limit to the requirements of duty, and here, too, we have heroism which does more than is demanded, which is meritorious. — Hence merit consists in doing more than average virtue requires. This likewise de- termines the concept of the allowable. It is allowable to take recreation, although we have plenty of work to do and the power to do it ; it is allowable to seek enjoyment, although there are others whom we might help by denying ourselves. In a word, it is allowable to remain within the limits of average virtue. The word duty, finally, is also used in a widest, fullest sense, in which both the notion of merit and the notion of the allowable have no meaning. Christianity commands its dis- ciples : " Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." In the face of this imperative there can, of course, be no excess in virtue; hence there can be no merit before God. Whoever has kept the commandments, let him say : I have done my duty ; or, as the saint prefers to say, since human beings do not achieve this goal: I am an unworthy servant. CHAPTER VI EGOISM AND ALTRUISM i 1. Acts are called egoistic when their motive is individual weal or woe, altruistic when their motive is the weal and woe of others. Some moralists regard these motives as mutually exclusive. Every act is the product of either egoistic or altruistic motives, and is therefore either egoistic or altru- istic. This view gives rise to two opposing schools. Pure altruism sets up the principle : Acts have moral worth only in so far as they are determined by purely altruistic motives. Pure egoism asserts : It is not only allowable, but morally necessary to make individual welfare the sole end of action. A. Comte, who coined the term, inclines to altruism. Schopenhauer advocates the theory in its extremest form. Every act, he argues, has a motive ; only weal or woe can be a motive ; the weal or the woe is either that of the agent him- self or that of another. Only in the latter case, does an act possess moral worth ; this depends solely upon " whether the act is committed or omitted for the good of another. When- ever this is not the case, the weal or woe impelling or hinder- ing the performance of each act can only be that of the agent himself; then the act is invariably egoistic, and hence without moral worth." It becomes bad when the welfare of self is 1 [See the ethical works of Bacon, Cumberland, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Bnt- ler, Hume, A. Smith, J. S. Mill, Bain, Darwin, Sidgwick ; Spencer, Data of Ethics, chaps. XI.-XIV. ; Stephen, Science of Ethics, chap. VI. ; Simmel, Etnleitung, chap. II.; Mackenzie, Manual, chap. IX., also p. 322; Williams, Evol. Ethics, Part IL, chap. V. ; Hoffding, Ethik, VIII. ; Harris, Moral Evolution ; Drum mond, Ascent of Man. — See also James's Psjchology, vol. I., chap. X. — Tr ] 380 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES sought at the expense of others' welfare.^ Popular usage seems to favor this view ; the adjective selfish implies blame, while the adjective unselfish implies moral approval.^ The absolute altruism of Schopenhauer and his disciples is opposed by its direct contrary, absolute egoism. This is not so common, and appears in the form of a paradox. Nietzsche approximates it: it is the reaction against Schopenhauer's altruism. Besides, there is a tendency to absolute egoism in Schopenhauer himself ; his contempt for the masses and humanity, and the high estimate which he places upon genius, suggest it. If humanity has worth, solely because of the few geniuses it produces, then it is right that the masses be regarded and employed by them as means ; an absolute aris- tocratic-egoistic morality would be the consequence. But a democratic-egoistic form of morality is equally conceivable. The individualistic utilitarianism of Hobbes^ and Spinoza approximates it: Everybody strives exclusively for his own self-preservation, that is the order of nature, but likewise the moral order. When a man solely pursues his own real good, he does right, that is all that morality demands. More- over, he, at the same time, does the best he can for others ; by a kind of pre-established harmony the true interests of all individuals coincide.* Indeed, the standpoint of absolute egoism is logically ten- able ; we can imagine a society in which every one acts accord- 1 Grundlage der Moral, § 1 6. 2 [Of. Fichte, Characteristics of the Present Age, § 70 : " There is but one virtue, and that is to forget oneself as a person ; but one vice : to think of oneself. Who- ever in the slightest degree thinks of his own personality, and desires a life and being and any self-enjoyment whatever, except for the race, is fundamentally and radically ... a low, petty, wicked, and wretched fellow." —Tr.] 8 [Leviathan ; On Lihertij and Necessiti/.] * [Egoists : Mandeville, Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue ; Fable of the Bees ; La Rochefoucauld, Reflexions, 1665 ; La Bruyfere, Les caracteres et les mceuri de ce sikcle, 1687 ; Lamettrie, L'hnmme machine, 1748 ; Helvetius, De Vesprit, 1758; Holbach, Si/sleme de la nature, 1770; Paley, Moral Philosophy; Bentham, PriV ciples of Morals and Legislation. Hartley and the associationists derive the sym- pathetic feelings from egoism. See also Jhering, vol. II. — Tr.] EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 381 ing to the maxim of pure egoism, whereas a society in which every one uniformly acts according to the maxim of pure altruism is not even conceivable. In so far as the economic world is based upon contract and commerce, it approxi- mately realizes the principle of egoism ; we have here a plu- rality of individuals, each of whom has in view only his own interests, and yet a certain harmony of the interests of all. If, on the other hand, we make pure altruism the leading principle, every man caring only for the interests of others and never for his own, we evidently bring about such an absurd exchange of interests as to make collective life incon- ceivable. — Neverthless, pure egoism, too, is practically just as impossible as pure altruism. A society based solely upon egoism is, conceivable, but psychologically impossible. Even in economic affairs, other motives, besides calculating self- interest, play a part, e. g., emotional influences of all kinds, a sense of what is proper and improper, a regard for the con- dition of others, the inhibition of egoistic impulses by shame and conscience. And it is really doubtful whether the com- plete elimination of these motives could be borne, whether we could always choose with sufficient accuracy between our true interests and our apparent interests, whether a temporary advantage would not often defeat a real advantage, and whether the war of all against all would not put an end to the life of society. Still less possible would be the more personal rela- tions, such as those existing between husband and wife, or par- ents and children, without their natural foundation, the sympathetic feelings. We may, perhaps, conceive of a mother who cares for and educates her children solely from selfish considerations ; but nobody will regard her as psychologically possible, unless, of course, he includes the welfare of the child in the selfish interests of the mother, in which case the dis- pute is merely a verbal one. For we called the feeling for the weal and woe of other individuals altruistic or sympathetic feeling as distinguished from egoistic or idiopathic feeling. 382 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES But if I insist that the sympathetic feeling, too, is my feel- ing and consequently au egoistic motive, there can, of course, be no other motives than egoistic motives. I can be deter- mined to action only by my motives and feelings, not by those of another. Still, this does not obliterate the distinction ; we should then have directly egoistic and indirectly egoistic impulses; the latter, however, would be the same as those usually called sympathetic or altruistic. And we should have to say that without these sympathetic-altruistic motives, a human life would be just as impossible as without the egoistic ones. Both together are needed to make the life of the in- dividual and the life of the whole possible. Both of these false moral principles, pure altruism and pure egoism, are ultimately based upon a false anthropology. They presuppose with the old system of rationalistic individualism, that every individual is an absolutely independent being, and comes in contact with other beings only occasionally and acci- dentally. In these relations, for which we can keep separate accounts, he is either egoistic or altruistic. In the latter case, altruism says his conduct is moral, at other times it is indiffer- ent or bad, whereas, egoism demands that he seek his own advantage even in his occasional dealings with others. Both theories are founded upon a view like the one advanced by Jeremy Bentham at the beginning of his Principles of Morals and Legislation : " A community is a fictitious body, composed of individual persons who are considered as constituting, as it were, its members." This conception has been abandoned since the eighteenth century, at least in Germany ; a people is not a fictitious body, of which the individuals are the ficti- tious members, but a unified being to which the individuals bear the same relation as organs to a body. Just as the organs are produced by the whole and exist in it alone, so the individuals are produced by the people and live and move in it alone ; they function as its organs; they speak its lan- guage, they think its thoughts, they are interested in its wel- EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 383 fare, they desire its life ; they propagate and rear offspring, and so perpetuate the race. And this abjective relation of the individual to the whole manifests itself subjectively in his volitional and emotional life. Everywhere the circles of the ego and the non-ego intersect. This fact is universally accepted ; only in moral philosophy we still find persons who do not see it, who insist on regarding the antithesis between altruism and egoism as an absolute one. I should like to show how little the facts agree with this view ; in our actual life and practice there is no such isolation of in- dividuals ; the motives and effects of action are constantly intersecting the boundaries of egoism and altruism. 2. Let me first prove it for the effects. There is no act that does not influence the life of the individual as well as that of the surroundings, and hence cannot and must not be viewed and judged from the standpoint of both individual and general welfare. The traditional classification, which distinguishes between duties towards self and duties towards others, cannot be recognized as a legitimate division. There is no duty towards individual life that cannot be constnied as a duty towards others, and no duty towards others that cannot be proved to be a duty towards self. Care of one's own health appears at first sight to be purely selfish. Reflection, however, will clearly show that the pos- sessor of good health is by no means the only interested party. Every disturbance and its consequences spread from the seat of its origin to the surroundings. The ill-humor which results from an improper mode of life or a neglect of self, is not confined to the guilty person ; he is cross and irritable, and his moodiness and moroseness are a source of annoyance to the entire household. In case of serious sick- ness, the family becomes uneasy and anxious, and perhaps suffers materially from a diminished income and an increase of expenditures. When the patient is an official, his colleagues are made to suffer ; they have to do bis work ; if he has 884 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES absolutely ruined his health, he becomes a pensioner, and so increases the public burdens. Conversely, whoever cares for his health perhaps does his surroundings the greatest service which he can do them; hence we may say, with Spinoza: Conatui sese conservandi primum et unicum virtutis est fun- damentum. Indeed, with only a little more rational self-love, the largest portion of human misery would disappear. Take away drunkenness and dissipation, and nine-tenths of the wretchedness would be gone. — It is the same in the economic sphere. To acquire wealth seems to be the central purpose of our egoistic strivings. But industry, energy, and frugality may, with equal right, be defined as duties towards others. The beneficent effects make themselves directly felt in the family, and in the education of the younger generation. But the community, too, and finally the nation, nay, even the entire economic world, have an interest in them. The welfare of a community, or a nation, consists in the welfare of the particular families. Conversely, the vagrant, the spendthrift, injures first himself, then his family, perhaps to remote gen- erations — for shiftlessness and mendicancy are hereditary as well as bodily defects — and at last, the entire nation, either by becoming a burden upon public charity, or by helping to turn production into false channels and by destroying mor- ality with his bad example. So we may say in general : All qualities and acts which promote or disturb the healthy development of individual life, at the same time tend to have beneficial or injurious effects upon the development of collective life. Or, as Spinoza puts it : Quum maxime unusquisque suum sibi utile quaerit, turn maxime homines sunt sibi in vicem utiles. But the converse is likewise true : Social virtues tend to have a good effect upon individual welfare, whereas their ab- sence is detrimental to individual life. The family is the most important sphere for the develop- ment of social virtues ; for the large majority of men the EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 385 most serious duties towards others are embraced in this circle. It requires no argument to show that all acts and qual- ities which promote the welfare of the family have beneficial effects upon the individual. The surest and greatest source of happiness to parents, nay, almost the only one in their old age, is the good training which they have given their children ; hardly any other neglect of duty is followed by such certain and painful penalties as improper training. We are accus- tomed to regard honesty in economic life as a duty to others. It is no less a duty of the individual towards himself. Many proverbs express the experience of the race on this point : Honesty is the best policy ; Ill-gotten goods seldom prosper ; The biter is sometimes bit; 111 got, ill spent. We cannot adduce a statistical proof for the truth of these observations, but a psychological proof is not hard to find. Dishonesty deadens the desire for honest acquisition ; and theft is always an uncertain and precarious means of livelihood. What we have honestly acquired is productive of blessings ; stolen goods have the opposite effect. And if all this were not true, if it were possible to enjoy the fruits of theft permanently and in safety who is proof against his own conscience? Every man shares the sentiments and judgments of society; they may be temporarily obscured, but no one can be sure that they will not manifest themselves again some day ; no one has ever done well to burden himself with a black secret. ■ — A modest, open, peaceable demeanor we regard as a duty to- wards others. There is no surer way of making one's own life happy. It wins friends for one, it creates an atmosphere of peace and good cheer in the surroundings, which is reflected back to its source. And vice versa, a haughty, envious, quarrelsome, deceitful, malicious nature is a certain means to an unhappy, sorrowful life. Hence duties towards others and duties towards self do not exclude each other ; individual welfare and the welfare of the collective bodies of which every one forms a part — the family, 25 386 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES the social and economic sphere, the community, the state — are so interwoven that whoever cares for his own true welfare at the same time promotes that of these bodies ; and vice versa, whoever faithfully performs the duties which are imposed by them works for his own good. 3. It is as impossible to distinguish absolutely between egoistic and altruistic acts on the ground of their motivet as it is to separate them according to their effects. Indeed, it is a somewhat curious notion, this notion that every act must have one motive. Nay, just as many causes co-operate in the physical world to produce a movement, so many motives work together to determine the will. As a rule, a particular act results from the interaction of a permanent tendency of the will, which in turn depends upon the agent's nature and life- conditions, and the surrounding circumstances. Altruistic motives have invariably contributed to educate the will, while among the conditions referred to we may often reckon the entreaties, commands, exhortations, admonitions, praise and censure of persons who exert an influence either directly, in word, or by their mere existence, even witliout being actually present. Is it an egoistic or an altruistic motive that impels the peasant to cultivate his fields, to improve his land, to work industriously year after year, and day after day 1 This is an absurd alternative. If the peasant himself were asked whether he did all these things for his own or others' sake, he would look at the questioner in a perplexed way, as though doubting his sanity, and if he answered at all, he would say : I do them because they must be done ; otherwise my property will go to rack and ruin. And why should n't it go to ruin ? Well, it would be a shame to ruin it. Besides, it gives me and my family a living. — And if the moralist were to investigate more closely, he would perhaps find that this same peasant was laboring zealously for his community, that he was rearing sons for his country and furnishing the army with soldiers, and that he really desired to do all these things, EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 387 and that he could not do them without working as he does. He is not working, say a little for himself and a little for others, but for both at the same time. His' action is deter- mined by all his conscious and unconscious purposes taken together, and there are no separate accounts in his bookkeep- ing, for himself, for his family, and for the community. Such exact calculations are, like the balance of pleasure, to be found only in the works of moral theorists whose hair- splittings hinder them from seeing the facts. Is the case different with the artist, scholar, or statesman ? Perhaps he will be told upon his seventieth anniversary, or upon some other occasion, that he has lived and worked solely for the welfare of the people or the cause of humanity. Now and then a man may be found who will give himself such a character as Christian Wolff gave himself in one of his prefaces, where he states that he had always felt a great love for the human race and had composed all his works for its benefit. I do not like to question old Wolff's veracity, but I am rather inclined to doubt his statement. Did he really first decide to benefit the human race, did he then deliberate how to serve humanity, and, after finding that nothing could be more useful than " rational thoughts," begin to write his books ? Hardly ; I imagine that he first felt impelled to think about things in order to clarify his own thoughts; that after he had succeeded in doing this to his own satisfaction, he could not rest until he had written out a clear and elaborate account of his views ; that he occasionally considered with satisfaction how lucidly they were expressed, how his readers would praise his work, in what glowing terms the learned journals would speak of it, how chagrined his opponents would be at the telling arguments against them ; that, now and then, he may have thought of humanity and of the value of knowledge for the world and of the advance- ment of truth by means of his labors. And the worth of these books will not be diminished by the fact that they were made 388 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES in a perfectly human way. On the contrary, the value of works composed " for others " is perhaps much more doubtful than the value of those whose authors were interested solely in the subject itself, and perhaps occasionally thought of their fame. Schopenhauer was not in the habit of worrying much about the weal and woe of others ; what he thought and wrote he wrote for his own sake, in order to solve the great riddle of existence, in order to preserve the thoughts which pleased him, in the happy moment of their birth, and to create for himself happy surroundings in them. He did not write for others ; he wrote no text-books, no systems, no learned works, but he wrote for himself just as the true poet writes poetry for himself, and the true artist creates for himself and gives expression to what his soul conceives. Of course, if there were no "others," nothing would be created. No orator would speak without an audience to hear him, no poet make poetry without a people to read or sing his songs, no author write unless there were, at least in his imagination, persons who would read what he wrote. Nevertheless, if a man is not so full of his subject that he cannot help speaking of it, if he must first be impelled to do so by his consideration of others and their good, he may save his efforts without endangering the welfare of others. HbfiEding quotes a remark of Goethe to Eckermann : " I never asked myself in my profession as a lit- erary man : What do the masses want, and how can I serve humanity ? But I always simply endeavored to make myself wiser and better, to enricli my own personality, and then always to say only what I had found to be good and true." And the same may be said of genuine self-sacrifice also. Was the motive which actuated Leonidas and his band, egois- tic or altruistic ? The question is absurd and tries to separate what cannot be separated. Certainly, they battled for their country ; but of course, the country was their country and not a foreign country. On the other hand, they fought and fell for their own glory, but their glory was likewise the glory of Sparta. EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 389 How would it be possible to distinguish between the personal and the altruistic element here ? Hence, wg may say : Every self-sacrifice is at the same time self-preservation, namely preservation of the ideal self ; indeed, it is the proudest kind of self-assertion for me- to sacrifice myself, for me to stake my life, in battling for a g6od which I esteem higher than my life. A purely passive sacrifice would not be my act, and hence not self-sacrifice. There is therefore always a " selfish " element in it ; " unselfish " conduct is a contradiction in terms. The self is always involved, it sacrifices a good only for a higher good, possessions for fame, a good name for a good conscience, life for the freedom and honor of the people. And vice versa, the traitor sacrifices his friend or his reputation or his people for thirty pieces of silver ; he, too, would rather have the thirty pieces of silver without the sacrifice. The only differ- ence lies in the evaluation of the goods ; and this is what de- termines the value of the man : he expresses his own worth, his innermost disposition, in the values which he places upon the goods. Physicists claim that there is n» isolated point in the uni- verse, that every element of the corporeal world stands in reciprocal relation with every other one. There is no isolated point in the moral world either. Every act of every man in- fluences the entire moral universe, and every act in the universe reacts upon every individual. We cannot trace these effects and show what they are, nor can we do this in the physical world : the fall of a stone does not change the earth's centre of gravity to any perceptible degree, but it changes it none the less. Similarly, an individual's liking for or aversion to coffee or tobacco does not noticeably affect the market value of these commodities, yet it changes it, and thereby influences agriculture and the economic activity of mankind. The indi- vidual's like or dislike for a mode of conduct, a form of art, a thought, or a word, does not perceptibly change, but still it changes, the morals, the art, the opinions, and the language 390 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES of his surroundings, his people, and humanity. That there is such an inter-relation between all is seen from the fact that no one is wholly indifferent to the behavior of others : he approves or disapproves others' conduct as soon as he wit- nesses it, and every judgment is the beginning of some form of interference, which furthers or retards such action. It seems as though every one felt : Whatever my fellowman does con- cerns me, it promotes or opposes my ultimate ends. Is the antithesis between egoism and altruism therefore meaningless ? Is there no difference in acts and motives, which gives rise to this division ? I do not, of course, claim that. Cases unquestionably arise, in which individual interests conflict, or seem to conflict, with foreign interests. Acts doubtless occur in which the individ- ual seeks his own advantage at the expense of others' welfare, and conversely, there are acts in which individual interests and inclinations are sacrificed for the welfare of others ; from which it does not necessarily follow that individual welfare, if we take the word in its profoundest meaning, is promoted in the former instance and retarded in the latter. And it cannot be disputed that these facts have great moral significance. The above re- flections simply desire to show that the opposition between in- dividual and general welfare, selfish and altruistic motives, is not the rule, but the exception. As a rule, there is harmony in the effects as well as in the motives. Life is not such an antagonistic affair as some moralists make it appear : it is not one constant struggle between mine and thine. No hu- man life, perhaps, is wholly free from conflict, but there are many lives in which it plays no prominent part. Persons who enjoy healthy domestic relations and live in well-regulated communities, and pursue honorable and regular callings, do not experience many such conflicts, nor do they by any means believe that the altruistic settlement of such conflicts forms the essential content of their life, and determines its moral worth. EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 391 4. And how are such cases to be judged morally ? Is the sacrifice of individual interests for those pf others always a duty, or, if not a real duty, at least praiseworthy and good ? Schopenhauer believes that it is, and popular usage seems to confirm his view : language, which has created the words kindness and malice, self-interest and selfishness, suggests it. The matter does not seem so simple upon closer analysis. It has been observed, in the first place, that not every act which springs from the impulse to do good to others, is really benefi- cent ; the altruistic intention does not guarantee a beneficent effect. There are many forms of " beneficence " which pro- duce evil ; indeed, there are many people who are so infinitely " good " that no one is benefited thereby, and every one who comes under their influence is spoiled. Kindness ( Gute) with- out wisdom is not good but pernicious, as pernicious as any undisciplined natural impulse. In his Timon Shakespeare has portrayed with cruel fidelity the effects of kindness that is not governed by reason. Consequently, the mere fact that desires are altruistically inclined, by no means makes them morally good, much less the only moral good. Moreover, can we grant that the sacrifice of personal in- terests, even when it really promotes the welfare of otliers, is invariably meritorious and praiseworthy, or even a duty ? I do not believe it. Ought I, in order to give others a little pleasure, to ignore my own important and essential interests ? Ought I to sacrifice my possessions, health, and life in order to fulfil a sick man's harmless whims, and to lighten his lot ? Is that my duty, or, if not my duty, always meritorious or praise- worthy ? Ought I to look upon the promotion of my family's welfare as selfish ? Ought I to deny to my brother, or to my child, that which would prove of great value to him, but could not be realized without in a measure interfering with the desire of another ? The unprejudiced man will not hesitate for a moment, but will say : On the contrary, my kith and kin are nearer to me than strangers, and it is not a duty, but a 392 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES violation of duty, to neglect their welfare in order to gratify the wishes of others. Therefore, we may say, the sacrifice of individual desires and interests is not good in itself, but only in case the vital interests of others demand it: whoever risks his life to save another's, whoever sacrifices himself for his people, will be admired and praised ; conversely, whoever allows a fellow man miserably to perish rather than sacrifice his comforts or a pleasure, is condemned as selfish and hardhearted. It seems, therefore, that our judgment depends upon our estimate of the objective value of the ends. Can we, then, making this our starting-point, set up as the universal norm for deciding between the interests of self and of others : The greater interest universally takes precedence over the smaller interest, regardless of whether my interest or that of others is the greater? Universalistic utilitarianism seems to hit upon this standard : If the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the absolute end, and if the objective worth of acts is measured by their pleasure-producing qualities, then the sacrifice of personal happiness is necessary whenever it brings greater happiness to others, and inadmissible whenever it brings less or no happiness to others. Perhaps the universal formula can stand as such. In order to guard it against misconceptions, it will be necessary, how- ever, to define it more accurately. Above all, it must be remembered that happiness or welfare is not like a coin that may be passed from hand to hand. Happiness is the result of successful action ; it cannot therefore be bestowed upon a man as a gift, — he must work for it. All that another can do is to provide him with the external means of realizing it, that is, to lend him occasional assistance. This at once shows that the formula is not suited to solve mere problems in arithmetic. It will never be possible to calculate what direction my altru- istic deeds must take at any particular moment in order to yield the maximum of happiness. Here moral tact will EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 393 always have to decide. This tact, however, cannot be guided so much by balancing the objective magnitudt of the interests involved as by a kind of natural hierarchy of ends. First in importance are the duties which my position and calling in life impose upon me ; next come the duties which my par- ticular relations to others impose upon me ; and then those depending upon occasional relations to people in general. Even though the interests of the latter may in themselves be greater, my action is invariably partially influenced and, as a rule, determined by their distance from the ego, the centre of my activity. It is evident that our conduct is actually guided by such considerations ; every ego, we might say, arranges all other egoes around it in concentric circles ; the farther away the interests from this centre, the less weight and motive force they possess. That is a law of psychical mechanics. Its teleological necessity is obvious : if the different interests were to influence us according to their objective value, it would lead to the most curious confusion in our natures. A corresponding confusion in our actions would render the latter utterly fruitless ; the efficacy of all aid generally decreases in direct proportion to the distance between the giver and the recipient. This view does not, of course, deny that remote interests may, under certain circumstances, necessitate the sacrifice of nearer interests. No life is too precious when it comes to pre- serving the life and freedom of a people. And this is right. The interests of justice and of truth may demand and justify the sacrifice of domestic happiness. And we shall praise the mercy of the good Samaritan, who, without thinking of his own interests and safety, hastened to the rescue of the man who had fallen among thieves : at that moment he was indeed that man's nearest friend ; he was able to help him, and he alone was able to help him. But the rule still holds that those nearest to us are dearest to us. Charity begins at home, says a good old English proverb. 394 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 5. Let me add a few words concerning the attitude of the theory of evolution to the antithesis of egoism and altruism. It is claimed that a system of moral philosophy which is based upon the theory of evolution cannot explain the gocial virtues. Natural selection may, perhaps, develop strength, shrewdness, and energy in the pursuit of selfish interests, but it can never produce self-denial, and still less self-sacrifice. Nay, the more selfishly an individual asserts his own interests, the stronger he must be, other things being equal ; and natural selection will necessarily produce such types. Moreover, evolutionistic ethics must regard these types as best adapted to the surround- ings, and must approve of their development : the most selfish egoism gives the individual the greatest power to assert his claims, and therefore the greatest perfection.^ Our answer is : This would be the case if men lived in isolation. But they live and, as human beings, can live only in societies and communities, in tribes and nations. Beasts of prey live in isolation, at least most of them, and here we actu- ally find the type mentioned above. That, however, which has given man such an immense advantage over all other liv- ing creatures, even over the strongest and fiercest brutes, is his peculiar fitness for collective life and collective activity, to which are due the development of language and intelligence, and likewise the invention of tools. The union of many indi- viduals for purposes of concentrated effort produces powerful effects. Hence sociableness becomes a life-preserving quality, like the qualities upon which it depends, such as loyalty and fidelity to companions, devotion and obedience to leaders, even at the sacrifice of individual interests, nay of life itself. These qualities, in turn, are deeply and firmly rooted in the indivi- dual's feelings of attachment and piety to the social whole and in his affection for all its members. Hence all these qualities tend to preserve the life of a social being, and can therefore be developed by natural selection. They will be exercised and 1 [See Huxley, Evolution and Ethics ; Kidd, Social Evolution. — Til.] EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 395 developed especially in the struggle for existence which the tribes are constantly waging with each othe^ ; man is man's most dangerous foe. Hence the more fiercely the tribes struggle for their interests, power, and existence, the stronger the pressure is from without, the more essential and the firmer becomes the internal union. Disobedience, selfishness, dis- loyalty, and cowardice are condemned most severely and eliminated most thoroughly when the tribe is threatened by an enemy; whereas external peace tends somewhat to loosen the internal union. In times of peace there arises a desire for individual liberty, an inclination to advance selfish interests, to obtain advantages over companions, in short, the calculating commercial spirit. So long as the tribe exists pre-eminently for battle, it will not permit such inclinations to show them- selves, and will ruthlessly suppress them whenever they arise. We therefore find the social instincts unusually well developed upon primitive stages of civilization. The individual lives only as the member of a tribe or city ; he cannot, nor does he care to, live outside. Piety, loyalty, and courage are the virtues extolled by the heroic ages. Let us now consider Herbert Spencer's view that the altru- istic or social impulses are constantly growing at the expense of the egoistic impulses. He shows in his Data of Ethict ^ that human nature more completely adjusts itself to the con- ditions of social life. Wars become less frequent, hence the militant instincts, which are adapted to the natural state of the war of all against all, gradually disappear ; the social instincts take their place, the militant type gives way^ to the industrial type, the type produced by peaceful co-operation. Spencer refers to his great biological generalization, accord- ing to which, " altruistic labors on behalf of the young in- crease with a,jdecreasing sacrifice of parental lives to the lives of offspring." He therefore expects, altruism to attain a level "such that the ministration to others' happiness will be- 1 [Chapter XIV.}. 396 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES come a daily need, a level such that the lower egoistic satisfactions will be continually subordinated to this higher egoistic satisfaction." Simultaneously with the progress of civilization, natural sufferings and privations of all kinds become less frequent, and altruism gradually ceases to be compassion and self-sacrifice and assumes the form of sym- pathetic gratification, " which costs the receiver nothing, but is a gratis addition to his egoistic gratifications." Indeed, Spencer is occupied with the thought that the desire for altruis- tic satisfactions may at some future time become so strong that each may insist on taking an undue share of them; but, he hopes, " altruistic competition, first reaching a com- promise under which each restrains himself from taking an undue share of altruistic satisfactions, eventually rises to a conciliation, under which each takes care that others shall have their opportunities for altruistic satisfactions." Spencer adds that he does not expect that these conclusions will meet with any considerable acceptance, or that those " who profess Christianity and practise paganism " can feel sympathy with such a view. Even at the risk of being reckoned among the latter, I cannot refrain from recording my objections. Spencer bases his expectations of the future upon the past course of development, which is their only possible ground. His idea of this evolution, however, seems to me to be one-sided. He overlooks a fact, of which he is, of course, usually aware, that war is a strongly socializing force ; sim- ultaneously with the hostile instincts it produces social instincts. Civilization, which makes wars less frequent, weak- ens the militant instincts, on the one hand, and loosens the internal unity on the other. Spencer describes historical development as a progressive socialization, in which there is a gradual abatement of war. Something like this un- doubtedly occurs; we no longer live, like the Indian, with weapons constantly in our hands ; and economic labor is be- coming more and more differentiated and organized. "We EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 397 also have the right to assume that human nature will adapt itself to these changes in the conditions of life, that it will become better fitted for social labor. The Germans who fought against Marius and Caesar, two thousand years ago, could hardly work side by side with their modern descendants in the factory or the counting room. But we should not identify fitness for collective life with altruistic feelings ; men may work together constantly without experiencing feelings of brotherly love : their feelings may be intensely egoistic. I believe there can be no doubt that feelings of distrust, hatred, and envy are mucli more common in our industrial society than they were among the old German peasants : among the latter competition, forgery, fraud, speculation, friction between labor- ers and employers, were unheard of ; every household formed an essentially separate economic unity. The more complicated the co-operation, the greater the opportunity for friction. Where shall we find the most collisions : among a group of officials, teachers, and clergymen, or among a group of peas- ants or a company of soldiers ? No one will be in doubt as to his answer. Of course, I do not wish to deny that, whereas in a peasant village men are rather indifferent to each other, feelings of respect, devotion, and friendship are, if not more frequent, at least more intense in particular cases, among the former group ; all 1 mean to say is that the personal relations existing between the members are more pronounced in every direction : there is greater enmity and disrespect on the one side and more friendship and confidence on the other. Spencer appeals to the evolution of domestic relations in support of his view. I believe these relations show the same characteristics ; they are more pronounced in every way. Families are now living together in much closer union than was possible in primitive times ; but there are also families among whose members discord and mutual hatred prevail to a degree absolutely unknown to primitive ages. This is 398 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES quite natural, for the more marked the individualities, the more intensely will they attract and repel each other. How happily and indifferently the animals dwell together in the herd ! The same is true of the relations existing between the different nations. True, peace seems to be the permanent condition of civilized nations, war an interruption, while among savage tribes the permanent condition is war. But by the side of the bloody and destructive wars of the former, the conflicts of the latter seem like child's play. Will wars disappear ? Spencer anticipates that they will. But will nations cease desiring power, honor, advantages, and fame, at each other's expense ? I fear, not until they cease to prefer their existence to the existence of others, that is, not until they cease to exist. Perhaps the nations will cease to be what they now are ; it seems idle, however, to speculate upon what will happen then, what new historical forms of life will take their place, and what relation these will bear to eacli other. Is Spencer's error — supposing that the dream of eternal peace is an illusion — a useful error ? Perhaps some will be inclined to believe that it is ; that it gives us strength and courage to labor for the future. It may do this for partic- ular individuals, although such remote considerations can hardly exercise a great influence upon human feeling and action. We love and hate, desire and despise, things that are near us. It may also have another effect : it may make us discontented with and unjust to the past and the present. Spencer does not always seem to be free from this fault. Just as his great biological generalizations not infrequently blind him to the manifoldness of historical reality, so his fan- tastic optimistic view of the future renders him incapable of understanding and appreciating the past. Even if the future should be blessed with perfect happiness and virtue, the past generations might still maintain — if they could defend their EGOISM AND ALTRUISM 399 cause — that their mode of life was not only the best for them, but also that it forms a stage in the development of humanity and possesses value in itself, just as the age of boyhood and youth with its games, its pleasures, and ideals has an independent value for the life of the individual. Let the "industrial type" have its happiness and its admirers, but let the " militant type " also receive its due ! Perhaps Achilles and Alexander will still find admirers in the world of the perfectly just and benevolent cotton-spinners. Or will this be possible only so long as man has something of the brute nature in him ? But it is not even certain that the brutes are most admired by the brutes. CHAPTER Vn VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS I SHOULD like to present the views which I have expressed at random in the foregoing pages, on the relation between virtue and welfare, in connected form. We may consider the subject from two points of view: (1) What influence has virtue upon happiness ? (2) What is the effect of happiness upon character ? 1. The first great and fundamental truth to which all peoples have been led in their reflections upon moral matters is the truth that the good man fares well and the wicked man ill. This conviction, which represents the experiences of the race, is expressed in countless proverbs. L. Schmidt has made an exhaustive collection of such proverbs and passages from Greek literature in the first chapter of his work on the UtMcs of the Greeks. " It was firmly believed by the ancient Greeks," so he begins his work, " that the fates of men were controlled by stern justice, which rewards the good and punishes the bad." He shows that this thought, which remained the fundamental theme of Greek poetry and history, already per- vaded the Homeric poems. The administration of justice and the fates of men are in the hands of the gods, or rather of the divine principle, for the gods as individuals are, at least for the poet, full of human moods and feelings ; whereas the gods of popular faith are essentially the guardians of justice and morals. They punish the evil-doer who breaks his oath, violates piety or the laws of hospitality, they pursue the murderer until his crime is avenged. To be sure, vengeance VIRTUE AND HAPPIiJESS 401 Is often delayed, perhaps it first strikes the descendants of the criminal, or it may not overtake the victim, according to the belief in the transmigration of souls and the judgment of the dead, which came from the Orient, until in the hereafter. But no evil-doer escapes punishment. The good man, on the other hand, is the favorite of the gods. They protect him and his own against evil, and permit him to complete his life in happiness and without sin. In the concept of the God- loved one (^eo^tX???) the notions of piety, philanthropy, and divine favor are inseparably interwoven. We discover the same fundamental note in the historical and poetical books of the Old Testament. The historical books show how the Lord makes good the promises and threats with which He accompanied the laws, in the lives of the in- dividuals and of the people. In the Psalms, too, the righteous- , ness, faithfulness, and truth or trustworthiness of God are a subject of praise : He does not forsake the righteous who keep His commandments, but rewards their children and their children's children for their obedience. The righteous man, too, suffers, but the Lord does not forsake him, nay, the sufferings themselves turn into blessings; the ungodly, on the other hand, perish; the wages of sin is death. The theoretical development of this thought forms the con- tent of Greek moral philosophy. Virtue and happiness are connected, not merely accidentally, through the mediation of the gods, but in the very nature of things. The concep- tion of happiness, however, is spiritualized ; not external happiness or good fortune (evrvx^a), but internal happiness, peace and repose of spirit, is directly joined with the exer- cise of virtue, or follows as its necessary effect. External welfare does not always fall to the lot of the wise and vir- tuous man ; but virtue tends to realize this also ; and in case he does not obtain it he is sure of finding happiness in his own heart. This is also the prevailing sentiment in modern ethics. Hobbes and Spinoza, Leibniz and Wolff, 402 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES Shaftesbury and Hume, all attempt to point out the neces- sary connection between righteousness and welfare. They, too, regard as their cardinal doctrine the proposition that good conduct has welfare, bad conduct, misfortune as its natu- ral consequence. Virtue, welfare, honor, and inner peace go together as well as vice, misery, disgrace, and inner dis- cord. This is especially true of the two extremes : virtue and inner peace, vice and inner discordi The two middle terms of the series are not so constant. A pessimistic conception runs parallel with this view of the relation of virtue and happiness which may be called the optimistic view : The evil-doer is the very one who fares well ; fortune favors him ; while the good man fares ill. It would not be difficult to gather a considerable number of examples from the literature and the proverbs of nations, all of which aim to show that the wicked man succeeds better in the world with his evil arts than the man who pursues the path of truth and justice. Strategy and vio- lence, the latter against the weaker, the former against the stronger, are the means by which men rise and maintain themselves. The old fable of Renard the fox, which Goethe once called a profane world-bible, illustrates this : the lion and the fox, violence and strategy, control affairs, they are the king and the chancellor; the honest ram and the innocent hare, the straightforward bear and the inexperienced wolf, always get the worst of the bargain. — And the other bible, that is, the Bible of the New Testament, does not seem to contradict this farcical animal bible. It is one of the fundamental con- ceptions of primitive Christianity that the just must suffer much for the sake of justice and truth. Like the master, the disciples must endure many sufferings, disgrace, and persecution. Which of these two views is the correct one 1 Is the truth of the first overthrown by that of the second? I do not think so. The sporadic pessimistic moods which now and then take VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 403 possession of every nation and every individual, may perhaps be explained as follows, and reconciled with the optimistic view. It is, of course, an undeniable fact that the good do not always fare well outwardly. A man may become sick, even though he is temperate and prudent, and, con- versely, a man who has no regard for his health may re- main hale and hearty. An able and honest man may fail in spite of all his exertions, and a scoundrel may accumulate wealth by dishonest means. Frankness often draws upon us the hatred of the mighty, and flattery gains their favor. — But the very fact that such occurrences attract so much at- tention and arouse such indignation seems to indicate that they are not the rule, but the exception. No one is surprised to hear of the ruin of a frivolous and reckless fellow ; we say it is as it should be, and forget the incident. But when a sensible and honest man is destroyed by all kinds of misfortunes, while the former prospers, it seems to be contrary to the nature of things, and we console our- selves with the general statement that ill weeds grow apace ; or, fools are lucky. "When an honest man wins the confi- dence of his surroundings, and the scoundrel is unmasked and disgraced, everybody regards it as a matter of course. When, however, a man grazes the penitentiary and gets his millions into a safe place, we become excited, and the matter is discussed for months. Everybody recalls similar cases, and so at last the verdict is rendered : " Well, that 's the way of the world ! " Here, too, the exception proves the rule. These cases would not cause such excitement if they were not contrary to the nature- of things. It is the rule that honest labor is a surer road to economic welfare than fraud and dishonesty ; that sincerity and truthfulness arouse confidence ; that false- hood and deception are poor means of making friends ; in short, that virtue is approved before God and man, and that vice is despised and condemned. 40-4 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES There is, however, an important exception to the last rule •• among the vicious virtue does not beget love, but hatred. The shameless strumpet hates the virtuous maiden ; the very existence of the latter is a reproach to her, she seeks her re- venge in ridicule, calumny , and whatever her hatred may prompt her to do. It is the greatest source of satisfaction to her to drag her innocent sister down to her own disgraceful level, for it silences reproach. This explains the awful impulse to lead others into temptation which is so common to vice. So, too, the flatterer and place-hunter hates the honest and truthful man, who goes through life with his head erect; he imagines that the latter watches, sees through, and despises him. Should vice ever gain the ascendency in society, virtue would no longer be attractive ; it would arouse among most men, if not contempt, at least hatred and aversion. And since the vices cannot make those who possess them agree- able in the sight of men — for virtue is agreeable to the vir- tuous, but vice is not esteemed by the vicious, especially not social vice — a feeling of universal hatred would take pos- session of society. Such a condition is foretold in the re^ markable lines of Hesiod's pessimistically-colored poem, Works and Days : Nor sire with son, with brethren brethren blend, Nor host with guest, nor friend, as erst, with friend: Reckless of heaven's revenge, the sons behold The hoary parents wax too swiftly old ; And impious point the keen dishonoring tongue, With hard reproofs and bitter mockeries hung : Nor grateful in declining age repay The nurturing fondness of their better day. Now man's right hand is law : for spoil they wait, And lay their mutual cities desolate : Unhonored he by whom his oath is feared ; Nor are the good beloved, the just revered : With favor graced the evil-doer stands, Nor curbs with shame nor equity his hands ; With crooked slanders wounds the virtuous man, And stamps with perjury what hate began. VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 405 Lo ! ill-rejoicing Envy, wing'd with lies, Scattering calumnious rumors as she flies, The steps of miserable men pursue * With haggard aspect, blasting to the view.* We have here a description of hell on Grecian soil. This will help us to understand the Christian conception of the worldly success of virtue. The old Christian view of the world was very much like Hesiod's description. Compare with the latter the picture of the Graeco-Roman world in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans : " Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness ; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity ; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful, who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them." Entering the world with such notions of the world, which they made no endeavor to conceal, the old Christians could not, of course, expect to please the world ; they could not hope for anything but hatred and persecution, which did not fail to overtake them. The old Christians expected something else besides : the end of the world. They felt that such human beings could not live, and did not deserve to live. They were right: a world like the world described by Hesiod and St. Paul could not possibly exist. But the world did not come to an end; nay the unexpected has happened, and the world, after ex- hausting all the means of persecution at its command, has in a certain measure accepted Christianity and preserved it to the present day. Hence we are justified in assuming that the picture which was painted of humanity could not have been an exact likeness. Moreover, primitive Christianity is 1 [Banks's translation, Bohn's Library, lines 239 fE., p. 345. —TkJ 406 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES not always so hopelessly pessimistic : Christians are not infrequently exhorted to do good, " that they may see their good works and glorify their Father which is in Heaven." And in another place we even read that "godliness is profit- able unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come," ^ a passage which, it must be confessed, would, so far as the promise of this life is con- cerned, have surprised us less in the Old Testament. We must add, moreover, that afflictions and persecutions are not evils for the Christian ; they are essential to his per- fection ; nay, they cannot disturb his peace of mind, his godli- ness, even for a single moment. Persecution gives him the blessed conviction that he is not of this world, but a child of the eternal kingdom of God. And so for him too, and for him especially, virtue and outward happiness, or at any rate piety and inner blessedness, are most intimately connected, nay they are one and the same, as the word evae^eia ( Gott- geligkeif) indicates. Here, too, then, we reach the conclusion that for the truly good man, for one whose will is completely ruled by virtue, virtuous action is always the greatest blessing, even though it should not bring external happiness, and should prove hard for his sensuous nature. Spinoza's maxim applies to him: Beatitudo non praemium virtutis, sed virtus ipsa. He, how- ever, whose will is not ruled by virtue, who does good from fear or calculation, may feel disappointed, when the outward success which he hoped to realize from his honesty, temper- ance, and benevolence, does not appear. To such a person vir- tue seems to be an unprofitable, or at least uncertain, means of happiness, and he utters pessimistic complaints, holding that the evil-doers fare well and the good fare ill. This, however, does not mean that he would have been better satisfied if he had reached by crooked means the goal which he complains of haying missed by fair means. — Hence the fact remains that 1 1 Timothy, IV., 8. VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 407 there ia a universal inner relation between virtue and success or prosperity or happiness, while the connection between wicked- ness and unhappiness is equally necessary. We may perhaps imagine a man who satisfies his desires without fear and scruple, who enjoys without pangs of conscience everything that fortune offers him, and whom fortune favors during his entire life ; but can there really be such a man ? At all events, it would not be wise for any one of us, constituted as we are, to follow his example. Even though he should suc- ceed in everything, the hour may come when he would give up all that he has achieved to wipe out the past. 2. The second question is : What is the effect of hapjoiness upon character? By happiness (^Grliick') we here mean ex- ternal happiness (^evTv^ia') : wealth, power, success, fame, honor, health, strength, victory. What effect has the pos- session or pursuit of these things on character ? Observation of human affairs has convinced all the more highly civilized nations of the second great fundamental truth that happiness, or prosperity, or good fortune, is a menace to character, and finally also to welfare. We mentioned above, as the first maxim of Greek wisdom, the proposition that the good fare well and the wicked ill. We may add as the second : Eutuchia is not identical with eudcemonia ; un- alloyed happiness is not happiness. Prosperity produces satiety, a fat heart, as the Psalmist says. Such souls are filled with pride, and pride leads to iniquity, which calls down upon its head the wrath of God, and destruction. That is, according to the conception of the Greeks, as expressed by their poets and historians, the natural course of events. Only an unusual amount of good sense will enable a man to bear prosperity.* The view is 'Theognis, 153: Tlicrei Toi xdpos S$piv, irav Kaicf ixfios Ittijtoi 'KvBpdTTif, xal irif /iii v6os tprios ^. Aristotle gives us in his Rhetoric (II., 15-17) an admirable description of the influence of eutuchia and its different forms — aristocracy, wealth, influence, and 408 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES undoubtedly well-founded that prosperity and success have the tendency to make one self-satisfied and insolent. The prosperous man is prone to judge others harshly and himself mildly. His success he considers to be due entirely to his own exertions ; he is ready to speak uncharitably of the mis- fortune or failure of others, and to lay all the blame on them. He has no respect for the striving of others, nor sympathy with their misfortunes, and thus arises the habit of mind so hated by gods and men, which the Greeks call v0pc<;, inso- lence. This leads to the contemptuous treatment of both things and men, and to the shameful abuse of the weak and vanquished .; to a state of careless self-assurance that is soon followed by the fall, the inevitable result of inner exhaustion and heedlessness. It is a noteworthy fact that the mere sight of sensuous enjoyment usually fills the spectator with disgust; thus, for instance, to watch a company of people feasting and drinking is apt to arouse feelings of repulsion. We naturally shrink from observing the satisfaction of sensuous needs. Lovers likewise seek solitude, and it is right for them to do so ; lookers-on are apt to be disgusted by their happiness. What makes the vain man so unbearable is the fact that he needs and seeks people to whom to narrate his deeds and suf- ferings. Biographies usually become uninteresting as soon as the hero has overcome all the difficulties and obstacles, the dangers and battles, which separated him from his goal. The years of rest and universal recognition, of fame and wealth, however well deserved they may be, are passed over by the biographer. Goethe showed his good sense in not extending his autobiography beyond the period of his entrance into Weimar. — "Enjoyment is degrading," says Faust — a pro- found truth, for the soul addicted to pleasure is conquered and degraded. The real secret of Faust's power of resist power — on character. We moderns should have to add as a prominent form, literary or artistic success and a brilliant career. VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 409 ance to evil is his failure to find satisfaction in pleasure. The devil hopes to debase him by means of enjoyment: Staub soil er fressen und mit Lust} Faust eats the dust, but not with zest, and hence the devil cannot wholly win his soul. There is a noble discontent in him, which makes his salvation possible. What is true of individuals is also true of collective bodies, of nations, classes, parties : prosperity ruins them. They lose their capacity for self-criticism and self-control, they lose their strength and dignity, they lose the sense of what is proper and their standards of reality, and so, inwardly ruined, they are ingloriously defeated by the despised foe. Nothing in the world is more repulsive than a company of well-fed and self- satisfied persons, who boast of their fatness and satiety ; nothing is so apt to arouse all the healthy instincts of hu- manity against it, nothing therefore so certain of destruc- tion, — as history proves. — The history of the church also confirms this truth, nay, perhaps it is nowhere so self- evident as there, for the church triumphant and dominant invariably becomes haughty, stubborn, hard-hearted, and per- secuting. But as her external authority increases, her inner authority decreases, until ruin overtakes her. Then comes the reaction. The despised and persecuted church revives ; humility, self-sacrifice, and heroism again show themselves ; she again gains power over the souls of men. Then the cycle begins anew. The powers of the world approach her, she becomes a power among others, who must be reckoned with, who can give favors and accept favors. Honors and wealth are showered upon her, she controls desirable posi- tions, she places the dogmas and the worship under the protection of the police. And now come the clever, the covetous, the worldly, and the aristocratic, and are anxious to serve the church. And the church allows them to serve her and to control her, and again to ruin her. 1 Dust shall he eat and with a zest. 410 CONCEPTS AND PKINCIPLES Such are the consequences of prosperity. Now look at the other side of the picture, at the educating, strengthening, purifying effects of adversity, failure, and suffering. Misfor- tune steels the will ; the will that can bear trouble is made elastic and grows strong under pressure. It gives us patience to bear the inevitable, it exercises our ability to measure and to test ourselves and our powers ; it makes us modest in our demands and charitable in our judgments of others' failings. Prosperity develops the repulsive qualities of human nature ; adversity unites men, making them friendly, patient, and just. When a storm suddenly comes up on a summer day, we may see how the persons of high and low degree who avoided and repelled each other while the sun was shin- ing, now seek refuge beneath the same roof, and bear and even jest with each other. So it is when a great misfortune overtakes a city or a nation ; it breaks down all the barriers of pride and hatred which were erected in the days of pros- perity. Finally, the highest moral pei'fection is not matured without misfortune and suffering. Christ entered into glory through suffering. Rejected by the leaders of His people, condemned by the unjust, mistreated by the puppets of the mighty, reviled and cursed by the mob, denied and forsaken by His disciples. He won the highest crown. Well could He say, upon the cross, with head bowed down, "It is finished " ; the highest that can be achieved upon earth had been accomplished : He had suffered evil for the sake of the good, without losing faith in the good, and without changing His inner peace into hatred and contempt for humanity. Christianity is wholly a philosophy of suffering. Tentatio e»t vita hominis super terram, Job's maxim, expresses the fund- amental mood of Christianity. Nor did the Greeks fail to appreciate this truth. Misfortune has an educating influence. " No human being can be trained without blows," says a line of Menander, which Goethe, who oould hai-dly be called a friend VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 411 of suffering, significantly places at the beginning of his auto- biography. But the faith of the Greek people in the purify- ing and elevating power of suffering is especially emphasized in the writings of the tragic poets. The chorus in JEschylus's Agamemnon gives voice to it : " For Zeus leads us to wis- dom and sanctifies the law that suffering is our teacher." Suffering is punishment ; but for him who accepts the pun- ishment, it is also a remedy against that disease of the soul, which is caused by prosperity, u/S/st?, self-righteous harshness. That is the idea expressed in the (Edipus tragedies. The pure man, however, who becomes the victim of undeserved misfor- tune shows, by bearing it tranquilly, the most sublime power and independence of the human will with regard to the natural course of things. So the dying Socrates has become for the philosophers a living witness of the truth that no evil can befall man so long as he refuses to regard it as such, " How can that be an evil," Marcus Aurelius asks, " that does not make me worse ? " Hence we may say that real happiness is a proper mixture of so-called happiness (good fortune) and misfortune. A man's lot is not happy when all his desires are always and fully realized, — but when he obtains a proper share of joy and sorrow, success and failure, plenty and want, struggle and peace, work and rest, and obtains it at the right time. Just as the plant needs sunshine and rain in order to thrive, so the inner man cannot prosper without both cheerful and gloomy days. If everything went against him, if he experi- enced nothing but trouble, he would, if such a life were at all possible, necessarily turn from the world and life with horror. Nor could a man call himself happy if his wishes were realized as soon as they rose in his soul. Even if satiety and pride would not ruin him — a result hardly to be avoided — he would miss some very important human experiences, he would not bring out some quite essential phases of human nature. Just as a general who has never met with defeat 412 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES would remain ignorant of all the resources of his mind, and be unable to unfold them, so a man who has never wanted for anything, and has never failed in anything, would not be able to develop all the powers of his mind and will. He would feel that fate had withheld from him something essen- tial to the perfection of his being, and he would, perhaps, like Polycrates, feel terrified at his " happiness." And so we may be permitted to say that life, as we find it, is on the whole adapted to the real needs of human nature ; it brings to every one good and evil days, success and trials. We do not hear many complaining that there are too many happy days, but the complaint is common that there is an excess of misery and want. It can, of course, never be proved that fate succeeds in producing the proper combination in every case : that is simply a matter of faith. And perhaps it is often hard to believe it, perhaps harder to believe it in the presence of the infinite misery suffered by others than of our own. We see countless creatures perishing from a lack of care and prosperity, from a lack of appropriate problems to solve, from a lack of the necessaries of life. And yet would other life-conditions have produced more favorable re- sults ? Who can tell ? How often have nations afterwards looked back upon times which they at first regarded as times of degradation and extreme misery, with feelings of grati- tude and pride ! Is there an epoch in the history of Ger- many upon which the eye would rather dwell than upon the period after the battle of Jena? Is not the time of "the greatest humiliation " in truth also the time of the greatest elevation? Were all the good and great men ever so hon- ored, so united as then ? And the reverse is also true. The days of victory, success, wealth, and greatness, look differ- ent in retrospect. The Dutch painters of the seventeenth century evidently wish to show us how a nation lives when it is too prosperous. We might, if we chose, make some observations nearer home. VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 413 We are reminded of the thoughtful poem of Chamisso : Die Kreuzgohau. A man complaining of the heaviness of his cross is taken to a large hall where the crosses of all human beings are stored. He is allowed to choose a new one for himself. He lays down his own and begins to look around for a more suitable one. After a careful and deliberate search he finally finds a cross that seems most satisfactory to him. Upon examining it more closely, he discovers that it is his own cross, which he had for the moment failed to recognize. There are people who would show us a better world than our real world, and therefore denounce the real world as a failure. If they were allowed to realize their im- aginary world and to live in it, they would perhaps discover that the conditions are far more satisfactory in our despised world. It frequently happens that persons leaving their country full of hatred and contempt, experience a change of heart after they have lived in their new home for a short while, and discover, for the first time, how deeply they really love their fatherland. If our pessimists could be trans- ported to another planet for a short period, they would per- haps learn to think of the earth with longing and gratitude. Perhaps the cure is nearer at hand than we imagine. Perhaps a time will again come when misfortune and sorrow will teach our people to appreciate life and its goods more highly. Pessimism flourishes in times of prosperity and exuberance. May the following lines — in which one who lived in those days of misfortune and spiritual exaltation, Wilhelm von Humboldt, gives expression to his philosophy of life — prepare us for the future : An ehernen Gesetzen fiihrt gekettet Der irdischen Geschlechter Wandelreihen Das Schicksal unerbittlich seinen Pfad ; Zufrieden, wenn das hohe Ziel es rettet, Bleibt kalt es, ob sie leiden, ob sich freuen. Aucb uns hat es auf Rosen nicht gebettet ; 414 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES Doch aus des Busens Tiefe stromt Gedeihen Derfesten Duldung uiid entschloss'ner That. Nicht Schmerz ist Ungliick, Gliick nicht immer Freude, TVer sein Geschick erfUllt, dem lacbeln beide.^ • From Haym's Life of Humboldt, p. 258. [Inexorable Fate leads tin changing ranks of the earthly generations, shackled by iron laws ; happy when she realizes her high goal, she remains indifierent to their joys and sorrows. We too hare not been resting on a bed of roses ; but our hearts are strong in patience and full of energetic action. Pain is not a misfortune, pleasure not always a blessing ; whoever fulfils his destiny suffers both.] CHAPTER VIII THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION* 1. The question which I shall attempt to answer in this chapter is : Is there an inner connection — one inherent in the nature of things, and therefore indissoluble, — between religion and morality, or are morality and religion independent of each other, and merely accidentally related ? An historical reflection will prepare us for the answer.^ — It is one of the safest propositions of anthropology that a very intimate relation exists between the religion and the morality of a people, at least at a certain stage of its develop- ment. The customs have the sanction of the gods ; the com- mandments of religion and morality form a unified code of laws ; piety and morality are regarded as one and the same thing. Let me simply call to mind the best known example. In the laws of Moses, religious, moral, and legal duties appear as wholly homogeneous parts of one law of God. All of them are equally binding ; all flow from the will of God, and the punishment of every violation is regarded by the people as a religious duty. The fear of God is the foundation of ' [Janet, Theory of Morals, chap. XII. ; Steinthal, AUgemeine Ethik, pp. 9 ft.; HofEding, Ethik, XXXL-XXXIII. ; Gizycki, Moralphilosophie, pp. 329-495; Coit's translation, pp. 208-276; Schurman, Belief in God, Lecture III. ; Wundt, Ethik, Part I., chap. II. ; Hyslop, Elements of Ethics, chap. IX. ; Mackenzie, Manual, chap. XVII. ; Bowne, Principles of Ethics, chap. VII. ; Smyth, Christian Ethics, Introduction, V. ; J. Seth, Ethical Principles, Part III., chaps. II., m. ; Pollock, Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics, chap. XI. ; Bunze, Ethik, p. 56. — Tr.] ^ I h^ve worked out many ideas which are merely suggested here, in my Intro- duction to Philosophy (5th edition, 1898) [translated by Frank Thilly]. 416 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES morality ; pious and good, godless and bad, are synonymous terms. Christianity and Mohammedanism accept this view. We find it also among the Greeks and Romans, Hindoos and Persians, Egyptians and Assyrians. The entire life of the in- dividual and society is regulated by religion ; all the institutions of the state and society, all customs and usages which govern the life of the individual, have a religious basis. We note the same connection between religion and morals among the most civilized tribes of all the native peoples of America, among the Mexicans and Peruvians. Waitz quotes several examples of Mexican wisdom which would do credit to a Hebrew or Christian moral philosopher. This he considers a convincing proof of the high state of mental advancement reached by those nations. " There is," this experienced student of anthropology adds, " hardly a more trustworthy sign and a safer criterion of the civilization of a people than the degree in which the demands of pure morality are supported by their religion and interwoven with their religious life." ^ How are we to explain the union of religion and morality ? Many facts seem to oppose the view that the connection is an absolutely necessary one. In the lowest stages of development religion exercises a separate function. It appears in the form of magic practices, having no connection with morality, so far as there is such a thing ; fetiches are indifferent to the conduct of. men, except so far as the latter directly concerns them ; " idolatry " and " morality " have nothing to do with each other. Hence, if this is to be regarded as the original state, how was the connection between religion and morality brought about? Or, if this question is left unanswered, upon what was the connection originally based ? ' Th. Waitz, Anthropologie der NatunSlker, IV., 128. An elaborate and thought- ful historical discussion of the relation of religion to custom and morality may be found in Wundt's Ethics, Section I., chaps. 2 and 3. The work of Fnstel de Coulanges, La cit€ antique (translated), shows that the political and legal insti- tutions of the Qreeks and Romans were originally intimately connected with religion; the oldest codes embrace worship, morality, and law, just like the laws of Moses. Law was for a long time a priestly science among the Romans. THE RELATION OP MORALITY TO RELIGION 417 We might, looking at the matter in a somewhat superficial manner, attempt the following explanation. • Acts of worship constitute the earliest subject-matter of science. Complete accuracy and correctness are of the utmost importance ; the slightest mistake may make the act ineffectual or even injuri- ous ; — think of the Hindoo or Jewish sacrificial worship. Hence the priests are the first scientists. They develop and transmit the great science of correct worship. Here arise the first fixed rules which exclude all arbitrariness. To these the demands of custom and of law are added and gradually form with them a unified code of law, which embraces every- thing tliat is binding upon all the members of the people. The transcendent sanction, which first attaches to religious duties, is thereby extended to the decrees of morals and law. An original inner affinity between religious and moral-legal duties perhaps favors the union. All religious command- ments resemble each other : they demand sacrifices, ablutions, abstinences, restrictions of desire. All acts of worship ex- press submission of the individual will to a higher and more mighty power ; humility wins the favor of the gods, insolence provokes their wrath. The same is true of the demands of custom ; they too limit and bind the individual will, they too enjoin submission to authority. With them too insolence leads to the violation of custom and to impiety towards the gods. The gods are enemies of insolence, and so become the protectors of custom. It is worthy of note that the weak and outlawed, strangers and helpless ones, everywhere enjoy the protection of the gods. Offences against guests, or against helpless old age or children are particularly punishable by the gods. The subject, however, is capable of a profounder treatment. — We may define religion in a general way as faith in the transcendent. It invariably presupposes a feeling of the insufficiency of the empirical world. Fetichism and shamanism too are attempts to accomplish by magic influences upon trans- 418 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES cendent powers or beings what cannot be attained by natural means. As life develops, the will is spiritualized. In the lowest stages of human existence it desires scarcely more than the satisfaction of animal needs. With the advance of civilization it aims not merely at life, but at a beautiful and good life, at an ideal of humanity. This change in the direction of man's will produces a corresponding change in the form of the transcendent world : the manifold world of gods of polytheism is the creation of the higher will. Perma- nent, personal, historical beings take the place of the Tague, perishable, nameless magic forces of fetichism. In the gods, man's ideals of a beautiful and good life are realized. The Greek world of gods is the objectification of the ideal human world, created by the longing of the Greek people for the beautiful and the good. Each of these divine personages lepresents some phase of the Greek ideal of humanity. And this transcendent world is not indifferent to or without influence upon the empirical world ; the god^i are ever mind- ful of man ; guiding him, protecting him, and punishing him, they fashion his will to perfection. The magic char- acter is not entirely lost ; the attempt to influence the will of the gods in order to realize through them immediate indi- vidual purposes, health, wealth, victory, success, undoubtedly occupied a prominent place in the actual religious practices of the people. But theurgy gradually lost its importance among the leaders and even among the larger circles of the popu- lation — particularly through the mediation of art — and the disinterested contemplation of the gods as the perfect models and guides of life, an attitude which is expressed in the beauti- ful figure of the praying boy, came to be regarded as one of the essential elements in religion. — In monotheism which appears in history as the last and highest development of religion, the ideal element is still more pronounced. Christianity doe« away with magic entirely ; Jesus teaclies his disciples to pray, Thy will be done ! Christian prayer presupposes the belief THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 419 that whatever may come comes from God and is good ; its real purpose is to make the heart submissive to God's will. God's will, however, is absolute holiness, justice, and grace. The deepest will of the purest man objectifies itself in the holy will of God, and then conceives itself as a revelation of God. We may therefore say that the religion of a people mirrors its own will in a transcendent world, in which the objects of its deepest longings are realized. For faith this transcend- ent world is the real and true reality, compared with which the empirical world is unworthy and unreal. But they are not separated by an absolute chasm. All pure striving comes from above and tends upward. This determines the relation of morality to religion. Both spring from the same root, the yearning of the will for per- fection. But that which is a demand in morals becomes a reality in religion. Perfection is described by morality in abstract formulae, it is intuited in religion in concrete form a's a divine, holy, and blessed life. And so, too, morality and religion are seen to be two phases of the same thing in the subject : the individual is moral in so far as his willing and acting strive after perfection, pious in so far as his feelings, his faith, and his hopes, are inspired with the image of the highest. Let us now consider the effect of the union of religion and morals. There can hardly be a doubt that the religious sanction of custom and the moral laws has, in a large measure, assisted in the moral discipline of the individual. The absolute fear (religio) which hinders the violation of religious commandments is extended to the moral laws. The belief in a life after death has been especially influential in this direction. In the next world man is in the immediate power of the gods ; here upon this earth their power is more remote, their interference occasional ; the transgressor be- lieves that he can sin in secret. In the hereafter, however, he appears before the judgment seat without concealment, 420 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES before the judgment of the dead, which is pictured by so many religions as the gradually approaching goal of life. Then everything will be brought to light, merit and guilt will be judged before a just judge. Whoever is full of guilt, whoever has lived an unworthy life, whoever has been remiss in his duties towards the gods, will suffer for it, and con- versely, whoever has lived a brave, pious, righteous life, may hopefully enter eternity. Nowhere is this idea more effec- tively brought out than in the Christian church. The great judgment day, which will end our earthly history, and finally decide the fate of all human beings, rewarding some with eternal blessedness, punishing others with eternal damnation, is a conception which has made a powerful impression upon the consciousness of man. Thus the fear and the hope of the hereafter become powerful protectors of morality. These impulses appear in purer form in deeper souls. God is not merely the stern judge, but also a father who in his merciful love forgives man. The chief concern. of the pious man is, not to prove unworthy of this love, not to dis- appoint the Holy One, not to exclude himself by deeds of darkness from fellowship in the realm of light. In the base soul religion becomes base ; future reward and punish- ment become a matter of speculation as it were: the re- mission of moral duties is purchased by an exact fulfilment of ecclesiastical duties, the forgiveness of sins by dispensa- tions. This is a perversion of religion which the systemati- zation of worship tends to produce in a church. Jesus found it in Judaism as Pharisaism, Luther found it in Christianity as the system of " good works," Spener found it in Luther- ism as " orthodoxy ; " " faith " Qfides mercenaria, to use Kant's expression) had become the ultimate "good work," taking the place of all the others ; and we find the same thing existing to-day. This " pseudo-worship (^Afterdiemf) of God in the statutory religion," as Kant calls it, is a great THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 421 menace to religious-church life. It dulls the sense of truth and the moral feeling ; it also fosters fanaticism : Whoever fails to respect our worship, cannot respect us; he is our enemy and therefore God's enemy, who favors and recognizes our service; to persecute and kill him is therefore a good work and one with which he is well pleased. 2. Let us now return to the question whicli we asked at the outset : Is the relation between morality and religion an es- sential one, and therefore indissoluble, or is it merely a pass- ing phenomenon, peculiar to a particular stage of development ? Will the connection be severed in the future ? Will there then be a perfect morality without any religiosity ? This question was not seriously debated until recently. For centuries nothing seemed more self-evident than the insepar- ableness of morality and religion. The tie between the two was first loosened by tlie violent commotions to which all theoretical conceptions have been subjected since the beginning of modern times. The church belief first began to wane in scientific and educated circles ; infidelity has gradually taken possession of the masses also. A purely physical conception of the universe now widely prevails. The belief is also com- mon that morality and religion, ethics and metaphysics, are wholly different things; that conduct is totally independent of the idea which one may have of the constitution of tlie world, and that his world-view is therefore the individual's private concern. A man may be a materialist, atheist, pantheist, sceptic, or anything else, without in the least affecting our estimate of his moral worth. There are unquestionably also narrower circles in which this view is emphatically opposed. The consequence of infidelity, it is declared, is to enjoy the present, regardless of the future ; theoretical materialism necessarily produces practical materi- alism, — at any rate this is its logical consequence, even though many a theoretical materialist is hindered by custom and habit from drawing it in practice. 422 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES After all we have said before, we cannot support the view that a life ignoring the laws of morality foHows as a logical necessity from any particular metaphysical belief or unbelief. We shall prefer to say : Whatever may be a man's notion of the nature of things, the laws of morality are none the less binding upon him; they are not arbitrary prescriptions, the observance of which is advisable from the standpoint of re- wards and punishments. They are rather laws of nature in the sense that the welfare of a life depends upon their ob- servance. And the opinions of men in no wise affect them. Hence if any one were to infer from an atheistic-materialistic conception that the laws of morality had no further claim upon him, he would be in error, and would have to bear the consequences of his error. Nor do I believe tliat an immoral life will actually result from unbelief, any more than I believe that a moral life is the invariable consequence of faith. There are, undoubtedly, honest and reliable men, nay even passionate and self-sacrific- ing idealists, in the ranks of those who have repudiated not only the church creed, but all religion, just as there are among those whose church-belief has not been shaken in the least, who perform all their religious duties in the most punc- tilious and conscientious mariner, and who are also capable of true religious feeling, men whose lives and acts are full of stubborn perverseness, cold-hearted pride, and hypocritical falsehood. Still, I do not believe that morality and religion, conduct and Weltanschauung, are entirely indifferent to each other. There are two views of the world which are radically opposed to each other. The central thought of the one is that the good is an essential element in the world, that reality exists through the good and for the sake of the good. We can call this conception idealistic, following Plato's terminology, who bases the world upon the idea of the good. We may also call it theistic, if we mean by belief in God the trust that the THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 423 good is the ground and the goal of the world, or, to use Fichte's expression, that the world-order is in the last analysis a moral order. Every theistic belief, in whatever form it may arise, can be embraced under this most general formula. Opposed to idealism we have materialism ; according to it the world-principle is in its essence absolutely indifferent to dis- tinctions of value. The atoms and their uniform motions, of which the whole of reality is composed, have originally abso- lutely nothing to do with the good and the evil, the rational and the irrational. In the course of time all itinds of com- binations, among them also living beings, are formed by the purely accidental conjunction of atoms ; in these, feelings of pleasure and pain arise, as peculiarly modified processes of motion, and things are accordingly characterized as pleasant and unpleasant, good and bad. Like all combinations of atoms, these, too, will again be dissolved by chance ; the indi- viduals will constantly perish, and finally also the species will die ; the conditions for the formation of living beings will no longer exist, and then pleasure and pain, good and evil, will disappear together, leaving nothing but unfeeling atoms and irrational laws behind. Now I believe that the acceptance of either one of these antagonistic world-views is not wholly unrelated to a man's will and conduct. A life containing ideal elements itself will naturally incline to the idealistic conception, while an empty and planless life will tend to the opposite view. For not the world-view, as has often been thought, but the disposition of the will is the all-important thing. Life determines faith, not faith life. What kind of philosophy you will choose, as Fichte truly said, depends upon what kind of man you are. If your life is a medley of blind impulses and momentary desires and moods, how can you form a higher conception of the universe ? Every man judges the value of the world by the value of human life, and he forms his opinion of the value of human life from the experiences of his own life. 424 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES In case the latter is an aimless whirl of empty momentary desires, it will be suited by a world which is itself an aimless play of atoms. An empty life produces a nihilistic conception of the universe. Conversely, whoever fills his own life with things of permanent value, whoever pursues lasting ends, great ideals, will place a different value, first, upon his own life, then upon the life of humanity, and finally upon the world at large. He will see a purpose and meaning in history, of which his own life forms a part ; he will interpret the past in the light of his own aspirations, believing that all good and great men battled for the same cause ; he will look upon the future as his: men of faith and action always believe that the future is on their side ; finally, the whole of reality will seem to him to be governed by the purpose to bring about the very things for which he is zealously and honestly striving. Thus the value which we put upon our own lives is finally predicated of the things themselves. One's conception of the universe, we may therefore say, is, 80 far as it includes and expresses judgments of value, the mirror of one's will. Everybody interprets the phenomena so that they may harmonize with his character. Just as every life surrounds itself with symbols of what it holds dear and valuable, so it strives to formulate a conception of things which will have a quieting and elevating influence upon the will. An empty will is satisfied with a nihilistic world-view ; an idealistic world-view would leave a painful sting in it ; it would appear before the world as the only being unwilling to harmonize with the purposes of the universe. A will with ideals, on the other hand, could not bear to think of itself as nothing but a strange anomaly in the world, as a freak of nature again to be cast aside. The thought alone would satisfy it that it was derived from the world-principle it- self, and in essential harmony with it, and that neither its achievements nor its strivings could be lost. Thus life influences faith. Faith then also undoubtedly reacts THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 425 upon life. The belief in the power of the good, the belief in God, strengthens the courage and arouses hope. We shall perhaps be compelled to say, that nothing truly great has ever been accomplished in this world without faith. All religions are based upon faith ; through faith their founders and disciples have overcome the world. Believing in an idea all martyrs have lived, fought, and suffered, — believing in the ultimate triumph of the good for which they sacrificed their lives, they have died. Who could die for a cause in whose ultimate and enduring success he did not believe ? And what would be left of the history of the world if all these things were stricken out ? Unbelief, on the other hand, is discouraging : what is the use in trying ; let the things go as they please ; who knows what the next day will bring forth ? So Goethe says : " The real and sole theme of the history of the world is the conflict between belief and unbelief. All epochs in which faith reigns supreme, under whatever form it may be, are bright, uplifting, and fruitful for contemporaries and posterity. All epochs, on the other hand, in which unbelief, in any form, gains a weak victory, even though temporarily boasting of a sham glory, will pass away, because no one will take the trouble to acquire a knowledge of the unfruitful." ^ 3. But has not the progress of scientific knowledge rendered faith idle ? Are not theism and idealism a mere shamefaced survival of the ancient superstition which first flourislied so luxuriantly in the miraculous world of gods of polytheism ? Has not science convinced all those who are capable of seeing > things as they are, that blind forces which know nothing of good and evil determine the course of the world ? Many are of the opinion that such is the case ; they believe that scientific knowledge has left religion with nothing to stand on. I do not share this belief. This is not the place to develop a system of metaphysics ; but I shall suggest a few points of view from which the matter may be considered, * Notes to WestSstUcher Divan. 426 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES It is true that the belief in gods as individuals resembling human beings, having an empirical existence somewhere and occasionally acting upon our world, is dying out and will never be revived. And it is immaterial whether we assume several such beings or only a single one. A monotheistic scheme, which conceives God as an individual by the side of others and permits him occasionally to act upon the world as upon something external and foreign to him, does not essentially differ from polytheism. If it be insisted that such a concep- tion alone can be regarded as theism, it will be hard to contra- dict those who claim that science leads to atheism. We should, however, have to add that atheism in this sense is evi- dently not the end but only the beginning of philosophy. It is not a positive theory of reality, but simply negates the view that there exists before, outside of, by the side of, above, the world a separate being who made the world, as a watchmaker constructs a clock, according to a plan, and now occasionally interferes with its course. The repudiation of a false theory is, however, not itself a theory. The question remains : How shall we explain the universe, how is it constructed, what is its essence ? Or is that no longer a problem ? Is it perhaps a settled fact that the world is nothing but an accumulation of an infinite number of little bodies, which accidentally congre- gating in empty space, come into reciprocal action with each other, and in this way produce the particular combinations which reality reveals to us ? There are persons who regard this view almost as self- evident. It is especially common among young people who have just discarded their school notions, and have substituted for them a few ideas gathered from popular scientific writ- ings. It is rarely held by the deeper and more independent thinkers ; indeed such men are not easily persuaded that any- thing is self-evident. Neither Plato nor Aristotle, Spinoza, nor Leibniz, Hume nor Kant, Schopenhauer nor flegel, Lot/e THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 427 nor Fechner, Mill nor Spencer, was able to convince himself of the adequacy of the theory. And in truth, no one can regard it as self-evident unless he is anxious to have an hypothesis without God, and therefore refuses to subject the view to a closer examination. When we look into the matter a little more carefully, we find some rather strange and sur- prising results. So the world consists of innumerable abso- lutely self-sufficient atoms, absolutely independent of each other in essence and being, each existing for itself, and re- gardless of all the rest ? But then how does it happen that all of them really do have regard for each other, so much so that, according to the assumptions of the physicist, the behavior of each element is uniformly determined by that of all the others ? For that is what the law of universal in- teraction means: it asserts no more and no less than that the totality of all physical processes constitutes but one single large interconnected process. Is not the actual be- havior of the atoms somewhat surprising in the light of the above theory ? Should we not rather expect each atom, since it is absolutely independent, to act in an absolutely inde- pendent way, regardless of all the rest ? Or are the atoms compelled by the laws of nature to agree with each other ? — But the laws are nothing but the expression of the actual behavior of these atoms, not something existing for itself and controlling them from without. — And how astonishing that these atoms which have come into the world without any regard for each other, should exhibit such a similarity of essence and behavior that it can be expressed in uni- versal formulae ! Should we not rather have to regard an infinite diversity of essence and behavior as a priori probable ? And how strange, moreover, that so much should be evolved from these atoms: cosmic systems, organic bodies, beings who feel and think ! How remarkable that such processes should arise by a mere change in the arrangement of those little pebbles of which the world is said to be composed ! Would the 428 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES atomist not be surprised if he had never seen the world as it now is, but had merely observed the assumed chaos of atoms, and should suddenly, after trying all sorts of combinations, hit upon sensations and thoughts ? Would he not perhaps say : It seems that there is something more in the atoms than ex- tension and motion ? Would he not even conclude : After all, reality cannot be constructed out of atoms, however simple the matter may at first have seemed ; in some form or other unity and spirituality must be assumed as original ; it is not possible to conceive them as the accidental results of the conjunction of atoms ? We might, by continuing these reflections, reach a view like that which Spinoza logically formulated in his Mhics : The world or reality is an absolutely unitary loeing, & substance ; the particular things, which at first seem independent, are in truth only dependent manifestations of the essence of the universal being. The All-One unfolds itself in a dual world of modifications, in a world of conscious processes and in a world of processes of motion ; between them there is uni- versal parallelism. The laws of nature, which govern each of the two worlds, and are conceivable by thought, ai-e nothing but forms of the self-determination of the All-Real ; and the latter is not pushed or shoved from without by mechanical compulsion — for there is nothing outside of it that could push or shove it — but, yielding to the inner impulse or craving, it unfolds its essence in the fulness of reality and is itself its own and free cause. Had not Spinoza been too deeply absorbed in his anti- theological and antiteleological speculations, he would have made the following additions to these conceptions : Our knowledge of the universe is in the main a physical and as- tronomical knowledge, dealing with the outside of things. Their inner side, the world of consciousness, which our uni- versal metaphysical speculation discovered to be as far-reach- ing as the world of motion, is not so open to observation. THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 429 Everybody has immediate knowledge of it only in so far as he experiences it in his own inner self. Reasoning by anal- ogy we infer from the bodily manifestations the existence of an inner life in the human and animal world. Assisted by the written and spoken word, we attain to some knowledge of the historical-mental life of humanity. Of a superhuman spiritual life we have absolutely no knowledge. We interpret the soul-life of animals by means of the lower manifestations of our own inner life. This is all we can do here. We read into the higher spiritual life conceived by metaphysics the highest phases of our being. In this sense we attribute to God, or the All-Real, wisdom, goodness, justice, and holiness. We do not intend thereby to define His essence theoretically, that is utterly impossible ; we shall not even dare to attribute reason and will to Him, reason and will are perhaps only earthly powers, just as sight and hearing are possibly merely earthly organs. We simply mean that we desire to imagine His essence in the form of the most perfect things of which we know. Art has always pictured God in human form, and will continue to do so; here we do not really intend to attribute such a form to God ; we simply use the human countenance, the most perfect and important form of cor- poreality that we have, as a symbol of absolute perfection. So, too, we use the spiritual form of the most perfect humanity as a symbol of God's essence, which we cannot imagine and conceive. And in this we seem simply to be following the sugges- tions of reality itself. The earth, the only member of the universal system with which we are in any degree familiar, is predisposed to organic life, and tends to realize it. Organic life in turn aims at mental life, which reaches its goal in man. What Speculative Philosophy defined in logical con- cepts, modern biology attempts to represent as a process of historical evolution. If now we discard the false concepts of causality, according to which the cause pushes or forces the 430 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES effect into existence, so to speak, and conceive it, with Lotze, as the spontaneous organization of all parts or members of reality into a unified system of motion or change, we can rightly say : The process of development of our planet, which culminates in human historical life, is moved or attracted by this its highest content as its goal. And in a similar man- ner, to follow Aristotle, the All is moved or attracted by God as its goal. Our conception of the moral laws as laws of nature, that is, laws of mental-historical life, suggests the same view. Since historical life is a part of universal life, the moral laws too must be based upon the essence of the universe, and give expression to it. Yes, we shall say, if human mental life is the highest and fullest development of inner life of which we know, then the moral laws are for us the highest forms of the self-determination of the All-Real. Here, too, the new biology serves as a bond of union between nature and history. This notion agrees with the old saying of Hera- clitus : All laws are nourished by one divine law. And Goethe says the same: So im Kleinen ewig, wie im Grossen Wirkt Natur, wirkt Menschengeist, und bcide Sind ein Abglanz jenes Urlichts droben, Das unsichtbar alle Welt erleuchtet. In this sense we may conclude with Bacon : " Undoubtedly a superficial tincture of philosophy may incline the mind to atheism, yet a farther knowledge brings it back to religion." ' It is true, not all the philosophers mentioned above have accepted this world-formula, although no system has fewer opponents than this. But they all agree that reality is far from being simple and perfectly intelligible. They all declare, in some form or another, that the universe is a wonderful miracle, whose infinite depths even the profoundest human thoughts cannot fathom. And they all assert, each in ' [Advancement of Learning, Bk. I.] THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 431 his own way, that it behooves man reverently to acknowledge the infinite and unfathomable. Forsooth, we must confess that, remarkable though the progress of science has been during the last few centuries, it has utterly failed to solve the great riddle of existence. In- deed, the mystery seems to have deepened and to have grown more wonderful. The more we study the universe, the more immeasurable seem its depths, the more inexhaustible the variety and wealth of its forms. How simple and intelligible was the world of Aristotle and St. Thomas ; into what incon- ceivable abysses astronomy and physics have since led us ! The billions of miles, years, and vibrations, with which these sciences reckon, carry the imagination to the dizzy edge of infinity. With what profound secrets of its organization, development, and existence biology sees herself confronted, now that she has learned to manipulate the microscope, and has called evolutionary science to her aid : back to what infinite beginnings progressive historical research stretches the life of man, which a few centuries ago seemed so clearly and distinctly bounded by the creation on the one side, and the judgment day on the other! So far is science from having transformed the world into a simple problem of arithmetic ! Science does not carry the thinking man to the end of things, she merely gives him an inkling of the illimit- ableness of the universe. She arouses in those who serve her with a pure heart, not pride, but feelings of deep humility and insignificance. These are the feelings which inspired Kant and Newton. Goethe, too, is full of this thought, which runs through his Prose Maxims (^Spriiche in Prosa) and his Conversations with Eekermann : " The greatest blessing that can befall a thinking man is to fathom what can be fathomed and silently to adore the unfathomable." This feeling of awe in the presence of the Infinite from which our life springs, and into which it flows, forms the root of our religious conception of things. Reverence includes 432 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES two elements, humility and trust; humility, the feeling of our own littleness and insignificance in the presence of the Infinite ; trust, the feeling that the Infinite is not merely an external transcendent force, but harbors and bears within its bosom our own life and striving as something that was created by it and cannot be lost. Of such feelings the heart-beats of religion consist. The ideas in which it clothes itself, the conceptual formulag in which philosophers and theologians attempt to comprehend the ideas, constitute the accidental and transitory element in religion. The value of these ideas and concepts consists in this : they are symbols in which feeling objectifies itself, and make religious fellowship and communion possible ; for no religion can exist except in a permanent social life. The individual participates in it as he participates in language and poetry, morals and law. — Besides, conceptual formulae have never exerted the greatest influence in the world ; art, which Goethe calls the mediator of the ineffable, and worship, with which the former is most intimately connected, have always been more important bearers and creators of religious life ; it is their function to express man's relation to the suprasensuous in a sensuous-visible manner. Now I believe that these feelings are qualities of human nature which will never be lost. The forms in which they are clothed will continue to change, their essence will remain. Whatever conceptions scientific research may form of reality, there will always be room for religious feeling. Religion will never die out ; it satisfies the innermost and deepest needs of the human soul. In order that it may not be stricken with pride and blindness in prosperity, the heart must turn heaven- ward, thankfully and joyfully accepting its happiness, not as something due to its own merit, but as a gift of grace. In the death of its hopes and plans it must remember that earthly things have no absolute worth ; in its absolute uncer- tainty concerning all human things, and in its ignorance of its THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 433 own future, that it may not fall into baneful superstition, it needs the trust that whatever may come is meant as a bless- ing. It is surely not an accident that wherever this belief disappears superstition spreads. I also believe that the hearts of the best men always have been and always will be most susceptible to religious feeling. The purer and more beautiful a human soul, the more capable will it be of that reverence which constitutes the basis of reli- gion ; the more seriously and profoundly it regards life, the more humbly will it acknowledge how far short it falls of its ideals. The greater and freer the aspirations of a man, the stronger and more intense will be his faith in the ultimate victory of the good cause. 4. But, it will be said, how does it happen that so many serious, able, and truth-loving men of our times not only stand outside of the church, but neither have nor even claim to have religion in any form ? Granting the truth of this statement — and I do not believe that we can doubt it — we may perhaps explain it as follows : First, the capacity for religion is not equally developed in all individuals. There are men in whom intellect or will so strongly preponderates, as to hinder the growth of the more refined and freer emotions. The story is told that a mathematician, after having listened to the read- ing of a poem, impatiently inquired : What does it prove ? His mind was so set upon demonstrations that there was no place nor interest in it for anything else; from nature he learned nothing except that she gave him problems to solve. Darwin seems to have passed through a similar experience. He tells us how his taste for poetry gradually disappeared Indeed, no one will wholly escape these influences who devotes his entire strength to a scientific task. Others are so deeply interested in practical problems as to care for nothing except what bears on these. They may be honest, efficient, and good men, but we cannot regard them as normally developed. An essential phase of their inner life seems to be wanting, 434 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES that part of it, namely, by which human nature senses beauty, poetry, and freedom. We may perhaps say that our age is especially productive of men of this stamp. The division of labor, the mechanization of life, specialism, which constitute the glory of the present, apparently favor such a one-sided development. Many are proud of their limitations, not to say narrowness. The old Greek philosophers, the mediaeval scholars, the thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies, came into broader and freer touch with the universe than many of the investigators of the present, who begin to delve in some special field, and then, buried in their shafts, see nothing of heaven or of earth. Similar one-sidediiess re- sults from the extreme devotion to an official or industrial sphere of activity, which the present demands. Life used to be simpler and more versatile, our relations to men and things were more varied, and hence fancy was more active, and the emotional life richer and more uniform. Specialism, and par- ticularly scientific specialism, encourages the feeling least favorable to religious life, that is, pride. I read somewhere that the salamanders living in the stalactitic caves of Car- niola have lost their vision, according to a well-known law of biology that organs which are not exercised disa,ppear. It would seem that the science-specialists of our age often meet with a similar fate. Accustomed as they become, by constant practice, to the microscopic view of things, in philology and history as well as in natural science, they gradually diminish and finally lose entirely the power to see things in their great connections. And in the same ratio the tendency develops to regard all those who do not see the little things as stupid ignoramuses, and all those who strive to insert them into a larger Whole, as meddlesome and fantastic bunglers. Is it not possible that the blind salamanders, groping about in the darkness of their caves, have the same contempt for those that see, and regard eyes as dilettantic organs of orientation ? Another circumstance, which causes a great deal of confu- THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 435 sion and unhappiness, has the same effect : the contradiction between our professions and our real convictions. The creed contains much that sounds strange to us now, for example, the belief in miracles and demons. No one objected to these things as late as three hundred years ago. But with the triumph of the scientific mode of thought, which starts from the hypothesis of the universal reign of law, and then seeks to verify it in particular cases, the intellect has come to rebel somewhat strongly against miracles and magic. There may be more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy, as witness the hypnotic phenomena, the reality of which we found it so hard to acknowledge. But the ten- dency to consider all phenomena as obeying the universal order of nature, as uniform occurrences, whose formula must be discovered, will not disappear again, unless science itself perishes. And no intelligent man would welcome such a calamity ; the decline of science would prepare the soil for the rank weed of superstition. We are here confronted with an alternative ; there are riddles, says science, which we can- not, as yet, solve, but there are no miracles, no occurrences which exclude, in principle, the possibility of a natural explanation. The Biblical miracles are no exception to this rule ; they belong to a category of world- views which has disappeared, and cannot long survive them. If we accept the Biblical miracles, we must also admit the possibility of modern miracles. If we have not the courage or find it impossible to accept the latter, at least in the Protestant world, we must draw the logical conclusion, and repudiate the former also. Protestant theology evidently appreciates the situation ; it at- tempts to set a limit to miracles or to discard them altogether, e.g., by interpreting them naturally or by explaining them away exegetically. This was the method of old rationalism, and it gave rise to many artificial and forced interpretations. Nevertheless, such a procedure was perhaps more honest and 436 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES also more appropriate than a later one in which the attempt is made to complicate the question by all kinds of so-called speculative considerations or critical investigations of the sources, and so to avoid taking a definite stand in the matter. The impartial reader is apt to feel that such investigations are intended to confuse him and to conceal from him the author's failure to reach any decision whatever. I do not believe that the church can again win the confi- dence of thinking men until she decides to discard the belief in miracles. All these endeavors to make the miracles appear credible, simply serve, I fear, to increase the distrust. Besides, it may perhaps be shown that miracles not only contradict the scientific conceptions of our age, but also the spirit of our religious faith. They really belong to the poly- theistic stage in the evolution of theism ; gods work miracles, God works no miracles. According to the dogma of the church, God originally created all things out of nothing, and it is He who is constantly keeping them in existence ; they do not exist through themselves. That is, stated in different words : God alone is an independent being, all things are and exist, not in themselves, but in Him ; or according to Spinoza's formula: God is the substance, the things are modifications of His essence. Miracles presuppose a different relation of God to the world : God, a particular being by the side of other beings, upon which He occasionally acts arbitrarily, but which, in other respects, have their own reality. Miracles are exceptional effects, they are makeshifts, by which the world, which usually runs its own course, is corrected from without. Fetiches and gods only can work by miracles. The all-powerful God of the first article, however, is an all- active God, and such a God works no miracles. Whoever takes monotheism seriously, whoever regards the difference between monotheism and polytheism not as a numerical difference, but as a difference in the divine essence, and does not look upon God as the only survivor of a great host of THE RELATIOI? OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 437 gods, whoever interprets monotheism to mean that God alone truly exists, cannot at the same time believe, without contradicting himself, that He reveals Himself in miracles and signs. And it is equally plain that theurgic practices of all kinds, aiming to produce changes in the course of nature, are necessarily connected with the polytheistic con- ception of the nature of the gods. Nor should we hide from ourselves the consequences of such an historico-critical " abstinence-policy " as was men- tioned before. The objection is raised to Strauss' s criticism that it is dogmatic and not historical. Thus Bishop Mar- tensen of Zealand tells us in his Autobiography^ that he noticed, immediately after reading the book for the first time, that " the Life of Jesus, which pretends to adhere to the prin- ciple of free thought, proceeds from a crass dogmatism : for Strauss boldly assumes that miracles are not possible." To be sure, if we should have to regard miracles as possible and true, until historical criticism had proved beyond a doubt, in case of each and every one of them, that the account of it was founded upon error, deception, or fraud, they would be safe for all time. We must not forget, however, that the same certainty would attach to the countless miracles which are mentioned in the literature of antiquity and the Middle Ages. They may all be defended against a " groundless nega- tive criticism " by the objection that their sources have not, as yet, been sufficiently investigated to compel us to abandon them ; and that it is crass dogmatism to assert their impos- sibility a priori: why, for example, should it be unthinkable that thunder and lightning, the flight of birds, and the condi- tion of entrails stand in some relation to human affairs, be it through supernatural intervention or through pre- established harmony ? It would, in my opinion, be no loss, at least to the Protes- tant church, should these things be entirely discarded. It may 1 L, 142. 438 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES be that miracles and signs were once needed to strengthen the faith of the church ; at present they merely discredit it. The story is told that F. A. Wolf once chose the New Testa- ment, tlie Gospel of St. Mark, as the subject of his lectures ; but when lie came to the fifth chapter, to the story of the cast- ing out of devils in the country of the Gadarenes, and the events following it, he laid the book aside forever. Why did he not find the same fault with the ghost-stories and the fables in Homer? Surely because he did not have to be- lieve them, because he was allowed to take them for what they were worth. The Gospels certainly contain wonderfully serious and important matters, much more important matters than the works of Homer ; but Wolf could not see them on account of these miserable Gadarene swine. For another person Balaam's ass or a similar calamity proves to be the stumbling-block. He is taught in the schools to take such things literally ; the miracles are perhaps emphasized as especially important facts and as corroborating the truth of all the other contents. As soon as he escapes from the school-room, and his impulse to believe and to doubt is no longer subjected to compulsion, he revenges himself by repu- diating these books once and for all ; to his own detriment of course, but not wholly through his own fault. How wonderful, deep, poetically affecting, are the stories with which legend has surrounded the birth of Jesus : the annun- ciation, the appearance of the angels among the shepherds, and the gloria in excelsis, the star, which appeared to the wise men of the East, and showed them the way to the new-born babe, the Savior of the world, the flight to Egypt; how full of meaning is the story of the temptation, of the feeding of the multitude, of the catching of the fishes. But who can endure a sermon that uses these narratives to con- tradict rationalism, and to prove their literal possibility and truth? Demonstrations are absolutely out of place here; where these stories are accepted with the old faith, proof THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 439 is superfluous; where the faith is gone, such arguments will never bring it back, they will simply destroy the poetical effect, and produce distrust, which will spread from point to point until it has finally eaten away all faith and all religion. If, in addition to this, the church undertakes to defend the creed by outward means, if the worldly powers aid her therein to their utmost, and if rewards are bestowed upon ostensible orthodoxy, and punishments inflicted upon its opposite, ^ — • then the sincerest natures will be the first to assume an attitude of decided hostility, they will look upon the creed as the Caudine Porks through which the path leads to ap- pointment and promotion, as the praemium servitutis. History shows it ; for example, the history of the forties and fifties ; but who heeds her warnings ? It seems to be fated that all the absurdities of humanity should be produced anew with every generation. So, too, the attempt is periodically made to bolster up religion by means of outward force. And the con- sequences are always the same ; human nature rebels against what is forced upon it, and philosophers assert that such methods are absolutely contrary to human nature. If the ex- periment could be made to employ force, not in behalf of, but against religion — an experiment which the first French revo- lution actually tried, and which presumably will be tried again in some form or other — it would be found how deeply re- ligion is rooted in the heart of man. 5. Let me also consider briefly the relation between the belief in immortality and morality. It has long been believed and is still claimed at the present time that the belief in im- mortality, in the sense that death is followed by another life, is the keystone of all morality. If this life were the end of everything, virtue would be an empty dream ; then it would be the part of wisdom to enjoy the moment. According to the view herein presented, morality as a science does not depend upon this belief. The latter is of 440 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES great importance to conduct, but not to moral philosophy. Ethics will not change a single proposition, whether there be a life after death or not. The moral laws are natural laws of the human historical life existing at this time and upon this earth. Should this life be the preparation for another life, we could not give the slightest indication of how to pre- pare ourselves for it except by filling our present life with a moral content. And should this earthly life be the whole of life, the same course would be advisable and necessary ; nor would such a life need another as a reward, it would be a sufficient reward in itself. And I should like to add that it does not seem advisable from z, pedagogical and practical standpoint, to make the truth or the value of the moral laws dependent upon so uncertain a thing as the belief in a future life. For it cannot be denied that this belief is becoming more and more unsettled in our times ; and the future will hardly succeed in strengthening it. It is being undermined by the increasing spread of the scien- tific and anthropological mode of thought. The conception of a life after death, as anthropology shows us, is a dream which all peoples have dreamed in infinitely different forms. The Indians and Esquimaux dreamed of hunting and fishing grounds, the old Germans of battles and drinking bouts, the Eastern Mohammedans of beautiful women and beautiful gar- dens : everywhere the imagination creates a future world, in which the will realizes its desire for happiness. Then I should continue as follows. Even though a tem- poral life after death were a dream, that would not make the belief in immortality a wholly vain illusion ; we have here in sensuous garb a possible and perhaps necessary thought, the thought to which the Kantian philosophy leads : The temporal life is the phenomenal form of a life which is eternal ax such. Consider : what is time ? The form of reality as such ? If so, to be in time would be the condition of being real. Id THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 441 that case, however, we should have to say further : To be in the present is the condition of being real ; for that which is not in the present, is necessarily either past and hence no longer existent, or future and hence not yet existent ; there- fore that only is real which is in the present. — But note the consequence : absolutely nothing can be in the present ; at the moment in which being is predicated of it, it has already passed with the moment ; the present is not a space, but a point. To be in the present can therefore not be the con- dition of being real ; if reality is not to disappear entirely, even the past must in some way be real, and hence also the future. — Perhaps after we have reflected upon this, it will be easier to grant : To be in time is by no means the condi- tion of being real, or, to speak with Kant : Time is not a form of reality, but a form of our sense-perception. That which appears in our consciousness, which is bound to this form of intuition, as a process extending through time, is in and for itself a timeless existence, eternal. Every moment of reality, hence also a human life, has absolute or eternal exist- ence in reality. It is irrational to think : Death ends all, for then life is gone and annihilated, and it is just as though it had never been. A life can in no wise be destroyed by death ; what has once been experienced is an eternal and indelible constituent of reality, never more to be erased or altered. It is a foolish doubt which Karl Moor expresses with the pistol in his hand : " If the paltry pressure of this paltry thing makes the wise man and the fool, the coward and the hero, the noble and the villain, equal — " That cannot be ; death severs the thread of the earthly life, but the content of life can neither be altered nor annihilated by it ; reality is eternal in its essence, nothing that is real can, to quote Angelus Silesius, ever perish and cease to be.^ Are these useless, abstract reflections ? Perhaps not alto- 1 Weil die Geschopfe gar in Gottes Wort bestehn, Wie konnen sie denn je zerwerden und vergehn ? 442 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES gether. Whenever we appear before men, even though it be but for a moment, it is not immaterial to us what pic- ture they form of us ; we know that it will hardly abide with them for a second, then to be forgotten forever, and yet we take care that it may not be a repulsive or ugly pic- ture. Countless human beings have lived and died thinking of the picture which future generations will form of them ; and should we then care nothing for the picture which is impressed, not upon a momentary consciousness, not upon the memory of the succeeding generations, but, as it were, upon the very essence of reality for all eternity ? And not a picture merely but rather our very being ? Should we, seek- ing only the enjoyment of the moment, be careless whether our being manifests itself forever in the eternal reality as a useless, empty, and contemptible, or as a beautiful and good thing ? But the world has no consciousness, and I myself will have no consciousness ; and what do I care for an existence in which neither I nor any one else is to have consciousness ? Well, who says that reality is without consciousness ? May not the All-Real have an absolute consciousness of itself, of its essence ? Surely the thought which so many of the pro- foundest thinkers of all ages regarded as a necessary thought, cannot be an absurd one. The divine consciousness will be different from the earthly-temporal consciousness of man, and we cannot conceive it, imagine it, or describe it. But who dares to assert that nothing can exist except what he can imagine ? — And who will claim that the individual beings, who here have a temporal consciousness, could not also possess an eternal consciousness ? Why should not a being which is conscious of its inner life as a process extended in time, also be able to become aware of it awJ specie ceterni- tatis f Do we know how temporal consciousness arises, and how it can exist ? And we might point out how consciousness is modified with THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 443 advancing age. Youth lives in the future. But the past gradually expands, and old age finds rest in the contem- plation of the past as the true reality, as something no longer subject to change. When we look back upon the past, what is it that determines our judgment of the value of life ? The pleasure which it yielded, or the fact that it was a worthy and a righteous life ? Christian moralists constantly exhort us to remember death and to be mindful of eternity, and to act and to live as though we were in the presence of death. Indeed, this advice is as sound as it is effective; death is really, as it has been called, a good professor moralium. The time will come for you, whoever you may be and what- ever you may think and believe, — even though not until your life is drawing to a close, — when it will be absolutely im- material to you what pleasures you have enjoyed in this world, how much honor and wealth you have won, how far you have succeeded in asserting your claims ; the time will come, even though not until you are on your death-bed, when one thing alone will not be immaterial to you : whether you have honestly done your work in this world, however great or small it may have been, as a righteous man, whether you have fought the battle of life as a brave and faithful soldier. Yes, ask yourself, and honestly answer the question. What is it that really pains you now when you look back upon your past ? Is it the sorrows you have suffered, is it the evils, the injustice, the losses which you have borne ? Or is it the sins you have committed, the wrongs you have inflicted upon others, the injury you have done yourself, contrary to your better nature ? And what is it that makes you happy, what adds value to your life in your eyes ? The pleasures and good meals ? These are gone and will never more delight you ! But the noble and honest deeds you have wrought, the good you have done to others at the sacrifice of your own inclinations, — these are the things which you still cherish and hold dear. Does this not express an immediate conviction on 444 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES your part that the past is not absolutely vain and unreal, but permanent and real ? for what do we care for the non-existent ? — "Why, you say, it exists in memory. — Well, suppose being in memory were the real being, suppose all recollection formed a part of the absolute memory, or rather of the absolute consciousness of God ? Then life, clearly seeing itself in the light of the eternal self-consciousness of God, would be engraven upon the background of eternal reality for all eternity.^ If we were to seek for terms to express the faith of Ohris- tianity in philosophical language, we should, it seems to me, be forced to adopt a similar formula. The Scriptures tell us that the eternal life is not a sensuous-temporal life, but a suprasensuous-eternal life ; that it does not consist of eating and drinking, but of an unspeakable glory and blessedness, or its opposite ; that the end of this earthly life destroys the possibility of a change of its essence and hence of its state, which means that no life in time will follow, for a life in time without change is something that cannot possibly be con- ceived. To be sure, faith does not rest here, in these abstract and negative expressions, which strip off the sensuous and the temporal ; it soon clothes the thought of a non-sensuous-time- less life in the forms and colors of the sensuous-temporal life ; it speaks of a city of God, measures its length and its breadth, builds the streets of gold and the gates of pearls, makes the saints, clothed in white raiment and carrying palms in their hands, sing songs of praise to God and the Lamb ; while hell is filled by the imagination with repulsive and ^ The mind which is immortal makes itself Requital for its good or evil thoughts — Is its own origin of ill and end — And its own place and time : its innate sense. When stripp'd of this mortality, derives No color from the fleeting things without, But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy, Born from the knowledge of its own desert. Btrow's Manfred. THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 445 horrible phantoms. These are images, and yet not merely images. It is peculiar to faith that it raises itself above the sensuous world, and yet remains in it aud clings to it ; what it throws away with the right hand, it again picks up with the left. The entire church creed moves along this boundary between the sensuous and the suprasensuous, between imagin- ation and thought. On the one hand, God receives no qual- ities of sensuous-temporal finitude : he is infinite, omnipresent, eternal, unchangeable; and then again he possesses the qualities of finite beings : he thinks, feels, wills, acts, suffers, is sorrowful and glad. The polytheistic religions naively attributed sensuous-human characteristics to the gods; this gave them their aesthetic perfection, which we cannot help admiring in the Greek gods even to this day. Christianity assumed a different relation to the world of sense from the very beginning. Nor must it be forgotten that it entered a world in which the great division between thought and imag- ination, which were originally one, had long ago been made ; Xenophanes and Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle, had not lived in vain. But it did not always adhere to the division ; the pseudo-science of the old dogmatics constantly attempted again to unite imagination and thought into one system. Will the time ever come which will recognize the futility of these endeavors, and decide to recognize the difference be- tween thoughts and pictures, concepts and symbols ? Will the time ever come which will have the courage to confess that the formulae of the creed are symbols, and no more adequate definitions of the divine essence and activity than the pictures of Raphael are portraits of the Holy Family ? Have the latter no value in case they are not exact likenesses ? What would be the result if a pseudo-science should endeavor to prove the portrait-character of these pictures ? Would not the indignation aroused by such a procedure, vent itself against the pictures themselves, especially if they were placed under the protection of the authorities ? 446 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES 6. The foregoing conception of the relation between morality and religionv has been criticised by Gizycki in a review of this work which I mentioned above.^ It seems to him that I underrate a valuable, indeed the most valuable, quality of a man of science, " intellectual honesty." " There really are," he says, " some intellectually honest men who strive after the truth with their whole souls, who desire to possess a faithful picture of the world, and therefore do not allow themselves to believe anything that is not immediately self-evident, or cannot be deduced with logical necessity from such absolutely certain principles." The above view, he believes, does not do these men justice. He mentions a number of such unbelievers, and compares them with others who combine great moral defects with much religion. Lom- broso has shown in his work on the criminal that few criminals are unbelievers. Gizycki considers the facts ad- duced by Lombroso as very suggestive. I confess that I do not find them so to any great extent. That criminals are superstitious is not surprising; for there is a close connec- tion between crime, intellectual decay, and insanity. It is much more surprising that Lombroso, and following him Gizycki, should so naively confuse superstition with religion. — But as for those sincere and honest men who have no reli- gion, I have of course never dreamed of denying either their existence or their integrity. I have even attempted to explain their lack of religion by their honesty. Because religion is so often confused and adulterated with superstition, religiosity with hypocrisy, sincere natures are repelled, and so repudiate all " faith," all attempts to transcend the facts adduced by scientific research. I did not reproach them for this, but, on the other hand, I cannot follow Gizycki, and regard their attitude as deserving especial praise. Nay, I cannot help regarding it as a kind of narrowness, particularly when it claims to be the only proper and legitimate attitude, I See p. 283. THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 447 Now, is it really true, are there really people who strictly adhere to the principle, " not to believe anything that is not immediately self-evident, or cannot be deduced with logical necessity from such absolutely certain principles ? " Do not these persons also form notions of the future, either of their own or of the future in general, which partake of the nature of faith ? Do not they, too, make use of unverified elements to construct their conceptions of reality ? Gizycki quotes a passage from an American author in his Moral Philosophy :^ " When a man believes things simply because Christ or the Bible says so, without knowing other reasons, then, even though his belief be true, the truth itself, which he possesses, becomes his heresy; — it is wrong to accept the Bible with- out investigation, even if every sentence were literally true." — Does this rigid rule apply only to the Bible or also to other books, for example, to the collected works of Lombroso ? I believe that it could do no harm to re-examine the generaliza- tion that most criminals are very religious. But that is most likely not our author's meaning. The rule does not really apply to the world of empirical facts, in which we are obviously constantly compelled to make assump- tions without ourselves verifying them, but to the world of religious faith, to the faith in " transcendent" things. At the beginning of this chapter I defined religion provisionally as faith in the transcendent. Gizycki says that he does not know what I mean by the transcendent, and that he has not been able to form a clear notion of it from my remarks. It seems to me that I am not altogether to blame for this. To be sure, I did not give a description of the transcendent, and I do not intend to give one now ; I believe that Kant's Criti- que has put an end to such attempts : only the empirical world is an object of description and of knowledge. But I am also convinced with Kant, and I might add, with Plato and Spinoza 1 [P. 457. The author is Stanton Coit, Intellectual Hmesty in the Pulpit, New York, 1888. — T»] 448 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES and Schopenhauer and a thousand others, that the world of our experience, or nature, is not the world in and for itself, and that our science does not exhaust reality. But what is reality in itself ? I do not know ; but it does not seem absurd to me to think that it bears a closer relation to my own inner experiences than may at first sight appear to one looking at it from the outside, with the eyes of the physicist. All philosophers, the materialists alone excepted, are agreed upon this point ; in addition to physical being they attribute to reality a metaphysical essence ; they merely differ in their interpretation of the latter. This thought of an absolute being becomes faith when it is at the same time conceived as absolute goodness, as a world of ideas, as a divine essence, as a kingdom of grace, as a moral world-order, or whatever we may choose to call it. And for such a belief Gizycki demands a theoretically satisfactory proof; otherwise it must be rejected as super- stition. Gizycki says that my theological reflections sur- prise him. Well, I confess that his demands, coming, as they do, one hundred years after the establishment of the Kantian philosophy in Germany, surprise me. Or has Kant become antiquated, has his philosophy been overthrown and replaced, say by the advance of the natural sciences or by the system of the " philosophy of reality " ? ^ If that is Gizycki's opinion, we are unquestionably pretty far apart, too far apart to be able to settle our differences here. But I should also like to add : Gizycki seems to be afraid that I may, after all, attempt to base my ethics upon theology or metaphysics, and that is perhaps the ultimate ground of his opposition. Such a thing is really far from my thoughts. I am as convinced as he is that morality can and must be explained purely immanently. But it may, perhaps, serve as a starting-point and support for metaphysics. And this 1 [ Wirklichkeitsphilosophie, the name under which German Positivism i» known. See Weber-Thilly, p. 583, note 1. — Tn.] THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 449 is precisely what I believe. If we wish to form a final con- ception of the nature of things in general, we shall have to take into consideration not only the facts of physics and astronomy, but also the facts of our inner life, and especially those with which moral philosophy is concerned. I have repeatedly emphasized the truth that the moral laws are likewise laws of nature, in the sense that a healthy and happy life is possible only where they determine the will. Gizycki calls this fact, which he recognizes as such,* a simple and self-evident fact, almost a tautologous truth. I regard it as a very suggestive truth : if the moral law is a biological law, then " unfeeling, involuntary nature " is brought into a very remarkable relation with mental-histor- ical life. It has always seemed strange to me that the thinkers who so solemnly declare that human life is merely a piece of universal nature, do not see the necessary consequence of their view : namely, that the historical life of humanity may in turn be used in interpreting the nature which produces it. For, on their hypothesis, the logical and moral laws also form a part of the universal order of nature, and the materialist, too, will have to regard them as such. He explains thought and conscience by the mechanics of the brain, that is, he assumes the possibility of such an explanation ; hence the mechanism functions, at least in part, as a logical and moral machine. Is n't that surprising ? How would the nature of things have to be constituted in order to impress the " philosophers of reality " as remarkable ? If immediately after each bad deed, the sinner were to receive from an invisible power a series of painful electrical shocks, corresponding to the degree of his guilt ; and if every good deed were, in the same way, immediately followed by its re- ward, then would they regard the phenomenon as strange and significant? Well, such an arrangement might seem suffi- 1 Moral Philosophy, §§ U f. 450 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES ciently obvious to a childish intellect ; the primitive mind has always imagined that every misdeed is followed by a misfor- tune, as a punishment, not of nature, but of the supernatural power of the fetiches or the gods. The thinking man, on the other hand, would find it difiScult to become reconciled to such a demoniacal, spectral arrangement ; he will regard a natural and uniform relation between reality and the good as more appropriate. Well, such a relation actually exists in the world ; that which the moral instinct of man has from time immemorial designated as the good or the bad, is found to be uniformly conducive to preservation and happiness, or, con- versely, to cause destruction, pain, and discord. Besides, it has not escaped healthy common-sense that God's justice does not assume the form of demoniacal intervention: The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine. Is the relation here spoken of self-evident ? Is the pro- position that virtue preserves life, that vice destroys it, a tautologous proposition, equivalent to the statement that preservative qualities preserve life, and destructive qualities destroy it? — We cannot compel any one to meditate upon these matters. But I believe there will always be men who will ponder over things more than the " philosophy of reality " may be pleased to regard as good. Nay, I am inclined to be- lieve that philosophy will, in the course of its development, come to view this connection between morality and life as the most remarkable and significant fact of all, from which all attempts to explain the essence of reality must take their be- ginning. Of course, it will never be possible to give a com- plete theoretical explanation of the world with this as our starting-point. We are simply afforded a glimpse into the ultimate connections of things. And so the ultimate relation to reality will always remain for us a belief, not an intuition. I certainly prize intellectual honesty very highly; but 1 cannot convince myself that it compels me to say that faith and religion are always a mistake in man, either of the head THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION 451 or of the heart; that he is either incapable or unwilling to see things as they are. This view held by many " philoso- phers of reality " is, however, not Gizycki's : he regards re- ligion as something wholly indifferent and accidental. I, on the other hand, believe religion belongs to the normal func- tions of human nature, and that its absence always indicates a disturbance, either in the individual life or in the life of society. CHAPTER IX THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL* 1. We now enter upon the discussion of a problem which likewise borders on ethics and metaphysics : the problem of free will. Let me discriminate, at the outset, between two senses of the word : we may speak of freedom of the will in a psycho- logical or in a metaphysical sense. The former means the ability to cause decisions and acts by one's own will (^freedom of choice) ; the latter means that the will or the particular decisions themselves have no cause. In popular speech, the term free will is employed solely in the first sense. An act is called free when the will of the agent * [For the psychology of willing, see : Wnndt, Physiologische Psychologie, chaps. XV., XX., XXI , XXII. ; Hofeding, Psychology, VII. ; Baldwin, Feeling and WiU, Part IV. ; Mental Development, chap. XIII. ; James, Psychology, chap. XXVI. ; Sully, Human Mind, vol. II., Part V. ; Ladd, Descriptive Psychology, chaps. XI., XXVI. ; Jodl, Lehrbuch, chaps. VII., XII. ; Kulpe, Die Lehre vom Willen in der neuern Psychologie, Phil. Studien, V. — Riehl, Der philosophische Kriticismus, vol. II., Part II., pp. 216-280; Sidgwick, Methods, Bk. I., chap. V.; Baumann, Wundfs Lehre vom Willen, Phil. Monatskejle, vol. XVII., pp. 558-602 ; XIX., 354-374 ; James, The Dilemma o/ Determinism, Unitarian iJcwieai, September, 1884, also in his The Will to Believe; Martineau, Study of Religion, vol. II., Book III., pp. 196- 324; Green, Prolegomena, Bk. I., chap. III.; Bk. II., chap. I.; Stephen, The Science of Ethics, pp. 264-294 ; Miinsterberg, Die Willenshandlang ; Fouill^e, La lihertg et determinisme ; Le sentiment de Veffort, Revue Phil., 1890; Sigwart, Z)«r Begriff des Wollens und sein Verhaltniss zum Begriffder CausalitSt; Steinthal, Allgemeine Ethik, pp. 312-382; Wundt, Ethik, Part III., chap. I., 1, 2, 3; Frank Thilly, Freedom of the WiU, Phil. Review, vol. III., pp. 385-411 ; Fowler and "Wilson, Principles, Part II., chap. IX. ; Hyslop, Elements, chaps. fV., V. ; Mackenzie, Manual, chap. VIIL ; Seth, Ethical Principle; Part III., chap. X. — Tk.] THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 453 is its immediate cause ; determined, when it is caused by an external force, that is, either directly, by physical compul- sion, or indirectly, by threats, misrepresentations, etc. In the latter case, the will is really not the cause of the decision ; but here there is a wide range between gentle persuasion and irresistible compulsion, and therefore a corresponding grad- ual transition from complete freedom to complete deter- minism. A person remains in a room because his business keeps him there, or because he feels no inclination to leave, or because he has been promised something to stay, or because he will be punished if he leaves, or because a sentry is posted at the door who will shoot him if he goes out, or because the door is barred and he himself is bound hand and foot. Here we have a graduated scale from perfect freedom to absolute compulsion. That there is psychological freedom has never been doubted. But whether the will can be free in the other sense is a subject of endless debate. \Jt is contended by the defenders of metaphysical freedom that the will itself is not determined by causes, but is the final uncaused cause of its decisions, that it is absolutely independent of the world-process, which is subject to the causal law. Here again there are two possibil- ities. We may, first, assume that the will of a man is an agens ; which though itself uncaused and standing outside of the causal nexus, nevertheless acts according to immanent law, in the sense that its effects follow from its nature. So Schopenhauer : ' operari sequitur esse ; but the esse, the will itself, has no cause, or is, so to say, its own cause (causa sut). Or, secondly, we may assume that the particular acts of will are uncaused as such, that each enters the world as an absolutely new element, in no wise determined by the previous course of outer and inner events. On the latter hypothesis, * [Die Freihei't des Willens. See R. Penzig, Arthur Schopenhauer tind die Ttie.nscUlche Willensfreiheit, which contains also a brief historical review of the free- will qnestion. — Tb.] 454 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES the will would be, if we could still speak of a will here, an absolutely lawless agens} The problem of the metaphysical freedom of the will is still regarded by some as one of the greatest and most difficult problems of philosophy. I do not regard it as such. It is a problem that owes its origin to certain conditions, and will disappear with these conditions : it belongs to philosophizing theology, or scholasticism. The problem did not really exist for Greek philosophy; only occasionally was it touched upon ; man was impartially conceived as a part of the whole of nature, from which he sprang, and to whose universal law — so far as Greek phil- osophy was familiar with this notion — he remained subject.^ The philosophy of the church, on the other hand, which grew out of the dogmas, considered it a problem of great difficulty.^ Two things are settled : God created man by an act of his will, hence man must have been good originally. On the other hand, it is no less certain that man, as we know him, is by nature bad. This second fact is the presupposition of the fundamental dogma of salvation, which, again, assumes the necessity of the church. But how did evil come into the world ? Through God, the Creator ? That is impossible. God is good and almighty, and hence his works as such are neces- sarily good. Evil then must have come into the world after he created it. Not from the outside, for outside of God and the world there is nothing; hence through the creatures themselves. But how can a creature become other than it is, other than the Creator made it ? Here the metaphysical freedom of the will presents itself as a solution. God has given man a free will in order that he may of his own accord decide in favor of the good ; without free choice there can be 1 [See Martineau, supra; Dr. Ward, Dublin Review, July, 1874. — Tb.] 2 [See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book III. — Tb.] ° [Of. Angustine and the Pelagian controversy, Thomas Aqninas, Dana Scotos, Luther, Calvin. — Ts.] THE FREEDOM OP THE WILL 455 no morality. ) But freedom is, in the nature of things, the cap- acity to turn to either side. Now man made use of his free- dom by deciding in favor of the evil: Adam sinned by his disobedience, and with him fell the entire race. Hence evil came into the world, not through God, but through man, although with God's sanction. Whether this solution removes the difficulty need not be decided here. The question might be asked : Can a creator really give sucli freedom to a creature, that is, the capacity to will or to do anything with absolute independence ? Will not every act and every decision follow necessarily from the nature of the creature? And then is not the cause of its nature also the cause of all its actions ? But if the reply should be given that the decision does not follow as a con- sequence from the nature of the creature, then indeed we have absolute fatalism. — Besides, purely theological objections may still be urged against such a solution, for example, ob- jections based upon the omnipotence and omniscience of God, or upon the necessity of God's grace and man's natural in- capacity for good. Calvin and Luther deny the freedom of the will, the former in his doctrine of predestination, whose logical consistency we are forced to admit, the latter in his teaching of the incapacity or " unfreedom " of the natural man to choose the good. The entire subject is, therefore, in the words of Ovid, instabilis tellus, inabillg unda. Modern philosophy, which is an outgrowth of the new natural sciences, has not, it is true, solved the problem; it has simply dropped it. The conception of the unity and uniformity of nature is one of the fundamental con- ceptions of the modern era, one that took root immediately after it was first enunciated by the great thinkers of the seventeenth century. And our interpretation of psychical processes has also been gradually determined by this concep- tion as the regulative principle. Hobbes regards the menta! processes themselves as motion ; hence metaphysical freedom 456 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES of the will is as impossible as the creation of motion or matter out of nothing. On the other handjiireedom in the psychological sense is a self-evident fact. \He sums up his view in an epigrammatic formula, which may indeed be termed the last word in this controversy : Libertas non est volendi, ted quae volumus faciendi ; we have the will to act, and this we call freedom, but not the will to will. Spinoza, whose system leaves absolutely no room for isolated or exempt ele- ments of reality, speaks of the soul as a spiritual automaton (automaton BpirituaW). Leibniz and Wolff vainly endeavor to purge themselves of the charge of determinism by distin- guishing between physical and mathematical necessity. Kant and Schopenhauer, to be sure, speaic of an " intelligible " free- dom ; but in the empirical world, which all human beings call the real world, the law of causality rules. The occurrences of the psychical world take place according to the natural laws governing it, with the same necessity as those in the physical world.^ It is merely accidental, that is, owing to their great complexity, that they cannot be calculated or foretold, which, however, likewise holds true of many pro- cesses in the physical world ; for example, of meteorological and physiological occurrences. Theoretically, nothing stands in the way ;(a perfect intellect, capable of taking into account all the necessary facts, would understand the acts of a man as perfectly as the movements of the planets.) The physiologists of our times are still further influenced in their acceptance of the causal dependence of all mental processes, by the prevail- ing view that the psychical processes must be conceived as concomitant phenomena of physiological processes in the brain and nervous system. If now the law of causality is absolutely valid for the latter as physical processes, it must also be as- sumed to apply to the concomitant mental processes. Jf the proposition is true that organic bodies which are absolutely identical will respond to the same stimuli in exactly the same 1 [See also Green, supra. — Te.J THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 457 manner, then the proposition also holds that souls exactly alike in nature and character, inclinations and moods, expe- riences and ideas, will respond to the same stimuli in the same way.^ And similarly : If the law of causality applies to transmission of bodily characteristics, it will apply no less to the psychical predispositions which depend upon the former. 2. Whatever view we may take of these ultimate specula- tions, the facts will hardly allow us to doubt the causal determination of the nature and development of the will, and hence of action. Indeed, no one really doubts it, no one believes that the human will is an ens a te, or that, a certain nature and certain conditions being given, a certain stimulus will sometimes produce one act, and sometimes another. Let me indicate the facts, which force themselves upon our attention. How does a man, a human will, come into the world ? So far as we know, his life begins in time. Is the beginning without cause, or is it the result of his own choice ? Hardly ; man, like the animal, is conceived and produced by parents ; he resembles them in body and in soul, he inherits their temper- ament, their desires, their sensuous-intellectual powers, as well as their bodily characteristics. He receives all the physical- spiritual qualities of the people from whom he descends, as his natural endowment. His sex, too, which exercises such a potent influence upon his entire life, is determined, by what causes we do not know, yet no one will claim that it is the result of his own choice. Hence nothing in the origin of man indicates that he constitutes an exempt territory, an enclave in the kingdom of nature, which is not subject to her laws. These predispositions or tendencies are then developed under the determining influences of environment, of natural and, above all, human environment. The cliild is educated by the family in the form of life peculiar to his people. He acquires their language, and with the language a more or less complete system of concepts and judgments. He is educated 458 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES into the customs and habits of his nation, by which the actions and judgments of most persons are governed during their entire lives. He is sent to school, and here obtains the gen- eral culture of the age ; he is taken into the church, where he receives further training, which, positively or negatively, exercises a permanent influence upon bis inner life. He is finally dismissed from the home and the school, but only to be subjected to the influence of a new educative force, — society. The individual is also born into society; there is, as a rule, little room for choice ; he belongs to a certain class by descent and, as a rule, for life. Society incessantly works upon him ; it tells him in words and in deeds what is right and what is wrong, what is proper and improper, what is at- tractive and repulsive. It assigns to him his tasks according to the law of supply and demand. Each man receives his instructions from his times. The builder does not build as he chooses, but as the age chooses : in the fourteenth cen- tury, in the Gothic style ; in the sixteenth. Renaissance ; in the eighteenth. Rococo. Nor does the scholar choose his scientific task, his age selects it for him : in the fourteenth century, a logical disquisition on substance and accident ; in the sixteenth, Latin verses, modelled after Virgil; in the eighteenth, a mathematical-physical investigation, or a treat- ise on the harmfulness of superstition. In our days he makes an historical examination of a lost Greek writer or digs up prehistoric ruins. There seems to be no break in the chain : nation and age, parents and teachers, environment and society, determine the predisposition and development, rank and life-problems, of each individual human being. He is the product of the col- lective body from which he springs. Just as the twig on a tree does not owe its form and function to its will, but to the whole body on which it grows, so a man does not exist prior to himself, as it were, and determine his form and lot in life by the decision of his will. )He comes into the world and THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 459 acts in the world as the member of a collective body. And as a part of this people his life forms a part of the total historical life of humanity, and, finally, of uriiversal nature. But, it is said, self-consciousness Icnows nothing of such ne- cessity. Every one has an immediate feeling of certainty that he is not moulded into what he is from without, that every- thing would have happened otherwise if he had willed other- wise.^ And he is likewise absolutely sure that the future shaping of his life depends upon his will : I could give up my business right now and start another one ; I could emigrate to St. Petersburg or to London or to America, — all this lies wholly in my power ; and such a course would evidently com- pletely change my life. I could also, and perhaps ought to, says self-consciousness, alter my mode of life, my behavior to others, my character. Is all this an illusion ? Certainly not. Self-consciousness does not deceive us. But what does it say ? Surely this, that to the influences which have determined and will continue to determine my life and character, must be added my wishes and inclinations, my con- victions and resolutions, and particularly these. It tells me that I am not moved from without like a cogwheel in a machine, but through the mediation of an inner element which I call my will. VThe organic differs from the inorganic in that the former is not determined by external, mechanical effects, but by the action of an inner principle : a statue is fashioned by chiselling or moulding, an organism may be de- stroyed, but it cannot be formed, by mechanical influences. Similarly, man is not moulded mechanically by things and men, but the outer as well as the inner man is formed by the reaction of an inner principle upon extraneous influences, by which process his nature is gradually developed. That is 1 [Sidgwick, Methods, p. 67 : "I hold, therefore, that against the formidable array of cumulative evidence offered for Determinism, there is but one argument of real force : the immediate affirmation of consciousness in the moment ot deliberate action." — Tb.1 460 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES what self-consciousness says ; never, however, does it tell uS that the particular processes arise without cause, that at any moment of life any occurrence whatever can take place, utterly regardless of all preceding ones ; this would, if it really hap- pened, be equivalent to the complete resolution of life into a series of disconnected and irrational accidents. Nor does it say that this inner principle, the character, the ego, or what- ever we may choose to call it, is itself absolutely uncaused, that it enters the world as an absolutely isolated element. In no sense does it contradict the view that the ego, like the organized body, is the product of evolution ; that it and its entire nature originally sprang from something else ; that it is exceedingly plastic during the earlier period of its develop- ment, but gradually becomes more capable of resistance, and acquires the ability to change its relations to its surround- ings, and thus indirectly its own form, through its own decisions.^ 3. But in that case what becomes of responsibility ? Then each man is ultimately what God or Nature made him, and God or Nature is to blame if he does not turn out well. He himself cannot help it ; if he did not choose his original en- dowments, nor his character, nor his parents, nor his society, he could not, being what he was under those particular con- ' One of the reasons why it is so hard to bring about a reconciliation between determinism and indeterrainism is above all a false conception of the nature of causality. It is customary to conceive the relation between cause and effect according to the notion of mechanical impact, and hence to regard necessity or compulsion as an essential element in it, a view which malces it impossible to apply the causal notion to the processes of psychical life. A more penetrating analysis of the relation, as we find it in thinkers like Leibniz, Hume, and Lotze, shows that both compulsion and necessity are out of the question : the causal law says that there is a spontaneous concomitance of all elements, Leibniz's con- comitance universelle, not that each element is coerced or compelled by every other element. From this standpoint, causality is compatible with teleology ; the universal concomitance points to an original unity of plurality, at first in a sub- stance, and ultimately in a unified reason. I can merely suggest these thoughts here. The reader will find a more elaborate treatinent of them in my Tntroduc tjon to Philosophy, pp. 212 ff. [Eng. translation, pp. 218 ff. — Te.] THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 461 ditions, have helped becoming what he now is. How can we blame him, how can we punish him for something which he really did not do, but suffered ? We reply : There is some ground for the first part of this conclusion, but none for the second. It is true, God or Nature cannot shirk the responsibility for their creations, if they cannot deny their authorship. We should despise a family as bad and worthless that had produced nothing but degenerate individuals for a number of generations ; we should hate and detest a nation that brought forth nothing but repulsive and base characters. If the world produced nothing but ugly and deformed creatures, we should un- doubtedly say it was worth nothing, and if we assumed the existence of a Cause, we should feel as little admiration for Him as for His work. If a good and beautiful human life is a credit to God, a worthless and disgraceful life is doubtless to His discredit. It is utterly incomprehensible how one conclusion can be drawn without the other. We cannot justify God for the evil in the world by saying that the human will is its absolute and ultimate cause, but only in the manner indicated above,^ that is, by showing that evil, even though it remains evil, is in a certain measure necessary to the good, because the latter cannot exist and manifest itself without the former. Hence, to refer evil to causes means to shift the respon- sibility upon these causes. But, it must be added, this does not alter our feelings, our judgment, and our attitude towards the worthless and evil individual. To be sure, we should say, nothing good can come from such a source ; but this would not mean that the product, base though it may be, was pure and guiltless, and that we should treat it as such. jOur judgment of the worth of a person depends upon what he is, not upon how he became so, and our attitude towards him depends on the same thing. > " Every tree which bringeth » Pd. 325 n. 462 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire." We know very well that it cannot help its badness, that it has not chosen its own existence and nature, but that does not pre- vent us from saying : "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground ? " So, too, we kill a ferocious and dangerous domes- tic animal without supposing that it has voluntarily chosen its evil nature; its nature is evil, and that settles it. One thing alone could induce us to modify our behavior. Should we become convinced that the displeasing quality was due not 80 much to an original endowment as to unfavorable condi- tions of development, should we find, for example, that the tree was planted in poor soil, that the animal was in the liands of brutal men, then we should deliberate and perhaps attempt to remove the unfavorable influences, and remedy the defect by changing the external conditions of life. In case, however, the original endowment itself is bad, our repudia- tion of the form is final. We assume practically the same attitude towards human beings. It is no excuse for a worthless and degenerate fellow to appeal to the fact that he comes from a family that has been profligate for generations. Nay, this will hardly justify him in his own eyes. If a man should say to himself : I am by nature, by descent, a wicked knave, endowed with all kinds of perverse instincts and moral defects, it would not alter the fact that he possesses the feelings which go with wickedness and degeneracy. It would, however, excuse him in his own eyes and before others, if he could sa,y: I am not naturally a bad man, I really do not belong to the set in which you find me. I owe my downfall to certain circum- stances — of course, I am not altogether free from blame — but I am a human being, my will is not absolutely proof against temptation ; I was overtaken by want, without any fault of my own ; I have been treated outrageously by men ; I fell into bad company without knowing it. In case we believe him, our feelings change, anger gives way to pity, THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 463 we endeavor to bring the unfortunate individual into more favorable surroundings, .so that his better nature may find an opportuniij to assert itself. Hence, we find here a Rouble responsibility : First, we hold the individual himself accountable ; then the collective bodies which moulded him, his family, his social class, his nation, humanity at large ; and finally the All-Real itself. This is what actually happens everywhere : we invariably judge of the value of collective bodies by the goodness and badness of the individuals belonging to them. But this does not make unnecessary our evaluation of the individual ; on the contrary, the latter remains the essential precondition of the wider judgment. The individual is the point from which our feel- ing and judgment extends to the whole, of which he forms a part. I have always wondered why in our anxiety to save respon- sibility we invariably think of accountability for evil. Why are we not equally concerned about the responsibility for good ? Is it because we plainly recognize that our judgments of value are independent of the question of origin in the latter case ? We do not allow our enjoyment of the beauti- ful and the good to be the least disturbed by the knowledge of how they became what they are. Or is it because the im- pulse to reward is not so strong in us as the impulse to revenge ourselves and to punish ? What is true of moral accountability is likewise true of legal responsibility, which rests upon the former. Practical jurisprudence has never doubted that freedom of choice alone, and not metaphysical freedom, decides the question of respon- sibility. It has never been considered necessary to inquire whether the criminal owed his evil tendencies to heredity and education, or whether he created them by an absolute act of the will. Only occasionally have theorists, by constantly brooding over the problem of metaphysical freedom, or by gazing blankly at the figures furnished by statistics, become 464 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES entangled in all kinds of curious perplexities and doubts : as to whether society has the right to punish, or whether it is not itself the guilty and responsible party. The same relative number of crimes, it is held, recur annually with the regularity of natural events, — perjury, murder, and crimes against morals ; a kind of necessity seems to prevail, particular criminals being selected as the victims to complete the criminal budget of society.^ We may reply to this : It is quite true ; society is guilty and therefore liable to punishment, it produces individuals with criminal tendencies, it also creates temptation and opportunities for crime. But is society not punished? Is not, in the first place, the crime itself a punishment which it suffers ? The person against whom the offence is com- mitted is as much a part of society as the criminal. And the feeling of fear and insecurity caused by the crime is a further punishment. And the punishment itself, which is inflicted upon the criminal, is an additional punishment: when he suffers, a member of society suffers, the member namely, through whom it has sinned. And finally, society as a whole suffers the punishment which it inflicts ; for is it not a pun- ishment for a nation to watch, to support, to clothe, and to employ many thousands in penitentiaries and prisons at enormous expense ? Ought society to be punished in other ways? Shall all the others, with the sole exception of the criminal as the only innocent party, be punished ? Or what do these wonderful people mean ? . We should further have to add that from the standpoint of collective life punishment is to be considered as a remedy against certain ills of society, a painful remedy which society prescribes in order to rid itself of these ills, that is, the crimes. The remedy is, naturally, applied to the seat of the disease, that is, to the criminal ; and here we expect to produce the ^ [See Drobisch, Die moralische Statistik und die menschliche Wiliensfreiheit., 1867. — Tr.] THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 465 immediate effects. The criminal, let us say, is imprisoned. This teaches him that his conduct is not appropriate, even for him. He cannot wish to relinquish his privilege to live in and with society ; the punishment reminds him that this is possible only under certain conditions, and that, in case he does not fulfil these conditions, he is hopelessly at the mercy of the stronger. At the same time labor shows him the way to a peaceful and profitable life. So the penitentiary is, in a sense, a hospital for the morally insane, in which, as in other hospitals, there are both curables and incurables. Society likewise protects itself against infection by isolating and deterring its offenders, or at least attempts it, for it is not wholly successful. Capital punishment is to be regarded in the same light : it is the last means of curing the criminal of his wicked will ; what good would it do him to prolong his life and enable him to increase his guilt ? And at the same time society protects itself against further disturbances, which are bound to spread from a hopelessly incurable member. This fact has, as we said before, never been doubted in the practical world. Accountability and legal responsibility merely presuppose freedom in the psychological sense. When the will of a man is expressed in his act, it is his act, and he is responsible for it. The question whether this will itself was fashioned into what it is by causes outside of it, is never broached by the judge. When, however, an act does not express the real will of the agent there is no responsibility. Insanity makes volition in the real human sense, choice as a result of rational deliberation, impossible. Violent passion may, under certain circumstances, and in a certain measure, have the same effect, in which case the real will of the entire man does not express itself. Therefore, deeds done in the heat of passion and without reflection are excused before the law ;l not entirely, it is true, for the inability to control one's temper is a defect of the will, for which punishment is im- posed as an effective remedy. When, on the other hand, the \ 486 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES act is accidental or unavoidable, the agent is wholly exoner- ated ; there is no need of a remedy when the will has abso- lutely nothing to do with the deed. Some one, however, disturbed by such psycho-physical spec- ulations, might argue as follows : Well, after all, the same remarks apply to insanity. If we regard and treat this as a brain-disease, why not do the same with other abnormal states ? The criminal impulse of the thief or incendiary must be explained scientifically, as an inherited or acquired predis- position of the brain, and hence the person thus afflicted must be treated as diseased. Our answer would be : We can cer- tainly look at the matter in this way ; the impulse to commit arson is an abnormal tendency of the brain, likewise the im- pulse to steal; and of course, the impulse of the boy who wantonly destroys his playthings, or of the little girl who annoys her parents and teachers by her carelessness and fickleness, all these, too, are to be regarded as abnormal or diseased predispositions of tlie brain. But, now draw the con- clusions. We attempt to cure diseases with the remedies which experience has found to be efficacious. If the physician can heal the insane by dietaries and shower-baths and medi- cines, very well ; and if he can also cure those afflicted with the impulse to commit arson with the same or similar remedies, very well ; we shall be glad to place such persons under his care, as well. as the bad boy whose pranks annoy us. But in case his remedies prove unsuccessful here, let him not hinder us from trying other cures, especially such as have stood the test of experience ; for example, for bad boys a natural remedy that grows on the hedges. And in case he cannot reach the impulse to steal or the impulse to destroy, by the remedies of the apothecary, let him allow us in the meantime to continue the use of an old remedy which, though not absolutely sure, has nevertheless met with a certain degree of success as an antidote against such impulses ; that is, the prison and the penitentiary. So soon as he discovers a more certam, sim* THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 4€7 pier, less roundabout and expensive specific, we shall be glad to dispense with these disagreeable and inadequate cures of ours. — But why do you not treat the maniac in the same way, why do you not bring him before court, and sentence him to jail when he commits a crime ? — We should certainly do so if we believed that the treatment employed by judges and prison-guards would produce better results in his case than that applied to him and others similarly afflicted, by physi- cians and nurses. In the meanwhile, we are of the opinion that to subject him to the process of the criminal law would make no impression upon him, would have no such influence upon his future behavior as the rod has upon the boy, or the penitentiary has — at least occasionally — upon the thief and his possible successors. Besides, we certainly do place the insane person under restraint when he becomes dangerous to himself or to others, and protect ourselves against him, so far as we can, as much as against the thief. Indeed, it is a very strange procedure, first to explain criminal impulses as diseases, and then to conclude from this that nothing ought to be done against them. Against diseases we employ all remedies that help, even though they burn and smart. 4. Then is there no such thing as free will ? Lest any one may draw this conclusion from my argu- ments, I add the following : The expression freedom of the will signifies in popular speech a real, positive property of human nature. Animals, too, have wills, but we do not attribute free will to them. Wherein does the difference consist ? Animals are moved to action by momentary impulses and perceptions. An animal observes its prey, hears the approach of the foe ; the percepts immediately produce ap- propriate movements of pursuit or flight. Deliberation, hesi- tation, and choice exist only in rudimentary form among the most highly developed animals. 468 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES Now such processes are characteristic of man. He deter- mines his conduct by resolutions, j Resolutions are the result of deliberation; in deliberation several possible courses of action or modes of behavior are compared with the ultimate aims of individual and social life, and chosen accordingly. Man, therefore, is not determined by his itr.pulses, but he determines himself by ideas of ends. In his purposes, man comprehends his whole activity, his whole life, into a unity, as it were, and chooses the particular acts according to their relation to this principle. Animal life is divided into a plurality of isolated, disconnected functions ; human life is embraced into the unity of an idea, and the latter evolves the particular moments demanded by the purpose of the whole. The unity of practical self-consciousness, or con- science, exercises a constant control over the particular processes of inner life, feelings, strivings, acts, thoughts. Well, this faculty of regulating and determining the particu- lar functions of life by an idea of one's life, is precisely what we mean by free will. Hence we may also say that a person's acts are free, when he is determined not by present stimuli and the momentary desires aroused by them, but by ideas of ends and ideals, by duty and conscience ; in the former case he is driven (agitur'), in the latter alone he acts (agit). We may accordingly add that, in a certain sense, the view that the human will is exempt, or forms a kind of en- clave in nature is correct. The animal is a point of transition for natural processes ; it is itself a part of nature, deter- mined from without by constantly-approaching stimuli and influences. Man, on the other hand, in a certain manner, emancipates himself from the course of nature ; he rises above nature and opposes it as a self, he determines it and employs it, is not determined by it : man becomes a person- ality. As such he is able to put his whole self, his ego, into every phase of his life, and therefore he is responsible for every particular act. THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 469 It is apparent that freedom in this sense is not an original endowment of human nature, but an acquired characteristic ; it has been acquired by the entire race in the course of his- tory, and must be acquired anew by each individual. The new-born child does not bring with it a ready-made freedom ; nay, it is driven like an animal by momentary cravings. But gradually the rational will, supported by education, rises above the animal impulses. This occurs in a different degree in different individuals ; some are wholly controlled by these impulses during their entire lives, others acquire such a remarkable control over nature in themselves that they seem to regulate even the smallest details of their lives by rational deliberation, and never do anything or leave anything undone, except by choice. It is to be observed, in this connection, that though it is vulgar and base to give the impulses complete mastery over one's self QaKoXaaid), yet the complete suppression of them fills us with fear and awe : no one, as has been said, is lovable without his weak- nesses. Man seems to be intended as a mean between an animal and a purely rational being. Hence, can man determine himself by his own will ? Can he fashion his will by means of his will ? — Yes and no. Yes, for he undoubtedly has the faculty of educating himself ; he can fashion his outer and inner man, with conscious purpose, according to his ideal ; he can discipline his natural impulses, nay, even suppress them so that they will no longer move him. To be sure, he cannot do this simply by wishing or resolving it ; he can do it only by constant practice and by employing appropriate means, in the same way that he ac- quires bodily skill. We cannot when awake immediately force ourselves to sleep, by an act of the will ; but we can, by proper diet and work, exercise such an influence upon the body that sleep will come in time of its own accord. It is said that Demosthenes's pronunciation was naturally indis- tinct and defective ; the will to be an orator was not able, 470 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES per se, to coerce the organs of speech, but it was able to prescribe to nature long and arduous tasks and to make these serve the desired end. Inner nature is susceptible of being influenced in the same way. A man knows that he has a dangerous tendency to anger. He decides to overcome it. His prudence and his good resolutions alone cannot, of course, by their mere presence, repress the violent fit of temper the very first time it breaks out again. But they can take the proper precautions necessary to subdue it gradually. They determine him to avoid temptation ; every organ, however, that is not exercised decays. His mind is filled with examples of the injurious effects of anger as well as with examples of self-control ; he even makes use of trivial aids : we accustom ourselves to say a prayer or to recite a few verses when we are seized with anger. Hence, a man can unquestionably transform his nature by his will. He may by inhibiting cer- tain impulses destroy them, and develop and strengthen weak impulses by habit. Habit, says the proverb, is second nature. On the other hand, we shall have to say that this formative principle itself must be native to him ; this he cannot give him- self by his will, for it is the innermost will itself. Man does not exist before himself, choosing or determining his will by his will ; that would be equivalent to Miinchhausen's attempt to pull himself out of the mire by his own cue. Only a pre-existing fundamental will can determine the develop- ment of the empirical character in the course of life. In so far, but only in so far, Schopenhauer is right : the character does not change. Unless a man sees the harmf ulness of anger, the disgracefulness of cowardice and falsehood, unless he already has the will to oppose these, he will, of course, not be able to train himself to gentleness or courage. But Schopenhauer is wrong when he misinterprets the proposition to mean that a change of the nature and of the modes of action of the will is impossible. That is not only a false, THE FREEDOM OP THE WILL 471 but also a dangerous, discouraging doctrine. We are bound to hold that whoever desires to change can do so ; only, the will must be in earnest, it must desire the means which lead to the end. Empty wishes will not do it. The old psychology, which was developed mainly as an aid to practical philosophy, offers some useful conceptions for our practical guidance. Thus, for example, the Pla- tonic division of the soul into reason, will, and animal desire, is an admirable help to the moral preacher. Here the subject of freedom is, practically considered, a very simple and effect- ive affair. The reason is the real ego, the free self of man ; it is combined in our earthly life with animal desires and feelings ; its function is to educate and control these in sucli a way that they will serve the reason and its ends. Noble courage, righteous anger, the joyful craving for honor and distinction, assist it in disciplining the sensuous desires. The moralist always appeals to the real self, he urges man to be mindful of his mission and his dignity ; he pictures the rule of sensuous desire as disgraceful slavery, in which the self is subordinated to the animal part of nature. Spinozistic, Wolffian, and Kantian ethics employ similar conceptions. In the first two systems the opposition between reason and the affective states, between the higher and lower faculties of de- sire, is emphasized ; in the latter, stress is laid upon the oppo- sition between the homo phaenomenon and the homo noumenon, between practical reason and the sensuous, selfish inclination. We are everywhere confronted with the notion: The freedom of man means the control of the spirit, the slavery of man means the rule of the animal desires. This is the positive significance of the freedom of the will. And ethics should not permit the whimsical attempts of a few metaphysicians to explain freedom of the will as the cause- lessness of the individual will or volition, to induce her absolutely to reject the so fruitful and necessary concept of free will. Freedom of will means, according to the popular 472 CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES usage of all men, these metaphysicians excepted, the faculty to determine one's life, independently of sensuous impulses and inclinations, by reason and conscience, according to pur- poses and laws ; and that man has such a faculty, that this really constitutes the yery essence of man, no one has ever doubted. BOOK III DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES I possess three treasures, these I guard and prize highly. Hie first is the love of humanity ; the second, frugality ; the third, that 1 do not presume to be better than any one else. Love of humanity — with this I can be fearless ; frugality — therefore I can give to others ; freedom from ambition — hence 1 have no one above me. Nowadays we despise love of humanity and are insolent, we despise economy and are wasteful, we despise modesty and strive to surpass every one else. These paths lead to death. Laotsbe, Taotbking 67. (After the translation of Noaok.) CHAPTER I VIRTUES ANB VICES IN GENERAL » The doctrine of duties and the doctrine of virtues are dif- ferent modes of presenting the same subject-matter. The former gives us a system of rules which, as commands or laws, specify the modes of conduct essential to the solution of the problem of life. The doctrine of virtues describes the system of powers by the exercise of which this end is realized. We have already discussed the nature of duty. Let me now add a few words concerning the nature of virtue. Virtues may be defined as habits of the will and modes of conduct which tend to promote the welfare of individual and collective life. Impulses form their natural basis. Virtues are not inventions of the moralists ; they are natural predispositions. Predispositions only, remember; for im- pulses are not themselves virtues : as impulses they have no moral quality. The impulse to eat is not good or bad, but it is the foundation of rational self-preservation. The sexual impulse is not good or bad, but it is the natural basis of the virtues on which family-life depends. Compassion or sym- pathy, the impulse to alleviate the pains of others, is not good or bad, but it is the natural foundation of the virtue of benevolence. Similarly, indignation at wrong and the impulse ' [Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. II. ; Sidgwick, Methods, Bk. III., chap. II. ; Porter, Moral Science, Part II., chap. I. ; Fowler and Wilson, Principles of Morals, Part II., chap. VII. ; Corner, Das menschliche Handeln, Part II., section 1 ; Wiese, Die Bildung des Willens; Runze, Practische Ethik, § 17. Ranze gives bibliographies of the topics discussed in the following chapters. See also works on Practical Ethics : Hyde, Everett, and Gilman. — Tk.] 476 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES of revenge form the natural basis of the sense of justice. Moreover, impulses form the permanent basis of the virtues. They cannot, as many moralists are prone to assume, be sup- planted by rational reflection. A being like Spinoza's sage, who is determined to action, not by impulse, but by reason alone, does not exist and cannot exist ; any more than Kant's dutiful man, whose will is governed solely by respect for the moral law, without impulse and inclination. Such a being would not be a human being, but a phantom. Impulses are fashioned into virtues or moral excellences by the reason. We are educated, first, by the reason of others, then by our own reason. Human life begins as a purely impulsive life ; the reason is developed slowly and at a late stage. During the long period of youth, the col- lective reason of the race, as represented by parents, edu- cators, and teachers, takes the place of individual reason. Fixed habits are the result of this education ; in them the customs (^Sitteri) of the community become individualized. Acquired habits constitute an extremely important part of moral culture ; they obtain control over life, and guide it with automatic certainty. The important elementary functions of life, especially, are governed by them. Cleanliness, for example, against which the child at first rebels, becomes a habit, which acts with the regularity of a natural function. Most closely related to it, is shame, which is implanted and established by education, and soon acquires the force and certainty of an instinct. So, too, aversion to falsehood, or politeness to others, becomes a second nature. The formation of such automatic forms of reaction constitutes a primary and important phase of moral education. The second stage is the gradual development of the individual's appreciation of the value of moral goods : this is the function of moral instruction. The latter will always have to consist, at first, in the presen- tatibn of concrete examples of the good, and — provided the proper care is exercised — of examples of the evil also. After VIRTUES AND VICES IN GENERAL 477 many concrete facts have been handled, the abstract or philo- sophical treatment of moral concepts will grq^ually be taken up. Perhaps our public instruction is too cautious in this re- spect. Our schools, the higher as well as the lower, are afraid of the evil effects of premature abstract instruction in morals, and therefore decide to omit it altogether. I fear that the omission is disastrous. The time is bound to come in the life of every young man when he will begin to inquire into the principles of moral conduct and judgment ; and there is danger that, being wholly without guidance, he will become the helpless victim of his own crude thoughts or of the sophistry of " enlightened " companions. Principles and moral in- struction are not in themselves necessary to secure correct judgment and action, but they are necessary to protect the individual against inadequate and misleading principles. But not only is the individual educated by others, he gradually learns to educate himself. The important thing is to learn the great art of governing the inclinations by means of a rational will, one that is determined by principles, to fashion and educate the impulses according to an idea of perfection, which gradually assumes shape. When the child leaves school and the parental home, his education by others practi- cally comes to an end. The most eventful period of his life now begins, the period of incipient moral independence. His previous training is now put to the test ; it must show whether it has succeeded in establishing the power of self- government. Not many discover the right path at once ; the art of self-government, like everything else, has to be learned. It can be acquired only by constant intercourse with the world ; hence there is an instinctive desire at this period of life to come into frequent contact with men and things ; these are the years of travel (^Wanderjahre'), which follow the years of apprenticeship QLehrjahre'). At the end of the Wander- Jahre, between the ages of twenty and thirty, or in some cases not until the close of this period, the inner man has assumed 478 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES definite and permanent shape. The following years do not possess the dramatic interest of their predecessors, the time of great crises and decisions is past ; the exercise of the physical, mental, and moral powers and capacities which have been acquired forms the content of the age of manhood, the Meisterjahre. In old age the powers diminish, life gradually loses itself in reminiscenses, and so drifts into the past. Differences in moral types correspond to these four ages of life. Pliant modesty constitutes the inner habit of the well- trained boy ; hopeful, optimistic idealism, that of the youth ; persistent and energetic action, that of the man ; the tranquil peace of contemplation, that of old age. This would answer the old question, the discussion of which marked the beginning of Greek moral philosophy : Can virtue be taught ? We answer with Aristotle : It certainly can ; but, like all excellences, it must be practised first of all ; hearing others talk about it will not avail. We do not learn to walk and to ride, to teach and to govern, by hearing these things talked of ; so it is with virtue. Of course, practice can and must afterwards be supplemented by theoretical instruction ; this applies to moral efficiency as well as to physical dexter- ity and skill. The counsels and teachings of parents and teachers, of spiritual advisers and preachers, may assist the moral development in a most effective way. We shall there- fore by no means agree with Schopenhauer that moral instruc- tion and moral preaching are utterly useless ; employed at the right time and in the proper place they constitute an important part of the great art of governing souls. Of course, mere babble will not avail. Such instruction will prove effec- tive only in case it comes from the proper source, and rests upon a profound knowledge of life, its order, and its laws. Virtues are normal powers of the will, tending to preserve and unfold human mental life. Vices, on the other hand, are abnormally-developed powers of the will, which tend to destroy individual life and that of the surroundings ; or, VIRTUES AND VICES IN GENERAL 479 rather, not really powers of the will at all, if we mean by will the rational human will, but abnormally-cjeveloped natural impulses. Vice always indicates a lack of will ; indeed, all evil is, according to tbe old view, nothing really positive ; it does not belong to the essence of the will, but must be defined as a lack of will. And this is true also in the sense that even the natural will essentially aims at the good ; evil as such is never the goal of the will, it becomes a part of it only in case the will cannot realize a good, a real or apparent good, except at the price of the evil. The fundamental form of vice is lack of will-power to harmonize the impulses ; strong natural impulses gain abso- lute supremacy, while weak ones entirely disappear. When the sympathetic impulse or the instinctive faculty to anticipate in feeling the more remote consequences of acts, is poorly developed, and the defect is not remedied by education and self-government, the habit of selfishness or inconsiderateness arises. Certain impulses may be hypertrophically developed, and may gradually crowd out all the others. So for example, in the case of the alcoholist, the desire for certain stimulants, gradually increases in strength, and all other impulses die out, such as the impulse to work and acquire, the love of knowledge and spiritual activity. The sympathetic feelings and social impulses are likewise weakened and finally extin- guished, and with them shame and conscience, which at first reacted against the excesses, disappear. In the same way life is debauched by other abnormally-developed impulses, by unbridled sexual impulses, by the impulse to acquire and possess property, which is intensified in rapacity and greed, by the love of fame and honor, which degenerates into am- bition, etc. ; these monopolize all powers and all strivings, and finally render the soul completely insensible to all other interests and considerations. As a rule, vice is the result of defective natural endow- ments and unfavorable conditions of life and development. A 480 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES defective education, evil associations, unfavorable economic conditions, unhappy domestic relations, will utterly destroy a nature that would have been preserved and might have adapted itself to its surroundings under more favorable con- ditions. By proper treatment, fitting self-denial, and exer- cise, an impulse inclining to excess may be held in check, while weak impulses may be developed and strengthened by timely care. This shows the immense importance of educa- tion, environment, established custom, and public opinion; upon these rests the responsibility of society towards the individual. Had it cared for him and educated him, he would not have perished. Can and must we say that, however unfavorable the natural predisposition of an individual may be, he can, under the proper conditions of life and development, become an honest and virtuous man ? Is Rousseau right in holding that all wills are by nature good, that every child may become a righteous man, that if he does not, education and unfavorable conditions are to blame ? ^ The age of pedagogical reform accepted Rousseau's view, and was stimulated by his example to the performance of great and fruitful deeds. Even at present we base our practice on the hypothesis that this theory is correct, and must do so. Education universally pre- supposes that every human being may, with the proper attention, love, and care, become an honorable and efficient, virtuous and happy man. So far, however, as the theory itself is concerned, our age has become somewhat uncertain and sceptical. Rousseau's optimistic view of human nature will not easily find supporters in our day. We no longer believe that education can make anything out of any one. Too many facts contradict the old dogma of empiristic psychology that the soul is at birth a white piece of paper, capable of receiving any impressions whatsoever. Hence we are inclined to agree with a realistic I £See Rnnze, §§ 13, 18.— Te.] VIRTUES AND VICES IN GENERAL 481 or pessimistic conception of humanity that there are children of sin for whom nothing whatever can be done, individuals endowed with such perverse impulses, exhibiting such a total lack of shame and reverence and sympathetic feeling, as to be utterly impervious to the influences of education.^ The concept " moral insanity " has been formed to apply to such cases. Pacts undoubtedly exist for which this concept has been formed. Not only are there persons who show a lack of in- tellectual power which amounts to an almost total absence of intelligence in idiocy, but there are some who are completely devoid of moral endowments, without being totally deficient in intelligence, although the latter is frequently dwarfed and perverted in such cases. Nevertheless, we may uphold the claim that there is no absolute lack of moral endowment, no absolute perverseness ; even in such dwarfed natures there is some tendency to the good. If only they had received the proper sympathy and training from the very beginning, they might have been saved. Perhaps there is no longer any hope for them later on ; when such a defective soul is subjected to unfavorable influences at the outset, it may soon become in- curable. And this is apt to be the case ; for hereditary defects and imperfect early training go together. Conclusive arguments are, in the very nature of things, impossible here ; faith, however, which governs our practical life, must cling to the assumption expressed in Riickert's lines : Schlage nur mit der WUnschelrut' An die Felsen der Herzen an ; Ein Schatz in jedem Busen ruht Den ein Verstandiger heben kann. It is customary to distinguish between two kinds of duties : dutieg towards self and duties towards others. The notion of duty towards self has been rejected by some ; there can be duties, it is held, only where there are legal rights. It seems ' [See Lombroso, Tlie Criminal ; Strumpell, Pedagogische Pathologit. — T«.] 482 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES to me that this is an unnecessary contraction of the concept. If the individual life has its moral problems to solve, it likewise has its duties. If the individual as such has absolutely no moral problems to solve, I cannot see how there can be any duties to others, either to individuals or collective bodies, ex- cept the purely negative duty of non-interference. We cannot obtain a positive quantity by multiplying zeros. Hence I shall retain the old classification, reminding the reader, how- ever, that it is not a legitimate division : there are, as was shown above,^ no acts which affect only the individual or society, hence also no duties towards self which are not at the same time duties towards others, and conversely. Corresponding to this classification of duties, we may also divide the virtues into two groups; we may call them in- dividualistic and social virtues. The fundamental form of the former is self-control, the fundamental form of the latter, benevolence. They are rooted in the two fundamental forms of impulsive life : the impulse of self-preservation and the sexual impulse. We shall first treat of the duties towards self and the in- dividualistic virtues, which are based upon the self-preserva- tive impulse of the individual. We shall take up the separate spheres of action, and first deal with the education of the will and the dietetics of the affective states; then we shall consider the bodily, economic, and spiritual life, and every- where attempt to define the problems and duties, as well as the capacities and virtues pertaining to them. In conclusion, we shall discuss the problems which arise from our relations to others, and examine the duties and virtues peculiar to this sphere. » L, 383 ff CHAPTER II THE EDUCATION OF THE WILL AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE FEELINGS, OR SELF-CONTROL i 1. The chief purpose of all moral culture is to fashion the rational will so that it may become the regulative principle of the entire sphere of conduct. We call the virtue or ex- cellence which regulates our behavior and conduct by the rational will, independently of momentary feelings, self- control. We may also define it as the capacity to govern life by purposes and ideals. It is the fundamental condition of all moral virtues, the fundamental precondition of all human worth, nay, the fundamental characteristic of human nature. Animals are determined by blind impulses, but the specific excellence of man consists in his determining his life by his will ; without self-control, no freedom and no personality. The Greeks call the virtue, of self-control ao)poa-w'ri, healthy-mindedness. 'Apa)v, senseless, foolish, is the man whom fear, anger, and desire, control, causing him to act irrationally and to ruin himself ; am^pwv, healthy-minded, rational, on the contrary, is the man who keeps his wits even in difficult situations, and acts in ac- cordance with the law of self-preservation.^ 1 [Aristotle, Bk. II., chs. VII. fE. ; Bk. III., chs. IX. ff. ; Bk. yil. ; Paley, Moral Philosophy, Bk. IV. ; Sidgwick, Bk. III., chs. IX., X. ; Spencer, Inductions of Ethics, chs. XII., XIII. ; Porter, Moral Science, Part II., chs. II., V. ; Rnnze, §§ 20 ft.; Smyth, Chislian Ethics, Part IL, ch. II.; Dorner, pp. 356-378; Fowler and Wflson, Part II., ch. I. — Tr.] ' It is a well-known fact that no virtue was more universally recognized and extolled by the Greek poets than self-control. Perhaps, however, it would be a delusion to suppose that the predisposition to auxppoaivri was a particular trait 484 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES Self-control ^ assumes diflFerent phases, corresponding to the different forms of impulsive life. As its two fundamen- tal aspects we may, with the Greek moralists, designate tem- perance (^iyxpaTeia) and courage. Temperance may be defined as the moral power to resist desires attracted by of the Greek national character. Perhaps Lessing's celebrated remark also applies to nations : we talk most of the virtues which we least possess, and whose value we have learned to appreciate because we have felt their lack. The Greeks were gifted with fine sensibilities and high intelligence, which especially fitted them for and made them keenly alive to all kinds of play aud art, dial- ectics and philosophy; but they were somewhat lacking in energy and per- severance. That is the way the Romans regarded them ; in comparison with their own natural seriousness and gravity {gravitas) the Greeks seemed sanguine and mobile, cunning and fickle : the Frenchmen of antiquity. They had a poor opinion of their talents for politics and war. However, it is this very thing that made the Greeks the great teachers of the virtue of self-control. The Stoics became the moral preachers of the world, directly or indirectly. Their entire system of morality, however, is a guide to the discipline of the emotions. Among modern authors may be mentioned the physician Feuchtersleben, who has written a widely read Dietetics of the Soul (Dieldtik der Seele). An excellent little book is Harriet Beecher Stowe's (the authoress of Dncle Tom's Cabin) Little Foxes. Two good books of the last century are B. Franklin's Autobiography and Campe's Theophron. Everybody is familiar with Goethe's mag- nificent Spriiche in Prosa und Versen. Lagarde's writings (3d edit., 1 891 ) have the form of public moral sermons, addressed to the German people. They remind ns of Fichte's Reden. The book of the Swiss Hilty, Gliick (4th edit., 1895), is making many friends. The Addresses of the American W. Salter also con- tain moral sermons. — These addresses were delivered before " Societies for Ethical Culture," which exist in several American cities. The idea of such a society, of a united ethical party regardless of nationality and creed, had already attracted the attention of B. Franklin (see his Autobiography). " Ethical Societies " have of late been transplanted to Germany ; whether they will take root here, remains to be seen. The universal love of morality is not a strong bond of union between men ; a particular purpose, even accidental hatred or superstition, has greater binding force. These ethical societies are, first of all, opposed to church morality ; moral sermons based upon dogmatics they regard as ineffectual. There is cer- tainly room for much improvement here : and if the ethical societies succeed, in the slightest degree, in bringing ethical culture to those who have turned their backs upon the church, they deserve not hatred and contempt, but gratitude and recognition. They may, perhaps, even help Christianity in gaining a foothold in these circles. For it is certainly true that no more important moral events ever occurred upon this earth than are reported in the New Testament ; and we shall search in vain for more effective moral sermons than those, in the Gospels and Episths. [Blackie's Self-Culture deserves a place in the list of books mentioned here. — Tr.] 1 [See also Runze, §§ 9 f. — Tb.] SELF-CONTROL 485 tempting enjoyment, when the gratification of such desires tends to endanger an essential good. Courage is the moral power to resist the natural fear of pain and danger, when the preservation of an essential good demands such resistance. 2. Temperance or moderation, ^ the ability to resist temp- tation to sensuous pleasure, is the precondition of humaniza- tion. The animal is essentially blind impulse, in the satis- faction of which its life consists. Man, too, is endowed with an animal nature, but its purpose is to serve as the soil for a higher, spiritual life ; this soil is prepared by the discipline of the natural impulses. The latter are not to be eradicated, that would mean insensibility and finally death, but their satis- faction is to be so regulated that they will not only not disturb the development of higher life, but rather assist it. The rela- tion is reversed in the opposite habit, intemperance (aKoXaaia) ; intemperance is not merely a relapse into an aqimal state : nay, the higher powers and gifts of man are here subordinated to sensuous desire. So in gluttony and the worship of the belly ; all the arts of civilization are here employed to excite and satisfy sensuous desires. So pleasure-seeking and also sexual dissipation have drawn into their service an entire industry of exquisite enjoyments. Even the most superficial examination of the facts cannot leave us in doubt as to the value and effects of these two con- trary modes of action. Intemperance, dissipation, inordinate love of pleasure, first of all destroy our sense and capacity for higher things ; the will and the intellect are exhausted by excesses ; finally the sensibility is blunted until at last even the faculty for enjoyment is lost. All passive enjoyments deaden the sensibilities ; stronger and more refined excitations are constantly needed to procure feelings of pleasure through the exhausted organ, until at last the chronic state of dulness which is characteristic of the roue is reached ; the powers of 1 [Spencer, Inductions, XII. ; Stephen, ch. V., 3 ; Seth, Part II., ch. I. — Tb.] 486 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES the organism and its irritability are exhausted ; nothing is left but the repulsive dregs of life. — Temperance has the opposite effect ; it makes the entire man healthy and vigorous, capable of action and enjoyment. This virtue, like all habits, is acquired by experience. The foundation is laid by a good education. The best way to pre- vent the growth of excessive desires is to satisfy the natural needs in an appropiate and orderly manner. This can easily be done in a well-regulated household, but is extremely diffi- cult under conditions of luxury as well as of poverty. Per- haps we can still agree with John Locke that an honest farmhouse is the best place for rearing a child. Gradually the child may be encouraged to give up little things of its own accord ; we cannot begin too soon in teaching the child the great art of life : to sacrifice to-day for to-morrow. The child then educates itself. The sense of honor may be ap- pealed to as an ally against desire. The ability to bear priva- tion with equanimity is so closely related to courage that the boy too sees the connection : it is weak and cowardly to yield to desire. Greek ethics is full of excellent moral advice on this very subject. How disgraceful, it says, to be compelled to obey the animal or child in us, which is full of needs and desires ; how beautiful and praiseworthy and in keeping with man's dignity, on the other hand, is the freedom and inde- pendence which is not disturbed by privation and want! Whoever succumbs to his desires is a slave to objects ; they draw him now hither, now thither, through pleasure and fear. The gods are without needs, and therefore without fear and desire ; the fewer our needs, the nearer we are to the gods. These are sentiments which the youth of all ages can under- stand. When the sense of honor works in the opposite direc- tion, as happens, to a large extent, in our times, the relation is an unnatural one. There are perhaps two essential reasons for such perverseness. The first is the wish of the youth to show that he has the means, the second, that he has the SELF-CONTROL 487 power and the courage to indulge himself. The latter motive exercises a particularly strong influence upon the young man. He is afraid of being looked upon as a baby, standing in awe of the rod, or as a " goody-good " boy, who is afraid of hell and the devil. He demonstrates his independence as a man, and freedom of mind, by an open violation of the law. The lad who has just been confirmed proudly struts up and down the village street with a pipe in his mouth and " shows off." In the same way, the satisfaction of other cravings becomes a matter of show. We are ashamed, to use Augustine's expres- sion, of not being shameless. The reaction of the years of indiscretion (^Flegeljahre *) against the compulsion of educa- tion will, to some extent, make its appearance everywhere. Perhaps our methods of instruction contribute largely to make the reaction so acute among us. The type of the libertine is, like the type of the priestling (JPfaffe)^ a form of degeneracy which thrives upon Christian soil. It was not known to the classical world. The most fruitful method of counteracting the growth of cupidity and the inordinate love of pleasure is to train the individual to efficient action. All successful exercise of nat- ural powers and skill in labor and in play is, as Aristotle teaches, accompanied by pleasure. And this pleasure is superior to the pleasure of passive enjoyment. It can be procured without the sting of desire. It is more independ- ent of external conditions; enjoyment consumes, activity creates commodities. It is intensified by repetition ; for while passive pleasure increases the intensity of the desire but dulls the faculty of enjoyment, action increases our efficiency ; and the greater the skill, the greater the pleasure of exercis- ing it. As in all cases, the better is here the enemy of the good : the pleasure which we derive from action, especially that resulting from play, is the most effective means of sup- pressing the pleasures of passive enjoyment. The Greeks 1 [The pnppy-dog stage.] 488 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES possessed a powerful antidote, against the love of pleasure among the youth in their gymnastics and military exercises and games. Since it was impossible to attain to proficiency in them and be dissipated and effeminate, the sense of honor operated in the right direction. — "We, too, have our military exercises, but, apart from other unfavorable conditions under which they take place, they come a little too late. Between the school days and the time of military service a long period of freedom intervenes which is but too often spent in dissipa- tion. For this reason, too, it would evidently be desirable gradually to advance a part of the general military training to an earlier age. To be sure, this change should not be brought about by a police regulation, which might simply make mat- ters worse, but by a change in popular custom. Perhaps the old Germanic love of athletic sports will be revived among us, as indications seem to show. A word concerning asceticism ^ may not be out of place here. An ascetic life is characterized by the habitual renunciation even of moderate and legitimate pleasures. Modern moral- ists, as a rule, reject it as an aberration ; and, indeed, the principle on which it rests seems to be the exact opposite of the principle of welfare. The three vows of monachism signify the renunciation of wealth, or material culture ; of fame and power, or ideal culture ; and finally, of family life, that is, the preservation of the species, or the precondition of all human culture. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly true that genuine asceticism arouses not contempt and aversion, but respect and admiration, even among pronounced " chil- dren of the world," that is, when they have no principle to defend. The phenomenon may perhaps be explained as fol- lows. The tendency to go to the other extreme of excess is natural and universal ; incontinence causes the ruin of many. Excessive temperance, therefore, does not seem to be ' [Lecky, History of European Morals, I., 113, 130; II., 101 ft.; Harnack, Das Mdnckthum; Ruuze, §11. — Tk.] SELF-CONTROL 489 dangerous, but meritorious ; for two reasons : The incon- tinence of some is, in a certain sense, directly compensated, by the extreme continence of others. The doctrine of the good works of the saints finds a natural support in this view ; the people forms a whole, the good and evil acts of its mem- bers are placed to its account. And absolute continence is indirectly meritorious in so far as it shows, by great and striking examples, that the impulses which often lead to ruin- ous excess can be mastered. Gratitude for this educative effect assumes the form of admiration. This at the same time explains why asceticism and a love of the world go hand-in-hand. We may find occasional examples of intemperance among a poor and uncivilized people, but not radical continence. Philosophical asceticism first appeared in the Hellenic world when the art of good living reached a high state of perfection. The Roman Empire was the soil on which Christianity found favorable conditions of development. The more sensuous a nation, the greater its admiration for the ascetic life. It is surely not accidental that the excitable Romance nations cling to Cath- olicism and celibacy and monachism, whereas temperance societies are common among the Germanic peoples, who are addicted to drink. — Moreover, even in particular individuals, an intensely sensuous nature is apt to seek refuge in asceti- cism. The man who is not exposed to temptation needs no heroic antidotes. From this it also follows that asceticism cannot become a universal ethical rule. It would defeat itself with both physical and psychological-aesthetical necessity : without its opposite there would be neither sense nor merit in it. The value of absolute continence and the admiration shown for it are conditioned by the fact that there are others who have not received the donum continentice, even in a moderate degree. The ascetic himself must recognize this; he cannot expect everybody to imitate him, nay, he cannot even say or 490 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES intimate that his mode of life is better than that of others. He may, at most, deem himself fortunate for having escaped such task-masters as most persons constantly liave near them in their impulses. A stern and haughty puritanism is not edifying ; it arouses antagonisms. A man, however, who is gentle and humble in spirit, who asks nothing for himself but desires others to have everything that is good, even that which he denies himself, will gain the respect and confidence of all, especially of children of the world. Since he does not enter into competition with the world, he may become the repository of very worldly secrets, like Friar Lorenzo in Romeo and Juliet. In his novel, / Promessi Sposi, Man- zoni has drawn for us, in the person of Cardinal Borromeo, a wonderful picture of a man who renounces everything, and thereby obtains the greatest influence over others. — Moral preachers, spiritual as well as secular, are in the habit of complaining that no one will listen to them and give heed to their counsels. Man's hardness of heart has been the subject of their lamentations from the days of the old prophets down to the present. Perhaps the fault does not lie entirely with the hearers. If these preachers would only examine themselves as closely as others, they would perhaps occasionally find that it is not only their zeal for saving souls that actuates them ; the things which they cannot or dare not or do not wish to enjoy, they begrudge others, and so revenge themselves upon them for their own privations. He alone has a right to preach morality who is in the safe possession of a good that absorbs his whole soul, and is entirely without envy ; he that cannot without bitterness bear the sight of others enjoying what he desires to convince them is worthless, should first preach to himself.* 1 The Imitatio Christi admirably describes the true moral preacher and his opposite, the habitual moral grumbler, in the chapter " Of a Good and Peaceable Man." " First keep thyself in peace, and then shalt thou be able to make peace among others. A peaceful man doth more good than he that is well learned. A passionate man draweth even good into evil, and easily believeth the worst SELF-CONTROL 491 3. Unpretendinyness or modesty is a modification of temper- ance, its inner form, as it were. It is modei;ation of desire as such, the moderation of the desire for wealth and fame, posi- tion and pleasure. Unassuming modesty consists in habitu- ally lowering one's pretensions to the level of one's fortunes. Its effect is contentment ; and hence it is the safest guide to happiness, just as its opposite, covetousness, or cupidity is the surest means to unhappiuess. Everybody is complaining of the rarity of contentment and of the prevalence of discontent. Although the conception of a past golden age of universal happiness is an optical illusion, the growing discontent among the European peoples of the present is not an illusion. Dis- content increases in direct proportion with inordinate desire, for the development of which the conditions are unusually favorable in our age. We no longer have a settled population ; everybody is on the move. Several generations ago it was the rule for a person to remain in the surroundings into which he was born, during his entire life. Now everybody is en- gaged in fortune-hunting. The large cities are the centres of the chase, they excite and tempt everybody, and everybody visits them or lives in them, at least in the imagination ; every inhabitant of every little village has relatives in the city, a son in the army and a daughter at work. The metropolis is a large bazaar, in which thousands of desirable things constantly excite desire. These wares are intended for all ; it is purely accidental that not everybody can buy them ; you and I could own them and make use of them just as well as some one else who has accidentally drawn a prize in the lottery or won a fortune on the stock exchange. Class pride and class customs A good and peaceable man turneth all things to good. He that is in peace, is not suspicions of any. But he that is discontented and troubled is tossed with divers suspicions ; he is neither quiet himself, nor suffereth others to be quiet. He often speaketh that which he ought not to speak ; and leaveth undone that which it were more expedient for him to do. He considereth what others are bound to do, and neglecteth that which he is bound to do himself. First, there- fore, have a careful zeal over thyself, and then thou mayest justly show thysell iealous also of thy neighbor's good." 492 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES have disappeared in tlie " anonymousness " of metropolitan life. Tlie equality of the masses, manifested in the similarity of dress and appearance, gives all the same rights. Hence, since every one constantly sees before him the things which others possess and which he must do without, for no good reason whatever — horses, servants, drawing-rooms, villas, clothes, jewels, articles of food — why should not everybody be discontented ? — In addition to this, the dam which religion formerly erected against covetousness, has been as good as washed away in our times. The thought of the transitoriness of everything earthly and the promise of eternity have lost their hold upon mankind. This is as true of the cultured classes as of the masses. Formerly, the hope of a future life, though it was not very inviting to the rich and the pleasure-seekers, consoled mankind in general for the hardships of this life. But what can console men now who have no hope of a future reward, when fortune fails to give them what it bestows upon others ? Is there no cure for this disease ? We are referred to the church and the restoration of its power. If by this we mean, not external power, but an inner frame of mind, humility and piety, then there can be no doubt that the remedy would prove effective. Perhaps nothing but true inner religiousness can give us perfect peace in regard to earthly things. And I am fully convinced that the church has had and still continues to have a salutary influence. I know of nothing that has greater power to raise the heart above the vain and transitory things of life than the Gospels with their simple and grand facts, teachings, and symbols. A proper interpretation of them will not fail to move the hearts even of our age ; and it certainly is a misfortune that a constantly increasing portion of our population is becoming farther and farther removed from the influences of these teachings. The Greek philosophers, too, suggested a remedy to their times, which suffered from the same disease : Abandon your SELF-CONTROL 493 false conceptions, above all, the false view that happiness de- pends upon prosperity. What is troubling you is not the lack of certain things, but the belief that you cannot be happy without them. Are you really sure that their possession would make you happy ? But certain it is that it makes you unhappy to desire them and not to get them. Now, since it is in your power not to desire them, but not in your power to obtain them, how foolish you are for resolving to get them instead of resolving not to desire them. — Yes, you say, but it is not in my power not to desire them. — Have you ever really and earnestly made the trial ? Have you, who have devoted so much attention and energy to so many things, ever devoted your attention and energy to this art? Have you reflected upon it and practised it ? Have you em- ployed the aids at your disposal? Have you ever turned your gaze away from the things which excite desire ? Have you studied others, who do without the same things and others besides, and, still are of good cheer ? Look at Socrates: he passes through the market-place and enjoys the sight of all the beautiful things because he does not need them. Have you ever appealed to your pride to help you against vanity ? Some one has been promoted, and you liave been passed by ; you have not been invited to a dinner ; have you, Epictetus asks, paid the price ? Of course, the price is flattery and sub- serviency. Well, then, pay the price at which these things are sold, if you deem it wise ; but if you are unwilling to pay, well, then, is it not shameless in you still to wish to have them? — And if theories alone will not help you, try practice, try asceticism : in order to break your own vanity and cupidity, voluntarily give up such things as you have. Strength grows with exercise ; you must merely give the will an opportunity to feel its power against desire. You are fighting for the best seat in the theatre, or on the train, and you become extremely angry because some one has beaten you ; now try to let the other man have it of your own free 494 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES will, and note whether you have fared worse than usual, and then make the application to greater things. — And, above all, have you torn envy from your heart, the ugly weed, which poisons and tortures both body and soul ? If not, do it at once; and do not believe that you have done anything for your happiness so long as you have failed in this. It is pain- ful to desire and not to obtain; but much more painful is it to desire to have more than others and to be unable to bear the tliought of others having anything. Again ; if you have children, help them. There are two ways of looking at life, one of which will certainly make it happy, the other unhappy. The first is the habit of regarding everything good that life yields as surpassing your expecta- tions, and every misfortune as falling below them ; the sec- ond is the reverse of this. You have it in your power to give your child either mood. Grant all his wishes, give him everythihg he sees, let him choose what he ought to eat and drink, what he ought to do and to leave undone, remove all obstacles from his path, bear his burdens for him, praise his ability and goodness ; in short, be all tenderness and devo- tion ; and you may be sure that he will, upon entering the world, find it hard and niggardly ; that he will be discon- tented and unhappy. If you are unwilling that this should happen, steel your own heart, and do not be afraid of being called an unnatural mother by all educated mothers. Not long ago I witnessed the following little incident : Once there were two little girls, perfectly healthy and cheerful, and blessed with the best of appetites. They went to visit an aunt, who loved them very much, and did everything she could to please them. Slie used to ask them before each meal what they liked to eat, and when the meal was served, what they preferred to have. Before two weeks had passed, these two little girls no longer enjoyed their food ; one of them could n't eat this, the other could n't eat thar ; their plates were always half full, and at the end of every meal they vfei-e discontented SELF-CONTROL 495 and in tears. " How is it," asked the aunt, when the mother of the two girls came to see her, " that things are so different at home ? " "I will tell you," she answered ; " at home I never ask them what they want, and never give them as much as they call for." Happy the man whom Fate treats in the same way. He that is able to choose each day what to do and what not to do, he that can have as much as he desires to have, will soon tire of life. — Hence, be thankful that you do not get every- thing you ask for ; learn to desire, so Marcus Aurelius coun- sels you, not that things govern themselves according to your wishes, but that your wishes govern themselves according to the things. 4. By the side of temperance Greek philosophy places courage^ the ability to resist painful, dangerous, and terrible impressions by means of a rational will. The former is the normal conduct in respect of pleasure ; the latter, of pain and danger. We may, with Aristotle, define both virtues as a mean between two vices : temperance is the proper mean between insensitiveness to sensuous enjoyment and licen- tiousness ; courage the mean between abject cowardice and blind foolhardiness. When an animal finds itself threatened by a hostile attack, we may notice one of two things : either the attack arouses fear and impels it to flight ; or it produces rage and rouses it to defend itself. The latter behavior is peculiar to beasts of prey, the former to their victims. Both forms of action are evidently adapted to the animal's nature and mode of life; the defenceless animal, whose body and temperament do not fit it for attack, strives to preserve itself by flight and con- cealment. Fear, which scents the danger from afar and impels the animal to rapid flight, is for it a useful natural en- dowment. The other quality, rage and ferociousness, is- equally well suited to the beast of prey, which can defend, 1 [Stepheii, chap. V., 2.— Tr.] 496 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES itself ; it must constantly be on its guard, externally and inter- nally, against surprises and attacks ; its preservation depends upon the success with which it solves this problem. Both modes of conduct are also found among men. There are men who run away like sheep at the first sign of danger. There are others, on the contrary, who, like beasts of prey, are straightway impelled to blind and ferocious attacks, when threatened or injured. Both modes of conduct are condemned by men, the former as cowardice, the latter as blind rage or foolhardiness. A different kind of behavior is required of man, and that is courage. That man is brave who, when attacked and in peril, neither blindly runs away nor rushes into danger, but retaining his composure, carefully and calmly studies the situation, quietly deliberates and decides, and then carries out his resolution firmly and energetically, whether it be resistance and attack, or defence and retreat. Prudence, therefore, constitutes an essential part of valor, A significant custom is said to have prevailed among the Spartans. Before the battle the king first offered sacrifices to the Muses, "presumably," says L. Schmidt,^ "to implore them that his army might, even during the battle, retain the pure ApoUinic freedom from wild passion." — The origin of this virtue might be explained biologically, as follows. The most dangerous enemy of man is man. In battle with this ad- versary courage has been acquired ; it is the means of de- fence against the most fearful weapon of attack, the intellect. Against this, neither blind flight nor blind aggression will avail, as is seen in the battle of man with animals. Fear carries tiie fleeing ones into his net, while rage brings the ferocious ones within range of his sword or gun. Such an enemy can be resisted only by means of the same weapon, the intellect, that is, by courage, by presence of mind in battle. The nature of courage is somewhat obscured in popular speech. According to the above explanation, courage I Ethik der Griechen, II., 37. SELF-CONTROL 497 may be exhibited in retreat as well as in resistance or attack. Popular usage is inclined to regard retreat jjnder all circum- stances as incompatible with bravery. Perhaps the cause of this one-sided conception may be sought in the following. The battle of man with man is uniformly not a battle of the individual with the individual, but a battle of one collective body against another. It is evidently an essential condition of the strength of a company of fighters that the individual persevere in the struggle, at all hazards, and rather fall than fly ; the power of the collective body depends on the confi- dence which each individual has in the trustworthiness of the other. Courage is a social virtue. Martial courage is the first form in which this quality receives recognition, perhaps the very first virtue which wins admiration. Courage is originally the virtue, cowardice the vice, as the Greek and Roman usage of language attests. And youth has no sincerer regard for any virtue than for stern and shrewd, and especially magnanimous courage. As civilization advances, its importance diminishes. Civi- lization makes for peace. The individual does not have to protect himself by his own strength and courage, he enjoys the protection of the laws and the police. The Indian con- stantly carries his life in his hands. Even during the Middle Ages everybody bore arms, at least outside of the city walls. We have laid down our arms because we no longer need them. It is not improbable that we have thereby lost our inner readiness to defend our lives with the weapon in our hands. The average European could hardly dare to compete, individually, with the individual Indian or Bedouin in personal bravery. He is also inferior to them in bearing hardships. But what gives him his superiority is, besides the instruments of war, organization and discipline. These are the things which turn the scale in the great battles of civilized nations. The personal bravery of the individual soldier does not count for very much. Our entire civil and military education is 498 DOCTRINE OP VIRTUES AND DUTIES little adapted to produce it ; its main object is to develop discipline : obedience, however, is, to a certain extent, the opposite of courage. 5. As civilization advances, other forms of resistance come to surpass martial courage in importance. Chief among these I mention what might be called civil courage, independence of thought, characterful self-assertion against the great pressure exerted by superior and inferior forces. Civilization has the tendency to create relations of dependence ; dependence upon men takes the place of dependence upon natui'e : dependence upon superiors and patrons, friends and fellow-partisans, customers and voters, society and public opinion. Depen- dence has the tendency to pervei-t the will : it inclines the individual to accommodate himself, to let things take their course, to obsequiousness, to cowardly self-denial, to falsehood in every form. So the moral duty arises to develop the inner power of resistance which calmly and firmly opposes every attempt to subject the individual to established customs and authority, which serves and remains loyal to truth and justice, regardless of whether such conduct brings favor and popularity or disfavor and contempt. To remain true to oneself, that is the aim of such ideal courage. No one can have it, the centre of whose life does not lie within himself ; whoever makes external things his ultimate goal cannot attain to inner freedom. Spinoza was, in his life and teach- ing, a great preacher of this doctrine of freedom. Another form of courage is perseverance or persistence, the power of the will to accept and continuously to endure all kinds of hardships and exertions, which are necessary to realize one's ends. It is the virtue of the working man. Martial courage was the virtue of the heroic age, persever- ance is the courage of the industrial age. It is in this virtue that the civilized man so immeasurably surpasses the savage. The savage is capable of great momentary exertions, but not of making a continued effort to overcome the small obstacles SELF-CONTROL 499 in which all work consists. A partial reason for this is his inability to conceive far-reaching aims. Hence, as soon as the momentary pressure of want or of the natural impulse ceases, he yields to the law of inertia, which also governs living bodies. The love of order may also be regarded as a phase of perseverance, the habit of doing everything with business- lilte regularity : a very valuable quality, which procures for us freedom and tranquillity. The consequence of disorder is confusion, which begets fear and trouble. This is especially true of the tendency to procrastinate. When our woric is done, we feel at peace, but when we put off our tasks, we are constantly fretting about them, and are finally forced to per- form them hastily and unsatisfactorily at an inopportune time. The man who is fifteen minutes late, suffers torture during the rest of the day. Patience, too, is related to perseverance. It is the ability to bear pain and suffering without being overcome by them. We may distinguish two aspects of patience : a somewhat passive patience, which bears sufferings without complaint and opposition, and the more active power of the soul, the ability to survive defeats, disappointments, and losses, and to begin life anew. — Patience is feminine courage. Both forms, especially the former, are more characteristic of women than of men ; women not infrequently display a remarkable capacity for enduring pain. This fact is evidently due to the natural difference of the sexes ; women are more experienced in all kinds of suffering than men. A man's nature is im- pelled to attack and defence : hence he finds it more difficult to yield to the inevitable. But active patience, too, the elastic resistance of the soul, is one of the most beautiful and valu- able qualities of the woman. It is harder for a man to get up again after he has met with misfortunes. A woman generally finds less difficulty in beginning anew ; she soon begins to hope and fear again, to work and strive ; she has a more flexible 600 DOCTKINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES nature. Man's strength is more unbending and brittle. A woman is also better able to battle with long-continued troubles and obstacles ; when the man impatiently sinks beneath the load, she retains her equanimity and even her cheerfulness. For that reason woman is the born guardian of youth, the nurse of the sick, and the counsellor of old age.^ Great patience in suffering is the invariable mark of a noble character ; courage and perseverance may belong even to a selfish and malicious will. Patient resignation in suffering is a sign that the violent natural impulse to life, which rebels against suffering, has been broken and silenced by a higher will. This is why sufferings which are accepted by the heart and patiently borne are expiatory : think of the thief on the cross. 6. A third form of self-control is calmness, the ability to control, by the rational will, such emotions as result from disturbances in our relations with our fellow-men : e.g., anger, vexation, ill-humor. To the lack of this virtue, and to envy and pride, are due most of the disagreeable annoyances which wear out the lives of so many men. Without the ability to overcome the inevitable petty collisions, intercourse with human beings becomes a constant torture. A man moves into an apartment house. On the floor above him lives a family with half-a-dozen children, who are making diligent use of the first right of man to use his hands and feet. The noise annoys him, he loses his temper and in his anger sends up a servant to say that the noise is intolerable, and that the gentleman downstairs insists upon greater quiet. What is the effect ? The family thus addressed resents such inter- ference, and henceforth lets the children make more noise 1 In a certain sense the greater capacity of women for bearing sufferings and misfortune is statistically shown by the smaller number of suicides among women. According to statistics, four times as many men commit suicide as womea Hence, if suicide is due to the person's inability to endure life any longer, we can Bay that the power of the woman to bear suffering is four times as great as that of the man. SELF-CONTROL 501 than before. And now the battle is on : our friend begins to storm around himself, slams the doors, stamps with his feet, sends for the landlord and the police, and becomes an- grier and more displeased every day. In this way his house becomes a perfect hell. His mind is filled with venomous discontent ; and, like a vessel full to the brim, overflows with bitterness and poisonous malice at the slightest contact. And in the meanwhile he is deploring the baseness of man in general. And yet, no one, evidently, is to blame but himself, he is annoying and tormenting himself. He is reaping what he sowed ; wie der Gruss, so der Dank. Had he, instead of sending his servant, put on his best coat and called upon the mother of those children, whose feet are ruining his brain, had he confessed to her that he had an unfortunate failing, that he was extremely sensitive to sounds, and had he begged of her, to have a little regard for his feelings if she could ; had he likewise not forgotten, upon leaving, to praise the beauty and good behavior of her children and to admire her taste in furnishing her home : everything would have been so different. In at least nine cases out of ten — and such a probability makes it worth a trial — he would have been kindly received, and one-half or three-fourths of the disturbance would have been removed. He might then have prescribed for himself a little Stoic philosophy, to enable him to endure the remaining fraction. " If you are going to bathe," Epictetus admonishes us, " place before yourself what happens in the bath : some splashing the water, others push- ing against one another, others abusing one another, and some stealing: and thus with more safety you will under- take the matter, if you say to yourself, I now intend to bathe, and to maintain my will in a manner conformable to nature." So it is here : when you move into an apartment house, think of what will happen there ; the neighbor's dog will bark, his boys will romp around, his daughters will play 502 DOCTRINE Oi? VIRTUES AND DUTIES on the piano ; if you cannot endure these things, do not move in, but build yourself a house outside of the city, be it ever so modest. But if you must move in, tell yourself before- hand that you must, and yield to the inevitable. To do all this you need not even have any love for human- ity — that, of course, would make it easier for you; it is simply a matter of prudence. However righteous your anger may be, suppress it; anger will destroy your life and happiness. When people try to make you angry, say: I shall not allow myself to be made angry, for I shall be the one to suffer for it. Indeed, it is very strange : we know that we must always adapt ourselves to the nature of the things which we desire to subject to our purposes; only when it comes to human beings do we seem to forget it. A stone is in my way, I do not scold it, but walk around it or push it aside. A watch or a machine is out of order ; we do not beat it, but inquire into the cause, or hand it over to an expert to mend the defect. But when a human being fails to do our bidding, when a neighbor displeases us, or a friend acts in a manner which we do not consider right, when a pupil does not know his lesson, or the soup does not taste right, we get angry and scold. As though abuse and anger were the panacea for governing human souls ! A human soul is of all things in the world the most complicated and most difficult to handle; and hence the art of governing souls is the hardest of all arts. And since it is the most important art for our happi- ness, it surely deserves to be studied with greater care. The most important thing in this art, however, is the ability to retain one's composure ; only calm and prudent investigation will succeed in discovering the causes of the trouble, and not until these have been found can the proper attempts be made to remedy it. However this may be brought about, whether by instruction, example, counsel, encouragement, assistance, admonition, entreaty, threats, punishment, — under all cir- SELF-CONTROL 603 cumstances, Bacon's word will hold good that he alone can rule nature who obeys her. Any one, of course, can get angry and scold, but this is merely a confession of helpless- ness, and does not tend to improve matters ; nay, it is apt to make them worse. Even where punishment is the proper remedy, it will be all the more effective, if administered calmly and firmly .^ 7. The fruit of self-control, which reaches its completion in the virtues of temperance and unpretendingness, courage and perseverance, patience and tranquillity, is inner peace and cheerfulness of mind, Democritus's iinOvixia, the tranquilitas animi of the Stoics. This is not only in itself the greatest part of human happiness, but also the source of real human pleasures. Tlie calm and cheerful soul is capable of the quiet pleasures of reflection : the forms of things are mir- rored best in the tranquil lake. The social duties thrive in the contented heart, — justice, veracity, tenderness, benevolence, faithfulness ; and from these in turn spring the joys which friendship and domestic happiness yield. This is the path which leads to self-preservation and wel fare. Wisdom is needed to find and follow it. Hence all peoples praise wisdom as the great guide of life. The royal sage of the Hebrews mingles his praises with those of the Greek philosophers; "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the mer- chandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies : and all the things thou canst desire are not • C. G. Gordon, the hero of Khartoum, who quelled the great Taiping in- surrection in China, one of the greatest tamers of men that ever lived, once wrote : The older we grow the better we learn to treat human beings as though they were lifeless objects ; that is, to do for them what we can without caring whether they will thank us or not. So God acts towards us. He lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust, he seldom meets with gratitude, he is most often forgotten. (In an anonymous biography, C. G. Gordon, the Hero of Khartoum, 188.5, p. 178.) [I have not been able to obtain the book, and cannot therefore quote the passage exactly. — Tu.] 504 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her : and happy is every one that retaineth her. The Lord by wisdom has founded the earth ; by understanding hath he established the heavens."^ » [Provarbs, IIL, 13-19.] CHAPTER III THE BODILY LIFEi 1. The function of the body is to serve as the organ and symbol of the soul. There is no difference of opinion concern- ing this practical estimate of the two phases of man's nature. Even the materialist, who regards the soul as a passing func- tion of matter, will accept our proposition ; for him too the body is the servant of the soul. Every one is likewise agreed as to what constitutes a good servant. To accomplish and endure much and to demand little, — these are the qualities which we all consider valuable in a servant. These also determine what is desirable in a body ; the healthy, strong, and hardened body endures much and wants little : the sickly, weak, and pampered body does little and makes great demands. Hence follows the rule of duty : Do what is suited to preserve and increase the health and strength of the body ; avoid what impairs and weakens it. — The other function of the body is to express or symbolize psychical life. Beauty and grace are the visible corporeal manifestations of a good and beautiful soul. Grace is acquired beauty ; the quiet se- curity of the soul which is master of itself, is reflected in quiet, steady, and appropriate movements. Hence follows the rule of duty : Educate the body, so that it may appear in this visible world as a pleasing expression of the invisible beauty of the soul. ' [Bonssean, MmiU; Porter, Part 11., ch. III. ; Hoftding, XI. ; Wun&t, Ethilc, Part L, ch. III., 2, 3 ; Fowler and Wilson, Part II., ch. I. ; Ronze, §§ 9 f. ; Domer, pp. 336-356. — Tb.] 506 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES It must be left to dietetics and gymnastics to develop these general formulae into a system of rules. Hufeland's Macro- biotic, a, simple book, full of common-sense, may be mentioned as giving a brief presentation of the subject. I shall merely touch upon a few phases of the problem. 2. Let us first consider the question of nutrition.^ It is characteristic of human beings to prepare their food artificially; and they do it universally with the aid of fire. The use of fire for this purpose plays an important part in the emancipa- tion of man from nature. Whereas the animal is limited to the territory producing the plants or animals upon which it feeds, and is itself a product thereof, man has made himself lord of the earth ; . everywhere he finds what may, with the help of fire, be converted into food. In other respects also, tlie use of fire in the preparation of food has exercised an important influence upon the development of human life. Wundt calls attention to the fact that by necessitating the common preparation of certain foods, it at the same time led to their common consumption ; to it we owe the origin of the com- mon meal at the hearth. With the meal is connected the sac- rificial worship, growing out of the funeral feasts ; the hearth becomes the altar. The meal coming at regular intervals and dividing the day, also leads to the first division of time. The child still receives its first lessons in the discipline of the animal desires by governing its appetite according to the meals. Let me add a word or two concerning degeneracy in nourish- ment. In emancipating himself from the natural guidance of instinct, which controls and likewise preserves the animal, man exposes himself to aberrations.- The palate is stimulated' by artificially prepared food, and the reception of food excit'CS' pleasure even when it is not needed. Gluttony and ho^gisK^ ness are universally characterized by the perversion of the '■-[Spencer, Ethics of Individual Life, ch. IV.; Brillat-Savarin, Ph^iidogve ducjiml. — Tr.] THE BODILY LIFE 507 organs of nutrition into organs of pleasure. It appears that such abuse never occurs among animals, but that among human beings it is common to all ages and all peoples. Travel- lers bring us horrible reports of the coarse forms of gluttony practised by uncivilized tribes. All of these seem also to have hit upon the manufacture of intoxicating liquors, or to have introduced them into their countries from abroad. Everybody knows to what extent the life of modern civilized nations is devastated by drunkenness. It seems that the Ger- manic nations have from time immemorial been more predis- posed to this vice than the Romance peoples ; which is perhaps to be explained by conditions of climate. In certain parts of Germany a considerable part of the male population is directly ruined by drunkenness ; and thei'e is no country in which this vice does not cause the most serious disturbances. The imme- diate effects of drunkenness are these : the economic life becomes unsettled, family-life is Jieglected and destroyed, the moral-spiritual life brutalized and debauched. Pauperism, crime, a host of diseases, insanity, suicide, degeneracy of off- spring, follow in its melancholy wake.^ The conviction is growing among earnest and thoughtful men that a very serious danger here confronts the future pro- gress of civilized peoples. How shall we meet it?* In 1881 the German government introduced a bill in the Reichstag, making offensive drunkenness in a public place punishable (by a fine not to exceed sixty marks and fourteen days in jail, the penalty to be increased in case of repetition). The permission was also asked for the temporary confinement of habitual drunkards in asylums. The measure did not pass. During the discussion of the bill the objection was raised, among others, that the passage of such a law would lead to ' Compare A. Baer, Der AlcohoHsmus, seine Verbreitimg, und seine Wirhung cvif den individuellen und sozialen Organismus, sowie die Mittel ihn zu behdmpfen, 1878. [See the articles on Temperance, Abstinence, Prohibition, in Johnson's Cyclopedia. — Tk.] 2 [Spencer, Ethics oflnd. Li/e.ch. VI. — Tk,] 0U» DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES the unlawful restriction of personal liberty. I do not know whether the objection had anything to do with the defeat of the proposition, but it seems to me that it must be regarded as thoroughly unsound. Drunkenness incapacitates a man for rational deliberation, but it does not hinder him from acting irrationally. Hence it leads him to treat others irra- tionally and possibly to abuse them ; indeed the causal connection between drunkenness and crime, especially crime against persons, is a well known fact. Therefore, it is un- doubtedly an attack against the security of others to put one- self into such a condition ; even the threats and the fears to which, for example, the wife and children of the drunkard are subjected, constitute a serious wrong against which the law has an absolute right to proceed. And it is no less beyond cavil that society has the right to proceed against habitual drunkenness by confining individuals in asylums. We have as much right to isolate and to cure the alcoholist who has lost his will power, in order to protect him and his surroundings against the consequences of his disease, as we have to incarcerate the maniac against his w^ill, that he may not injure himself and others. Of course, it goes without say- ing that great care would have to be exercised to hinder the ai'bitrary and unjust execution of the law.* Hence, it seems utterly unwarranted to oppose such a law on the score of personal liberty. The freedom temporarily to put oneself in a state of moral and intellectual insanity can- not be regarded as one of the universal rights of man. ^ In his text-book on Psychiatry, Krafft-Ebing defines intoxication as a volnn- tarily-produced, temporary state of insanity. (I., 35.) He shows in detail its similarity to forms of mental disease. Its beginning is marked by a slight mania- cal excitation, with exalted self-consciousness, and apparent intensification of vital functions. The continued use of alcohol is followed by a gradual decline, as in the case of the riolent maniac : at first the aesthetic and moral presentations, which in health have a controlling and inhibiting influence, disappear; the drunkard " lets himself go," ignores the rules of decency and morality, becomes cynical and brutal. A state of complete exhaustion follows, consciousness is deranged, illusions and hallucinations appear, his speech becomes thick and un- certain, his walk tottering, just as in the case of the paralytic ; the end is a deep and idiotic stupor. fSee Zola's powerful novel L'Assommoir. — Tb.1 THE BODILY LIFE 609 Nevertheless, I doubt whether the defeat of the measure, at least of the part relating to the punishment jaf public drunken- ness, is to be deplored. In addition to the injustice or the harmfulness of a law, another decided objection may be urged against it, and that is its inefficacy. It is to be feared that a penal law against drunkenness would, as matters now stand, have very little effect ; it would not contribute much to the improvement of morals, and that after all is the end to be desired. The efficacy of such a law would essentially depend upon its ability to render drunkenness disgraceful in the eyes of the public, which it is not at present. But I doubt very much whether that can be done so long as public opinion, not only of the lower classes, but also of so-called good society, judges this vice so leniently. Several years ago a riot occurred in a German university town, which for several days kept the entire city in a state of great excitement. The reason which induced a part of the student body to revolt was a police- regulation ordering the saloons to be closed at twelve o'clock midnight : a highly beneficial measure, one would imagine, for all the parties concerned, for the beer-drinkers as well as for the other inliabitants of the city. It was, however, re- garded by the liberty-loving youth as an intolerable restriction of their personal freedom, or perhaps also of their academic freedom, about which some rather curious ideas exist. Now imagine these same defenders of liberty five or ten years later pronouncing judgment upon drunkenness in court ! I can- not make myself believe that the law administered by such representatives would exercise an educative influence upon public morality. Or will they have changed by that time ? Perhaps ; but even then would not their own past rise up against them ? And do they actually change, as a general thing ? The hilarity which one of the advocates of personal liberty succeeded in arousing among the representatives of the people, when the measure mentioned above was discussed in 510 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES the Reichstag, was not calculated to remove all doubts con- cerning the high gathering's respect for sobriety. When this speaker remarked that the drunken men whom he met on the streets were for the most part elderly gentlemen with white cravats, and that the sight of them did not arouse in him feel- ings of anger, but sympathetic cheerfulness, his statement did not arouse anger in the meeting either, at least there was no perceptible sign of it, while the sympathetic cheerfulness mentioned by him, which goes by the name of general hilarity in the reports of parliamentary proceedings, became plainly audible. And the long and sentimental accounts of the drinking bouts {Kommerse) of old gentlemen, followed by the Katerfrilhstuck, which so frequently appear in all our news- papers, are evidently written with the intention of exciting good-humored laughter in their readers.^ So long as " good society " treats itself so leniently in these matters, it will have every reason to doubt its ability to cure " bad society " of drunkenness, by means of penalties. The law cannot create customs, it can merely protect existing ones. May we expect an improvement of custom in the future ? Perhaps the case is not hopeless. A student of history might reach this conclusion. At the beginning of the modern era the habit of bestial drunkenness prevailed at the courts of princes and among the nobility. Call to mind the chronicles of Hans von Schweinichen. The vice was gradually sup- pressed in these circles during the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries, through the influence of the French courts. Prom the courts, however, it had spread to the middle classes of society ; it seems to have reached its climax in the aca- demic world during the second half of the seventeenth cen- 1 W. Martius {Der Kampf gegen den Alkoholmissbrauch, 1884, pp. 40 ff.) gives us au idea of the feeling of the public in reference to drinking and drunken- ness. He also publishes the bill mentioned above, and the constitution of the Society against the Abuse of Spirituous Liquors, and many other items of interest in the history of the crusade against drunkenness. THE BODILY LIFE 511 tury. Here, too, it has had to give way, since the middle of the eighteenth century, to the more refined manners which gradually came to prevail, owing to the development of higher spiritual aspirations. The habit still persists with great stub- bornness in certain academic circles, but I believe we can say that it is really no longer considered good form. Among offi- cials and the substantial citizens, drunkenness, though judged rather mildly in individual cases, is not regarded as one of the legitimate habits of life. At present it is largely confined to the lower and lowest strata of society, into wliich it has gradually found its way since the seventeenth century. We may measure its growth there by the increase in the manu- facture of brandy, which has reached an enormous extent in the nineteenth century. Will the plague, after having passed through the body politic from the top to the bottom, leave it again ? Perhaps we may hope so. When the higher classes of society, who set the example in all things both good and bad, take the lead in this matter and repudiate drunkenness, it will gradually lose caste among the masses. Whatever is no longer regarded as " refined," is doomed ; so soon as it be- comes " vulgar " it is cast out. The progress in this direction may perhaps be hastened by the fact that drinking assumes a more and more brutal and repulsive form, under the influence of the whiskey-habit ; there is some poetry in wine, and, if need be, also in beer, but there is no poetry in whiskey. So soon as public opinion comes to look upon intoxication as de- cidedly vulgar and disgraceful, it will be possible to combat what is left of the old vice by laws and penalties. In the meanwhile, we have here a wide field for the work of societies ; but we must not forget the good old rule : First sweep before your own door. The beer-drinking habit of the academic and non-academic Philistines, which is so common in Germany, and the worship of the belly to which the rich and aristocratic are addicted, are equally degrading. Can any one who, day after day, from morning till night, for hours 512 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES and hours, sits in the beer-shops, enveloped by tobacco smoke, and listens to the selfsame stupid talk or plays the same old tiresome game of Skat, and who at last carries home with him an empty and stupefied head, do any serious and earnest work ? Can any one who, day after day, revels in the pleasures of the table at dinners and suppers, throw his soul into anything ? Will not a feeling of lazy satiety take possession of him and extinguish all higher aspirations ? Now what remedies shall we employ against drunkenness among the masses ? All effective measures will, perhaps, aim chiefly at two things : the removal of temptation and the discovery of a suitable substitute for whiskey and the dram- shop. The so-called public coffee-houses, which were originally established in England and afterwards on the Continent, at first by societies and subsequently as private enterprises, have made a good beginning in the latter respect. Moreover, every improvement that is made in the conditions of life will tend to counteract alcoholism among the lower classes. Wretchedness and want, insufficient food, poor habitations, injurious labor, over-exertion, indeed an uncomfortable mode of existence, constitute its favorite soil ; the effect desired is the temporary stupefaction, the blunting of the sensibility, caused by the use of alcohol. The so-called Gothenburg sys- tem has happily succeeded in diminishing the temptation in Sweden. In 1865 a stock company was formed in Gothen- burg which obtained possession of all the dramshop-licences of the city, and considerably decreased the number of drink- ing places. It then placed these saloons in charge of its own employees and limited the sale of liquors to a very short period of the day. The net profits, minus the usual rate of interest, are turned into the city treasury. The system, which has been adopted in many cities throughout the North, not only directly diminishes the opportunity for drinking, but also removes some of the conditions encouraging drunkenness, for example, the saloon-atmosphere and the landlord's love of gain. THE BODILY LIFE 513 Here, moreover, the State too may interfere, without hesi- tation, by employing the proper safeguards. The legislature has finally resolved to limit the gambler's freedom to ruin himself, by closing the gambling-houses ; it has passed laws commanding the utmost care in the sale of poisons, and may consequently take precautionary measures against, and limit the sale of, the poison which claims a thousand times more victims than all the others put together. A Dutch law of the year 1881 contains some very stringent regulations ; it limits the number of dramshops in proportion to the popu- lation, and grants licenses only for one year at a time ; it also punishes drunkenness. The regulations which call the land- lord to account for encouraging excess are also wise. And the demand of the temperance societies that no one be legally bound to pay debts incurred by the purchase of alcoholic liquors surely deserves approval. Finally, it is also feasible to increase the tax on whiskey, and thereby to limit its consump- tion, or at least to hinder its increase. To be sure, these restrictions are opposed in Germany by quite influential circles, which have a selfish interest in increasing the sale of whiskey. But is it not, perhaps, conceivable that the masses will some day see that the whiskey-drinker is making a volun- tary tax-payer of himself and is at the same time paying trib- ute to the whiskey-distilling landowner ? Will not the German social democracy some day, perhaps, adopt abstinence from spirituous liquors as one of its weapons against the existing order of society ? It would not in my opinion be the worst, nor the least effective weapon. The English trades-unions have made the beginning in the fight against alcohol. The leaders of the labor movement in that country are all advo- cates of total abstinence. Let me say a few words regarding another stimulant, tobacco, which entered upon its triumphant march through civilized Europe simultaneously with brandy. It is, as is well known, one of the guest-gifts of the new world to the old. If 514 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES ever the Middle Ages could be supposed to pass judgment upon modern times, they would most likely say, in revenge for the many evil things said of them : Three things charac- terize the modern era: whiskey, tobacco, and the French dis- ease {die Franzosen), as a certain affliction was called which made its appearance in Germany at about the same time. The modern times, they might proceed, are fond of boasting that their civilization is superior to that of the Middle Ages. Now if civilization consists of these three things — a view which the " savages " outside of Europe to whom the Europeans have brought " civilization " might easily be led to take — then, the Middle Ages might say, our own lack of civilization need not trouble us very much. Indeed, " it is a very remarkable fact that a barbarous Indian custom, the custom, namely, of drawing the smoke of the dry leaves of a narcotic plant into the mouth by means of a tube or a twisted roll, and then puffing it out again, or of stuffing the same leaves in pulverized form into the nose, should have been transmitted by the redskins to white, yellow, and black men all over the world, and should have taken root." ' Tolstoi, too, has pondered over this strange fact. In a little pamphlet. Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves f he gives his answer : In order to stupefy their consciences ; for which tobacco and alcohol are especially fitted. There is a great deal of rhetorical exaggeration in the reply ; but it likewise contains a germ of truth. Why does the student smoke and drink ? Because he likes it ; or because he does not know what to do with himself, and so deludes himself about his empty and burdensome life ? It is estimated that the German nation spends about three hundred million marks for tobacco annually. I certainly do not desire to begrudge any one his pleasures ; but could we not buy something better for three hundred million marks ' V. Hehn, Kulturpjianzen und Hausthiere in ihrem Ubergang aits Asien nach Europa, p. 449. THE BODILY LIFE 515 than smoke ? If, for example, this sum were spent in im- proving and beautifying our homes, then, at least, the three- fourths of our people who are only passively interested in smoking would be the gainers ; and perhaps even the smokers themselves would not lose anything. For I confess that I am still in doubt, after many years of experience, as to whether smoking causes more enjoyment on the whole than annoyance. Was any father ever pleased to see his sons or his daughters acquire the habit ? Furthermore, what was said above about drinking is also true of smoking : after it has become universal, it will become vulgar, and then it will be abandoned, first by the privileged classes and afterwards by all. Has this process already be- gun ? It seems to me, there are more students to-day who do not smoke than there were thirty years ago. Another sign of the times is vegetarianism, which has made many converts of late. I do not believe that everybody will or ought to follow its standard. There are most likely sound reasons for the consumption of animal food beside vegetable food, and it is on the whole indispensable. I also doubt whether abstention from meat would, as the enthusiasts predict, lead to the extermination of all vices and ills. And as for the animals in whose behalf we are appealed to to abstain, — why, the abstention from meat would prove disastrous to them ; the animal at least " with the rose-colored skin, whose cries are so much like human cries " (Tolstoi), would be doomed by the triumph of vegetarianism. On the other hand, the move- ment is evidently the expression of a desire for a more beauti- ful, more spiritual, more human form of life ; and voluntary abstention from animal food (the involuntary abstention is not wanting, as we know) cannot fail to have beneficial results, under certain circumstances. 3. Let me add a few words concering habitation ^ and cloth- ing. The dwelling, originally a protection against lieat and cold 1 [See also Oettingeii, Morahtalistik, § 34. — Tr] 616 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES as well as against hostile attacks, has gradually far outgrown its original purpose : the cave, the tent, the hut, the house, the burg, the city, mark the stages of its evolution. Its mission has been enlarged so as to embrace the whole of ci\'ilized life. What clothing is to the Individual, the domicile is to the family. Within the walls of the house the family finds pro- tection against all kinds of annoyances, and seeks refuge from inquisitive curiosity and insatiate greed. In the home it reveals its character ; the occupation, the mode of life and thought of the family, are expressed in the form, furniture, and decoration of the house. The memories of the past, both joyful and sorrowful, cling to it, and so the dwelling becomes the necessary framework of the family history. It is no less apparent that the development of great historical institu- tions is closely connected with the evolution of the home: without the dividing walls of the individual's own hut, we cannot imagine the separation of the particular families from the original herdlike unity of the horde. The evolution of property-rights is doubtless also closely related to the same dividing walls. Moreover, by the side of the human dwell- ing erected by the individual rises the house of the gods, the temple, which has proved so stimulating to religion and the arts. The temple has also had a great influence, as Wundt remarks, upon the evolution of the sense of justice. The peace of God made the temple the refuge for fugitives. The temple-peace reacted upon the development of the house- peace : the gods avenged its breach, whether the offence were committed against the host or against the guest. Again, the first notions of international law owed their origin to the reverence which the tribe felt for the temples of kindred gods. One of the most deplorable results of the recent develop- ment of social life is the forced abandonment by larger and larger portions of the population of the dwelling as a perma- nent home for the particular family, and the crowding together THE BODILY LIFE 517 of great masses of people, who are unknown to each other, iuto the tenement and apartment houses of our large cities. Even the wealthy family suffers serious loss in this respect, being deprived of its peace and comfort, its freedom of move- ment, its pleasure of possession, its feeling of neighborliness, and the love of home. And among the lower classes these are not the only disadvantages. The overcrowded condition of the houses tends to endanger the life and health, happiness, morality, and domestic feeling of the occupants. When one family possesses but a single room, which it shares with sub- tenants and lodgers, real human life is no longer possible.^ It would be a great blessing if the modern means of transpor- tation could be so perfected as again to disperse the crowds of people whom they have poured into the large cities. Many families, who are at present living in crowded tenement- houses, to their great injury, could, even now, if they so desired and ceased regarding a bad habit as a natural neces- sity, occupy their own homes in the suburbs. Here, again, the wealthier classes must inaugurate the reform by forming better habits themselves.^ The original purpose of clothing ^ was partly to protect, partly to decorate the body and to reveal the importance of the wearer. Its negative object was to conceal the animal portions of the body, leaving only the face, the symbol of the spiritual powers, uncovered. Dress has retained this dual nature in the vicissitudes of historical life. The costume symbolizes rank and office, age and sex, joy and soitow, tem- perament and mode of thought, time and people. By means of clothing the historical and social position of the individual is constantly impressed upon him and his surroundings. In- * [See Rupprecht, Mensch und Wohnung in Wechselbeziehung ; Laspeyres, Uber den Einfluss der Wohnungsverhdltnisse auf die Moralitdt der arbeitenden Classen. — Tk.] * Die Wohnungsnot der armeren Klassen, Schriften des Vereins fur Sozialpolitik, rol. I., XXX.-XXXII., 1 886. 8 [See also Jheriug, vol. 11, 311-329. — Tb.J 518 DOCTRINE OP VIRTUES AND DUTIES deed, we may saj that dress is so essential that historical life and social order cannot be imagined without it ; naked men are unhistorical men. Sameness of exterior marks brutes as unhistorical beings, dissimilarity in dress is the outward manifestation of historical and social beings. Hence, histori- cal changes in the life of nations reveal themselves in changes of costume ; try to imagine Lather in a swallow-tail coat and a wiiite cravat, or Goethe with a moustache and a cut-away, and you will see that dress is as characteristic of man as an his- torical being as its skiri is of the animal. ■ — The abolition of the old class distinctions and the levelling tendency of the nine- teenth century clearly manifest themselves in the disappear- ance of class costumes. On the other hand, the dress of the state, the uniform, has become more prominent ; distinctions spontaneously created by society are giving way to distinc- tions made by the state. Furthermore, the uniform is an ex- cellent means of uniforming and controlling the inner man. It compels the wearer to represent the office and to obey orders ; he cannot retreat, he must seem to be what the uni- form proclaims him to be, and so becomes it. What would an army be without uniforms ? The difference between costume and fashion consists in this : the latter is an arbitrary invention of particular individ- uals and lasts only for a short time. Its climax is marked by the complete decline of costume. Fashionable attire differ- entiates its wearer, makes a " distinguished " person of him, not so much because it is a sign of taste, wealth, or costliness, but because it creates the impression that he is a leader in society or that he stands close enough to the leaders to notice the changes immediately and to keep pace with them ; hence, also, the need of rapid changes. Fashion is the feminine form of sport or speculation, and is, like all sport, capricious and tyrannical, stimulating its followers to do their best. The health and welfare of many a woman, the peace and happiness of many a home, are sacrificed to this tyrant without THE BODILY LIFE 519 a murmur. Should the psychologist succeed in inventing a process for the transformation of psychical forces — as the physicist has for changing thermal or electrical forces into motion — and should the process ever succeed in con- verting but one-half of the energy which the women who obey the dictates of fashion expend in destroying their com- fort, welfare, and freedom, into other forces of self-sacrifice, the invention would presumably produce a greater increase in real happiness among civilized humanity than all the inven- tions of this century put together. 4. Another important part of dietetics is the development and exercise of bodily powers. Life is, according to Aristotle, action ; the body deteriorates when it cannot act. These powers are exercised in two ways : in play and in work} Work is the exercise of powers for the sake of an external end ; in play the activity is an end in itself, it has no end outside of itself, it is free activity ; while work is constrained or unfree action. Play is especially characteristic of youth. In the life of the adult it is overshadowed by work ; but it is not wanting here and cannot be wanting without depriving life of an essential element. A country consisting entirely of fertile cultivated fields would not wholly please us ; we should miss the heaths and the forests, the moor and the wilderness, we should miss the poetry of freedom. Nor would a life please us that consisted solely of useful work : without play it would be without the poetry of freedom. It cannot be denied that with the advance of civilization, certain dangers are threatening life from this side. The sphere of play is becoming more and more restricted, and work is growing morp monotonous and mechanical. In primitive stages of civilization work is freer and more varied ; it has sometiiing of the character and charm of play. That ' [See also Spencer, Ethics of Individual Life, chaps. II., III., VII. ; Runze, §§ 22 ft. ; J. E. Erdmann, Ernste Spiale ; Santayana, The Sense of Beauty, Bk. L - Tr.] 520 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES this is true may be seen from the fact that civilized men indulge in hunting and fishing as a kind of play and sport. Agricultural pursuits, too, are quite free and full of change ; each season yields new forms of action. The peasant practises a hundred arts, he handles numberless tools, and comes in daily contact with a thousand living and lifeless things. The work of tlie mechanic is not so free ; he is tied to his workshop ; the circle of his activities is narrow ; his work consists rather in the constant repetition of the same performance, which consequently becomes more mechanical. He is not so dependent on nature, upon the weather and the seasons, but more dependent upon human beings. All these features are greatly emphasized in the great metropolitan in- dustries. Labor becomes more specialized and monotonous, the working man is less dependent upon nature, but more dependent upon men ; the natural laws which govern the life of the peasant are replaced by the laws of the factory and, in more modern times, by the laws of the state, which is interfering with these matters more and more. The metropolis resembles a great prison, in which men are confined within a narrow space and compelled to perform monotonous tasks ; the factory and the workshop, the store and the counting-room, the street and the home, — everything is so small and contracted ! How great is the sense of oppres- sion felt by the masses may be seen from the eagerness with which they seek the open when they are dismissed from their work-houses for a few hours on a Sunday. Even corporeal labor is apt to be somewhat mechanical and disappointing in these places. It is not accidental that art shuns the towns. The painter does not paint the people around him, the privy counsellor in his office, the teacher . in his class, the book- keeper at his desk, the workman in the factory ; or when he does it, there is almost always something comical, or satirical, or sentimental in the picture. He prefers to seek the fisher- man on the sea, the huntsman in the forest, the shepherd on the THE BODILY LIFE 521 mountains, the peasant in the fields, the carrier on the high- ways. Why ? Most likely because the latter live and act as free men out in the open air, while the former, the prisoners of labor, seem ludicrous or pitiable. The greatest sufferers are the young, and those of the higher classes perhaps suffer most because they are sub- jected to such conditions for a greater length of time. The truth that life is movement is especially applicable to the young. Their impulses are directed towards the exercise of bodily powers ; they desire to run and to climb, to jump and to dance, to build and to destroy. There is neither room nor opportunity for such action in the " flat." Free and unim- peded play is utterly impossible ; children living in large cities — as any one raised in the country cannot but note with surprise — know no games ; they have no play-gronnds, no companions, and without these, games cannot thrive and grow. In polite society the child, instead of playing, is taken out for a stroll by the governess, or goes to the doll bazaar, or attends a children's party. But all these artificial things do not satisfy our children, and inasmuch as their love of movement and exercise cannot be suppressed, they are in the way in the metropolitan household. Under these circum- stances tbe school proves to be a veritable refuge : tliere they are taken care of and kept busy for a number of bours each day, and then a few more hours are consumed at home in preparing lessons. Among the upper classes a few more lessons in music and drawing are deemed indispensable, and afterwards a few more hours are devoted to novel-reading and card-playing. And so it happens that young people, from fif- teen to twenty years of age, at a time when the body needs most exercise, spend ten, twelve, or fourteen hours of the day sitting down, until the body gradually becomes accus- tomed to it, and the desire for exercise gives way to a gen- eral feeling of torpor. In this way the foundation is laid, during the period of youth, for the ailments by which the 522 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES members of good society might easily recognize each other in case all the other characteristics should ever disappear; indigestion, nervousness, and near-sightedness. And all the physicians and watering-places in the world cannot restore what nature gratuitously bestows upon him who keeps her commandments : namely a state of healthy exhaustion and a sound sleep, a good appetite and good digestion. Matters are still worse among the female portion of the population than among the men. We may justify or at least excuse the men on the ground that society, as it is constituted, demands mental labor in addition to manual labor, and that this is so difficult and complicated as to make it impossible to train the mind properly without in some measure injuring the physical powers, and that therefore the hypertrophic development of the brain at the expense of the other organs must be regarded as a sacrifice to society. Such an apology can be offered, although the question may still be asked : Is not the cultivation of the mental faculties compat- ible with an harmonious development of the physical powers, and is not bodily health the precondition of all healthful activity ? With women, on the other hand, the case is dif- ferent. Spencer quotes a remark of Emerson's : The first requisite of a gentleman is to he a good animal. The thought expressed in this saying is especially applicable to women. Indeed, there is absolutely no excuse why the health of girls should be sacrificed to " culture." Their duties in after life will not, as a rule, demand that they be able to speak three or four languages, but that they be able to manage their house- hold affairs and educate their children, things with which good health, strong nerves, and good eyes have a great deal to do, and learning and languages desperately little. Nor can we accept the excuse that there is neither room nor opportunity for work in the city home ; yoinig girls will always find plenty of opportunity for work and service in every household. This, of course, brings us to the very root of the evil. TPIE BODILY LIFE 523 Work, that is, manual work, has become vulgar ; the honor of the educated daughter would be compromised hy her doing housework — that is what the servants are for. It is not even genteel to wait upon oneself, much less upon others. I confess that I regard this custom of being waited upon at all times and under all circumstances as a highly efficient means of moral and physical degeneration. Sir John Lub- bock tells an interesting story.^ A species of ants which were once warlike and vigorous conquered and made slaves of another species. They became so accustomed to be waited upon that they were finally absolutely unable to help themselves ; they could not even feed themselves, the slaves pushing the food into the masters' mouths ; the only thing which they still did without aid was to digest their food and to propagate their kind. Does not this sound like a satirical fable on good society ? A man that has been con- stantly surrounded from youth up by servants who do every- thing for him, will finally become so helpless and dependent that he cannot take a step, cannot tie or untie a knot, without others' assistance. However aristocratic such a state of de- pendence may be, it necessarily becomes a continual source of annoyance and discontent. " Tout notre mal vient de ne pouvoir etre seul," Chamfort once said ; I wonder whether he also had in mind our dependence on servants. In this respect, too, imperial Rome seems to be the model for our age. " The desire," says Friedlander, in his Sitten- geschiehte RonCs^ " to do, nay even to think, as little as possible, was exaggerated to such a degree as to become posi- tively ludicrous. Not only was the business of remembering the names of clients and followers assigned to nomenclators, there were even people who had slaves to remind them when to eat and when to take their baths. They are, says Seneca, 30 completely exhausted that it requires too much effort for them to know whether they are hungry or not. One of them 1 [Ants, Bees, and Wasps, cliap. IV.] ' III., 124. 524 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES asked, after being taken from his bath and placed upon a chair : Am I sitting down already ? A hundred years later Lucian reports, to his surprise and disgust, that it was cus- tomary for aristocratic Romans to be preceded by slaves whose business it was to inform them of any roughness or obstruction in the street." (No one was allowed to drive through the narrow streets of Rome during the day.) We see, the aging Romans were on the very point of falling into the habits of the ants mentioned above. Friedlander compares the slave-luxury of imperial Rome with the servant-luxury of modern Russia ; hence, a descrip- tion of the conditions in that country may not be out of place here. Leo Tolstoi thus portrays the wretched state which aristocratic Russian society regards as essential to its hap- piness : " They lack five essential conditions of human hap- piness : contact with nature, manual labor, family life, intercourse with human beings, health and a painless death. One of the chief requisites of happiness is a life in the open, in the sunlight, with plenty of fresh air, communion with the earth, with plants and animals. Man has always regarded the want of such things as a great misfortune. These people, however, see nothing but woofs, stones, and wood fashioned by human hands ; they hear only the sounds of machines, equipages, cannons, and musical instruments ; they smell only spirituous liquors and tobacco smoke. Nor do their constant travels bring them any relief. They are carried in closed boxes ; wherever they go, they find the same stones and the same wood under their feet, the same curtains shut- ting out the light of the sun, the same lackeys, coachmen, and house boys, who will not allow them to come in contact with the earth, plants, and animals. Wherever they may happen to be, they are everywhere, like prisoners, deprived of the conditions of happiness." Another condition of happi- ness is labor, free manual labor, which stimulates the appetite and invites sleep. Here, too, it may be said that the more THE BODILY LIFE 525 happiness any one has acquired, according to the opinion of the world, the more he lacks this second condition of happi- ness. " All those whom the world deems fortunate, high dignitaries and millionaires, either have absolutely nothing to do, like prisoners, and struggle in Tain against diseases resulting from want of physical exercise — and battle with still less success against the ennui which consumes them ; or they do work which they despise, like the bankers, the pro- curers, the governors, and ministers and their wives, who buy gorgeous furnishings for themselves and their children."^ Count Tolstoi, who was destined by birth and rank to become a member of this society, had the rare courage, when he came to recognize the true meaning of life, to renounce such a lot, and to strive after true happiness. Many efforts are now being made in Germany, let me say in conclusion, to counteract these evils. Especial mention must be made of gymnastic exercises {Turnen), which, of course, as prescribed school exercises, are a poor substitute for free play. They came into vogue at the beginning of the century, with the rise of the military spirit among the Prus- sian people, and were originally aimed against every form of effeminacy. Jahn and his disciples desired to rid them- selves of the effeminate habits which resulted from French hyper-culture, by means of bodily exercise, hardships, and privations, and to regain the vigor of the German peasant. It was regarded as disgraceful to give way to any form of pampered sensuousness. Gymnastics have gradually come to be recognized as a part of the education of the young and likewise of military training. Perhaps the hope is not groundless that they will make even greater progress in the future. Should their hygienic necessity fail to gain for them the recognition which they deserve, their military utility may perhaps aid them. It is not likely that the European nations will be able permanently to bear the enormous burdens now 1 Mij Religion, p. 210. 526 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES imposed upon the community and the individual by the increase of military armaments, and it may ultimately become necessary to improve the instruction in gymnastics as well as the exercises connected with them, and to begin the general preparation for military service at an earlier age than at present. This plan would not only release the citizen from service during the later years of his life when the long inter- ruptions occasioned by military service are bound to cause him serious injury, but would have many other wholesome effects. The bodily exercises could be carried on, during the earlier years, in direct connection with the games of boy- hood; they might be continued with zeal during the years intervening between the school days and the time of service, and thus serve to counteract disorderliness and dissipation ; and finally they might encourage and lead to the revival of public games for the young. And should these games, which formerly occupied an important place in our national life, be revived, and give rise to more beautiful popular festivals, the German people would derive from its gymnastic exercises the same benefits which the Greeks derived from theirs.^ Athletic sports are also coming into vogue of late years — races, boating, mountain-climbing, bicycling, and so forth. Though a great many evils are connected with these exercises, they have this good, that they promote the physical vigor of the upper classes of society. The English, the leaders in these things, owe no small part of their success in inter- national affairs to the robust strength which the gentry acquire through physical exercises and games. Still more recently efforts have been made to improve the manual skill of the young by giving them an opportunity to train themselves in the use of tools. It is to be hoped that these attempts will succeed. Practical skill is a desirable thing. I am convinced that at least ninety out of every hundred young people who attend our higher schools, would find more pleasure i [Runze, §§ 46, 47. — Tr.] THE BODILY LIFE 527 in manual labor than in their school exercises. When nature formed the eye and the hand, she evidently did not intend them to be used in the way which is almost the only one known to our pupils : that is, for reading and writing. The Germans used to be very proud of their mechanical skill ; during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries their cities were renowned above all others for the skill of their artisans. Leibniz once described the difference between the French and German na- ture as follows : Frenchmen, he said, make useless things, which are simply beautiful to look at, while Germans make things which not merely please the eye and satisfy the curiosity of great lords, but also accomplish something ; they bring nature under the control of art and lighten human labor. — As late as a century ago there were places in Ger- many in which sailors and peasants spent their leisure moments in carving ; at present the only things which many a man can handle, besides his knife and fork, are his pen and his cigar. May it not be possible for us to return to our first love ? And if by doing so we can get rid of the new-fashioned contempt for manual labor, that too will be a blessing ; in- deed, we should not regret the loss of some of the idealism which, in imitation of the ancients, affects to despise banausic work. I am rather afraid anyhow, that we are not making much headway in Hellenizing our people, and perhaps we have less reason to regret being honest Germans than old and new humanists try to make us believe. In conclusion, let me allude, in a few words, to the opposite of action, to rest and recreation. Activity means expenditure of energy ; hence nature demands that activity be suspended in order that the loss may be restored. Regular, long periods of rest for the entire psycho-physical system follow the changes of day and night. Jewish tradition has estab- lished an additional period of rest in the Sabbath. This is a highly beneficial institution, one that is so interwoven with our life and feelings as to seem like a part of the natural order 528 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES itself. How was it possible for the Greeks and Romans to live without their Sunday ? Finally, during more recent years, it has become customary for those engaged in the higher pursuits to lay down their work for longer intervals ; vacations, which were originally confined to schools, have gradually extended to other circles. The need for them evi- dently grows as the work becomes more arduous, systematic, and monotonous. Hence it is to be assumed that greater portions of the population will be affected by the custom. Periods of rest have a double purpose : first, the restora- tion of consumed energy ; secondly, the exercise of functions not employed in the regular calling. The latter, too, is recreation. Those whose calling makes especial demands upon their mental powers will find recreation in the proper exercise of their bodily powers, in play, in travel, in mechan- ical activity ; those, on the other hand, whose work chiefly calls into play physical forces will find relief in mental activity, in reading. Social pleasures, music, games of all kinds, are excellent means of recreation for all alike. A proper balance between work and recreation is an essen- tial condition of health, efficiency, and happiness. An excess on either side is equally dangerous. It is now universally admitted that the development of industrial production has led to an intolerable excess of mechanical work. The efforts of the labor party to shorten the working time merit our entire approval. Work must not make a slave of man, but should enable him not only to acquire commodities, but to develop his powers. He should not be a mere tool, but a personal end in himself. When this becomes impossible, when daily labor leaves only time enough for the necessary animal functions of nutrition and sleep, man's life ceases to be a human life. CHAPTER IV THE ECONOMIC LIFE* 1. The economic life has its origin in the natural needs, which man shares with the brute. When the functions en- gaged in the satisfaction of these needs are systematized bj reason, two institutions arise which form the basis of economic life : labor and property. The accumulation of commodities, which is the original form of property, enables man to free himself from the slavery of momentary needs, to which the animal is subjected. This freedom is the precondi- tion of all real human life ; without it there can be no syste- matic, purposive activity, no mental-historical life. Through it, what remains a natural process in the animal world is raised to the moral sphere. We shall find occasion later on to make a more thorough examination of the institution of property and the historical forms which have been evolved from it.^ Here I simply desire to outline the moral duties which the acquisition and consumption of commodities impose upon the individual. Commodities are acquired through labor. In the more highly developed stages of civilization, this assumes the form of a calling or profession. Professional efficiency and fidelity to calling are the virtues peculiar to this field. * [Paley, Bk. III., Part 1 ; Spencer, Inductions, ch. XI. ; Porter, Part II., ch. VI.; Jhering, vol. I., ch. VII.; Wundt, Part I., ch. III., 2 (d), 3 (a) ; ch. IV. 2 (b), (c), (d) ; Runze, §§ 52-64 ; Fowler and Wilson, Part II., ch. 1 ; Dorner, pp. 347-353, 418-429; Hoffding, pp. 265-312; Oettingen, Moralstatistik, Part II., ch. 1.— Tb.] 2 In Bk. rv. 3, ch. L sa 530 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES Under healthy conditions, the duties of the calling form the centre of one's entire life. The boy practises his future profession in play ; the youth leaves the parental home to learn it, and the man devotes his whole energy to it. The avocation determines our essential relations to the exter- nal world ; it brings us into contact with our colleagues during the periods of work and rest ; and upon it depends the manner in which we exercise our faculties in play. Hence the calling is the guiding principle in life ; it gives it steadiness and purpose. The teleoUgical necessity of the callmg becomes apparent when we consider the consequences of its lack. Both rich and poor may be without a calling. The indiA'iduals without a calling who form the lower fringe of society constitute the proletariat. This group is composed of those who have no steady work, but wander from place to place and beg or steal, or otherwise gain their livelihood. Aversion to work, dissipation, drunkenness, recklessness, vanity, are the vices which draw individuals into this group. Moreover, this mode of life is transmitted by heredity ; degenerate families raise degenerate offspring. The metropolis is the most favorable soil for the proletariat. The covetousness which finds nourishment there, the temptations which lurk about in thousands of guises, the isolation and " anonymousness " in which the individual lives among the masses, the occasional scarcity of work and the loneliness which confront him, — all these are conditions favorable to the development of a proletariat. Sucli a life reaches its completion in the infamy and shamelessness ac- quired in workhouses and prisons. Another group of persons who have no calling is formed at the upper fringe of society. I mean the professional idlers who live on their interest and absolve themselves of the duty of having a calling. Looked at from the outside, their manner of life differs from that of the other class; seen from within, however, it shows many points of resemblance. Besides, these two classes come into personal contact with THE ECONOMIC LIFE 531 each other ; they meet in the demi-monde and among the gambling fraternity. Both congregate in ip,rge cities, both have peculiarly perverse notions of honor, both, above all, are restless in disposition and unsettled in their movements. Just as a ship without a cargo is aimlessly tossed about by the wind and the waves, so the life of the rich idler is the plaything of every whim or mood that happens to strike him. Nothing is required of him, so he takes up now one thing, now another, only to abandon it again at the earliest opportunity. The ability to will, which simply means the ability to perse- vere, even in the face of temporary distractions, is gradually lost 'when not exercised, and the victim perishes from an in- curable softening of the will. The disease was already known to Plato. In the Republic he describes it with all of its symptoms : " So he lives [in Plato " he " appears as the demo- cratic son of an oligarchical father] through the day, indulg- ing the appetite of the hour ; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute ; then he is for total abstinence, and tries to get thin ; then, again, he is at gymnastics ; some- times idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher ; often he is at politics, and starts to his feet and says and does anything that may turn up ; and, if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior, off he isin that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life has neither order nor law ; and this is the way of him — this he terms joy and freedom and happiness. — Admirably, said Glaucon, have you described the life of a ' man of freedom.' " ' Indeed, this is an admirable picture, true to life, the model for which it would not be hard to find even among us. The son of the "oligarchical" money-making father, loving "democratic" liberty and sport, enjoying the life of the metropolis, is evidently a peculiar product of the times. Prince Bismarck once declared in the Reichstag that no one was rated highly in Germany who did not have an 1 [Plato's Republic, 561 B ; Jowett's translation. — Ts.] 532 DOCTRIHE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES honorable calling. I am afraid this judgment expresses the opinion of an older generation rather than of ours. At any rate, the view is becoming very popular of late that the calling of the capitalist (^Rentier) is the most genteel of all, and everybody seems to agree that his life is, to speak with Plato, joyful and free and happy. Of course, this is a mistake. For man was not designed by nature merely to enjoy, but to work and acquire. How- ever plausible it may at first sight appear, the attempt to live a life of enjoyment merely, has invariably failed. Toil and pleasure, that is an old law of nature ; without the former we cannot obtain the latter. Whoever possesses the freedom which goes with wealth, of choosing any calling, and chooses none at all, but releases himself from all obli- gations, undoubtedly chooses the very worst : nothing causes more anxiety in the long run than the thought of how to spend the long weary days. If ever the proverb which con- nects the words choice and torture ^ was true, it is true here. We observe this in spoilt children : they pick up everything, they try everything, and throw everything away, only to desire something else ; and when they get that, they throw it away again, and again wish for something new; and so, constantly desiring the other thing, they are the unhappiest, most discontented, and contrary creatures in the world. Those who make idleness the business of their lives experi- ence the same thing; they take up one thing after another, and then abandon it again, and thus become the victims of the professional disease of the idler, tedium, Langeweile, ennui. Restlessly they toss about and make all kinds of desperate attempts to get rid of the trouble : they try amuse- ments, games, love-affairs, and sports, they take to drink, form societies, travel, enter politics, speculate on the stock exchange, until at last they are exhausted and sick of life. ' [Wer die Wahl hat, hat die Qual. (Literally : He that has the choice has the tOTtnre, i. e.j Choosing is difficult.) — Tr.] THE ECONOMIC LlEE 633 2. Not only do we owe it to ourselves to pursue a serious calling but likewise to society at large. Th© man who refuses to work in some way or other lives at others' expense. This is no less true of one who idly spends his inheritance than of the professional beggar or thief. Prom the legal point of view the former consumes what belongs to him and does no wrong ; from the moral standpoint, however, — that is, in reality, — he accepts the products of others' labor with- out making any return ; he lives as a parasite at the table of the people, without helping to defray the costs. It was formerly customary for philosophers to apply the principle of the tacit contract in the social sciences. John Locke endeavors to base upon it the income which the land- lord derives from his rents. After deducing the right of property in a thing from the labor by which it is acquired or produced, he asks : How does it happen that any one possesses more land than he can cultivate himself? He finds that the thing can be justified only by the consent of the people ; that this was given, tacitly, of course, by the introduction of an invention which enabled an individual to obtain the revenue of more land than he could cultivate, that is, by the introduction of money. An indirect accumu- lation and hoarding of products beyond the amount needed for self-consumption is made possible by converting them into money. But inasmuch as money possesses a conven- tional value only, society has, by adopting the invention, tacitly given its consent to the consequences thereof. But to this (somewhat imaginary) contract, we might con- tinue, society has, likewise tacitly, added a clause: it shall be valid only on condition that the person who thus becomes possessed of wealth shall make some return for the surplus which he acquires with the tacit consent of society. A con- tract assumes that some return be made, otherwise it is a donation ; and there is no reason to suppose that society intended to donate anything to any one, nor has society any 634 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES right to do so, at least if future generations are to bear the burden. The individual may make such a return by assum- ing public responsibilities: say by leading and representing his people in peace and in war, by serving as a judge or legislator, by performing the duties of the priestly calling, or by administering the spiritual possessions of a nation in science and in art. And it may still be regarded as such a return to systematize and guide economic production, nay even to influence consumption in a manner conducive to welfare, by example and encouragement, by public gener- osity and private beneficence. — During the time when the nobility and clergy still were an active power in the body politic, they so conceived and performed their functions. The man who does nothing ignores the obligations tacitly assumed by accepting property, and, therefore, has no right to it, from the moral point of view. The pure capitalist (unless he be an emeritus) is a thief. The people fully ap- preciate this fact ; and evidently the law against usury, estab- lished by the old church, was based upon some such feeling : whoever lives without working and consumes inherited wealth, lives upon the products of others, for money, as Aristotle says, bears no fruit. The law does not execute the judgment of morals, it does not repudiate ownership in property when no return is made, or in case of misuse, and it is probably well that it does not. For it would not only be impossible to formulate the necessary rules and to enforce them, but there would arise a feeling of insecurity in reference to property which would carry greater evils in its train than the most flagrant abuse of property-rights in particular instances coifld effect. In a certain sense, however, history realizes the judgment of mor- ality. Whenever the nobility and clergy renounced their obligations and merely retained the corresponding privileges as an inalienable right, things went along in this way for a while, but the day of reckoning came at last, and they were THE ECONOMIC LIFE 535 cast off from the social body as useless members or as harm- ful parasites. Thus history pronounced sentence upon the French nobility in the French revolution ; and the ecclesiasti- cal revolution of the sixteenth century condemned the clergy, who had proved false to their trust. History will not hold the capitalist more sacred than the nobility and the clergy. It is furthermore worthy of note that, with the progress of history, society is to a greater and greater extent changing the tacit contract into an explicit one, by transferring the aforesaid functions, which were originally performed by the wealthy without direct emolument, in honorary positions, to appointed and salaried officials. Appointed and salaried min- isters and privy counsellors, officers and judges, are now expressly commissioned to discharge the duties which, in the Middle Ages as well as during antiquity, were the prerogatives and duties of the great families. Even the economic functions are beginning to be separated from possession. The great landowner transfers the cares of administration to the tenant ; in the great industrial enterprises of modern times salaried employees relieve the capitalist of all work ; the owner becomes an annuitant. It is evident that this state of affairs diminishes the teleological necessity of ownership in land and capital, and correspondingly affects the stability of the insti- tution. Things which are no longer rooted in the life-condi- tions of society perish. Let us suppose that several thousand families in Germany should gain possession of all the pro- perty, so that all the others would be forced to live upon the product of their labor, while the former merely consumed their rents. What happened to the French nobility a hundred years ago would obviously happen to these capitalists. Are we on the eve of a new great judgment-day of history ? Are the days of the bourgeoisie numbered ? An evil presentiment seems to have taken hold of society. It is certain that a social revolu- tion would not come upon us as unexpectedly as in 1789. But perhaps this is a sign that it is not so near at hand : the 536 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES judgment-day of history always seems to steal upon us una- wares, like the thief in the night. One thing, however, is plain : whoever consumes rents without making some return or other, is hastening the coming of the judgment. Tlie eighth commandment is never broken with impunity. The law, however, Thou shalt not steal, is merely the negative formula of the positive command : " By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." 3. Let us cast a glance at the other side of economic life, at the question of consumption} The virtue peculiar to this field is the virtue of frugality, or economy, the capacity to manage one's affairs according to one's income as well as according to the needs and obligations which grow out of individual conditions and social rank. This virtue, too, we may define, following the Aristotelian principle, as a mean between two faults or vices, greed and prodigality. The miser saves where he ought to spend, the spendthrift spends lavishly where he ought to save. The good manager is distinguislied from the prodigal by the virtue of frugality, from the miser by the virtue which Kant calls liberalitas moralis (in opposi- tion to liberalitas sumptuosa') : he lives decently himself, and is generous to others who need his help. Of the two vices, avarice is the more disgraceful, extrava- gance the more dangerous. Greed characterizes a base nature. The soul in which it has taken root withers and dies ; all higher aspirations disappear. The miser at last begrudges himself and others all that is good. Extravagance, on the other hand, may exist in connection with grand aspirations. It is closely allied to a much admired virtue, generosity. The spendthrift always regards himself as a liberal man, and is likewise praised as such by those wlio profit by his extravagance. Avarice, on the other hand, has no one to sing its praises ; nay, even the virtue of which it is a degenerate form, frugality, finds few admirers, especially when practised by princes and 1 [Aristotle, £Mics, Bk. IV. — Te.] THE ECONOMIC LIFE 537 great lords. All lackej-s, big and little, whose expectations are not realized, show their gratitude by reviling the frugal giver. Generosity, however, even when practised at others' expense, makes a good impression upon all, even upon those who bear the loss. For this reason prodigality is a tempting vice, and in avarice there is nothing seductive ; indeed it is strange that avarice should exist at all. And this also explains the well-known fact that greed is confined almost entirely to old age. Old men become indifferent to opinions and appear- ances ; experience shows that the impoverished spendthrift becomes an object of ridicule to his former friends and ad- mirers ; hence it is not the man who has wasted his substance, but the man who still has his money in his pocket that is well thought of in the long run. Besides, all desires diminish as the capacity for enjoyment becomes weaker in old age, while the abstract desire for possession continues strong to the end. Hence, we might, perhaps, regard this process as a strategy of nature to transmit the products of the parent generation to its successors. Avarice, therefore, debasing though it be, is not altogether injurious in its effects. The consequences of extravagance, on the other hand, are absolutely destructive to individual as well as to social life. The first consequence of extrava- gance is a lack of means for the necessaries of life, and the resulting need of exercising strict economy in the wrong place. What the wife wastes on dress and show must be made up in the home and on the table. What is spent on receptions and sports, on horses and dogs, is deducted from the household allowance. Still more often there is not money enough to meet legitimate expenses : the servants are not properly fed, niggardly wages are paid, public en- terprises make vain appeals for aid, contributions to com- munity and state are made as small as possible and given reluctantly ; — we invariably think of the noblesse oblige at the wrong time. And just as extravagance leads to false 538 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES economy, it leads to improper methods of acquisition. The landowner fleeces his tenants and day laborers, the prince his subjects, the physician his patients, the lawyer his clients, the gentleman of leisure takes to gambling, the merchant speculates on the exchange, the tradesman adulterates his goods, the official accepts bribes or fawns upon his superiors for promotion or an increase in salary, the courtier begs for pensions and presents, the author and the scholar cater to the popular tastes, the artist tickles the palate of the money-bag ; money must be made, money at any price, even at the price of freedom and honor, body and soul ! There is no joking when it comes to money matters, said a well-known financier; in money matters most people also lose their pride. When it comes to fees, the process described by the proverb in refer- ence to thieves is reversed ; here the big ones are accepted and the little ones rejected with scorn. Money has no smell. The maxim reaches farther than one would imagine ; even the most " respectable " classes act upon it. How ready many rich people are to shift the public burdens upon the poor man, the new assessment-lists for the income-tax have recently shown in mortifying figures. But, it is contended, when a man has means he surely ought not to be blamed for spending them ; he causes money to circulate among the people. How many busy hands receive employment and earn money through a ball or a masquerade ! — This is the popular view, but it is superficial. Would these hands remain idle if there were no demand for costumes? Of course, now that these costumers and their train are here, such entertainments must be given to keep them alive. But would they be here if there were no such de- mand? Apparently not; the demand creates the supply. Consequently, would the individuals who now depend upon such orders have had nothing at all to do ? Apparently not ; for instead of ball dresses for the baronesses of finance they would now be making cotton clothes. The effect, therefore, THE ECONOMIC LIFE 539 of this method of making money circulate among the people is simply to divert production from the manufacture of commodities intended for general use to the manufacture of luxuries. When a great lord keeps ten servants and twenty fancy horses, he consumes what these consume, and when he transforms a square mile of farmland into a game preserve, he practically enjoys the grain formerly harvested on this field, in the form of the pleasures which he derives from the chase. This, of course, by no means settles the question whether such a diversion of production may not be good for those directly concerned as well as for the community. Everything will depend upon tlie value these luxuries have, not merely for the person directly enjoying them, but also for the community. Whoever believes that the life of a people is enriched and ennobled by balls and parties and artistic dinners, must praise those who arrange them for turning national production into these channels. Whoever thinks differently will not place the same estimate upon the services of these persons. It is to be observed, in this connection, that it is a difficult matter to judge of the value of products which do not satisfy average needs. The Parthenon and its sculptures, the fes- tivals for which ^schylus and Sophocles composed their tragedies, the mediaeval cathedrals with their decorations and utensils, — these, too, are luxuries, and presumably, fault- finders were not lacking; surely not in the Middle Ages. Religion does not require such worldly pomp, thought the evangelical brothers, and how much misery and want might have been alleviated with the money thus expended ! Yet we should be inclined to say that the money was well spent and that a higher purpose was realized in this way than if it had been used in clothing and feeding the poor. All, with the exception of those to whom they gave offence, enjoyed these works ; then, too, they stimulated the arts, wliich in turn developed architecture and manufacture, thereby bene- 540 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES fiting even the poorest. Similarly, we are not to blame a great lord for building grand and beautiful houses, and fur- nishing them splendidly ; by laying out a park he may be putting his land to the best possible use, even from the standpoint of the community. And who would be narrow- hearted enough to object to the care and money expended upon beautiful and eujoyable social entertainments of a grand character ? There are diversities of gifts : this truth will hold even against a morose Puritanism.^ 4. The most favorable condition for the development of the economic virtues, is, as the old Greek sages already declared, the possession of moderate means; wealth (^Wohl- stand) our language significantly calls it. Pleasure in acquisition and possession, efficient work, and moderation in the use of commodities, are most common in the middle classes. The " too much " and the " too little " are equally dangerous. Riches are dangerous in that they tend to en- courage idleness, arrogance, ostentation, and extravagance. Excess, however, begets sorrow and ruin. Especially dan- gerous is sudden wealth not acquired through labor. The money won in lotteries and stock speculations usually soon goes the way it came ; not, however, without first ruining the life of the lucky winner. Inherited possessions are not so dangerous. A family that has been long accustomed to certain conditions of life develops the power to resist the temptations of riches ; the man who inherits the wealth of his ancestors in a certain measure inherits their sense of duty and honor. The feeling that he is destined to do great things serves to counteract the empty feeling of power which easily turns the head of the nouveau riche. Poverty is equally unfavorable to the development of eco- nomic virtues. Inherited poverty deadens the sense of owner- ship. Children reared in utterly destitute families, in families living from hand to mouth, fail to experience the pleasures of > [Runze, § 59. — Te.] THE ECONOMIC LIFE 541 acquisition and ownership. The desire to have more than is required to satisfy daily needs does not manifest itself, or at least remains an idle wish, and never grows "into a strong voli- tion. When this state becomes a habit, the individual be- comes improvident and reckless, giving no heed to the morrow. Poverty tends to blunt the sense of ownership in another sense : it weakens the person's ability to discriminate between mine and thine. When a man possesses property himself, he appre- ciates the sacredness of property. When he looks upon the in- stitution of property merely as a barrier, as a protection against him and not also for him, he naturally feels less hesitancy in overleaping it than when he has been accustomed from child- hood to regard it as a means of self-defence. So poverty easily becomes a school for theft, for which the pupil is prepared by mendicancy and the tipping-system (^Trinhg elder). Beggary robs a man of his economic honor, which depends upon his economic independence, his ability to help himself by his own efforts. The custom of accepting tips or fees is the first, ap- parently quite innocent, form of beggary. That it, too, lessens a man's economic honor may be seen from the fact that the offer of a tip may under certain circumstances be a gross insult.^ The possession of moderate means secures the individual against temptations in either direction. It saves him from 1 On the effects of the hahitaal acceptance of tips see the interesting essay of R. V. Jhering tjber das Trinkgeld. The relation between theft and poverty is shown by criminal statistics. H. t. Valentin! (Das Verbrecherihum im Preuss. Stoat, 1869) constantly refers to it. He gives a table (p. 22), in which the Prussian provinces are arranged according to the frequency of grand larceny (during the sixties) as follows : Tor every 100,000 inhabitants there were sen- tenced to the penitentiary for grand larceny : in the Rhineland, 5.59 ; in West- phalia, 9.21; in Saxony, 18.33; in Pomerania, 20.57; in Prussia, 24.69; in Brandenburg, 26.27 ; in Posen, 32.89 ; in Silesia, 36.94. On page 56 we find a table showing the distribution of landed property : a small piece of land (as much as 30 acres) is owned by 4 inhabitants in the Rhineland ; by 8 in West- phalia; 11 in Saxony; 14 in Silesia; 22 in Brandenburg and Pomerania; 25 in Posen ; 30 in Prussia. Theft, as we see, follows large landownership like its shadow. It is unfortunate that the German capital has received and still receives most of its increase to the lower classes of population from the Eastern provinces. 542 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES the slavery which is the companion of poverty ; it gives him the free choice of a profession, without tempting him not to follow any calling whatever. It develops in him a desire for possession, as opposed to the proletarian supineness of poverty ; it arouses a pleasure in ownership, as opposed to the arrogance of satiety, which follows upon superabundance. It is plain, the conditions in this regard are not favorable in our age. The marvellous growth of industry and commerce during the nineteenth century, the concomitant development of specula- tion and the stock exchange system, have enabled particular individuals to accumulate enormous wealth, not infrequently without any merit of their own, which now seeks in vain for rational employment. The consequence is senseless extrav. agance, a great greed for gain, and an insane mania for gamb- ling. Universal poverty and proletarian misery form the obverse of the picture. CHAPTER V THE SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE » 1. By culture we mean the perfect development of spiritual life. It consists in the capacity, acquired by instruction and practice, to take an active part in the spiritual life, first of a people, and ultimately of humanity. We note as the two essential phases in the spiritual life of a people, knowledge and the creative fancy, philosophy and science, art and poetry. Culture, therefore, means for the individual the development of the intellect to the end that he may know the truth, and of the senses and the imagination, that he may comprehend and enjoy the beauti- ful. — The detailed treatment of this subject belongs to peda- gogy. I shall merely give the outlines, and consider knowledge first. Knowledge has a double function. The intellect is, first, the organ of the will ; its function is to adjust the latter to its environment. As was indicated before, the feeling of pleasure and pain may be regarded as the most primitive form of knowledge. The senses, which are developed from the general animal sensibility, enable the animal to under- stand its more remote surroundings and to adapt itself to what is useful or harmful. Sensibility develops into intel- ligence, which may be defined, in a general way, as the faculty to know from what is given that which is not given. 1 [Porter, Part II., ch. IV. ; Hoffding, pp. 313-354 ; also XXI. ; Spencer, Ethics of Individual Life, ch. VI.; Runze, §§ 44 f. ; Smyth, Part II., ch. II., pp. 356-371; Wundt, Part IV., ch. 1, 4; Seth, Part IL, "ch. I. (IL) ; Oettingen, Moralslatistik, Part II., ch. II. — Te.] 544 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES It employs the data of sense-perception as signs, and infers from tliese that which is not yet perceived, especially the future, the remote in time. The intellect, wliich already plays an important role in the higher animals, reaches its highest perfection in man in conceptual knowledge. The latter differs from sensuous knowledge in that it is based upon the analysis of percepts. The animal combines percepts by association, and so makes a kind of inference from certain perception-complexes to future occurrences. But the animal does not, so far as we may conjecture, succeed in resolving the percepts into their particular elements ; it does not distinguish, in fire, between the wood and the process of combustion, in a moving object between the persistent body and the temporary movement. Man, however, does this, and so, on the basis of analysis, forms the synthetic judgments : the body moves, the wood burns. The animal does not distinguish the direction and the velocity of the movement, nor the size and the weight of the body. By making such an analysis, man succeeds in discovering the ultimate and constant relations between the simple components ; these are expressed in the for- mulae which we call laws of nature. The knowledge of them gives him theoretical and practical control of the nature of things : he is able not only to foresee the complex processes, which the animal too, may, in a certain measure, foresee, but also to explain them, that is, to deduce them from their causes, and, in so far as the causes are in his power, to produce them. — Thus, the intellect has become the powerful instrument by which man has made the earth his servant. He has tamed the animals or exterminated them, he has selected and formed the plants which cover the earth, he has compelled the forces of nature to do his bidding. Knowledge is power.^ 1 [Compare with this James's admirable chapter on Reasoning [Psi/Mogj Vol. 11.). — Tr.] SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 645 But knowledge also has another, an immediate value. In the animal it is absolutely subservient to practical needs, in man it becomes free ; he takes a disinterested interest in con- templation, so to speak. This holds even of sense-perception. The eye finds pleasure in forms and colors, the ear, in notes and their rhythmical musical succession ; hence arise music and painting. From the same pleasure in the contemplation of things springs philosophy. Philosophy is purely contem- plative knowledge. This is the original meaning of the word among the Greeks ; the Socratic school, in which it was first used as a technical term, distinguishes philosophy, as purely theoretical knowledge, from technical knowledge, to which also Sophistic dialectics and rhetoric belong. In this most gen- eral sense philosophy is a universal human function ; mythology is its most primitive form ; it universally arises as an attempt to comprehend the whole of things into one conception ; and to interpret the meaning of the universe and especially of life.^ This estimate of knowledge will furnish us with a stan- dard by which to measure the value of particular forms of cognition. We shall say that a particular truth has value in so far as it tends to increase our practical power, and our theoretical insight into the nature of things in general. Knowledge which has no value in either sense, which accom- plishes nothing for our technics or for our philosophy, has no value whatever. The proposition : All knowledge has absolute value as such, or : Everything that is, is worthy of being known, is not infrequently proclaimed in our age as the highest principle of scientific research. I cannot help regarding this as a meaningless assertion — one, however, that is accepted by many as a convenient means of silencing the question concerning the value of particular investigations. Apparently, however, the true scientist does not adhere to this principle. In spite of the assertion that everything that ^ The reader will find an elaborate account of these topics in my Introduction to Phihsophij, 5th ed. 1898. [Thilly's tr.] 546 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES exists deserves to be known, no historian has ever undertaken to ascertain what such and such a celebrity or " obscurity " has had for breakfast or dinner every day of his life, and no one has yet volunteered to attack the problem once suggested by Jean Paul — the history and system of typographical errors since the invention of printing. Nor has any scientist ever attempted to count the grains of sand on the seashore, and to describe the forms of the separate grains. Why not ? Surely because healthy common-sense, if not scientific insight, instinctively recognizes the uselessness of such a task. — It must be added, however, that we cannot always tell in advance whether an investigation will yield results which may have some bearing on knowledge in either form or not. In no case, perhaps, has healthy common-sense betrayed such shortsightedness as in its repudiation of scientific research as useless trifling or curiosity. Bacon ridiculed a contemporary for thinking it worth while to experiment with magnetic phenomena. Socrates rejected all physical investigations as idle speculation : to know oneself he con- sidered the most essential, worthy, and possible task. No one any longer holds these views in physics ; everybody knows that physics has achieved the greatest results for our philoso- phical conceptions of the universe as well as for practice, in consequence of its maxim that regards nothing as too trivial. Healthy common-sense may perhaps feel more inclined at present to find fault with philological, historical, and psycho- logical investigations ; and, indeed, who can help thinking that, beside the grain, a great deal of chaff is being gath- ered in these fields as a precious harvest? Still, we must not forget that a fragment of knowledge which seemed rather insignificant at first has often gained, later on, an impor- tance not dreamed of. The first attempts in comparative lan- guage may perhaps have seemed more like useless trifles than serious work ; and yet what an extraordinary influence they have had upon our modern historical world-view ! Hence, it is SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 547 by no means necessary that every investigation should justify its utility in advance ; the principle holds jievertheless : that knowledge has value only in so far as it increases and pro- motes our practical power over things or our philosophical knowledge of the world. 2. The same principle applies when it comes to judging the value of knowledge for the individual. Cognitions have no absolute value for the individual, they have value in so far as they do something for him, either by solving his practical life-problems, or by assisting him in his philosophical reflec- tions, or, in other words, in so far as they make him wiser and more prudent. Knowledge which does neither one nor the other, which does not make him either more efficient in his calling or more skilful in contemplation, has no value for him whatever. If we call the knowledge upon which professional efficiency is based professional or technical education, and that upon which rests the ability to contemplate, to participate in philosophy, literature, and art, general culture, we may say: Only such knowledge is valuable to the individual as either serves to give him professional culture, or intensifies his general culture, or does both. And this would give us a principle for the guidance of instruction : Everybody ought to acquire such knowledge as will assist him, on the one hand, in following his special call- ing to the best possible advantage, and, on the other, in understanding the world from his position in life. It is ob- vious that the first demand, the demand for professional culture, has a different meaning for different individuals. Nor does the second demand mean the same for all. Speaking abstractly, it is true, all have the same end in view : general culture or the faculty to participate in the active spiritual life of the people ; and this will ultimately depend upon the same two things : upon the knowledge of nature, or cosmology, and the knowledge of history or spiritual life ; for the former gives us an idea of the general form of reality, while the latter sup- 548 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES plies us with the ultimate and universal content by which to interpret the meaning of reality. But the ways and means by which individuals obtain these and the form in which they possess them, differ according to the capacities and inclina- tions of the individuals themselves as well as according to their external conditions and opportunities in life. These differences make necessary different schools and courses of study. Three fundamental forms appear: the primary school (Vblksschule), the secondary school (Mittelschule), and the university (^Hochsehule'). The object of the primary school is to educate the great masses of the population in a manner suitable to their needs. The curriculum must keep in view the fact that, owing to the economic conditions of their parents, the pupils must complete the course at the age of fourteen, and are destined to enter callings which chiefly require manual labor. The course of study therefore should consist mainly in the acquisition of the elementary branches, reading, writing, drawing, and arithmetic, and also in attain- ing a general notion of the natural and historical surroundings. The purpose of the secondary or intermediate school is to educate those pupils the economic condition of whose parents permits a somewhat longer attendance, and whose prospective position in life will require work of a higher character, pre- supposing greater knowledge and skill, and affording more leisure and greater opportunities for free action. To the sub- jects taught in the primary grades, which are, of course, in- tensified and elaborated here, are added especially foreign languages and mathematics, the latter the instrument of the natural sciences and technics, the former the medium of inter- national intercourse, commercial as well as spiritual, and of an intensified humanistic-historical culture. The university, finally, has as its aim the extension of general scientific and philosophical knowledge, and also, particularly, the acquisition of scientific-technical education, which is the precondition of professional activity. SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 549 That school will be the best for the individual which, on the one hand, is suited to his individual te^Jents and tastes, and, on the other, to his future calling and position in life. By no means can we admit that the more elaborate and ad- vanced instruction is desirable for all, and that it is only from necessity that pupils content themselves with the elementary form. There are people who, in their zeal for equality, are inclined to demand the same schools and the same education for everybody. We may say to such : It is not wise to give a man advanced scientific instruction whose future call- ing will make it necessary for him to do manual labor, even though he possess intellectual talents, provided he cannot at the same time enter a learned profession. Nor is it wise to whip the son of a banker or privy councillor through the gymnasium and the examinations, regardless of the protests of his nature, which unfortunately is a much more common case than the other. The principle holds absolutely : Knowledge which the individual cannot utilize, either on account of natural incapacity, or in consequence of his exter- nal position, is of absolutely no value to him. Yes, we may go further and say it is an evil. This be- comes self-evident when the individual is lacking in talent. To know too much for his capacity makes a man not wiser, but more stupid. We must discriminate between stupidity and ignorance. Ignorance is a lack of knowledge, stupidity is a lack of judgment, and may go with great learning, nay, it may, under certain circumstances, be due to this. A good anecdote is told of the Duke of Wellington. A young man once applied to him for an office. After conversing with him for a while, the Duke refused his application, adding : " Sir, you have received too much education for your brains." I fear that if the Duke of Wellington could attend our examinations, he would not infrequently make the same discovery. Nowa- days offices depend upon examinations, and state examina- tions naturally take account only of the information which 650 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES an applicant possesses. Knowledge has thus acquired a purely accidental and external value for the possessor as a social being — a value which is entirely independent of its real value to him as a rational being. Hence it happens that many learn many things which do not fit in with their natural capacities and inclinations. The result is, not only does the acquisition of such knowledge become a torture to both teach- ers and pupils, but injury is done to what natural intelligence the latter may possess. The judgment is confused and over- burdened by such undigested knowledge. It very often hap- pens in an examination that a question addressed to the intellect is answered by the memory ; instead of a judgment we are offered a memorized formula or fact. It is often im- possible to induce the candidate to use his intellect; it has become rudimentary in consequence of constant study. It is to be feared that such a person will act precisely in the same way when he enters the practical world; the case de- mands that he observe and understand a fact, that he con- sider what is possible and necessary ; instead of opening his eyes and using his intellect, our learned friend soon begins to ransack his memory for formulae and facts, which he has for- merly learned off by heart ; he involuntarily falls into the ex- amination habit for which he has been trained, — he does not know what else to do with his intellect. Bluntschli expresses the opinion, somewhere in his Autobiography, that this not infrequently happens to our jurists : by constantly memoriz- ing and reciting formulae they entirely lose their ability to look at things in a natural way. That is most likely what the German proverb means which calls the learned the per- verted (die Gelehrten die Verkehrten). And Huxley means the same thing when he says in one of his Addresses : ^ " In my belief, stupidity, in nine cases out of ten, fit non nascitur, and is developed by a long process of parental and pedagogic repression of the natural intellectual appetites, accompanied 1 [Science and Education, p. 128.] SPIRITUAL LIFE AifD CULTURE 651 by a persistent attempt to create artificial ones for food which is not only tasteless, but essentially indigestible." And be- side the stupidity thus acquired, another quality is acquired, and that is pride, haughtiness. Over-education not only dwarfs the head but also the heart. Knowledge puffeth up, says the apostle ; tliis is particularly true of knowledge of which the possessor can make no legitimate use. Not useful, but use- less things are employed for show. The useful finds satis- faction in being put to its right use, while superfluous pomp invariably strives to make a display of itself. The same may be said of useless learning : the possessor endeavors to parade it, so that he may at least get something out of it. The educated young lady or her governess cannot rest until she has " shown off" her French, so that people may praise her culture ; the Untersekundaner who has fretted long over his Latin exercises until he finally gets his Einjdhrigen- sehein^ is now not infrequently plagued with the Latin-pride for the rest of his life. But also where there is a conflict between his education and position in life, where his calling and social rank prevent him from utilizing his school education, the possessor of the knowl- edge is placed in a false position, and his learning is not a blessing. He makes claims upon life which cannot be satis- fied, he cannot find pleasure in the work which his calling re- quires of him, he does not feel at case in his surroundings. The " Latin peasant " (^der lateinische Bauer) is a well-known character ; in his own sphere he is regarded with a mixture of awe and contempt, and his attitude toward the world is one of discontent ; he feels out of place. Such moods are quite com- mon in our day. We meet persons who have been " de- classed " by their education, — among men as well as among women. Tliey are all alike in that they consider what life ^ [The " one-year-certificate," which entitles the holder to serve in the German army for one year as a volunteer, instead of as a conscript, who must serve three years. — Tr.] 552 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES demands of them beneath their dignity, and therefore suffer from habitual ill-temper. lu our higher schools a certain num- ber of scholarships are regularly awarded, and in the larger cities they are often given to poor and talented boys from the Vblksschulen. The object is doubtless a commendable one; but it is not so certain that the results are beneficial to the boys. Even in the school itself they often feel out of place ; they do not find the necessary quiet and sympathy at home, they do not receive the assistance which they occasion- ally need, they must do without school books, and many of them are soon compelled, perhaps after having obtained the Mnjdhrigenschein, to leave school for good. I fear the education thus acquired and the Einjdhrigenschein often prove to be possessions of negative value. Others endeavor to fight their way through, to graduate from the school and university — unusual bodily and mental powers of resist- ance are nowadays required to overcome the countless pri- vations and obstacles — and after all the examinations have been passed and the ship seems to be safe in the harbor, it frequently happens that the struggler is shipwrecked after all. Would it not have been wiser to relinquish the proffered place in the gymnasium ? To be sure, it pains a man of unusual talent to find himself handicapped in his attempt to get an edu- cation and forced to do mechanical labor for life. And it is a loss to the nation as well, in several respects : talents are wasted, which nature does not too freely bestow, and entire spheres of society are cut off from the spiritual culture of the people, nay become hostile to it when it becomes utterly unat- tainable. It would be to the interest of the individual as well as of society to return to the old practice of the six- teenth century, and to educate men of pronounced ability at public expense and for the public service. These thoughts are summed up in a remark of Goethe's : " Man is born for limited surroundings ; he is capable of grasping simple, near, and definite ends, and he accustoms SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 553 himself to employ the means close at hand. So soon, how- ever, as it comes to more remote ends, he neither knows what he wants nor what he ought to do. It is always a misfortune for him when he is induced to strive after something with which he cannot come into active relations." And the words of Faust, who groans beneath the load of scholastic learning, ought to be inscribed above the doors of our schoolhouses, to serve as a warning to our parents when they bring their children to school : " Was man nicht nutzt ist eine schwere Last." For there has hardly been an age in the history of our p€>ople when the evil of over-education prevailed to such an extent as at present. The reasons are plain enough ; there never was a time when education was held in such high esteem as now. Formerly men were divided into clergy and laymen, believers and unbelievers, nobles and citizens ; now we classify them as educated and uneducated. When we desire to recommend a young man, we say he has a fine and many-sided education ; when we wish to express our low opinion of a woman, we sum it all up in the statement that she is a thoroughly uncultured person, whereupon everybody knows what to think of her. No wonder, therefore, that the whole world is running after culture, that our fathers and mothers desire nothing more earnestly than to enable their sons and daughters to get an education : with an education they can become everything, without an education they are nothing. The demand for education creates the supply of the means and institutions of education, which is so characteristic of our age. Illustrated and non-illustrated text-books of education, of scientific and historical education, large and small educa- tional dictionaries and lexicons, institutes of all kinds for the higher education of daughters and sons, intermediate schools and gymnasia, humanistic and realistic, — all these enterprises have for the last fifty years increased with remark- able rapidity, and still have been unable to satisfy the grow- ing demand : indeed, the institutions in which culture, male 554 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES and female, is manufactured, are usually so overcrowded that applicationa for admission must be made years in advance. No wonder, then, that in this mad race, not a few obtain an education which is not adapted to their personal and social conditions, and makes them unhappy. The educated female has long been the domestic affliction of the nineteenth cen- tury. Of recent years, we have also had thrust upon us the man with a high school and university education, who cannot earn his bread and butter, because of this very education. In acquiring it he has neglected to learn some honest trade, and even if he still had the power and the desire to make up for lost time, his education would not permit it, for by using his hands to work he would necessarily forfeit his honor as an educated man. Will there be a natural reaction for the cure of this disease ? We might suppose so. Many signs seem to indicate tliat edu- cation is about to fall in value. It strikes me that the word is beginning to take on a suspicious flavor, similar to that of the word enlightenment (^Aufkldrung) at the opening of the century. This invariably happens when a thing becomes too common. We are reminded of the barber's appren- tice who did not believe in God, even if he was only a barber's apprentice. " Culture " (^Bildung) has, as it were, come to take the place of " enlightenment." The word first came into vogue toward the close of the last century, in the neo-humanistic circles that gathered around Herder and Goethe. Tlie full term was: Bildung zur Humanitdt; it sig- nified the fashioning of the inner man after the Hellenic pattern, as distinguished from the model of the French cour- tier on the one hand, and that of orthodoxy and pietism on the other ; compared with these, the Hellenic ideal of culture seemed to represent the free and natural education of the human being. How the word has degenerated since those days! What is meant at present when the word culture (^Bildung') is mentioned in a conversation? If I can trust my philological SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 555 Instincts, I should define it about as follows : He is cultured or educated who can talk upon all topics in which society is interested, about Goethe and Schiller, Raphael and Michael Angelo, Plato and Kant. It makes no difference whether he feels what these men felt or understands their thoughts, whether he has caught a breath of their spirit or not, so long as he can talk about them. But in case he is unfamiliar with these names, as was the honest Hermann with Tamino and Pamina, then, whatever else he may be and have, feel and think, he is lacking in culture. And there is still another way by which we can tell whether a man is educated, at least in Germany ; namely, by his ability to use foreign terms. Foreign terms are borrowed from foreign languages, and so by using them we give people to understand that we do not belong to the rabble who speak only the common vernacular, but to the privileged classes, who could also speak Latin or French if they chose. We often hear complaints of the prevalence of semi-refine- ment or half-culture (^Salbbildung'), and lay the blame on the Reahchule or the Einjdhrigensehein, or what not. I should say that semi-education was precisely what we popularly mean by culture : the foreign terms, a smattering of everything, and the ability to talk on any subject. Semi-education means the possession of all sorts of knowledge which has not been digested and converted into a living force. The etymology of the word seems to suggest the same thought : Bildung signifies a process of organic formation, a process in which substances are taken up and assimilated through the inner formal prin- ciple. Halhlildung would then mean Bildung which has not been completed ; in which substances have been received, but have not been assimilated and converted into organic forces, and thus lie in memory as undigested masses, and as foreign bodies overburden organic life. Hence half-education may be acquired in gymnasia and universities as well as in the Real- schulen and youiig ladies' seminaries. And the reverse may 556 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES also happen : a plain man who has never gone further than the Vblksschule may have a complete and thorough education ; if his inner life is consistently and harmoniously developed, if he has digested and, as it were, converted into organic sub- stance and living force whatever opinions and experiences he has acquired at school and in the world, he is a well- educated man. Not the mass of material, but the inner form is what makes education. Matter without form produces semi-education, over-education, pseudo-education, or whatever we may call this degeneration of the soul. 3. Art, like philosophy, is also based, partially at least, on pure contemplation. If play is, in distinction from work, the free exercise of powers, and not a means to an external end, while in work an external effect, or product, is desired, art, as well as philosophy, belongs in the category of plat/. All occu- pation with the fine arts is playful or purposeless exercise of sensuous-spiritual powers. When we contemplate a statue or a painting, it is not our purpose to learn anything, as is the case when we study a drawing in a physical or technological text-book. We desire nothing but to exercise our perceptive and presentative faculties without having an end in view. When we listen to a song or hear some one " play " an instru- ment, we simply desire to follow the movement of the notes : when we are reading a poem or seeing a " play," we abandon ourselves to the " play " of the imagination which the poet sets a-going. The production of works of art is nowadays, it is true, not regarded as play but as work, and it is apt to be so in the sense that the aim is to make an economic use of the product. In their origin, however, art and play are closely connected All peoples, even the most savage, decorate their utensils, pots, weapons, and clothes are covered with all kinds of orna- mental lines, marks, and drawings; it is the same play in- stinct that impels the child to cover its slate and the walls with figures. Song and music were originally connected with the SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 557 dance and festival plays. The same impulse to play created the first poems, the epic narratives : a motleji crowd of charac- ters and events passing before the inner eye of the singer and hearer. The original epic was actually sung. An epic has become known in our century which was transmitted by word of mouth, the Finnish epic. In the long night of the polar zone, the Finns passed the time by reciting rhythmical stories of the gods and heroes in dialogue form ; each in- dividual could repeat them or invent new ones himself. Hence the peculiar variations in tlie transmission of the epic. Among us the fairy-tale (^Mdrcheri) has been handed down in the same way; the infant mind, which is itself full of play and poetry, preserves this fragment of living poetry even for adults ; or did preserve it, for now that these stories are printed and a dozen new, artificially- made books of fairy- tales are produced every Christmas, this last survival of Hving poetry, whose obscurity was its salvation, is dying out. When the printed fairy-tales reach the last mountain-hut, the poetical narrative as a living function of the people will be a thing of the past. Art is also partially rooted in feeling and willing. Every strong emotion is accompanied by the desire to express and communicate itself. The joys and pangs of love, martial cour- age and sadness, yearning and reverence, seek and find relief in poetry and song. By the rhythmical-melodious arrange- ment of words and notes, the feelings themselves are aroused. And so the will and the mood of a people and an age are expressed and objectified in the great creations of epic and dramatic poetry as well as in the creations of the plastic arts and architecture. Gothic art manifests tlie mood of tower' ing supernaturalism, which contemns and repels the earthly sensuous world, — corporeality with its pleasure and heavi- ness. In the Renaissance the opposite mood asserts itself ; its architecture and fine arts, its costumes and house-fur- nishings, its poetry and music, all of them express the 558 DOCTRINE OP VIRTUES AND DUTIES determination of the age to abandon itself, with the enthu- siasm and exuberance of youth, to the contemplation and enjoyment of everything charming and agreeable, till it seems as though the age felt the need of making up for lost time. It is the highest function of art to shape and express the ideals which the spiritual life of a nation creates. The ideal world reaches its highest expression in a supramundane- superhuman world, in which perfection has absolute reality for faith. Thus art becomes the organ of religion. Its high- est function is to realize the innermost cravings of a people, to contemplate its ideas ot perfection in concrete forms. So the plastic arts produced concrete representations of the Greek gods, — glorious figures in which the Greek's ideals of human culture were made visible to him. Similarly Greek poetry gave to the people in its epics and its dramas living pic- tures of divine and human excellences, such as courage, loyalty, devotion, magnanimity, prudence, wisdom, piety. — Christian art, too, has performed the same necessary function of convert- ing the realm of faith into a world of concrete intuitions. The entire mediseval art, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, had for its sole object the presentation of the world of Christian faith, in the form which this had assumed in the Germanic mind, to the senses and the entire man.^ We may therefore describe the effect of art upon the soul as 1 A. Diirer so conceives the function of art : "The art of painting is employed in the service of the church, and so manifests the passion of Christ and many other good examples, also preserves the forms of men after their death." (See Thaus- ing, A. Diirer.) Milton has the same conception of the art of poetry ; " Poetical powers are the inspired gift of God rarely bestowed ... in every nation, and are of power, beside the oflBce of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the affections in right tune ; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he worlts and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his church ; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints^ the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the gen- eral relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and God's true worship." SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 559 follows : (1) It exercises our sensuous-spiritual powers and so fills our leisure moments with the purest and most beautiful recreation and pleasure. (2) It satisfies and *quiets the crav- ings of the emotions to express themselves, by providing them with the necessary stimulus and affording relief. (3) It raises the soul above the world of work and need, struggle and misery, to a world of freedom and ideals, and purifies it from the dust of base feelings and passions with which the affairs of daily life cover it. The inner uniformity and harmony which constitutes the essence of all art also brings uniformity and harmony into the soul. Finally, (4) it binds together and unites the members of the nation, nay, all the members of a sphere of civilization ; all those who have the same faith and the same ideals. Opinions and interests differ and pro- duce discord ; art presents in sensuous symbols the ideals which are cherished by all, and so arouses the feeling that all are, in the last analysis, of the same mind, that all recognize and adore the same ultimate and highest things. Hence the union of art with the public festival. In the festival the inner unity of the members of a people seeks to reveal itself : art is appealed to to satisfy this craving of the popular con- sciousness. Art fills all hearts with the same feelings, and makes the popular soul conscious of its unity. Whatever else may divide the people is for the moment forgotten, and the identity of the innermost sentiments becomes a source of pure joy. 4. If this is a correct description of the nature and effect of art, it follows that it is a universally human function. Art is not something peculiar to a few nations and to a few individuals among them, but all nations have an art to express their emotions, as they have a language to express their ideas. And just as all the members of a people partici- pate in its language, though not equally, so all of them, in a measure, participate in its art. When we compare this conception of art, which seems ad- 660 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES equately to express its real function in the life of a people, with its present position in our national life, we readily observe a discrepancy between the definition and the facts. When we speak of art in our days, we are not apt to mean by it some- thing that is intended for all, or that has an essential bearing on one's life. Art is mostly regarded as a kind of luxury, which only the few can enjoy whom fortune has given more freedom and leisure ; the masses, the uneducated, must work and content themselves with an occasional solid pleasure. That is the tacitly assumed and often also openly expressed opinion of many educated persons. This view, it must be confessed, is not very far from ex- pressing the actual status of art in our civilization. The sculptures and paintings which we exhibit in our galleries and museums, in our art exhibitions and salons, are, of course, not intended for the masses ; indeed, the people do not visit them, and when they chance to do so, they feel out of place, as their embarrassed movements and looks indicate. Nay, it not in- frequently happens that a person reared in simple surround- ings and removed from the influences of culture, suffers from another kind of embarrassment in the presence of such works of art, the embarrassment of shame. He sees all kinds of naked forms around him, classical nakedness, Renaissance nakedness, and modern nakedness, so that the unaccustomed eye wanders about seeking for a place upon which to rest. So, too, the great masses of people have only a modest share in what we call our national literature. Song and music are most enjoyed by the multitude, by which I do not, of course, mean arias and symphonies. Moreover, a closer in- vestigation would, I believe, show that art does not even con- stitute a very essential element in the lives of many of our educated men. It is largely merely a matter of show ; a few paintings and engravings, the usual gilt-edged editions in the glass case, and the inevitable piano belong to the furniture of a " refined " home ; similarly a smattering of the history SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 561 of literature and art forms a part of the furniture of a cultivated mind. , How shall we account for this discrepancy between the reality and the ideal ? Some may, perhaps, feel inclined to say: Well, this is the inevitable obverse of higher civiliza- tion; the number of persons capable of keeping pace with progress will naturally diminisli, the greater the demands that are made. All progress depends upon the division of labor and differentiation ; and the splitting up of the people into the educated classes and the masses is a necessary consequence. I cannot convince myself of the truth of this assertion. It is in a measure true of knowledge that the more it grows, the further it becomes removed from the masses ; the pro- ducts of science are by their very nature accessible only to the few persons who have the time and strength for difficult and protracted preparation. It seems to be different, how- ever, in the case of art. Science speaks to the intellect in concepts, art appeals to the sensibility through percepts ; the capacity to be impressed by its products seems to be more a matter of natural aptitude than a specific accomplishment to be acquired by practice, although this aptitude may be de- veloped and intensified by exercise. If art expresses the sum total of the emotions of a people, it must surely have some- thing to say to every child of the people. Not everybody can be a creative artist nor an expert art critic, but all, we should imagine, ought to be capable of enjoying art, although in different degrees. Historical facts also seem to bear out this view. Greek art, at its climax, was, as everybody knows, by no means inferior to the art of the present, either in content or in form. Never- theless, it was not intended for a small circle of educated persons : ^schylus and Sophocles did not compose their dramas, and Demosthenes did not write his orations, for college graduates, but for the entire community. So, too. 562 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES the Athenian citizens must have understood and appreciated the value of the works of arcliitecture and sculpture which adorned the city in the fifth century ; indeed, these could not have arisen had not the citizens first convinced themselves of their value. And if reference be made to the slaves who enabled the citizens to enjoy leisure and culture, I call attention to mediaeval art. It, too, possessed a large degree of creative power and sense of form, wealth and depth of content. It, too, did not work for a small circle of educated persons, but for the entire people. Mediaeval art served the church ; it was the essential object of architecture and sculpture, paint- ing and music, to make the service solemn and dignified. The church and the divine worship, the sacraments and the ser- mon, were intended for all ; likewise the arts which labored for them. Who would have built the countless houses of worship which filled the mediaeval cities, had not their value been universally recognized ? They were not built by the state with the money of the tax-payers, as the result of an abstract consideration that something ought to be done for the church or for art, but by corporations and citizens, for the glory of God, for their own pleasure and edification, and as a monument to their artistic and self-sacrificing piety. Where should we find the courage and the means to con- struct such buildings to-day ? Why, for decades and decades we have been taking up collection after collection throughout the length and breadth of the land, and have been appealing to the gambling instinct, which has been deprived of other forms of satisfaction, and yet we hardly succeed in raking together the sums necessary to complete the structures which a single city or corporation undertook to build in those days. So, too, the countless paintings and sculptures which adorned the interior of the churches appealed to all. Each one saw before him artistic representations of the sacred stories and personages that lived in every heart, and was inspired by them to joyful veneration. SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 663 Is this not an artistic effect? I believe it is the high- est, for ultimately the artist must care ny)re for reverent contemplation than for hasty criticism. True, it was not the artistic form, the coloring and drawing, which constituted the chief source of enjoyment, but the thing represented. But, perhaps the artist himself believed that the painting existed for the sake of its content and not for the purpose of showing his technical skill. The latter is not an end in itself, as the oft quoted maxim " art for art's sake " would have it, but an instrument in the service of an idea. Would a medieval painter have been willing to exchange those who looked at his pictures for those who visit our art galleries ? It is doubtful ; what sensible artist would not prefer to have, instead of pro- fessional and non-professional art critics, who gabble about coloring and the art of handling the pencil, about subject and composition, people who simply enjoy first what the pictures represent and then their truth and beauty. I do not therefore believe that the discrepancy between art and our actual life is due to the high state of perfection which our civilization and art have reached. It is due, rather, to a peculiar defect in our spiritual life : we are lacking in national feeling ( Volkstumlichkeit'). The reason for this is that our literature and art are not, like those of the Greeks, the product of a steady national growth. Twice has our inner life been seriously interrupted in its development, first by our conversion to Christianity, then by our conversion to antiquity ; the former marks the begin- ing of the Middle Ages, the latter of the modern times. In each case we consciously repudiated our past, we experienced a spiritual regeneration, so to speak. At first our people adopted the religion and civilization of Christianized an- tiquity. The religion and civilization which the church brought were undoubtedly vastly superior to what we had our- selves. Still, the conversion at the same time produced a great convulsion : a nation cannot change its religion as it 564 DOCTHINE OP VIRTUES AND DUTIES changes its clothes. Religion is the soul, the inner life of a people, it permeates everything, its language, its poetry, its customs, its institutions, its ideals. It is well known with what jealous zeal the new religion persecuted and exterminated, the old beliefs, the old sacred customs, the old poetry, the old ideals. The new religion took root among the people ; it was grafted upon the old trunk and produced vigorous offshoots : the knighthood, with its curious mixture of martial courage and Christian mercy, the monastic orders with their equally remarkable union of culture and asceticism, the scholastic philosophy with its combination of childlike faith and mascu- line thought, mediaeval art with its union of supernatural content and sensuous form. But then came the second great interruption, which we are in the habit of calling the Renais- sance. Here, again, we notice the same sudden break with the past as before. After our conversion to Christianity, the past was repudiated as paganism, and regarded with abhor- rence ; then the Middle Ages were condemned as filthy Gothic barbarism. The Humanists could not find terms enough to express their contempt for the Middle Ages : their language, their worship, their art, was nothing but detestable barbarism. Nay, even their religion was not Christianity, but an idolatrous scandal ; so judged the Reformation, and joined forces with Humanism to destroy the old forms of church life. The fear of idolatry led to the destruction of the entire sensuous element in religion, both on the mental side and in its outward man- ifestation ; and with the decline of the worship of the saints, art lost its true object. Though four centuries have passed since this second inter- ruption of our historical life, its effects have not been overcome as were those of the first, during the Middle Ages. Our na- tional life has not assimilated classical antiquity, as it for- merly assimilated Christian antiquity ; we have not received it into our flesh and blood ; all our people do not share in it SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 565 Indeed it is doubtful whether this can ever happen, and whether it would be desirable. The civilization of the Re- naissance has taken hold of only a small fraction of our pop- ulation, of that part, namely, which receives a classical edu- cation in our humanistic gymnasia; an important fraction, it is true, the destined leaders and teachers of our people in all the spheres of life. But this group does not wholly stand within the pale of our popular life, it constitutes a special stratum by the side of it, or, if we choose, above it : the learned class which is sharply separated from the people by its so-called classical education. This chasm between the learned and unlearned did not exist until the Renaissance. During the Middle Ages a distinction was made between the clergy and laymen ; this was a difference in education, but it was not great ; the clergy knew Latin, the language of the church, but their conception of life and the world did not differ from that of the knight and the peasant. Besides, ow- ing to celibacy, these differences in education did not become hereditary. Not until the sixteenth century was the line sharply drawn between the people and the cultured classes. Not only do the latter differ from the former in scientific or technical knowledge, but their entire conceptions of life differ from those of our people, and they are proud of it. They turn to classical antiquity for what they cannot find at home : the perfect development of man, an ideal which is realized only in a more or less crippled form outside of the ancient world. The worship of antiquity has become something of a second religion with scholars, a more aristocratic religion in which the masses do not, of course, participate. This worship reached its climax in the second Renaissance, the continuation in the eighteenth century of the first Renais- sance, which had been interrupted by the great religious movement of the sixteenth century. Our gymnasia were re- established at the beginning of this century as temples of this " religion of the educated, " Homer being their sacred book. 566 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES What we call our national literature and art is largely the possession of this group of the classically educated. It is not rooted in our popular life, but in the classical schools ; hence its general classical character. Our so-called classical litera- ture, it is true, no longer employs the ancient languages, like the neo-Latin and neo-Greek poetry of the sixteenth century ; still it loves to follow the old classical models in form and content. Indeed, every day we hear the assertion calmly made that to understand our classic authors the classical educa- tion which the gymnasium gives is a necessary prerequisite. The statement is perhaps somewhat exaggerated, owing to a desire of its defenders to justify the gymnasium, but who will deny that there is a germ of truth in it ? The other arts also betray classical traits. Take architect- ure, not to mention sculpture, which is a purely exotic growth, except in so far as it produces portrait statues. Architecture is not a product of the handicraft, but is learned in academies ; it is not rooted in our needs and in our life-conditions, but in learned traditions. We arbitrarily choose a certain style, and then do the best we can to adapt the form to the conditions. Thus arise those curious formations which may be seen in our streets, — pillars of brick topped with tin to give them the ap- pearance of Corinthian columns ; plaster-of-paris consoles glued to wooden cornices apparently to support them, — until they drop off; buildings which want to look like Grecian temples and to that end surround themselves with columns, but remembering that they are intended for picture galleries insert walls and windows between their columns so that one half of the column projects from the masonry — a miserable sight. Painting is more indigenous to the soil ; music, most of all ; is it because music had to develop independently, owing to the fact that Greek music — one is tempted to say, for- tunately — was not preserved ? I do not wish to be fault-finding or to criticise history ; far from it. This would be a presumptuous and futile undertak- SPIRITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE 567 ing. Things are what they are, historical things among the rest. It was doubtless impossible for ,the German people to pursue their course in isolation, and I am also willing to believe that they chose the best of all possible courses. But our modesty cannot hinder us from confessing that our culture, such as it is, though it be the product of the historical condi- tions of our people, does not satisfy all, that art, especially, does not do for us what it could do for a nation. It will not hinder us from confessing that this is not a pleasing state of affairs. One fact, particularly, is plain, that the life of the masses is impoverished and stunted by the lack of beautiful and elevating pleasures. Their enjoyments are vulgar. In their work they are respectable, perhaps also in their priva- tions and sufferings, but their pleasures strike more refined natures as repulsive and common. — But art itself deteriorates when it is not deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. When only the higher strata of society cultivate it, it easily degenerates into mere finery, into an object of luxury and show, or sinks to a still lower level, and becomes a pliable means of sensuous pleasure or love of diversion, and the crav- ing for sensation. Everybody knows from what miry depths the models for pictures and novels are occasionally taken in our age. Will our people ever again possess a great art, an art that is deeply rooted in its nature ? Will it, with creative power, evolve from its innermost essence new forms and new objects of artistic expression ? Will it succeed in appropriating such foreign ingredients as can be assimilated, and reject the rest ? No one can tell. One thing alone we can perhaps say : if the Germans and their neighbors are destined for a long life — a matter not of knowledge but of faith — they will again possess a world of universally recognized ideals, without which no nation can permanently exist ; and this world of ideals will again seek for sensuous expression in works of art. What form this art of the future will take — it is not to be subservient to erudition — historical prophecy cannot foretell. 568 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES One thing, however, is certain : the narrowness of intellectual life, which is so favorable to the development of the creative fancy, is gone ; mythology and legend, whose ideal figures furnished the art of the past with its material, will not return. Nor will the new art thrive upon the soil of luxury. Goethe knew what he was saying when he made the remark which I find quoted somewhere : " I hate luxury, it destroys the fancy." CHAPTER VI HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR* 1. The love of honor may be regarded as a peculiar modi- fication of the impulse of self-preservation ; it aims at the pres- ervation of the self in consciousness, in our own consciousness as well as in that of others. We may call it the impulse of ideal self-preservation. By honor in the objective sense we mean the opinion which our surroundings have of us. By his character and his acts, every man arouses sentiments in his fellows which represent judgments of value : respect and disrespect, admir- ation and contempt, reverence and aversion. These feelings express themselves in judgments and are influenced, intensi- fied, and harmonized by other feelings, and thus arises some- thing like a general estimate of the value of the particular individual in society : this is his objective honor. — The phenomenon is lacking in animals ; only in man does intel- lectual and social life reach such a state of perfection and stability as to make possible this permanent reflection of the individual in the consciousness of the whole. There are as many different kinds of honor as there are groups or sets to which a man belongs. As the member of a political community he has a political honor; it measures his value as a citizen. The different estates or orders repre- 1 [Aiistotle, Ethics, Bk. II., ch. VII., Bk. IV., chs. VII.-X. ; Schopenhauer, Parerga, vol. I., Von df.m was einer vorstetlt ; Jhering, pp. 480 ff. ; Porter, Part I., ch. XV. ; Hoffding, XI. c; Wundt, I., ch. III., 3. (c)-(e) ; James, Psychohg;/ , ch. X. ; Fowler and Wilson, Part II., ch. IV. ; Corner, pp. 384-395 ; Runze, §§ 67A — Tb.] 570 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES Bent so many attempts at a systematic graduation of this form of honor. It is to be noticed, however, that the lowest class, that of the citizen as such (^Staatsbiirger'), is not re- garded as a real class. But that it exists, that it too has its political honor, is shown by the fact that penalties are in- flicted for breaches of it which deprive a man of his civil honorary rights (hurgerliche Ehrenrechte) : he forfeits all offices, positions of trust, titles, decorations, and the right to serve as a soldier, voter, juror, witness, and guardian. The political unworthiness of the individual is thereby proclaimed. Besides the political honor, there is a special social honor. Everybody is a member of society ; his value as such is measured by his social honor. Social rank is essentially determined by birth, wealth, economic and mental achieve- ments. Social honor invariably seeks to convert itself into political honor, or, rather, to obtain the sanction of the state. The state satisfies this desire by the bestowal of titles and decorations. It makes the rich merchant a Kommerzienrat, the successful physician a Sanitdtsrat, the celebrated scholar and professor a G-eheimer Regierungsrat. No office goes with these titles, they carry no duties with them ; the professor has no governing to do, nor is his advice ever sought, either in public or private matters. In the title the state simply recognizes and brings to public notice the social significance or social rank of the recipient. Decorations serve essentially the same purpose, that is, they proclaim the social and pol- itical rank of the possessor. — The title system is a product of the modern state, while the nobility is an older develop- ment. The latter too is based upon social distinction, which in turn depends upon wealth, birth, and personal achieve- ments. The state recognizes this by the bestowal of political privileges. Within these comprehensive groups there are narrower circles, each having its particular form of honor : we speak of the honor of a merchant, the honor of an artist, the honor HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 671 of an officer, the honor of a student, etc. Its possession sigmfiea that the individual satisfies the special demands which are made upon him by the particular set to which he belongs. Collective bodies, too, like individuals have their honor : a family has its family honor among other families, a class among other classes, a profession among other professions, a nation among other nations. The individuals have a share in this collective honor ; let an Englishman's honor be what it may among Englishmen ; among foreigners he has the honor of an Englishman in general. This collective honor is a highly important factor in all collective life ; it firmly cements the members of a community together. The family honor holds the members of a family together, even after they have lost their love and respect for each other ; all of them would have to suffer the disgrace of a single member. 2. The significance of honor for human conduct is obvious. Since increase of honor produces pleasure, and decrease, pain, the love of honor tends to determine the will to seek for things which increase honor, and to shi"ink from things which diminish it. As a rule, honor is increased by everything that increases the power and influence of an individual, or, in other words, increases his capacity to help or harm others. We may mention such qualities as strength, skill, courage, military skill ; these are the qualities which are pre-eminently honorable in primitive society : the fearfulness of a man as an enemy and his value as a friend depend especially upon these. Then come wealth, which too means social power; birth and rank, which give power, namely through family con- nections ; and finally, prudence, knowledge of the law, and eloquence, qualities which, with the progress of political development, enable tlieir possessors to attain to higher positions, either as leaders of the people or as officers of the state. The types depicted in the Greek epic are the simplest examples of these different forms of fame and distinction. 572 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES Achilles stands for strength and courage ; Agamemnon for rank and wealth ; Ulysses and Nestor for prudence and elo- quence. Finally, the moral excellences also belong, in a cer- tain sense, to the qualities which bring honor and which the love of honor impels us to acquire. Intemperance, dissipa- tion, and extravagance bring disgrace, at least after they have ruined the person addicted to them, for then the friends who once applauded him forsake him. The opposite modes of be- havior, on the other hand, preserve wealth and strength, and so, ultimately at least, lead to honor. Falsehood, on account of its kinship with cowardice, if for no other reason, brings dis- grace ; likewise deceit and dishonesty. Veracity, trustworthi- ness, and uprightness, on the contrary, give one a good name. Thus honor becomes the guai'dian of morality ; the love of honor tends to determine the will to develop, first of all, the self-regarding virtues, and then also to acquire the social virtues, or at least to avoid injustice, falsehood, and crime. No detailed account is needed to show the importance of this impulse for the moral education of the race. The development of the human virtues in the species — courage, magnanimity, justice, veracity — the development of higher capacities, economic as well as mental, is hardly conceivable without this constantly active impulse. The regard for honor and the fear of disgrace produce a few good results even in the most unpromising cases : the sluggish nature is goaded to action by the fear of the disgrace of poverty ; the timid temper- ament is urged to make a stand for fear of being accused of cowardice ; the defiant and stubborn disposition is brought to terms by the fear of punishment and dishonor. Nor can we imagine the performance of great deeds without a strong love of honor. Fame, honor in its highest degree, was the most powerful motive in most of the men who brought about the great turning-points in history, — in Alexander, Caesar, Frederick, Napoleon. And great mental and artistic achieve- ments too would be inconceivable if there were no prospect of HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 573 distinction, fame, and immortality in the memory of man. The love of fame, it is true, does not create the productive impulse, but without it the latter would not be apt to develop. Even among the great saints the prospect of fame was not without its influence : though they despised the fame of men, it was because they hoped to achieve a higher fame with God. The counter proof is furnished by cases where absolutely no regard is had for honor and disgrace. Persons who no longer have any fear of dishonor because they have no honor to lose, have reached the lowest depths of degradation. Such a group of outcasts exists in every metropolis ; professional criminals and prostitutes form its complementary halves : they are persons who have no more honor to lose and no hope to redeem it. In the work of Av^-Lallemant on the German criminal class ^ we find a detailed description of a kind of counter societyj formed by these " dishonorables," which has its own language, its own customs and usages, nay its own honor, the honor of thieves ; so impossible is it for men to do utterly without distinction and honor. Its language is a mix- ture of the dregs of all languages ; the language of one people particularly having contributed to it, a people which has lost its honor among the nations, the Jews. Its morality is a disgusting immorality ; the criminal honor, the degree of dis- grace which each one brings as his pledge, so to speak ; the more disgraced his name is in honorable society, the more distinguished he is in the counter society. 3. The proper attitude of the individual towards honor, the virtue into which the impulse of honor is fashioned, we call the love of honor. We may define it as that habit of the will and mode of conduct which seeks to gain the recognition of the virtuous and good hy means of honest and virtuous actions. Perhaps we may characterize it suitably, from two points of view, as proper pride and proper humility. Pride (which is not to be confused with haughtiness) is the 1 4 vols., 1858 ff. 574 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES antithesis of two degenerate forms of the impulse of honor: vanity and ambition. We call a man vain who is greatly pleased with himself and his achievements, and displays them wherever he can, for the sake of receiving admiration and praise or at least flattery. The vainglorious man is not very particular in the choice of his admirers, or in the choice of the things for which he is distinguished. His constant aim is to be conspicuous and to make a show ; he is not satisfied unless he can attract attention to himself. A man is ambitious who makes honor the unconditional goal of his striving, that is, craves for honor and fame at the price of all other goods, even at the price of happiness and life, self- respect and a good conscience. Ambition especially strives for political reputation ; it craves for power, rank, and posi- tion. Vanity seeks to arouse admiration by personal qualities, by beauty and elegance, by brilliancy and wit, by long nails and stylish clothes. On the whole, we may call vanity the feminine, ambition the masculine, form of the degenerate impulse of honor. Women strive to please by all kinds of outward show, pretty figures and dainty faces, superfluous finery and tinsel culture. To please a man is as yet almost their only way of achieving outward distinction. The man's impulse of honor is usually determined by his birth and calling ; it aims at objective reputation : the honor of the mer- chant is wealth ; that of the prince, power ; that of the peasant, the size and productivity of his fields. Ambition based upon rank and family traditions, is more quiet, constant, and masculine in character, while that which aims at personal distinction, through literary, artistic, and scientific achieve- ments, approaches the feminine form of ambition, vanity. It is more self-conceited and excitable, self-consciousness is more vacillating, evidently because we are here concerned with personal accomplishments and achievements, and be- cause an objective standard of the value of such performances is not possible. We can measure the I'ank of a general, or HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 575 the possessions of a merchant, but who can determine the poetical value of a poem, or the artistic value of a painting in comparison with others ? Here there is great room for illu- sions, and on illusion vanity chiefly feeds. It is evidently due to the prevalence of vanity in artistic and scholastic circles that envy, spite, hatred, calumny, and what else may be the effects of injured pride, are nowhere so common — unless it be among women afflicted with vanity — as among the genus irritabile vatum, the irritable and irascible tribe of poets and authors, actors and artists. Und wenn du schiltst und wenn du tobst, Ich will es geduldig leiden. Doch wenn du meine Verse nicht lobsty Danu lass ich mich von dir scheiden.i They need not be verses ; even a difference of opinion as to the age of two manuscripts or the second marriages of clergy men may constitute a ground for divorce, as we know from the history of the Vicar of Wakefield. The antithesis of vanity is pride. The vainglorious man is especially anxious to be considered somebody, and to rep- resent something, and then, if possible, to be somebody. The proud man, however, desires, above all, to be something, and then, if possible, to be considered somebody. But he is select in the means which he employs to gain a reputation ; he refuses to seek for fame in trivial and indifferent or, what is still worse, in absurd and disgraceful things, which the fashion of the day makes the centre of attraction for a fickle public. Indeed he despises the applause of the rabble altogether, it puts him to shame, he shrinks from it. He cares for the opinion of the best, their applause alone seems worthy of his efforts and fills him with happiness. But he consoles himself when he does not get it, for one thing no one can take from him : the cause itself to which he is de- ' [I will patieutly bear your scoldings and ravings, but if you refuse to praise my verses, I "J get a divorce from you.] 576 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES voting his strength, the consciousness of doing honest and efficient work, and the hope that the future will honor his sincere endeavors. At all events he refuses to have recourse to flattery and camaraderie in order to be admired in return. He does not allow the fear of displeasing persons in power to hamper him in his thoughts or actions. Kepler thus con- cludes the preface of his Weltharmonih : " Your forgiveness will please me, your anger I will endure ; here I cast the die, and write a book to be read, whether by contemporaries or by posterity, I care not : it can wait for readers thousands of years, seeing that God himself waited six thousand years for some one to contemplate his work." ^ These are proud wordsj and a proud man it was that uttered them. Compare with Kepler's proud demeanor the behavior of our modern scholars who unblushingly permit their pupils and colleagues to sing their praises to their very faces at all kinds of jubilees. Would not a little pride be more becoming ? It would, at least, make the profession more respected ; the people have a keen sense of propriety in such things ; fifty years ago the German scholar was held in higher esteem by the public than at present, perhaps, to some extent, because the use of incense among the living was much more limited than now. Nor is it to be regretted that titles and decorations were rarer, and that he was more often censured and ignored by his superiors than at present. Since then the calling has become considerably more aristocratic outwardly, but its inner worth and real fp-me have hardly increased in proportion. 4. The other antithesis of the love of honor is proper humility. Pride manifests itself in the proper acceptance of honor, humility in the proper bestowal of honor. Humility is the opposite of haughtiness. The haughty man despises others, he treats them condescendingly. By refus- ing to show them proper respect, he endeavors to keep it for himself, as it were, and so to have an advantage over them. • Reuschle, Kepler, p. 127. HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 677 He does not seek converse with men, indeed he actually shuns it, because he finds that his expectations with respect to honor are not realized, and because he is not willing to satisfy the claims of others. It is evidently for this reason that haughtiness and pride are so easily confused. Haughtiness is, moreover, very commonly connected with servility. The man who treats those whom he regards as his inferiors with brutal haughtiness, crouches before the mighty. He uses all the arts of subservient flattery towards those who are unquestionably richer, more aristocratic, powerful, and influ- ential than he, in order thus to rise on the ladder of rank ; he revenges himself on those below him, and it affords him special satisfaction to kick his patron as soon as he has out- stripped him. In this way he gets back his capital with interest. Eumility, on the other hand, gives every one the honor which is his due. It rejoices at the merit of others, and is ever ready to recognize ability, to admire excellence, and to reverence goodness. Genuine humility — this is its true sign — and genuine free-mindedness go together. The humble, free-minded man bows before what is truly honorable, even when it appears in menial form, and refuses to mere external power what belongs to the venerable alone. It is with pride that he sides with those who are outraged for the sake of truth and justice, and he considers it an honor to suffer dis- grace and persecution with them. The word of the judge on the judgment day applies to him : " I was in prison and ye came unto me." These are two well-known types : the servile-minded, full of haughtiness and baseness, and the free-minded, full of noble pride and reverence and deep humility. We Germans have an example of a man of the latter type in Freiherr von Stein. " Humble before God, highminded, magnanimous towards men, a foe of falsehood and injustice," so his epi- taph characterizes him. And Luther once said of himself in 37 578 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES commenting upon the fifty-first Psalm : " When I bow down and liumble myself before God, I am scornful of the devil and the world, defiant and haughty in the Lord, and I despise all their dangers, strategy, and violence." We often find, upon the old German passion pictures, the two types painted side by side. The first type is represented by the soldiers and their voluntary assistants, who revile and maltreat Him who was forsaken by God and man ; they have no eye for His ador- able soul, or if they do obtain a glimpse of the sublime char- acter of the noble sufferer, their bitter hate becomes all the more intense ; nothing affords the base-born so much genuine pleasure as to be allowed, by those in authority, to spit at and to trample upon the pure and innocent. The other type is represented by the women under the cross. With fearless loyalty their tears acknowledge the outcast of men ; their hearts do not cease revering Him. The man who listens to his intellect is seduced by it to forsake and to deny Him : His cause is lost ; can it be the just cause when all in authority and all competent judges decide against it ? The sacred story shows its profound and eternal significance even in such features as these. The sins that women have committed through vanity, women have again atoned by their faithful and unswerving devotion and adoration. Nothing in this world is stronger than the heart of a humble and free- minded woman. There is no higher praise for women than that which they found beneath the cross. 5. With true pride and true humility, true self-esteem finally is joined. The proper estimate of oneself may be defined as a mean between pusillanimity and supercilious- ness. Pusillanimity is habitual faint-heartedness in regard to the problems which life sets before us ; it weakens our capacity to act and to suffer. Superciliousness springs from underestimating our tasks and overestimating our powers ; it regards exertion as superfluous, and so is no less produc- tive of failure than faintheartedness : superciliousness goeth HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 579 before destruction. "When tliis attitude is assumed towards others, it becomes hau^tiness, and if it is not flattered, ends by abusing thejn, tjonduct which the Greeks aptly characterize by the word u/3pt?. True self-esteem, on the contrary, which marks the efficient man, gives him confidence in his own will and powers, and upon the latter depend security in decision and firmness in execution. But the great conception which he has of his task guards him against arrogantly overestimating his ability. He is not easily satisfied with himself ; it is no consolation to him to see others behind him ; he keeps the great and excellent men before his eyes. When it comes to dividing the common work, he is always ready to assume the more difficult tasks, but when honors and gifts are distributed, he does not insist upon obtaining an equal share. Whenever life places him in a position to solve great public problems, we have the type of the highminded man (fj,eya\6-\}rv'x,o';), a man who esteems himself capable of great things and is worthy of them. The proper estimate of one's own worth, of one's own powers and achievements, knowledge of self, constitutes a particularly difficult problem of self-culture. Ever since the Delphic inscription. Know thyself, first attracted the atten- tion of the Greeks, the question concerning the importance and possibility of self-knowledge has been much discussed The opinions of Greek thinkers and poets are found in Schmidt's Ethik der G-riechen} Reference is also made in that work to Goethe's words in his Sprilche in Prosa : " How can we learn to know ourselves ? Never by contemplation, but always by action. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what is in you." It is impossible to gain a knowledge of oneself as an object in a theoretical way, by re- flection ; by living, suffering, and acting we reach a direct knowledge of what we may expect of ourselves, so that we shall not overstep our limits in choosing our tasks and our ' II.,394ff. 580 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES attitude in certain positions and towards certain persons, but will choose and do the proper thing with sure tact. There is no other form of self-knowledge than this instinctive knowl- edge ; an abstract psychological self-knowledge based upon analysis and comparison is not possible. This is Schopen- hauer's view also ; he calls attention to the fact that we cannot, in spite of all looking-glasses, even picture to our- selves our own bodily physiognomy, like that of others, because we cannot cast upon ourselves the "look of estrangement" which is the condition of the objectivity of perception.^ We do not see ourselves acting, any more than we see ourselves in motion; the agent cannot observe himself while acting, for which reason too, as Goethe says, he has no conscience as an agent. His attention is fixed solely upon the ex- ternal goal. Yes, we may say, the inclination to reflect upon oneself is a symptom of a morbid condition ; it springs from a lack of self- reliance. And reflection is by no means able to remove the defect, — it merely intensifies it ; self-reflection resembles the conduct of the gardener who digs up the roots of his trees to see whether they are sound. This, too, is Goethe's idea. In a conversation with Eckermann he rejects the demand, " Know thyself," as a curious demand which no one has ever satisfied, and which no one really ought to satisfy. "Man is bound by all his thoughts and strivings to the external, to the world around him, and he is kept busy in understanding this world and in making it serviceable to him- self, so far as his purposes require. Of his own self he becomes aware only when he enjoys and suffers, and so too his sorrows and joys alone teach him what to seek and what to avoid. In other respects, however, man is an obscure being ; he knows not whence he came nor whither he goes ; he knows little of the world and less of himself. I do not know myself, and may God preserve me from it." Here, again, Schopen- 1 Parerga, II., § 343. HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 581 hauer offers himself as an interpreter of Goethe. The "obscure being" is the will, which only gradually manifests itself, as Schopenhauer shows in the instructive nineteenth chapter of the second volume of the World as Will and Idea. 6. Modesty may be defined as the outward form of the love of honor. The modest man shows by his entire behavior that he does not despise the opinion of others, but that he desires to make an effort to gain their esteem. The opposite demeanor is that of the overbearing man ; his acts proclaim that he does not care what others may think of him. When such conduct is displayed toward especially venerable persons, we call it insolence and impudence, the sign of a low and servile disposition. Modesty is the natural habit of youth. The young have no independent opinions of what is good and proper, but are governed by the opinions of others. Hence it behooves the young man to respect the opinions of others ; modesty (pudor) is, as it were, the down of a youthful soul, not yet touched by the hands of the world. Forwardness or even insolence, on the other hand, is a sign of uncouthness. It is easily pro- duced by the awkward ignorance of teachers ; it is particularly encouraged by training the child to flattery and ostentation. The opening scene in King Lear is a grand picture al fresco of false education. Imagine that which is here condensed into the few lines of a scene as the outgrowth of a long-con- tinued abuse of the child-soul by paternal vanity, and you have a faithful picture of an educational method which is not infrequent either in homes or in schools, or wherever education is carried on. How often may not the foolisli old man have asked his daughters whether they loved him, and how much they loved him ? His constant questionings have already destroyed all love and reverence in his older daughters ; they despise the old fool and flatter him. Cordelia, the youngest, has just left the care of a faithful nurse, so we may assume ; 582 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES she does not yet know how to flatter, and, fortunately, receives no more lessons in the art. Besides, modesty is becoming to every age, particularly to all those who appear before the public. It was usual for the authors of the last century to appeal to the " gentle reader," a more commendable custom than the one which came into vogue during the age of Romanticism and Speculative Phil- osophy, that, namely, of giving the reader to understand, first in the preface and afterwards on every possible occasion, between the lines and in the lines, that he was a very inferior creature, who would not, of course, succeed in fathoming all the profound thoughts there set forth. If, however, in spite of this, he still insisted on reading the book, he was told not to be discouraged in case the expected should happen, that we could not all be philosophers, and to remember also that due warning had been given him. It is very remarkable that the German public actually allowed itself to be bullied in this fashion, and for a long time was accustomed to admire as profound what it did not understand. Hence writers are not wanting to this day who speak in such a strain; insolence still continues to impress the average German. The spirit of English scientific intercourse forms a highly pleasing contrast to the German habit. Take such writers as Mill and Darwin : they speak to the reader as though he did them a favor by listening to them, and whenever they enter upon controversy, they do it in a manner which expresses respect and a desire for mutual understanding. The German scholar believes that it will detract from the respect due him if he does not assume a tone of condescension or overbearing censure. Examine the first scientific journal you may happen to pick up : even the smallest anonymous announcement breathes the air of infinite superiority, even the most friendly recognition is accompanied by the tacit or explicit assurance that the " reviewer," of course, understands the subject better, and that it is therefore really a pity tliat it did not fall into HONOR AND LOVE OF HONOR 583 better hands. In case the "reviewer" differs from the writer, he does not rest satisfied until he has proved to his credulous readers that his opponent is a worthless and mali- cious fool. The philologists, especially, are tried and acknowl- edged masters in this field. Is it the occupation with the infinitely little that makes them so irascible and intolerant ? The foreign observer might, I fear, be easily led to believe that overbearing impudence was at present regarded as a specially estimable quality in Germany. When we examine a book of historical portraits like that published by E. von Seidlitz and look at the pictures of the last century or of the first half of the present century, we cannot help feeling that a great change has taken place in the physiognomies since that time : the " smart " (schneidig^ face is the type affected by the modern generation. Think of the beards and their sym- bolical-physiognomical significance, which is expressed in the saying : Haare auf den Zdhneri haben ; oderint dum metuant would be an appropriate motto for them. Or look at the por- traits in our so-called art exhibitions : each person repre- sented seems anxious to show his contempt for the observer in some way or other. The hand in his breeches-pocket, the tired, scarcely elevated, uninterested eye, the eye-glass in his extended left hand, the cigar stump from which the ashes have just been knocked off, — they all seem to say : What do I care for the rabble that is crowding around to see me ! And then let your gaze rest on the " smart " female who turns her back upon the spectator and grants him only a quarter view, or lets her big dog stare at him. CHAPTER VII SUICIDE! 1. Suicide is a phenomenon peculiar to man. Its possi- bility, in a certain sense, depends upon the power of the will to emancipate itself from the natural control of the impulses. Animals do not reflect upon life as a whole, hence they have no freedom of choice. Freedom of choice and consequently the possibility of suicide depend upon the development of man's intelligence ; upon it also depends the possibility of insanity, a phenomenon which is likewise peculiar to human life, and which is closely connected with suicide. The animal intelligence is subservient to the will and therefore proof against such aberrations. Suicide is rendered possible by the growth of the intelli- gence, and its frequency seems to increase with the progress of civilization. From the large collection of statistical facts which the Italian H. Morselli has examined in his work on suicide, it may be seen beyond a doubt that there has been a constant and uniform increase in the number of suicides dur- 1 [Statistical : Oettingen, Moralstatistih, § .19, pp. 737-785 ; Morselli, Suicide (abridged aud revised translation in International Science Series) ; Masaryk, Der Selbstmord als soziale Massenerscheinung der modernen Civilisation, Ancient and Christian ideas of suicide: Lecky, I., 212-222, 331; II., 43-61. Philosophical views of suicide : justifying it : Hume, On Suicide ; Hartmann, Phenomenologie da sittUchen Bewusstseins, pp. 860 ff. ; Mainlander, Phil, der ErlBsung, pp. 349 ff. ; con- demning it : Kant, Metnpkijsik der Sitten, vol. VII., pp. 277 ff. (Hartenstein's edition) ; Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, First Section (Abbott, p. 13) ; Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille, vol. I., § 69 ; Paley, Bk. IV., 3 ; Hoffding, XI., 4 ; Duhring, Der Werth des Lebens, VI., 6 ; Porter, § 175 ; Runze, § 12. See also StSudlin, Geschichte der Vorstellungen vom Selbstmord, 1824.— Tr.] SUICIDE 585 ing the nineteenth century in most of the European countries.^ In France, for example, the average number of suicides a year has risen from 54 to 154 per million inhabitants, during fifty years from 1826 to 1875 ; in Prussia, from 70.2 to 173.5, between 1816 and 1877. The increase is still greater in Ger- man Austria. There are countries, it is true, where the con- ditions are more favorable; in England, for instance, the in- crease in the last fifty years seems to be scarcely noticeable, the average numbers oscillate around 65 per million inhabi- tants. In Norway the figures have even fallen from 80 to 70. The local distribution likewise shows the dependence of suicide upon the intensity of civilization. As a rule, suicides are the more frequent in European countries the more civil- ized the latter are. Here, too, however, the English form a conspicuous exception. The maximum figures (200-300) ap- pear in central Europe ; as we come nearer to the boundaries they diminish greatly, falling below 25 in Southern Italy, Spain, and Ireland, below 50 in Northern Italy, Scotland, Northern Sweden, and Russia, below 75 in Hungary, Poland, and Southern Sweden. The metropolitan and industrial local- ities give the largest averages. Saxony and Thuringia head the list with about 300 in Germany ; then come Brandenburg, including Berlin, 204, Schleswig-Holstein, including Ham- burg, 250; in Austria, Lower Austria with Vienna comes first, 254, followed by Bohemia, 158 ; in France, Paris forms the centre of irradiation from which the influence extends to an entire group of adjoining provinces, Seine, Marne, Oise, about 400 ; then comes the industrial North of France. The same law may be observed in the three capitals of the Scan- dinavian countries. A striking exception is formed by West- phalia and the Rhineland, Belgium and Holland, in which the average figures fall below 75, thus following the English group. 1 Compare also Th. Masaryk, Der Selbstmord aU soziale Mattenerteheinung del nodernen Civilisation, 1881. 686 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES It is further noticeable that within the separate countries, suicide seems to be more prevalent among the educated classes. Morselli gives the following data for Italy : > the group, letters and science, heads the list, with 614 per million male individuals belonging to this group ; then come de- fenders of the country, 404 ; instruction, education, 355 ; public administration, 324 ; commerce, 277 ; jurisprudence, 218 ; medical professions, 201 ; industrial productions, 80 ; production of raw materials, 27. For France the following figures are given.^ The number of suicides per million in- habitants is : domestic service, 83 ; commerce and transport, 98; production of raw materials. 111; industry, 159; liberal professions, 510. Other statisticians reach different results, but they do not contradict the law that suicide is least common under the simplest conditions of life, and that it becomes more frequent as the conditions become more com- plex. — No one will seek the cause for this in higher educa- tion as such ; it is due to a number of concomitant phenomena. Such are deviations from the original and natural conditions of life and forms of labor; one-sided exercise of the brain, especially when caused by premature mental labor ; ex- haustive and subtle forms of enjoyment ; violent desires and breathless pursuit of fortune, connected with great disappoint- ments and catastrophes. All these causes come together in the great centres of modern life, and here they are especially potent among the higher strata of the population. 2. How is suicide to be judged viorallyf Our natural feeling in reference to it is one of dread. Our horror of death is intensified by intentional homicide in every form, such as murder and execution. Nothing seems more un- natural and terrible than when an individual takes his own life. The church obeyed the common instinct when it regarded the suicide as an outcast, even refusing to allow him to bo 1 P. 244. » P. 251. SUICIDE 587 buried in hallowed ground. Among the old Greeks snicidea were deprived of honors to the dead; the act was looked upon as a violation of the sense of awe with which the an- cients regarded all violent interference with the natural order of things.^ In this respect, again, philosophy runs counter to popu- lar opinion. Among the Greek schools, the Stoics and Epicu- reans, particularly, strongly defend the moral possibility of suicide. They praise as a prerogative of man the freedom to leave life when it has no further value.^ And a great number of men, prominent in public life and literature, made use of their freedom. The liberal philosophy of modern times shows the same general tendency. In his essay on suicide, Plume states the grounds on which suicide may some- times be justified. He shows that suicide is not necessarily a transgression of our duty to God, our neighbor, or ourselves. Not to God, for " were the disposal of human life so much reserved as the peculiar province of the Almighty that it were an encroachment of his right for men to dispose of their own lives, it would be equally criminal to act for the preservation of life as for its destruction. If I turn aside a stone which is falling upon my head, I disturb the course of nature " as much as if I turn a few ounces of blood from their natural channel. But if it be said that the natural impulse tends to self-preservation, the suicide may reply : I do not experience this impulse and may conclude therefrom that I am recalled from my station. Nor is suicide neces- sarily a breach of our duty to our neighbor or to ourselves. A man who is not able to do good to others but is a burden to them, who does not value his life but endures it as a torture, who can cut short his miseries without wounding anybody in the world, does no wrong by laying down the burden. On the contrary, he might say, " it is the only way > Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, II. 441 ; [Lecky, 212-214.— Tk.]. 2 [See Seneca, letters, 26, 70.— Tr.] 588 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES that I can be useful to society, by setting an example of how every one has the power of freeing himself from misery." ^ Indeed, I do not believe that we must necessarily regard self-preservation as a dut}', and voluntary death as a violation of duty. It is said that Frederick the Great carried a little bottle of poison on his person during the Seven Years' War, and that he intended to commit suicide in case he was made a prisoner, so that his country might not incur the danger of sacrificing its interests in order to ransom its ruler. It is obvious that such an act could not have been judged other- wise than the act of a captain who blows up himself and his ship to save it from falling into the hands of the enemy, or that of a pioneer who sacrifices his life in order to make a way for his family. Or take the case of Themistocles : banished by the Athenians, pursued by the Lacedaemonians, he finally, after many wanderings, finds a refuge with the Great King. When the Persian asks him to show his gratitude by promot- ing his plans against the Greeks, he puts an end to his life. Who will dare to reproach him for this, or who can tell him what else he ought to have done ? — But even when a man commits suicide in order to leave a life that has become intolerable, I have not the courage absolutely to condemn the act. When a man who has met with reverses or has been disappointed gives up like a coward, leaving his family in misery and want, we have a right to judge him harshly. But when a man can no longer endure a hopeless and pain- 1 [See Hume's Essays, Green & Grose's edition, vol. II., pp. 405 ft] It is said that when any one among the Massilians desired to drink the poison hemlock, he could obtain the sanction of the Council of the Six Hundred by giving his reasons for voluntarily departing from life. Those afflicted with incurable and painful dis- eases in Thomas More's Utopia are exhorted by priests and magistrates to do what is the best under the circumstances : no longer to nourish the torturing pain, but to die courageously. Such as are wrought on by these persuasions starve themselves of their own accord, or take opium, and by that means die without pain. Suicide without authority, on the other hand, is regarded as reprehensible. Carlyle, too, once expressed the opinion that there was no justice in depriving a man of the freedom to escape from unbearable tortures by voluntary death, as is done in England by laws and the pressure of public opinion. SUICIDE 589 ful malady, when he feels that everybody is tired of him and would be materially benefited by his going, the impar- tial judge will view the case differently. * True, we say: it is grand and ennobling for a person to bear great suffer- ings in patience; we admire the hero in his suffering as much as the hero in battle. But — heroism is not a duty, it is meritorious to be a hero, but it is human not to be one. We cannot withhold our sympathy from one who sinks be- neath his load, or forget the word of charity : " He that is without sin let him first cast a stone." If a man says. Suicide is suicide, and as such reprehensible, we cannot argue with him ; his own feelings will contradict him in the given case. It is usually said that suicide is the result of cowardice. Cases undoubtedly occur in which this is so. A man without the power to act and to suffer meets with a misfortune ; he loses his head and sees no other escape but the rope, while a brave and energetic man would have overcome the difficulty with patience, and would have begun life anew. A banker squanders the money of his customers and then shoots him- self in the head : certainly this is cowardly and base. But the conditions are not always like these. A man who, like Them- istocles, after careful deliberation, makes up his mind, and then does what he thinks necessary, that he may not suffer or do anything unworthy of himself, will most likely regard the charge of cowardice as a rather pedantic jest. — And he will scarcely be affected by statements such as are found in Schopenhauer or the Neo-Platonists, that flight from life is flight from suffering ; that suffering, however, is the necessary means of deliverance from the will-to-live. He will perhaps answer : I am so free from the will-to-live that I am about to leave life, without feeling the slightest desire to renew it. The metaphysician may, if he chooses, worry over the question whether death will realize that purpose. I am not troubled about that, and I have no desire to enter upon these sophis- 590 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES tical, rather than profound, discussions, in which the meta- physician tries to prove that voluntary death puts an end to life as a phenomenon but not to the will as a thing in itself. 3. Nevertheless, I do not think that the condemnation of suicide is utterly groundless. If we consider, not the excep- tions but the rule, we must regard suicide as an act by which the suicide himself condemns his entire life : it is, as a rule, the ignoble end of an ignoble life. The wages of sin is death ; the words of the apostle are surely applicable to self-destruction. There are exceptions, perhaps numerous exceptions, but they do not disprove the rule. The popular judgment is the result of experience: Suicide is the natural conclusion of a sinful life. Here, again, we may refer to statistics. Difficult though it is to obtain definite answers to the question concern- ing the causes of suicide, we may ascertain certain general facts from the material at hand. In Morselli's table ^ in- sanity appears as the most frequent motive, embracing about one-third of all the cases for which a motive can be given. Then come physical diseases, weariness of life, vices (drunkenness and dissipation), afflictions (especially domestic troubles), misery and financial disorders, re- morse, shame, fear of condemnation. The figures are difi'er- ent for different countries, but they nearly agree in that each motive embraces one-tenth of all the cases. The small remainder of about one-twentieth is divided among the pas- sions, love, jealousy, and anger. We observe that suicide, as a rule, marks the end of a mentally, bodily, morally, econom- ically, or socially deranged life. Only in a relatively small number of cases are vices given as the direct cause. If we were to investigate the other motives, we should without doubt very frequently discover as their primary causes : per- verse desires and bad habits of life, either in the individuals themselves or in their parents and ancestors. Alcohol, es- i p. 278. SUICIDE 591 pecially, would be found to be the chief destroyer of the vital powers : it ruins the brain and creates an hereditary tendency to mental as well as bodily diseases and weariness of life ; it destroys economic welfare, it causes domestic troubles, it leads to criminal acts, which are expiated with remorse and disgrace. Thus suicide is a symptom and criterion of morally-diseased conditions. But we must be careful here. We should not regard a classification of nations and classes according to the frequency of suicide as a classification according to their moral worth. We should not forget that indolence is the best preventive of suicide. Nor should we lose sight of these facts in judging particular cases. Suicide is the confession of a guilty life, not a healthy confession, it is true, one that marks the beginning of a new life, but the desperate confes- sion of the complete inability to begin a new life. But in so far as it is a confession of the suicide's unwillingness to continue his old life, it is likewise a sign that not every spark of good has been extinguished in his soul. It is not the abso- lutely debased who take their lives, but those who do not possess the moral power to resist the pernicious impulses of their own natures and the unfavorable influences of their outward surroundings, and yet retain a sufficient sense of the better to be unwilling to endure their unworthy lives and evil deeds. The suicide of Judas Iscariot, it seems to me, in a certain measure disarms our judgment of him. That he was able to despair of what he had done, shows that he was not an utterly wicked man. Otherwise he would have behaved diffei-ently : he would have squandered his money in merry-making, or he would have put it to usury, and have achieved further distinction along the same lines. Instead of that, he pronounced judgment upon himself, finding it impos- sible to make atonement by submitting to earthly justice. Although it may not have been the proper atonement, it was nevertheless a kind of expiation. CHAPTER VIII COMPASSION AND BENEVOLENCE i 1. The sympathetic feelings and impulses form the natural basis of the social virtues. Such will-impulses are called sympathetic — in distinction from idiopathic impulses, which originate directly in the individual — as are aroused in us by transference from others, by a kind of contagion. All feel- ings have the tendency, though in different degrees, to spread by sympathy, as for example, pleasure and pain, fear and hope, love and hate, contempt and admiration, cheerful ex- uberance and earnest solemnity. The passions aroused by a speech in a large popular gathering are much more intense than those which arise when the same persons read or hear the same speech separately ; it seems as though the feelings were reflected from every feeling-centre in the meeting to every other one, and the rays concentrated in each individual as in a burning-glass. Not only is the human heart sensitive to sympathetic ex- citement, it likewise yearns deeply to have its feelings com- municated to and reflected from other hearts. When we are happy or in pain, we crave for human beings to reflect our joy or sorrow ; when we love or hate, admire or contemn, we strive to diffuse our feelings, and are pained when our sur- roundings remain indifferent to us. Every strong emotion 1 [Sidgwick, Bk. III., ch. IV.; Stephen, ch. VI.; Porter, Part II., ch. VII.; Wnndt, Part I., ch. III., 4 d, 5 ; Fowler and Wilson, Part II., ch. II. ; Spencer, Inductions, cha. VII., VIII. ; Ethlct of Social Life, Part V., ch. I. ; Seth, Part 11., ch. II. ; Bunze, § 64. See also chapters on Sympathy in the standard psycho- logies.— Tk.J COMPASSION AND BENEVOLENCE 693 impels us to utterance ; " out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." Blood-relationship is the natural starting-point of the sympathetic feelings. They manifest themselves most in- tensely and directly in the relation between mother and child. Originally one being, they, in a certain sense, continue to live one life, though with a separate physical economy. From this point sympathy extends to the members of the family, tribe, people, humanity, — to all living creatures. Sounds and gestures at first serve as a means of communication ; the more complicated and characteristic feelings and moods are trans- mitted by language and the symbols of art. Of all feelings pain seems most capable of arousing sym- pathy. Language shows this: we have a term for sympa- thetic pain only, in compassion {MitleicL). No terms have been coined to designate sympathetic pleasure or fear : (^Mit- freude, Mitfurcht, etc.). — It is doubtless true that joy is not so easily transferred by sympathy. This may perhaps be ex- plained as follows. Pleasure and pain have not only the tendency to arouse sympathy, but also a tendency to arouse antipathy : happiness produces in the surroundings that peculiar form of pain which is called envy ; unhappiness, on the contrary, produces malicious pleasure (^Schadenfreude). Everybody compares himself and his condition with that of others ; and since there is no absolute standard, we measure our powers, reputation, and possessions by those of our fellows. In case the comparison results in our favor, we experience pleasure, otherwise pain. The happiness of others, therefore, has a depressing effect, their unhappiness an elevating efPect upon our self-esteem. These are well-known phenomena : they are never entirely wanting in man. The pessimistic philosophers love to dwell upon this truly partie honteuse of human nature. In the troubles of our good friends, says La Rochefoucauld, there is always something that does not displease us. And with 694 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES still greater justice may we assert that there is always some- thing in the good fortune of our friends that does not entirely please us. A man wins the first prize in a lottery; his friends congratulate him with mingled feelings of pleasure and pain, especially those who have drawn the blanks. A second one passes a brilliant examination ; he should beware of men- tioning it, especially to his less fortunate competitors. On the other hand, if he has met with a misfortune, if he has fallen from his horse, or has been hooted as a speaker, or has speculated and lost on the exchange, he need not let the fear of paining his good friends hinder him from telling it. He will have no difficulty in finding persons to pity him, but — well, everybody knows how little we care for the pity of our friends on such occasions. I do not mean to say that intense sorrow cannot be aroused by such misfortunes, and that genuine sympathy is not felt as an assuaging balsam, but the balsam is too apt to be mingled with the corroding poison which is called malicious joy (^Schadenfreude). The only satisfactory mode of expressing sympathy would perhaps be to give a laughing spectator a blow in the face. We see, sympathetic pleasure and envy, compassion and malicious joy, are produced by the same causes. Compassion is accom- panied in consciousness by an intensification of our self- esteem ; it flatters our self-love. Sympathetic pleasure arises in conjunction with a diminution of the self-feeling, or, rather, it ought so to arise : for envy extinguishes the pleasure. Compassion, on the other hand, may exist together with an intensification of the feeling of power, or self-love. Genuine malice of course also extinguishes pity, but a feeling of true pity may easily arise in connection with the feeling of per- sonal security and superiority. Hence real sympathetic pleas- ure {Mitfreude) is rare, while compassion (Mitleid) is not at all rare. And for this very reason the ability to sym- pathize with another's joys is a much surer sign of a pure and unselfish nature than any other. Goethe, who was not in COMPASSION AND BENEVOLENCE 595 the habit of praising himself, thus boasted of his lack of envy, when accused of egoism : Ich Egoist 1 — Wenn ich's nicht besser wiisste I Der Neid, das ist der Egoiste. Und was ich auch fiir Wege geloffen, Auf'm Neidpfad habt ihr mich nie betroffen.* And to the compassionate souls who, even to this day, find fault with him for not having cared enough for the sorrows of others, he dedicates the following xenion : Aivf das empfindsame Volk hab' ich nie was gehalten ; es werdeu, Kommt die Gelegenheit nur, schlechte Gesellen daraus.' Indeed, pity may go with all the seven sins against the Holy Ghost. The Pharisee probably silently or openly added to his prayer — God I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this pub- lican, — the word of pity : Of course, I am sorry for the poor devil over there ; it is his own fault, no doubt, but how easy it is to make the first misstep, when one is not eternally on one's guard ! All gossip is carried on in a tone of pity and listened to with an attitude of pity. Many a sentimental woman who has too much pity to tread upon a caterpillar, will, without compunction, wound a neighbor to the quick by her calumnies, or poison her husband's life with her con- stant bickerings and baseness. 2. The sympathetic feelings, and especially compassion, 1 p an egoisf? I know that I am not one. Envy is an egoist. And on what- ever ways I may have strayed, yon have never found me on the path of envy .3 '^ [I have never had any respect for the sentimentalists ; they always turn out to be wicked knaves when the opportunity offers.] — In order to appreciate Goethe as a man, compare his reception by the older celebrities in German literature, t. g., Lessing or Klopstock, with his attitude towards the younger poets, e. g., towards SchiUer, when the latter appeared upon the scene. (See Victor Hehn, Gedanken ilber Goethe, in the essay : Goethe und das Publikum.) Goethe was not a saint, and they are not doing him a kindness who insist on making an angel of him, they simply provoke the advocatus diaboli, such a one as has appeared against him in the person of Father Baumgartner. In spite of all, Goethe was a good and great man. 596 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES evidently have the same significance for conduct that all feelings have : their object is to guide the will in the business of self-preservation. Just as idiopathic pain impels the indi- vidual to remove the evil or the disturbance which threatens his own life, so compassion tends to determine the will to remove the causes of pain from the lives of others. In com- passion the solidarity of collective bodies manifests itself : the collective body feels the disturbance which first attacks a member as a menace to itself, and is thereby impelled to react in a manner conducive to its own self-preservation. In human life, however, feeling-impulses are never adequate guides of action, but require the regulative control of reason. We say of love and anger that they are blind. This is also true of pity. Therefore this impulse, no less than the selfish impulses, must, in order to promote welfare, be educated by reason, guided by wisdom. The virtue which thus arises, the general fundamental form of the social virtues, may be called benevolence and defined as that habit of the will and mode of conduct which tends to promote the welfare of the sur- roundings by hindering disturbances and producing favorable conditions of life. In benevolence, compassion (Mit-leiden) is overshadowed hj well-doing, beneficence (Wohl-thun') . The benevolent and beneficent man prevents or alleviates the sufferings of others without always having to feel compassion himself. Nay, a certain power of resistance is as much a part of benevolence as it is a part of courage to be able to resist idiopathic pain, or a part of temperance to be able to resist the temptations of sense. We do not expect a physician to suffer with the patient all the pains which he witnesses or perhaps causes himself. On the contrary, a certain obduracy on his part is the condition of beneficent action ; his compassion would obscure the clear- ness of his judgment and interfere with the steadiness of his movements. It is well known that physicians do not like to treat their nearest relatives because their pity in- COMPASSION AND BENEVOLENCE 597 terferes with their skill. — But not only is freedom from pity needed to give the physician greater security in the prac- tice of his art; it also has a directly heneficial influence. The physician enters the sick-room and makes his examina- tion and gives his orders with business-like serenity ; he does not pity nor lament. His calmness has the most wholesome effect ; some of it is communicated to the relatives and the patient ; we feel as if we were in the presence of a power against which the evil is powerless. On the other hand consider the influence of visits from relatives and friends ! Frightened by the appearance of the patient and overwhelmed with pity, they break out into tears and complaints, and so increase his sufferings by their compassion and excitement. The same thing happens in other cases. A tender mother doubly suffers the pains which her child feels. If the child falls and hurts himself, she is overcome with pity. The result is that the child now really begins to feel the pain ; he does not cry out until he has been pitied, when he regards him- self as an object of pity. And the permanent effect of such treatment is a sort of whining nature ( Wehleidigkeit), which is not a pleasant endowment for life. Another mother, who loves her child just as much, bandages the wound if neces- sary, diverts the child's attention from the accident ; and lo ! the pain actually disappears when it is resisted. As a permanent consequence, the child, in a measure, becomes hardened to such things, and so receives the best possible equipment for life that education can give. To love one's children is natural, and neither a virtue nor an art, but to educate children is a great and difiicult art, which demands, first of all, the ability to control one's natural tender im- pulses. We must not let our children know how much we love them, says an old wise maxim, which, however, does not suit the sentimentalism and vanity of modern mothers. Indeed, the same is true of every form of assistance that human beings can render each other. The sure and steady 598 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES hand that helps and guides always presupposes that the per- son behind it lending aid is not overwhelmed by the sufferings of others. In charity work, for example, blind compassion results in evil : we spoil the recipients of our charity, and en- courage them to make demands, and when we can no longer, or are no longer willing, to satisfy these claims, we break out into complaints of ingratitude. We may therefore say : Compassion is the natural basis of the social virtue of active benevolence, but it is by no means a virtue itself, nor even, as Schopenhauer asserts, the absolute standard of the moral worth of a man. Like every phase of impulsive life, it must be educated and disciplined by reason ; in the rational will it is both realized and limited, — realized in so far as it attains to its end, the furtherance of human wel- fare, limited in so far as it is prevented from doing harm. And hence we may accept what Spinoza, agreeing with the Stoics, says, that the wise man will strive to rid himself of compassion, and, as far as human nature permits, to do well and to rejoice {bene agere et laetari)} Perhaps such wisdom is more common among women than among men. Courage in suffering, patience, a specifically feminine virtue, enables one calmly to bear first one's own and then the sufferings of others. The capable woman is not overwhelmed by her own pains, nor will she permit herself to be overcome by the pains of others. Calmly and deliberately, energetically and helpfully, she attacks the evil and conquers it. 1 Ethics, IV., 50. CHAPTER IX JUSTICE » We distinguished between two phases of benevolence: a negative phase — not to retard welfare ; and a positive phase — to promote welfare. These two phases, regarded as special virtues, give us the virtues oi Justice and love of neighbor. Justice, as a moral habit, is that tendency of the will and mode of conduct which refrains from disturbing the lives and interests of others, and, as far as possible, hinders such in- terference on the part of others. This virtue springs from the individual's respect for his fellows as ends in themselves and as his coequals. The different spheres of interests may be roughly classified as follows : body and life ; the family, or the extended individual life ; property, or the totality of the instruments of action ; honor, or the ideal existence ; and finally freedom, or the possibility of fashioning one's life as an end in itself. The law defends these different spheres, thus giving rise to a corresponding number of spheres of rights, each being protected by a prohibition : Thou shalt not kill, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness against the honor of thy neighbor, and interfere with his liberty. To violate the rights, 1 [Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. V.; Paley, Bk. II., chs. IX. ff.; Bk. III. ; Mill, Ulilita- rianism, ch. V. ; Sidgwick, Bk. HI., chs. V., VI. ; Spencer, Inductions, chs. III.- VI. ; Justice ; Stephen, ch. V. (V.) ; Jhering, vol. I., ch. VIII. ; Porter, Part II., chs. VIII., IX., XV. ; Holland, Jurisprudence, chs. VII. fi.j Wundt, Part I., ch. III., 4, Part III., ch. IV., 5 ; Bowne, chs. VIII., X. ; Fowler and Wilson, Part II., ch. III. ; Hyslop, ch. X. ; Smyth, Part II., ch. III. ; Mackenzie, ch. X. ; Seth, Part II., ch. II. ; Dorner, pp. 382-395 ; Taylor. The Individual and the State; Ritchie, Natural Rights; Tounies, Gemeinschajl und GeselUehafi, Bk. m.; Bunze, §64. — Tr.] 600 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES to interfere with the interests of others, is injustice. All in- justice is ultimately directed against the life of the neighbor ; it is an open avowal that the latter is not an end in itself, having the same value as the individual's own life. The general formula of the duty of justice may therefore be stated as follows : Do no wrong yourself, and permit no wrong to he done, so far as lies in your power; or, expressed positively : Respect and protect the right. Let us now examine the first part of this dual formula : Refrain from doing wrong — and the virtue of rectitude or probity to which it gives rise and which is often regarded as the whole of justice. Not to do injustice is usually considered the least that morality demands. But justice, in this sense, is by no means the easiest among the virtues, nay, perhaps it is one of the most difficult, because it is the most humble, and does not flatter our vanity by its grandeur and splendor, like magnanimity, liberality, or courage. Justice enjoins limita- tion of self by submission to a general rule. Man is by nature, like all animals, intent upon self-preservation and self-asser- tion. Every creature naturally acts according to the maxim that he is the centre of the universe, that all things are means for him and his purposes. This principle governs the attitude of animals towards each other ; it also governs our attitude towards them. We draw the final consequence of this prin- ciple when we kill and devour them, thereby declaring in unmistakable terms that we are the end and they the means. The natural man's attitude towards his fellows does not dif- fer from this. The child is, at the beginning of its life, naively inconsiderate. It has regard only for itself, it does what pleases it, without being seriously concerned about the effect of its behavior upon others. Only gradually does it come to understand that its action has consequences not only for itscilf but for others. Its attention is drawn to this fact by the reaction caused by its acts in others. It deprives another child of its plaything ; that child becomes angry and reacts JUSTICE 601 accordingly. We may note a look of surprise on the face of the first child ; only gradually, after experiencing similar treatment from others, does it begin to understand the mean- ing of this surprise. Its teachers, too, help it to interpret the facts. So the individual gradually acquires the habit of con- sidering the influence of his own conduct upon the interests of others. Where the necessary experience is wanting or in- adequate, we frequently find a trace of this primitive incon- siderateness. An only child is in danger of remaining inconsiderate, obstinate, and dogmatic for the rest of its life ; it does not receive the effective training in justice which brothers and sisters impart to each other. The danger is still greater in the case of persons who grow up as privileged favor- ites, persons who are always right. It is most difficult for the children of princes and great lords to learn the lesson of justice. Even after reaching the period of mature manhood, they often show that they have not had the experiences in their youth necessary to teach them justice in the elementary form : their encroachments upon the rights of others and their ill-humor have never been opposed, and so they fail to discover the existence of other wills beside their own. The real test of a just disposition is a person's attitude towards enemies and opponents, personal or collective. We are naturally inclined to look upon everything as right that is done against an enemy ; enemies may be despised, dis- graced, hated, and abused. And it is almost still more diffi- cult to be just to collective enemies, party opponents, etc., than to personal enemies. Injustice here assumes the form of fidelity to principle, loyalty to colleagues and friends ; the good cause demands that we subscribe to it unconditionally, and that we prove our sincerity by inflicting all possible in- jury upon our opponents. The attempt to judge without prejudice and to recognize the good in the other side is cried down by partisans as the beginning of apostasy. Hence partisanship is the deadly foe of justice ; we find this truth 602 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES corroborated in every field, in political, ecclesiastical, and social, as well as in literary and scientific partisanship. For this reason men of finer sensibilities are not fitted for parti- sanship, and sbun it like the plague. This is one side of justice ; he is a just man who limits his acts so that their consequences will not interfere with the interests of others ; he is unjust who does not do so, or consciously does the opposite. The other, active, side of justice is the non-sufferance, the warding off of injustice, first, of the injustice done to others, then also of that done to self. Language characterizes this phase of justice as the sense of Justice. In a certain measure, it is the easier duty. To suffer wrong inflames us ; not only does the wrong which I myself suffer call forth anger and the impulse to revenge, but the wrong which is inflicted upon a third person also arouses in the disinterested spectator a vio- lent emotion, indignation, which may be defined as disinter- ested anger at the injustice suffered by another, and which impels us to take the part of the injured person, and to punish the evil-doer for the wrong. In the impulse of retahation we have the instinctive basis of public punishment. In the latter the sympathy of the disinterested party for the victim as against the offender, is systematized and made effective. In punishment the community reacts against the attack made upon one of its members, and defeats it. 2. The significance of justice for human conduct is shown by the effects of injustice. The immediate effect of injustice is that it disturbs or destroys the welfare of the person against whom it is done. There are also indirect and secondary effects. Injustice creates strife. The injured person seeks to re-establish his interests at the expense of his opponent, and to revenge himself for the injury suffered. The aggressor in turn defends himself, and bo a state of war arises, which has the tendency to spread to all those who are related either to the victim or to the aggressor by ties of fi'iendship or common JUSTICE 603 interests. — Another effect inseparable from injustice is that it produces a feeling of insecurity, not only in the person who suffers it, but in all those who witness it. tVhat has happened once may happen again, at any time ; what has happened to one may happen to all — this is the instinctive inference forced upon all by injustice and violence. Injustice therefore tends to destroy the state of peace and security, and to substitute for it the state of war and insecurity. This explains the perniciousness of injustice. A condition of insecurity paralyzes life and action, wherever it extends. Human conduct differs from that of animals, the conduct of civilized men from that of savages, in that it is connected and systematic ; the animal lives in the present, man reckons with the future. But arbitrary interferences on the part of others render all calculations of the future illusory. Injustice as a lawless element prevents all systematic activity and de- liberate planning. If it can break in upon us at any moment, it will be advisable to confine our actions to the present, and not to sacrifice certainty to uncertainty. Injustice, therefore, tends to undermine the foundations of truly human life. A state of war has the same effect : it is necessarily a state of insecurity for all those who actively or passively participate in it. It has the further effect of consuming and paralyzing the powers of the participants, and consequently to that extent, hinders them from solving the problems of individual and social life. Justice is, therefore, good because it has the tendency to establish and maintain a state of security, the precondition of systematized, i. e., human, activity, and peace, the precondition of social life. Injustice is bad, as a mode of conduct and habit of the will, because it tends to destroy these foundations of human welfare. 3. We can now demonstrate the teleological necessity of positive right. Positive right has its place in the state. The state represents, first of all, the united power of a nation. By 604 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES placing itself under the protection of might, the right becomes a power in the world. In law the state formulates the right as the expression of its will, and invests it with its power to overcome the resistance of individuals. The positive right may be defined as a system of rules by which the interests and functions of the individual members of the state are differ- entiated from each other, and the spheres thus limited are placed under the protection of the power of the state. The penal right defines the limits of the spheres from the negative side ; it determines which acts shall he regarded as encroach- ments or violations, and therefore punished. The private right determines them from the positive side ; it defines the spheres — in family-rights and property-rights — within which -the individual may move and still enjoy the protection of the state. The object and effect of the positive right and the protection of the same by compulsion and punishment is the prevention of wrong, hence the establishment of a state of peace and security for all the members of the community. It is the business of the system of rights, on the one hand, to assist the individual in regulating his conduct with respect to others' spheres of action ; it saves him the trouble, or at least facil- itates the process, of making difficult and complicated com- putations as to what he may do without injuring the just rights of others. It likewise checks his inclination to do wrong, by threatening evil consequences, and so gives a cer- tain steadfastness to his conduct and hinders him from in- fringing upon the rights of others. On the other hand, it also protects him, within his restricted sphere, against encroachments on the part of others. The system of rights, therefore, brings a certain degree of objective justice or legality into the life and conduct of the members of the legal community, and maintains it. But why is compulsion exercised here while so many objectionable and pernicious modes of conduct, like intern- JUSTICE 605 perance, dissipation, ingratitude, mendacity, do not occa- sion any interference on the part of the community with the individual ? This is due to the specific nature of injustice. The pernicious effects of injustice directly affect the com- munity and its conditions of life. Injustice, as has been pointed out, has the tendency to produce a state of war among the members of society. Internal war, however, is the specific disease which destroys communities ; it has the same effect, to use an old illustration, as the revolt of the members of an organic body against each other would have. A tribe or a people that suffers from this disease is, to that extent, less capable of life. Other things being equal, a second tribe or people is precisely so much superior to it in the struggle for existence as it is less exposed to internal friction, or as its arrangements for preserving internal peace are more perfect and effective. This is the teleological ne- cessity which has impelled every nation to develop a legal order and the technical means for administering the same, and which encourages it constantly to improve the system. All other offences and vices are dealt with by custom, educa- tion, spiritual ministration, and the personal insight of the individual. By opposing injustice a nation defeats attacks upon the conditions of its own existence. The history of positive right universally follows this plan. Every right is a form of protection against injustice, the destroyer of peace and social life, and as such adapted to the actual state, intelligence, and good will of the society pro- ducing it. Blood revenge was the primitive form of resisting encroachments; the clan reacted against injury as a unit, by holding the clan of the aggressor, as a unit, responsible for the acts of every member thereof. This form of right gradually yielded to a higher form of tribal and national right. The family-feud, which grows out of blood revenge, was against the interests of the people, it weakened them against the external foe and disturbed peaceful intercourse within. Hence it was at first regulated by "fines" 606 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES \_WehrgeM] — a system in which an officer of the law as the representative of the king, who is the guardian of order, co-operated — and at last self-help and personal revenge were entirely done away with. 4. This also explains the right of the community to com- pel lawful behavior on the part of the individual by force and punishment. It has a right to compel and punish because it has a right to preserve itself. And this right is at the same time a duty, because self-preservation is the first and almost only duty of the community. The explanation of the penal right forms the subject of endless debate.* Here as everywhere in practical philosophy we have the two opposing views which we have termed the teleological and intuitional-formalistic. The latter attempts to justify punishment as the immediately necessary, ethical- logical consequence of the crime ; the former explains it by its effects upon human welfare. Here, too, Kant is responsible for the reaction against the teleological conception. " The penal law," he says, " is a cate- gorical imperative." " Judicial punishment can never be in- flicted merely as a means of promoting another good for the criminal himself or for civil society, but must always be im- posed because he has broken a law ; " — and he cries " woe " upon all such as go through the serpentine windings of the eudsemonistic theory.^ And Hegel adopts the same view, adding the usual statements concerning the superficiality and triviality of those who employ their " understanding " in these matters, wliich is inadequate, because the " con- cept" is what we are after. He deduces punishment as the logical abrogation of the violation of right: "The violation of right as right is, indeed, a positive, external ' [See in addition to the works already mentioned : Spinoza, Preface to Part IV.; Bentham, chs. XIII.-XVII. ; Maine, Ancient Law, ch. II.; Hiiffding, XXXIX.; Bowne, ch. X.; Wundt, Part III., ch. III., 5 ; Nietzsche, Genmfogie, 70 ff. ; Runze, §§ 76 ff. ; Proal, Le crime et la peine; Criminal Statistics in Oettingen, §§ 37, 38, 39, 57. — Tk.] 2 Rc.Atshhre, § 49. JUSTICE 607 affair, but it is naught in itself. The manifestation of its nullity is the annihilation of that violation, which likewise appears in external form. This brings out the reality of right; its form of necessity is mediated by the abrogation of its violation." Offering violence to the criminal will is "the annulling of the crime, which otherwise would main- tain its own validity, and the restoration of the right. " ^ It is one of the strangest psychological riddles that the turbid profundity of such reflections should have been mis- taken by many of Hegel's contemporaries as the solution of the problem ; as though plays upon words and ambiguities, like nullity and abrogation, were thoughts ! For can we affect the past and make naught what has been done ? And if ab- rogation and negation cannot mean this, what do tliey mean ? That even if a thing did happen, it ought not to have happened ? And are criminals being hung and beheaded, im- prisoned and deported, simply in order to bring this out ? — But here, too, the intuitional-formalistlc theory receives support from common-sense. The latter, too, will answer the ques- tion. Why is the criminal punished ? by saying : Well, of course, because it is right, and because he deserves punish- ment ; what is there so remarkable in that ? So say also Kant and Hegel : There is nothing remarkable in this ; punishment is demanded by the categorical imperative ; punishment is the logically-necessary consequence of wrong ! It would be futile to attempt to dissuade philosophers who are in love with their formula from believing that it contains the answer to all the problems of the universe and of life. But it will perhaps be possible to convince healthy common- sense that this answer does not entirely settle the matter. So the criminal is punished because he deserves punishment ? Admirable, and undoubtedly true ! But would there be pun- ishment if it had absolutely no effect and could have none in * Naturrecht, §§ 90 £E. [Translated in part by J. M. Stenett, The Ethics of ffe.gel, 1893, pp. 94 ff. — Tr.] 608 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES the very nature of things ? Would thieves be lodged in jails and penitentiaries if that did not prevent them from stealing, either during their imprisonment or afterwards, or at least, if no one else were thereby deterred from theft ? That is hardly probable ; society would scarcely undertake to build prisons and penitentiaries if the existence of such institu- tions had absolutely no influence upon the annual number of robberies and burglaries. The victim of the criminal might, perhaps, still desire punishment to be inflicted, provided he considered confinement in the penitentiary as an evil ; other- wise, he would have no interest in the matter ; the mere "manifestation and abrogation of the wrong" would not relieve his anger. The " retrospective " theory of punishment, then, seems to be inadequate. Punishment is inflicted because a crime has been committed {quia peccatum esf) ; very true, but this because is not really the ground, but only the occasion of the punishment. The ground is to be sought in the effect, and the effect is not in the past but in the future : punishment is an evil which is inflicted upon the criminal by the authori- ties of the state in order that crime may not be committed in the future {ne peecetur). People cover up a well because a child has fallen into it, and in order that it may not happen again ; they build dams because the river inundates the fields, and in order that it may not happen again. If it were not for the in order that, the because would not determine them to act in the manner indicated. If there were no future, there would be absolutely no effects and no acts ; although it may be con- ceded that a tendency to do afterwards what ought to have been done before, even though it can do no more good, occa- sionally expresses itself in attempts at action. When the maid has broken the dish, she puts the pieces together again, and says. This is the way it was ! It is encouraging to note that the science of criminal juris- prudence is beginning to abandon the purely formalistic con- JUSTICE 609 ception of Speculative Philosophy, and is turning to the teleo- logical view. It seems to me that the influence of Hegel with his contempt for the "intelligible," i.e., the causal-teleological view, was particularly bad in this field. It led to a total neglect of the question concerning the effect of punishment ; science, it was held, had solely to determine the right. The main thing was to ascertain the number of years and days in jail or prison which ought to be imposed for each particular delict. No one ever inquired whether these punishments were suitable means for preventing crimes. The legislator fixed certain general penalties, the judge applied them to the particular cases, and this settled the matter, justice was satisfied, the crime expiated. The criminal was then turned over to the authorities whose business it was to execute the sentence. And from this quarter came the opposition to the theory. It could not escape the notice of sharpsighted and conscientious men that especially the short terms of imprison- ment — though they might satisfy " the idea of the right " and serve to "make manifest" the wrong — were by no means particularly fitted to hinder crime, nay, were wholly ineffective in many cases; that they did the very opposite. Short terms of imprisonment, without special physical priva- tions or inconveniences, hardly deter the habitual criminal, who has no social position to lose; nay, he frequently seeks tem- porary refuge in the penitentiary. For the accidental crimi- nal, on the other hand, who violates the law in consequence of poverty, opportunity, temptation, or ignorance of the law, the prison often becomes a school for crime. Here, in the com- pany of old and experienced criminals, he loses his reverence for custom and law, he forms acquaintances who afterwards cling to him and initiate him into all kinds of crimes; he loses his self-respect, his civil honor, and his ability to make an honest living. In this way his ability to resist crime is weakened on all sides ; he begins to develop into an habitual criminal. 610 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES The teleological theory, which was applied to the entire field of jurisprudence by Jhering in his work, Der Zweck im Recht,^ and particularly to the penal law by F. von Liszt in his Lehrbuck des Strafrechts,^ calls attention to the causes of crime on the one hand, and to the efficacy of punishment on the other, and will, it is to be hoped, prove more success- ful in coping with crime. For we surely all agree that our system of criminal jurisprudence by no means satisfies all just demands. A system that enables thousands of profes- sional criminals to commit the same crimes over and over again, which, with the assistance of an army of police ofB- cers, captures them each time, grants them long and tedious trials, convicting them after endless sessions and at great expense, and finally imprisons them for a few months or years, only to release them again at the expiration of their terms, for a few months, permitting them to take up their calling where they left it off, and to propagate their kind — such a system, I say, can hardly be designated as a satisfac- tory institution for the protection of society against crime.' And it is equally hard to understand the calmness with which our criminal authorities contemplate the fact that four hundred thousand persons are sentenced to prison in Prussia annually ; that is, that one out of every seventy has been in prison ! How many of the population are not punished ? 1 The Teleology of Law. ^ Handbook of Criminal Law, 3d edition, 1888. " In the Feuilleton of a Berlin paper I once read the following : " A comical scene may frequently be witnessed in the streets during these Christmas holidays. The pickpocket is now diligently engaged in shadowing his victims, who gather around the show-windows of the stores. But we may regularly notice, not far from him, a man of the law, who keeps a sharp watch upon him, and catches him by the collar as soon as he puts his hands into people's pockets.'' The writer evidently intended to remind the citizen of Berlin how well his pocket was being guarded : behind every pickpocket stands the detective, who is simply watching his chance ! — Would the burgomaster or the aldermen of a mediaeval town have regarded this scene as so comical 1 Would they not rather have declared with an angry oath : Such a system of having one thousand policemen watch one thousand professional thieves seems to be the most flagrant madness, even though there is method in it ! JUSTICE 611 Half of those who are old enough to serve time ? And what influence have these conditions upon the sentiments of the masses in reference to their relation to thcstate ? Punishment is efficacious in many ways: it may reform the criminal hy bringing him to his senses and reconciling him with the injured person and society ; it acts as a deter- rent, — in extreme cases by eliminating the criminal, that is, by killing or deporting him; it also deters all others who may show an inclination to similar crimes, for offences com- mitted with impunity invite imitation, and everybody would feel that he had been cheated if he did not follow suit. All this is perfectly self-evident. It would be awkward, of course, to regard these things as separate, independent ends of punishment; the purpose of punishment is one: to pre- serve peace and security, the condition of human life. The reform of the convict by education is not included in the purpose of punishment as such. It can easily be combined with the execution of a certain kind of punishment, namely, with incarceration; it is not, however, one of the real effects of punishment, but one of the effects of benevolence connected with it. The care of discharged criminals be- longs in the same category. Capital punishment is a subject of especial controversy. Some thinkers, following Beccaria's ^ example, have denied to the state the right to deprive any one of the right to life, because it cannot be assumed that any one would have con- sented, upon making the state contract, to be deprived of that right. And Schleiermacher holds that society should not inflict upon the individual any punishment that he would not inflict upon himself.^ Kant rejects Beccaria's argument as sophistry and as a perversion of justice ; he says it springs from the sympathetic sentimentalism of an affected hu- 1 [De delitti e delle pene, 1764. — Tr.] * [Chnstliche Sittenlehre, p. 248. Victor Hugo is a riolent opponent of capital punishment. See his Le dernier jour d'un condamne. — Tk.] 612 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES manism.* Indeed, we might ask with Justus Moeser whetbei the state has any right to permit the professional murderer to live, first, in view of the relatives of the victim, whom the state has deprived of the possibility of revenge; secondly, in view of those who are compelled to provide for the main- tenance of the prisoner ; thirdly, in view of the future pos- sible victims of his criminal impulse. Let us suppose that a man makes a regular business of abducting, robbing, and murdering servant girls in search of employment : there can be no doubt that the people's sense of justice will be sat- isfied with nothing less than the death of such a monster; they would simply regard it as an absurd outrage to keep and to support him for life at public expense. I confess, the fact that the Liberal party regards the abolition of capital punishment as one of its chief political aims, has always seemed to me to prove how little it understands the real sentiments of our people. And I further confess that I do not deem it impossible that the future will again make a more extended use of the process of extermination. That modern nations, which have for so many centuries relent- lessly exterminated worthless individuals, have for a few generations succeeded in discarding these methods does not at all prove that such a thing is permanently possible. There can hardly be a doubt that the fear of crime, which was formerly kept alive in the popular consciousness by so many death -sentences, is not so great to-day as it was one hundred years ago. I also call attention to the fact that compulsion is not con- fined to the criminal law. We find it in civil law as well ; especially where the state compels the discharge of obliga- tions based upon contract. Here, too, the reason for coer- cion is apparently a teleological one. Two persons make a contract calling for a particular service or a specific payment. The obligation is not met. Why does the law compel the 1 [Rechtslehre, Hartensteiu's edition, 149 ff.] JUSTICE 613 individual to keep his contract ? Why does it not say : That is a bargain which does not concern me ; why were you so reckless as to trust that man or to lend him money ? — Evi- dently, because it is not immaterial to the state; because it has a very essential interest, not in this particular case as such, it is true, but in the keeping of contracts in general. Without a guarantee that contracts will be kept, there could be no intercourse except in the form of exchange or cash barter, and no personal service except in the form of slavery. If, then, higher civilization is made possible only by a de- veloped system of intercourse, the perfection of legal forms and legal protection becomes a teleological necessity for intercourse. 5. From this standpoint we can also understand the duty of the individual to co-operate in supporting the positive right and in battling against injustice. He is in duty bound to resist breaches of the law, even when they do not directly affect him. This duty is recognized by the state : I am com- pelled to resist attacks upon the right by serving as a wit- ness, juror, soldier, or official. But the individual is also morally bound to protect against injustice the injured right in general, even when it\is not protected by the law. It is the virtue of the chivalrous man to defeat by personal inter- vention, or to call to account before the courts, every possible form of injustice that interferes with the right, especially the rights of the defenceless, either by violence, strategy, or temptation. We must, of course, exercise due care in this regard : for injustice and self-caused misery are fond of giving themselves the air of injured innocence. The absence of this virtue forms one of the most painful omissions in the morality of the New Testament. To work and suffer for others it recognizes as a virtue, hut of the battle against injustice and violence for the protection of others it says almost nothing. What ought the Samaritan to have done had he reached the spot a quarter of an hour 614 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES earlier and had found the robbers still at work, and had he seen only one way of rescuing their victim, that is, by attacking and killing them ? I confess, I do not know how to answer this question in the spirit of the Gospel. Moses, who strangled the Egyptian, gave us an unambiguous answer by his example ; does the New Testament give us the same answer ? It does not seem so : Peter's experience with the servant Malchus seems to point to a different solution ; the moral to be drawn from it is evidently this, Resist ye not evil, neither that which is done to yourselves, nor that which is done to others. So, too, the old Christian com- munities present us with many examples of heroic suffer- ing, but not with examples of chivalrous battles against the oppressors and persecutors of innocence. Such a type of conduct was first developed by mediaeval Christianity. No one in our times will doubt that it is a duty to resist and battle against the injustice done to others. But how about the wrong inflicted upon myself? Is it a duty to offer resistance to this also, and even to oppose it with force, should occasion demand ? Or is the defence of one's own rights merely a matter of inclination, and not a commandment of justice ? The ethics of the Gospel favors the latter view ; it nowhere insists that we assert our own rights, while it often admonishes us not to judge, not to go to law, not to take re- venge, but to forgive transgressions and to love our enemies. There has perhaps never been a time when a community calling itself Christian strictly obeyed such a command. It is to be assumed that Christians have always — at least in extreme cases — though perhaps with some misgivings, ap- pealed to the law for protection and for the punishment of evil. We know that Paul appealed to his Roman citizenship for protection against violence and injustice. Now, espe- cially, that Christian states have been established, the evan- gelical injunction, "Love and forgive your enemy," does not binder any one from going to law and causing punishment JUSTICE 615 to be inflicted by due legal process. Is this merely a human weakness, which cannot resist one of the strongest impulses, the love of revenge, or does the command not hold, at least not without limitation ? There is no doubt in my mind that the latter is the case. If the public measures which are taken to hinder injustice are necessary for the establishment of order and security, and hence make for welfare, then it will be the duty of the individual to do all in his power to support them and to carry them out. Whoever permits his rights to be inter- fered with without making legal resistance, to that extent weakens the barriers erected against injustice. Every act of injustice is directed not only against me, but against the entire legal system, and, if allowed to go unpunished, dimin- ishes the latter's power of resistance. Good-natured or cowardly compliance invites repetition and imitation; it also tempts those to do wrong who would otherwise be de- terred by fear ; and thereby endangers the rights of others. A legal community resembles a dike-union. Duty towards the community demands that even the smallest break in the dike be taken notice of and stopped up. So, too, it is the duty of every member to see to it that no breaches are made in that part of the universal defence against the tur- bulent floods of injustice which is placed under his charge, that is, in his own rights. R. von Jhering ably develops this view in his thoughtful little treatise: Der Kampf urns Recht.'^ The right, he says, is acquired and kept alive by struggle. To flee in this battle is to abandon one's moral dignity as a legal subject, and at the same time to injure one's fellow soldiers by making a breach in the ranks for the enemy to enter. The strength of the public legal system depends upon each individual's willingness to insist upon his rights as representing the universal right, and upon the universal right as represent- 1 [The Struggle, for thn Right.! 616 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES ing his own rights, and, if need be, to fight for them. An English traveller, says Jhering, remains in a town for days and days to resist the exorbitant demands of a hotel-keeper or coachman, and spends ten times the sum involved in the dispute, in order, so it appears, to defend the rights of old England. " The people laugh at him, and do not know what it all means — it would be better for them if they understood him. For in the few guldens for which the man is here fighting, there is, indeed, a piece of old England; at home in his own coimtry everybody understands him, and hence takes good care not to overcharge him. Imagine an Austrian of the same social rank and wealth in a similar situation, how would he act ? If I may trust my own experiences, not ten out of one hundred would follow the example of the Englishman. They would dread the inconvenience arising from the trouble, the notoriety, the danger of being misun- derstood, which an Englishman in England need not fear and which he calmly accepts abroad, — in short, they would pay. But there is more in the gulden which the Englishman refuses to pay, and which the Aiistrian pays, than we are apt to believe; there is a piece of England in it, and a piece of Austria, and it represents centuries of their re- spective political evolution and social life." ^ Very true; the energy with which each individual in a nation resists wrong, and the amount of wrong committed, stand exactly in inverse proportion to each other. In free nations this active side of justice, the sense of right, de- velops. In nations that are not free, the individual expects leniency, privileges, favors, mercy; here mendicancy, the tipping-system, bribery, and corruption thrive. 6. The jurist properly emphasizes the duty to respect and protect others' as well as our own rights by lawful means, and even by violent means if necessary. The moralist, on the other baud, will insist, with equal propriety, that this 1 §44. JUSTICE 617 duty is not absolute, that the duty to respect and protect the right must be limited and supplemented by the demands of equity and magnanimity. Equity demands that we voluntarily resign claims and acts to which we have an undoubted formal right, so that our own interests may not be advanced at relatively greater damage to those of others. This is a demand, not of the law, but of morality, which, it must not be forgotten, is rooted in the very nature of justice: my regard for others and their inter- ests, which are just as important as my own, will hinder me from exacting from others all that the law allows. To insist rigorously on one's rights would be violating the very spirit of justice, for justice really demands that the different interests be fairly apportioned, but it cannot, on account of its mechanical nature, wholly adapt itself to the individual cases, and hence can realize its end only imperfectly. It appeals to the fair-mindedness of the interested parties for help, and now and then expressly authorizes the judge to make revisions in the interests of equity. Magnanimity is the virtue which does not requite personal injuries, but overlooks them, and does not embrace the opportunity for revenge, even though it present itself. Christianity goes so far as to demand love of enemies : Love him who sins against you, as a brother, and not only bear him no grudge, but forgive him with all your heart, and return good for evil. The command of the Gospel seems difficult and almost unnatural. The natural man deems it right and proper to love his friends and to hate his enemies. Would it not be unjust to the former if we should treat the latter in the same way ? What would there be left for my friends if I were to treat my enemies with pure benevolence and beneficence ? And shall I endure every injury, every attack against myself and my interests without exception, and do nothing but good in return ? Would that not be encouraging and provoking 618 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES wickedness ? Has not nature herself taught all living crea- tures to resist attacks so that they may defend themselves and have peace ? Certainly, we must admit it ; and resist- ance and resentment, both private and public, are justifiable in their proper place. But they are not in every case the proper means of establishing and ensuring peace, and hence the command. Resist every infraction of the law by all law- ful means, cannot have absolute validity. A neighbor in- sults me with a frivolous remark, or treats me unkindly. Shall I summon him before court ? Shall I obtain satisfac- tion by private means ? The opportunity will surely pre- sent itself, owing to the closeness of our relations. What would be the effect ? Would he be more careful in future ? Perhaps. But another effect would surely follow: my retaliation would leave a sting in him ; he would consider himself the affronted party : For such a trifle, on account of a mere word ! he would say. He would make up his mind to pay me back at the next opportunity, and to show me at the same time that he was not afraid of me. The moment ai-rives when he can play me a trick or do me a favor, protect me against damage. He makes use of his chance by scorn- fully reminding me of my former conduct. And now it is my turn again. I simply defended my good rights before ; his present treatment of me is an intentional injury : this I shall not forget. And so we move our revenge back and forth, intensifying it as we go, making our enmity deeper each time. Here the "struggle for the right" did not bring peace, as it should have done, but the bitterest, most per- nicious war, sapping the strength of both of us. How differ- ent it would have been, had the first act of revenge been omitted, had the first act of injustice been met with com- plete, free forgiveness! Perhaps the insulting remark, which inaugurated the war of revenge, might have formed the starting-point of a lasting friendship. An opportunity was afforded for requiting the wrong; I did not embrace it, JUSTICE 619 but was sincere and kind, polite and obliging. He was sur- prised and perplexed; he felt as though I were heaping coals of fire upon his head, and resolved to wipe out the remembrance of that first occurrence. The first act of injury and forgiveness became the basis for a firm friendship be- tween us; my forgiveness and his acceptance of the same are guarantees of our mutual good will. Thus, to speak with the Apostle, evil has been overcome with good. There is no grander and more beautiful art than this; Jesus does not forget it in the beatitudes : Blessed are the peacemakers. Spinoza furnishes us with the psychological formula for it : " Hatred is increased by hatred, and can, on the other hand, be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love; and love is then greater than if hatred had not preceded it."^ Hence "the wise man {qui ex ductu rationis vivit) endeavors, so far as he can, to render back love or kindness for other men's hatred, anger, and contempt." And with a warmth not usual to him the mathematical judge of human affairs adds : " He who chooses to avenge wrongs with hatred is assuredly wretched. But he who strives to conquer hatred with love, fights his battle in joy and confidence ; he withstands many as easily as one, and has very little need of fortune's aid. Those whom he vanquishes yield joyfully, not through fail- ure, but through increase of their powers. " ^ If, then, both modes of conduct are justifiable, the ques- tion arises: How are we to limit the command of forgiveness and the command of retaliation? When is the former, when the latter, in place ? It will not be hard to give a general answer : That form of conduct is always appropriate and duti- ful which in each case tends to realize the ultimate end, the avoidance of further injustice and lasting peace. If to forget and to forgive were the means of hindering theft and of preserving the institution of property, we should undoubt- l Ethics, III., 43, 44. = Ethics, IV., 46. 620 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES edly make exclusive use of this means. If retaliation and punishment were the sole and surest means of making him peaceful and kind who treats us impolitely, unkindly, and uncivilly, we should also know what to do. The trouble is, different cases require different treatment, and it will often be impossible to determine with certainty what is the most effective, and, hence, most appropriate, method of procedure in a particular instance. It certainly cannot be indicated by moral philosophy in universal propositions or categorical imperatives. Only experienced moral tact, which takes into account all the concrete circumstances, can discover the proper course to pursue in each particular case, which, how- ever, does not exclude the possibility of error. Moral phi- losophy can perhaps merely indicate the general points of view from which each case must be considered. We may mention the following: — (1) Forgiveness is possible when the offence is directed against a particular person ; punishment is necessary when the offence is directed not so much against a particular per- son as against custom and law in general. Theft, for ex- ample, is not a crime against the particular person as such, but against the owner as such, hence, against the institution of property. To overlook it is therefore less possible than to overlook an insult which is aimed solely at myself, and does not show a general tendency to such offences. The case is different when it comes to insulting an official in the exercise of his duties, — for which reason retaliation is more in place here. The criminal law takes account of these facts in so far as it distinguishes between delicts which are prosecuted ex officio and such as are prosecuted solely upon complaint. (2) It is a fact that we are apt to be reconciled and in- clined to forgiveness by remorse. And justly so. Remorse is a sign that the offence was not the expression of the offender's permanent will, that it was the result of error, accident, haste, or carelessness. If no attention is paid to his re- JUSTICE 621 morse, if we react by punishing him or taking revenge, a revulsion of feeling is likely to ensue. His remorse vanishes, he has expiated his vrrong, nay, he is apt to' feel that he has more than expiated it, and he now has, instead of a debt to pay, a claim which he will take up as soon as opportunity offers. Punishment may, of course, be appropriate even in cases of genuine remorse, as, for example, in education; the punishment may prove the remorse, and genuine remorse may even demand punishment as an expiation, in order, however, at the same time to obtain forgiveness thereby. And if the remorse is not deep, punishment may be necessary to strengthen the memory of the will : punishment is then a reminder, an admonition. — When, however, remorse is lack- ing, when a conscious and stubborn will, when impudent malice, commits the wrong and boasts of it and rejoices in its iniquity, punishment is necessary to terrify and to break the wicked will ; perhaps the nature of the will may even be transformed in this way, for it is an undoubted fact that there have been genuine conversions among crim- inals sentenced to death. — The criminal authorities too, endeavor to take these things into account, but tliey cannot, in the very nature of things, easily adjust themselves to the particular circumstances, and to this is due the inadequacy of public punishment as compared withthat employed in educa- tion. It necessarily somewhat resembles the mechanical process of nature, which does not consider the intention, but merely the objective facts. Then, again, the judge, as a rule, has no means of testing the genuineness of remorse. If this factor were taken into consideration, the criminals would, of course, all simulate remorse, as universally happens in pen- itentiaries and other places where a remorseful demeanor is regarded as a sign of good behavior. Nevertheless, the judge is induced by a remorseful confession to assume extenuating circumstances. (3) The third item is the following : Wherever persons live 622 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES together in permanent relations, as husband and wife, brother and sister, inmates of the same house, relatives, neighbors, etc., the command of Jesus, not to forgive your brother seven times, but seventy times seven, will be especially in place. Slight collisions are always inevitable where persons live close together. Whoever insists upon his rights in every instance, makes life intolerable for himself and his surround- ings. A certain measure of toleration is an absolute precon- dition of peaceful intercourse. " Be not righteous overmuch," the word of the Preacher, applies here ; that is, be careful to give everyone his just dues, but do not always rigorously insist upon your own rights. And also remember the ninth commandment and the interpretation put upon it : Speak well of thy neighbor and turn all things to good ! To good ! This is excellent advice. Your brother is close and rather fond of money, — say he is economical and a good manager ; he has a tendency to express his views somewhat strongly and with- out regard for the feelings of others, — say he is sincere and loves the truth ; he is fonder of enjoyment and social pleasures than you deem necessary, — say he is cheerful and light- hearted. The man who cannot see the good in things, who always looks at them from the worst side, who is constantly finding fault, cannot live with men, and will do well to avoid contact with them as much as possible. Schopenhauer un- questionably acted wisely when he withdrew from the world and absolutely refused to enter into close personal relations with his fellows, such as, marriage, friendship, society. In his exclusiveness he enjoyed a tolerable peace, which other- wise would have been impossible. Dogmatic, distrustful, and revengeful as he was, he would have embittered his own life and that of others had he mingled with the world. Where, however, no permanent relations exist, where men come in contact with each other occasionally only, as is the case in business, it will be much less objectionable for one to insist upon his rights. To overlook acts of injustice and to JUSTICE 623 let them go unpunished would be apt to be misunderstood. It might he regarded as a sign of ignorance or indolence, fear or cowardice, and would invite repetition, perhaps on a larger scale. It is well known that persons who are ashamed of insisting on their rights, especially in little things, encourage that tendency to fraud which is found wherever great lords and rich people are in the habit of squandering their money. The same may happen in social intercourse. It is at times as meritorious sharply to call to account inquisitive impu- dence, insolent arrogance which boasts of despising morals, as it is to bring thieves and scoundrels to justice. But we cannot regard it as a universally binding duty to bring such offences to justice in every case. It is evidently not only right but even necessary for one to consider his own interests in such instances. The behavior of the English- man mentioned above may be the result of a praiseworthy habit, but this does not make it rational and dutiful in each particular case. A man goes to Russia ; he is cheated by a high or a low official. Is it his duty to prosecute the offender, at the risk of being compelled to carry on a hopeless and expensive law-suit, and of finally being sent to Siberia with- out any trial whatever ? It seems to me he might well con- tend that it was not his business to improve the morals of the Russian ofiicials, at least not at such a cost. The case may be different for a Russian. And so it can not be my duty to avenge every insult to which I am subjected. A street Arab makes faces at me, or throws mud at me ; surely I may pass along without turning around, and say with Epictetus, That is none of my business. A reviewer says all sorts of evil things against me, all of them being lies ; it is surely my privilege to decide whether I shall call him to account or shall console mjself with Solomon's wise saying: JVoli re- spondere imprudenti ad imprudentiam ejus, ne similis illi fias. For, indeed, the only possible answer which one can give is often simply to pay no attention to the matter. At 624 DOCTRINE OP VIRTUES AND DUTIES times, of course, it may be highly meritorious to inflict ex- emplary punishment upon a literary highwayman, that is, in so far as this will tend to protect other wayfarers, and help to develop a public conscience along these lines. 7. The Principle of Rights. Right in the subjective sense was characterized above as that sphere of interests which a person can justly command others to respect ; wrong, as an offensive encroachment upon this field. The question now arises : According to what principle is the line to be drawn which separates the spheres of the different members of a legal community from each other ? If the actions of in- dividuals were perfectly independent and did not conflict with each other, if their interests were absolutely isolated from each other, it would be the function of the riglit simply to protect this relation against arbitrariness and violence. But the case is different. The actions of each individual cross those of others, tlieir spheres of interests intersect. We might say, with Hobbes : Originally, in a fictitious natural state, every man had and insisted on bis right to have every- thing and to do anything he liked. Hence arose a collision of interests and actions, which led to " the condition of war of every one against every one." The system of rights pre- vents such a state ; it limits the activity or the liberty of each individual to a particular sphere, and at the same time de- fends him in this against the encroacliments of others. Or, with Hobbes : The legal order consists in each individual's resigning his right to everything (Jus in omnia), and receiv- ing in return a limited and protected sphere. According to what principle shall the lines be drawn between the conflict- ing rights and interests ? The principle of equality seems to suggest itself as the most immediate and natural principle : Each man shall count for one ; the interests of each man are as important as those of every other one. This is the principle with which the advo- cates of natural rights antagonized the positive and historical JUSTICE 625 system of law prevailing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Starting from the hypothesis of the natural equality of individuals, they demanded equal rights for all. The con- clusion would be correct if the premises were true. Equality of natural capacities and powers demands equality of rights in perfecting and exercising them, as well as equal rights to the means of their realization. Positive law has, however, never acknowledged this prin- ciple of the absolute equality of all individuals ; and even the upholders of natural rights have always accepted certain restrictions as self-evident. There never has been equality of rights between adults and children, and it has never been de- manded. Children, it is true, are recognized as having rights, e. g., property-rights, but they are hindered from exercising them, and so, too, their personal freedom is subjected to the most decided limitations. The positive law universally shows the same differences between the rights of tlie sexes : women are restricted in the exercise of certain rights, at least married women, while they are almost entirely devoid of other rights, like public rights. It is true, some of the most modern advocates of natural rights demand the abolition of the legal inequalities between the sexes: equal rights in public and private law are claimed for women. And we may undoubt- edly say that our previous development has been tending towards equalization. Yet the majority of persons to-day, women as well as men, do not regard it as probable or desir- able that the rights of men and women be made absolutely equal.— Why not ? Is the vis inertice of institutions the only reason ? Hardly. Nay, the inequality of rights corresponds to an inequality of natural powers and natural spheres of action, and so long as this exists, the inequality of rights seems to be natural and necessary. To the military and political functions of the man — and here we are not to think chiefly of speech- making and voting — correspond certain political rights; to his economic position corresponds his right to be the exter- 626 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES ASD DUTIES nal economic representative of the household. "Woman's most important function, on the other hand, still is — however great the changes of these latter days may have been — the management of the home, and it will continue to be so, as long as the life-conditions of man himself remain essentially what they are. The rights of woman are determined by this relation : it is her privilege to rule the home, a right which is vouchsafed her not only by custom, but by law. Beside the legal differences based on age and sex, the his- torical legal systems always show other differences which rest upon class distinctions. Freemen and slaves or serfs, nobles and citizens, property holders and the propertyless always had different rights. This now was the point against which the upholders of natural rights directed their real attacks, and here they were essentially successful in enforc- ing their claim of equal rights. Ever since the great revolu- tion, on the eve of the nineteenth century, which affected all relations of right, there have been no real class rights in the European states ; these have entirely disappeared from private law, and are being gradually eliminated from public law ; a few remnants, e. g., in the form of a property qualification for voters or of privileges conceded to certain classes with regard to certain offices, are all that is left of the old system. — Why has the equality of rights prevailed here ? Surely because the differences in capacity and the corresponding differences of function and duty have gradually disappeared : the classes themselves have been gradually dissolved and with them the legal class-distinctions. Natural differences still exist between men, differences in mental and moral endowment and education, differences in inclination and skill, but they are no longer incorporated in classes, as was largely the case in former times. This, tlien, would be the principle which seems, on the whole, to have governed the development of positive right: the spheres of rights of the different members of the legal JUSTICE 627 community are staked off according to the spheres of action corresponding to their natures and powers. Equality of rights extends as far as there is general liatural equality ; corresponding to the great and essential differences inherent in the nature of things, we have differences in rights. Perhaps the upholders of the theory of natural rights can also adopt this principle. The most desirable thing would be for each individual to exercise, with absolute freedom and an unlimited control of all the means, all the functions of life which lead to and are included in the perfection of his natural capacities. This ideal of individual perfection would at the same time be the ideal fulfilment of duty towards the community : the richer and more varied the individual life, the richer would be the collective life. But since such absolute freedom and such unlimited rights are impossible where many live together, and since it becomes necessary to limit the liberty of each individual conformably with the freedom of all the rest, such restrictions must be made for the general good that the greatest possible amount of power and action may be realized in the community. This will be the case when the spheres of right are marked out according to the powers and capacities of the individuals. And such an arrangement could not, as it seems, be opposed from the standpoint of the individual: the apportionment would be equitable. Or, if we consider the functions of the in- dividuals from the standpoint of the community, as duties, we can say that rights are to be apportioned according to duties. 8. Incongruity between Law and Morals} If the fullest and freest development and exercise of human powers and cap- acities is tlie highest good of human life, the legal order may, according to the above, be defined as a mechanism in the service of the good, whose function it is to harmonize many individual forces, with the least expenditure of energy, or to balance many partially crossing spheres of interest, with the 1 [See also Hoffding, XXXVII, — Tr.] 628 DOCTRIXE OF VIRTUES AlfD DUTIES least injury to those interests. The more perfectly a posi- tive legal order accomplishes this result, the more closely it realizes the purpose of the law, or what ethics demands and expects of the law. But the legal system can never absolutely realize this end. It lies in the nature of a mechanism to act mechanically, that is, according to general laws, and not according to the re- quirements of a particular case. The legal system acts in the same way : individual cases are decided according to general rules. We may conceive of a system deciding indi- vidual cases only; we may conceive of a legal community which, either as a collective body, or through some organs or other, without binding itself or its judicial organs in any way, finds and determines the right from case to case, by free deliberation. There is in reality no such law ; every- where the law has the form of universal rules ; the right of the individual case is ascertained by subsuming it under one of these rules. The reason for this is obvious : only when there are general rules or laws, can the individual know and do the right with certainty and ease, and only in this way, too, can the law be protected against the arbitrariness of those administering it. If the right were ascertained from particular decisions only, then the individual who is in doubt about the limits of his own rights and those of others, would have to judge according to analogous cases — an uncertain method — while the subjective notions and inclinations of the judge would furnish boundless opportunities for error and partiality. The safety of the law depends upon its uni- formity. The legal order here resembles the natural order ; a nature without uniformity, in which all events occurred without rule, say according to absolute caprice, would be unknowable, and practical adaptation to its workings would be impossible. The uniformity of the process of nature is teleologically necessary for us as acting and knowing beings ; and the uniformity of law is necessary for the same reason. JUSTICE 629 But this very uniformity of nature is fatal to our purposes in particular instances. All our movements presuppose tliat there are no exceptions to the law of gravitation, and tlieir certainty depends upon the fact that our body univer- sally obeys it, like everything else. At times, however, it causes injury and death. Precisely the same may be said of the legal order : as a rule it tends to preserve and produce what is by nature right, but cases occur in which, owing to its necessary mechanical operation, the moral law is violated and broken by the positive law. The particular cases exhibit countless individual differences, while the law it- self is general, conceptual, schematic. The transition from childhood to maturity is, as a matter of fact, a continuous process of development, which differs for different individ- uals. The law, however, determines in a rigid formula, that a person is not of age until he is twenty-one years old. Even if on the day before he reaches his majority the guardians, against the will of the ward, take the most serious and ruinous measures affecting his rights, these will have legal force and will be upheld by the courts. The law protects contracts which were made in legitimate business, without regard to whether their provisions still conform to justice or not. Owing to unforeseen circumstances, things may so have changed as to cause the ruin of one of the contracting parties should the contract now be carried out, perhaps with- out substantially benefiting the other party. The law is not concerned about that. It pitilessly orders the eviction of a tenant who has unsuspectingly signed a ruinous con- tract, or the eviction of a debtor who has been robbed of his patrimony by a usurer who has remained within the pale of the law. It proceeds on the assumption that everybody always acts with a complete knowledge of the law and with a full understanding of his interests, an indispensable hypoth- esis which, however, as we all know, is false. The same is true of criminal law. It embraces under 630 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES the same formula two acts which are, subjectively or morally considered, infinitely different from each other. Murder is the intentional killing of a man with malice aforethought, and is punishable with death. This definition includes the open and honest killing of a dishonorable and base scoundrel who has ruined the honor and happiness of my family through some dastardly act, without having rendered himself amenable to the criminal law, as well as the most heinous deed of the poisoner and assassin. It is true, the criminal law attempts to make itself more elastic where the discrepancy is greatest, in order to adapt itself to the individual case : the discre- tionary powers of the judge in reference to the punishment to be inflicted, the consideration of extenuating circumstances, and the possibility of pardon are means to this end. But it is clear that these safeguards are not sufficient to counteract the errors caused by the mechanical operation of the law. Hence it happens that the positive law at times demands and does what contradicts the idea of justice in a particular case : summum Jus gumma injuria, — an inevitable conse- quence of the universality and uniformity of the law. Absolute adaptation of the law to the particular instance is possible only when the law appears in the form of a personal will, as is the case in home education. From this it follows that it may, under certain circum- stances, be morally possible for a person to do what the law does not allow. It is legally wrong for a man to dispose of a thing entrusted to his care, to the detriment of the owner ; such an act is punishable as a breach of faith. And yet it may be morally right. In case he can avert a great calamity from himself and others only by appropriating the thing entrusted to him, he may perhaps do so without com- punction. He may be guilty and punishable before the law, but before the tribunal of conscience and morality he is with- out blame. It is worthy of note that the law itself, in a certain sense, JUSTICE 631 recognizes the possibility of such cases, in that it exempts from punishment criminal acts " when tl\p act was committed in consequence of a condition of necessity, for which the agent was not responsible, and which could not have been averted in any other way, and in order to save the body or life of the agent or one of his family from an imminent danger."^ Hence, when a man on the verge of starvation appropriates and consumes what belongs to another, or when he is in danger of freezing to death, and burns his neighbor's fence, he is exempt from punishment. In practically defeating itself the law evidently aims to avoid a conflict with morality or the idea of justice. And this is right, for it would simply destroy the faith in its own justice and necessity if it were to treat such cases according to the formula : Whoever ap- propriates anything belonging to another in violation of the law, will be punished with imprisonment for theft. Berner^ considers the definition of the term condition of necessity (Notstand) in the Imperial Criminal Code too narrow. He is right. If a man in serious danger of losing his entire for- tune slightly encroaches upon the rights of another, say by tearing down his neighbor's fence or by entering a dwelling or garden against the will of the owner, in order to save his house from fire or flood, it is evidently not possible to punish him for destruction of property or trespass. Or let us suppose a man compels an unwilling third party, by threats or force, to do or leave undone a trifling act in order to save a total stranger's life. It is not morally possible to condemn him for interfering with the personal liberty of another. Berner thinks it would be wise not to define the concept of necessity at all, but to leave the matter entirely to the discretion of the judge. In this respect, too, I agree with him. In order to have sufficient universality the definition could hardly read otherwise than as follows: In case it is possible to preserve my own or 1 Beichsstrafgesetzbuch, Imperial Criminal Code of Germany, § 54. 2 Slra/recht, § 57. 632 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES others' vital interests only by doing less damage to the rights of others, a condition of necessity exists, which renders the infringement of others' rights exempt from punishment. It is obvious that no legislature could enact such a law. Its indefi- niteness would make all other laws uncertain : for how shall we define a vital interest ? What a field such a definition would open to the artifices of the lawyer! If we leave the matter to the judge, without tying him to a definition or con- fusing him with a vague principle, we may, I believe, assume that he will hit upon the right with the tact peculiar to a healthy common-sense that has been sharpened by judicial experience. On the other hand, I cannot agree with Berner when he de- fends the notion of an actual Notrecht {right of necessity), which the Imperial Criminal Code avoids. It may be morally justifiable to do what is contrary to the juridical right, but this cannot, as it seems to me, be defined juridically as right. That would mean a right to violate the right. The law can grant exemption from punishment only under certain circum- stances. Perhaps it would be better to speak of a Notunrecht (necessary unright or wrong') in analogy with the Notlilge (lie of necessity), a wrong which, objectively considered, is un- doubtedly a wrong, but which cannot be judged and treated as a wrong under the existing objective and subjective conditions. Hence, the law itself recognizes in the notion of necessity and its influence upon the legal estimate of an act, that it may, owing to its logical-mechanical character, actually result in doing wrong, that is, decide contrary to the idea of justice. The idea of justice demands that equal interests be treated as equal, unequal interests as unequal. As a rule, the law takes no account of the relative value of conflict- ing interests : it simply decides according to general formal rules, and is obliged to do so. But under totally abnormal circumstances it goes back even to the very source of the decision : wherever there is an absolute discrepancy between JUSTICE 633 i,ne interests involved, the larger ones take precedence over the smaller ones, without regard to the formal law. Inasmuch as such corrections are, and can be, ma3e only in extreme cases, it follows that the enforcement of the law must in many instances result in decisions which do not satisfy the idea of justice. 9. This is one incongruity between law and morality : it may be morally possible to do what is legally impossible. More frequent and more important is the other case : it may be legally possible to do what is morally impossible ; a man may be guilty of the most serious violations of the moral duty of justice and yet remain strictly within the limits of the law. The positive law defines, we may say, only a part of the actual right. The mechanical nature of the legal order makes such a limitation necessary. A legal system attempting to enforce the complete realization of the idea of justice in the acts of men would, as may readily be seen, necessarily lead to a most intolerable state of insecurity and tyranny. Hence the legal order confines itself to enforcing that minimum of righteous acts without which human social life would not be possible. It thereby, of course, leaves a wide margin for injuries and the unjust assertion of individual interests at the expense of those of others. It does not enforce the payment of a just wage, but simply of the stipulated one ; it does not punish the delivery of goods inferior to those which the con- tract calls for, but only fraud ; it does not compel a man to give to every one the honor which is due him, but merely pun- ishes affronts. A general survey of all the spheres of rights will bring out this discrepancy between the demands of the law and the demands of morality. The legal spheres, as we noticed before, correspond to the great spheres of action or the circles of interests, for the pro- tection of which the legal order exists. The first and narrow- est sphere of interests is that which we may embrace under the heading, hody and life-' Encroachments upon this domain 634 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES are made by homicide, isfi urement, assault and battery, and all attacks upon life and health. Protection against such crimes forms an important part of all law ; in the oldest legal systems it occupies the most conspicuous place. The laws of the ancient Germanic races, for example, consist largely in the determination of the amount of blood-money to be paid for every kind of injury against body and life. If we mean by encroachments upon this domain only physical assaults, then the law seems to leave no room for infractions. In fact, however, every hurt is directed against body and life, and so boundless opportunity is offered for unpunishable offences against others : such as causing them annoyance, arousing their anger or grief, exploiting and defrauding them. This is what the Gospel has to say in the matter : " Whoso- ever hateth his brother is a murderer." A second sphere of interests is bounded by the family, the expanded individual life. Encroachments upon this domain are made by adultery, abduction, substitution of children, seduction, and similar crimes. The more pronounced and tangible forms of such offences are reached by the criminal law; the more subtle forms of disturbing the peace of the home and the family, tale-bearing, intriguing, by wliich hus- bands are estranged from their wives and parents from their children, do not come within the reach of the law ; think of Othello's friend, lago ! A third sphere of interests is defined by property, which includes the sum-total of external means of self-preservation and voluntary action. Encroachments upon this field are made by robbery, theft, blackmail, fraud, forgery, embezzlement, usury, and all such offences as come under the head of crimes against property. Here again the criminal law cannot reach the more subtle methods by which property is illegitimately acquired at others' expense. In spite of the efforts of the law to punish the offenders, the inventive genius of the lower and higher criminal classes always outwits the law. JUSTICE 635 As a fourth sphere of interests may be mentioned honor, or ideal self-preservation. Encroachments upon this domain are made by insults, false reports, slander. In these cases, much more than in the preceding ones, the criminal law can reach only the more flagrant and careless, but not the more subtle and shrewd violations, which are not the less injurious. There are a thousand anonymous, indirect, undiscoverable ways of blasting a man's reputation for which a penal formula never can be found. The fifth sphere of interests is the free exercise of volition. Attacks upon the liberty of others are made by kidnapping, illegal arrest, compulsion, threats. Breaches of domestic peace may also be placed in this list. In the primitive legal codes protection was afforded against this class of offences by threatening with punishment every one who made a slave of a fellow, contrary to the law. Legal slavery and serfdom no longer exist among us. Yet even in our day forms of depend- ence are not wanting which closely resemble actual slavery. We may regard the laws which have been enacted for the pro- tection of labor during the last half century as a continuation of the legislation in defense of individual liberty against new forms of slavery. No one enjoys freedom in the full sense of the term whose life and strength are utilized merely as means to others' ends. Hence, whoever uses men in this way, or attempts to reduce them to such a state or to keep them in it, acts contrary to the law of justice, which demands that the freedom of others be respected. Finally, we may also add a sixth sphere of interests, which is closely connected with the fourth and fifth, the spiritual life, which expresses itself in convictions, views, beliefs, religion, morality, and habits of life. Persecutions, aspersions, open or concealed signs of contempt, scornful neglect, importunate attempts at conversion, are some of the forms of interfer- ence with this field. The inner state which tends to such forms of injustice, we are in the habit of calling intolerance. 636 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES It has its natural roots partly in man's dependence and need of society, the gregarious instinct, partly in his arrogance and the conceited belief in his own infallibility. The majority of men are sure of their ground only when their fellows are going in the same direction, thinking the same thoughts. Hence, they demand that everybody accommodate himself to them. Deviations from the common rule are regarded as disturbances and give offence, and hence all means are em- ployed that seem suited either to bring the dissenter into har- mony with his fellows or to remove him from view, and to deter others from imitating his example. Arrogance has the same effect upon the leaders of the masses. They regard it as an intolerable presumption on the part of an individual to refuse to follow their leadership, for does he not thereby tacitly accuse the appointed authorities of error ? What would happen if everybody were to dare such a thing ? An example must therefore be made. The opposite habit of mind is called toleration ; liberality of mind would perhaps be a more appro- priate term. A liberal education shows itself in the ability to understand and to recognize what is strange and different. It is acquired only by frequent contact with the extraordi- nary, be it personal, literary, or historical. In narrow spheres the mind remains narrow ; nations, classes, scholas- tic sects, religious communities, which live for themselves and scarcely come in contact with the customs and opinions of others, are universally conspicuous for their intolerance. This is a field in which the law is most powerless. It can reach violations only when they can be construed as libels, which is not always the case. And yet such offences may cause serious injury ; even mere intrusive attempts at conver- sion ultimately become unbearable. The law is powerless against them. Nevertheless, toleration is not a favor, but a right : morally, every one has the right to demand that we do not interfere with his habits, his convictions, and his thoughts if he is determined to adhere to them; and it is a duty to JUSTICE 637 respect this right, provided, of course, the individual's be- havior does not violate the rights of others., I have the right to win over others to my ways of thinking and acting, only by example and by means of persuasion, and in the latter case I must respect the rights of others to their own opinions. — The difficulty arises with the question : To what extent have tastes, habits, assertions, opinions, of which we cannot morally approve, a claim to toleration, that is, to what extent shall we concede to them equal rights ? It is obvious that I have not the right to censure or to express my contempt for every statement which cannot be justified morally, or which does violence to my moral sense or taste. And it is equally obvious that I am not bound in duty to allow everything to pass with- out conti'adiction : it may be in the highest measure justifi- able to express my contempt openly. Here again no formula can be given which will enable us to decide each particular case. We must leave it to tact to discover what is proper under these circumstances. CHAPTER X LOVE OF NEIGHBOEi 1. Beside justice, the negative side of benevolence, we have love of neighbor, the complementary, positive side. We may define it as that habit of the will and mode of conduct which assists those in want, and strives to promote the wel- fare of others by active sympathy. — t is the great command- ment of Christianity. In the last jurlgment man's worth will be measured by this standard. " Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, — I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me in : naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick, and ye visited me : I was in prison, and ye came unto me." Three times more these works of mercy are enumerated, — a sermon powerful in its grand simplicity. The commandment is so simple and clear that no doubt can arise as to its meaning. I meet a hungry man ; what shall I do ? — Give him what you have. — Very well. Ten and a hundred others come; shall I give to each ? Shall I give until I have nothing left for myself ? And shall I not await their coming — shall I seek them out ? I hear that my neighbor is sick and in want ; I visit him, I help and console him, as I [Paley, Bk. III., Part II. ; Sidgwick, Bk. in., ch. IV. ; Spencer, Inductions, chs. VIL, VIII ; Ethics of Social Life, Pta. V. VI ; Porter, Part IT., chs. VIl.. XI.-XIII. ; Hoffding, XII. a, XXXIV., XXXV. ; Wundt, Part III., ch. H., 3, 4; ch. IV., 3, 4; Dorner, pp. 395-403, 605-624; Runze, § 79, § 60; Statistics, Oettingen, § 36. — See also Lecky, History nf European Morals, 11., 85-101, and references under ch. VIII. supra, — Tb.1 LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 639 well as I can. Shall I go farther ? Shall I hunt up the sick and the needy everywhere ? I am sure that there are always hundreds of them in this city, and that they need help and consolation ; shall I always be on the road from one to the other ? And what is to become of my own affairs in the meanwhile ? Shall I calmly neglect them and always look out for others ? There are hundreds of families in the land whom I might assist, by word and by deed, in bettering their conditions: sliall I visit all of them, shall I look for them, advise them and help tliem ? Is this the meaning of the commandment of love of neighbor ? It is easy to see that in that case I should have neither time nor strength left for myself and my own business. The commandment would defeat itself. If it were a duty, always and under all circumstances, first to look after the affairs of others, before attending to one's own, the perfect fulfilment of the law by all would lead to a complete confu- sion of all human things, to an absurd interchange of duties. If every one would follow Jesus's advice to the rich young man and " sell whatsoever he hath and give to the poor," the result would be a ceaseless circulation of commodities, or rather there would be no one left to buy and receive tliem. The law taken universally destroys itself. It presupposes that there are others who desire to buy and receive, regard- less of the law. This commandment must, therefore, be somewhat re- stricted, or more narrowly defined, if it is to hold as a uni- versal moral law. We may perhaps consider the matter from the following points of view. (1) The duty to care for the welfare of others is limited, first, by the duties which grow out of one's own life. The individual's first duty is to develop and exercise the capacities and powers which are given him, and to make his own life beautiful and good. His own individual life is the field which it is his special mission to cultivate. For this work he is 640 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES especially fitted by natural inclination and insight. In the last analysis, every man knows what is good for him better than anybody else. Care for the welfare of others should therefore not prevent the performance of this most immediate duty. This principle undoubtedly governs our actual behavior and judgment. If a rich and talented young man, alarmed by the command of the Gospel, were to sell his small inheritance and give to the poor, if he were to abandon his studies and nurse the sick in their homes or in the hospitals, without being specially qualified for such work, we should not approve of his course. We should praise his self-sacrifice and humility, but we should not applaud his conduct and set it up as an example for others to follow, nay, we should even say that he could and ought to have put his talents to better use. Had he quietly continued his studies, had he become an able physician, preacher, or teacher, his own life would have been richer and more beautiful, and he could have done more for others. And so we shall be obliged to say : Each person does the most for himself and others when he makes the most of himself. Raphael and Goethe benefited humanity simply by unfolding the inborn capacities of their natures. Wenn die Rose selbst sich schmiickt, Schmiickt sie auch den Garten. We cannot question the validity of the universal proposi- tion. The difficulty lies in its application to concrete condi- tions. Is a particular act which I do for others compatible with my own duties ? My friend is sick, I devote my entire time to his cure, without hesitation. But he remains an invalid; the physicians send him to a different climate; shall I, can I, accompany him, sacrifice my education, my life for him ? This cannot be decided by the general for- mula of duty, but only by a consideration of the concrete cir- cumstances ; it will ultimately be decided not by the reason LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 641 but by the heart. And, as a rule, we shall feel inclined to applaud the man who obeys his heart more than his reason in these things. We admire the heroism of a woman who resolves to follow her husband into solitude, into exile, or into imprisonment. We respect the sister of charity who sacri- fices her life and gives up everything to nurse strangers upon their sick-beds during the long weary days and nights. We say it is altogether possible that such a nature develops and exercises the gifts with which it is endowed, a warm heart, a skilful and tender hand, a consoling courage, most perfectly ill such a calling, and so realizes the fullest and most beau- tiful form of life possible. But — what is good for one is not good for all. (2) The duty of caring for the welfare of my neighbor must be limited in another way ; I must guard against destroying his independence. My act must not weaken his indepen- dence ; otherwise it ceases to be beneficent, nay, it may become an evil, for self-reliance is a general precondition of a healthy and normal life. The object of all help is, after all, to make help superfluous. The matter is self-evident when it comes to systematic and permanent aid. In education we have an example of the most comprehensive and deliberate care for others. It is governed solely by the consideration that we must train the pupil so that he can take care of himself. We call a mother irrational who cannot resist her child's entreaties to prepare his lessons for him, we cannot praise a father who constantly undertakes to solve the prob- lems for his young son which life is beginning to put to him. Not to solve problems, but to put the proper problems, that is the real function of the educator. In no human relation has true beneficence a different function, —it realizes its end only when it succeeds in making the person self-sustaining. This is especially true of all economic assistance : the problem is to remove the need for help. (3) There is finally a third restriction, or, rather, narrower 642 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES determination, of the universal duty of love of neighbor : that made necessary by our special duties toward special neighbors. Every man is related to persons who have special claims upon his benevolence and active sympathy, — to children and parents, relatives and friends, servants and laborers, neighbors and inmates of the same house. His strength and possessions belong to these first of all. If any one were to give away his fortune to strangers and beggars or to all kinds of chari- table enterprises, and were to let the members of his own household suffer want, or if a mother were to accept the presidency of seven benevolent associations, and shamefully to neglect her own children, we should not be very lenient in our judgment of them. We should say : first duty, then the super- erogatory ; first perform your particular duties and then search for further problems to solve. By these special con- ditions the virtue of charity or love of neighbor is confined to a fixed channel, as it were, through which it flows as a per- manent stream and fructifies its banks. Here, too, everybody knows with some degree of certainty what is good for those nearest to him, but it is much more difficult and often impos- sible to tell how to help strangers. And here, too, we must think of the collective bodies to which the individual belongs. The community and the nation have legitimate claims upon him, and their permanent charitable institutions supply him with a safe channel in which to exercise his sympathy with others' welfare. The formula of the love of neighbor, Care for the welfare of others, must therefore be limited and supplemented as follows : In so far as this can be done without neglecting the problems of your own life, without violating the special duties which arise from your special relations to individuals and collective bodies, and finally, without weakening the self- reliance of others. 2. Common-sense, by beneficence, means above all so-called almsgiving, and popular opinion is to this day somewhat in- LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 643 clined to regard almsgiving as absolutely meritorious ; hence a word about it will not be out of place. Moral philosophy cannot subscribe to this view, except to a very limited extent. Promiscuous almsgiving perhaps results in more evil than good. It is particularly apt to violate the second of the above mentioned provisions : it has neither the intention nor the effect of making the recipient economically independent; only too often does it educate parasites, who are a pleasure neither to themselves nor to others. "We give a beggar an alms. The direct effect is that the man's hunger is satisfied. But another effect necessarily follows : the recip- ient is taught to expect that the next time he is hungry some one will feed him again. The gift will therefore encourage him to believe that there is another, perhaps more successful and at any rate more convenient, means of gaining a liveli- hood than labor, that is, begging. If a beggar's life is not a good life, then almsgiving, which promotes beggary, is not beneficence. — We frequently hear people complaining of the impudence of mendicants : Here comes the same young beg- gar who was here yesterday ; but won't I give him a piece of my mind ! — It seems to me the beggar might say : I see nothing impudent in my behavior ; I was hungry yesterday and you gave me money to satisfy my hunger ; conditions are pre- cisely what they were yesterday ; why do you want to behave differently to-day ? I am not impudent, but you are incon- sistent. I trusted in your tacit declaration that you would support me in case of need ; consequently I have come back, and now you want to abuse me ? — I do not see what answer the almsgiver could make, except this : I did not clearly see what I was doing yesterday, and therefore beg your pardon for having raised expectations which I cannot or will not fulfil. And perhaps he might, to be thoroughly honest, say to himself : When I gave the alms, nothing was really further from my thoughts than the welfare of the stranger ; it was simply a w;ay of getting rid of him. Habit, convenience, or 644 DOCTRINE OF VIKTCES AND DUTIES perhaps the fear of a wicked face, prompted me to put my hand into my pocket. Indeed, true charity acts differently. It tries, first of all, to find out what is the cause of the trouble ; without a knowledge of the causes of the distress it is absolutely impos- sible to render assistance. Promiscuous almsgiving is like quackery, which, without investigating the disease, prescribes a cure-all. If the trouble is due to an unhappy accident, causing temporary embarrassment, the philanthropist will help to overcome it by word and by deed. If it is due to permanent disability, he will endeavor to assist the person in obtaining permanent support. If aversion to work is the reason for mendicancy, he will refuse to recognize and foster this branch of industry by alms. Of course, it is much easier to give the beggar a nickel and to dismiss him than to take an interest in him, which latter indeed may not always be possible, owing to the " anonymousness " of metropolitan life. But whoever cannot or will not help has no right to dabble in the affairs of a fellow-man. Of late years, the authorities have repeatedly prohibited the giving of alms to mendicant vagabonds ; a measure which is justifiable in principle. Care- less beneficence is really maleficence, a crime against the beggar, whom it encourages, as well as against others, who are tempted by the example to follow the same life, and finally also against those who are overrun by the army of tramps which owes its existence to such negligence. If the flooding of a country with beggars is a plague, it is evidently an offence against the welfare of the country to encourage the thing. To be sure, the prohibition of mendicancy and almsgiving ought simply to be the other side of organized public charity, which finds work for the unemployed and helps those in need. Moreover, we must not imagine that almsgiving to beggars and tramps is the only form of careless charity. There are, beside these vulgar forms, also elegant forms of begging, LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 645 which are no less dangerous to welfare. How many a great house scatters the germs of ruin among its clients in the shape of presents, gifts, and favors ! They are pampered, made covetous, shameless, beggarly, envious, mendacious, thiev- ish, and the consequence is their benefactors usually grow tired of them, and, if possible, get rid of them by referring them to some public charity. In such houses much is said of the wickedness and ingratitude of the human race. The story is told that Max Joseph, the first King of Bavaria, received from the general treasurer one thousand guldens every mornmg for " charity." When this sum was spent — and it did not last very long, for beggars and needy persons of every rank and station crowded around him as soon as he made his appear- ance, — " he gave orders upon the bankers, the sinking-fund, the lottery-fund, the war-economy-treasury. His mania for giving was carefully nourished by those who benefited by it, and he grew indignant at every measure of economy, regard- ing it as an encroachment upon his rights. While money was wanting for the most urgent needs, and the officials had to wait for their salaries for months, the beggars lived in luxury." ^ This form of " charity " was evidently a perversion of the duties of the royal office, a crime against the subjects from whose pockets the money was taken, and against the parasites whom it raised. It is a proof of the multitude's weakness for show, that kings and lords of this kind enjoy their favor and are loved and praised for their " goodness." There is a good Italian proverb : Si buon che vol niente, so good that he is good for nothing. It can hardly be denied that Christianity has fostered this kind of beneficence. Passages are not wanting in the New Testament which suggest such a confusion of love of neigh- bor with almsgiving, and at the same time seem to recom- l Perthes, Polit. Personen und Zustande zur Ze.it der franzSsischen Revolution, I., 2, 448. 646 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES mend almsgiving as promising future retribution. A passage from Chrysostom, which I quote from Uhlhorn's work, Die Liebesthdtigkeit in der alten Kirche,^ shows this perversion in a marked degree. He praises charity : " She is the queen among the virtues, who swiftly raises man into the heavens, and is the best mediator. Charity has mighty wings ; she pierces the air, lifts herself beyond the moon, rises above the beaming sun, and extends to the heights of heaven. But she does not rest there; she penetrates the heavens, hastens through the hosts of angels and the choir of the archangels and all the higher hosts, and places herself before the throne of the King himself. Learn this from the Holy Scripture, which says : ' Cornelius, thy prayer is beard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.' This means : Though you have many sins, if you have alms for your inter- cessor, fear not ; they call for the payment of the debt and bear the signature in their hands." In another place he com- pares almsgiving to the prices at the fair : " Here we buy justice cheaply, for a piece of bread, a ■worn-out coat, a drink of cold water. So long as the fair lasts let us buy our sal- vation with alms." It is plain, here the object is no longer the welfare of others, but one's own good — whether in this world or in the world to come is immaterial. And there can be no doubt that the welfare of others cannot be promoted by such charity, which is solely intent upon purchasing rewards or exemption from punishment. Still, I am far from believ- ing that the charity practised by the Christiau church always exhibited this trait of calculating speculation. Though the hope of reward was apt to be mingled with it, it was not often the only effective motive. And perhaps Christianity did more good, on the whole, in its educative influence, than harm. A particularly deplorable form of almsgiving has been developed of recent years : the charity-craze. Misfortune, 1 p. 272. LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 647 poverty, and misery are made the pretexts for entertainments of all kinds, such as concerts, theatrical performances, balls, bazaars at which elegant and beautiful ladies bargain, play, and flirt with elegant and rich gentlemen, all for sweet charity's sake. We smoke, we breakfast, we gamble, we dance, all for charity ; new-fashioned mendicant orders are founded, with priors, decorations, and honors, — all for the sake of the poor, of course, but at the same time we enjoy the thought of how kind-hearted we are, which is no more than right, and get a little pleasure for ourselves, according to the formula in the second part of Faust : Hoch ist der Doppelgewinn zu sehatzen : Barmberzig sein und sich zugleich ergetzen.^ I must confess that this union of amusement and " charity " seems to me an extremely sad sign of the times. This play- ing with distress shows how insensitive certain social classes have become to the seriousness and wretchedness of life. "We may say the same of many of the associations which make a specialty of collecting alms. A committee is ap- pointed to feed poor children ; the ladies X, Y, Z, have warm hearts, and it is so interesting to belong to a com- mittee, to hold meetings, and to read one's name in the news- papers. A circular is issued, collectors are employed and equipped with receipt-books, for much money is needed for charity. And now the charity begins. Three collectors work four hours each day, for the great families who are visited are late risers and, besides, they do not like to be disturbed at their meals. At the end of the year the books are balanced : five thousand marks have been contributed by three thousand subscribers; from this sum subtract three thousand marks for the collectors, printing of the report, and advertisements, and you have a sum-total of two thousand marks for charity. — The collectors proved a veritable plague to those who were [1 Lo, now ! what double gains your deed requite I You show compassion, and you take delight.] 648 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES appealed to. Have the poor children been benefited ? I have not much faith. The sympathy of one individual for another is really helpful, and the systematic help of the community can at least keep tlie wolf from the door. On the other hand, I am afraid that such collection-charity, which expects others to do the contributing, like the charity-craze, never yields blessings, but simply rears greedy beggars. It may serve as an excuse that the metropolis destroys all other personal re- lations between the rich and the poor, and yet the rich desire to ease their consciences by doing something for those in want, so they help in the manner indicated. However, I am not of the opinion that societies for the organized distribution of charity are not good and useful. .An association which combines freedom of movement with order and permanency is undoubtedly an entirely suitable form of charitable activity. And there are doubtless excel- lent and helpful societies. Nor can we altogether disapprove of the method of inducing larger circles to make financial contributions. But instead of angrily and moodily throwing a few nickels at every collector who presents himself, the givers should make up their minds to become active mem- bers of some organization, of whose usefulness they have convinced themselves. If they could only take an active in- terest in these enterprises, their sympathy would be really helpful, and their own lives would be enriched thereby. 3. The opposite of love of neighbor is heartless selfishness, which seeks its own advantage, regardless of others or even at the expense of others. The intensification of it is malice, which takes pleasure in the distress and sufferings of others even without advantage to self. As cruelty it causes physical or mental sufferings, simply in order to feed upon them. This habit does not commonly express itself in those brutal attacks upon the persons and interests of others which the criminal law pursues, but in the thousand little inconsiderate, malicious acts which are observed in our dailv intercourse LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 649 with men. Four or five persons are sitting in a railroad coup^ ; a new traveller enters, thej all stare at him with angry and hateful looks, each one seenling to say : Don't come near me ! No one dreams of offering him a seat, or of removing his baggage ; we merely wait until the intruder threatens to sit upon our things, then we grumblingly shove them aside, or begin to quarrel with the man. And so these people will sit together, side by side, in the narrow com- partment making themselves as disagreeable to each other as possible, in the meanwhile boiling over with rage. If, instead, one of the passengers had politely made room for the new-comer, a pleasant feeling would have been aroused at once, and perhaps a friendly conversation might have been begun, bringing into the tiresome railroad journey sociability and good cheer. These are little things, but life is made up of little things, and our moods are determined much more by such countless daily trifles than by the great and unusual occurrences. There are persons who are always waiting for an opportunity to perform some great and heroic act of charity, who even believe that they would be ready to sacri- fice themselves if need be ; and in the meantime they are wearing away their own lives and those of their fellowmen with their petty troubles and malicious remarks. Besides, it can hardly be doubted that the plain people treat each other with much more consideration than the members of so-called good society. Among the latter an accidental collision soon leads to a bitter discussion ; while the matter is at once passed off with a jest among the former. The general inclination to take life easy is manifested in intercourse by the tendency to make the life of others easy and cheerful. Among the so-called educated the fear of lowering one's dignity is always alive. Politeness and civility are regarded as a sign of self-debasement, as a lowering of one's dignity. A repellent nature says to others : Come on, I am not afraid of you ! There is a kind of starched-linen 650 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES haughtiness which is always oq the look-out lest some one should become too familiar or presume to be somebody. Per- sons may even be found, who will, with a kind of secret pleasure, observe others doing what they can interpret as offences against their own persons, so that they may after- wards have the satisfaction of becoming angry and of holding it up to them. Yes, if you ask them beforehand whether they approve of a certain course or not, they will lead you astray, simply that they may afterwards grumblingly and ill-humoredly complain of the suffered wrong. It is arrogance which in- spires such conduct ; we do not like to appear in the r6le of needing considerate treatment and of asking for it ; it looks more lordly and more elegant first to act indifferently and to become angry afterwards. And hence haughtiness does not deserve the last place among the plagues of humanity. The church is right in reckoning it among the seven deadly sins. A field in which cold-heartedness and malice are particu- larly common, deserves mention here : the habit, namely, of sitting in judgment upon one's neighbor. Everything that the latter says or does is misconstrued and spitefully exposed to the ridicule and ill-will of his fellows. An evil or a base motive is always imputed to him, his prosperity is attributed to evil means, his misfortune is regarded as his own doing. He belongs to the Liberal party : of course he receives Jewish money. He votes the Conservative ticket : why, to be sure, he is fawning upon his superiors. He is successful in business, he becomes rich : he is certainly a swindler, and owes his suc- cess to crooked methods. He meets with literary success : all those who are not so fortunate at once agree that it is because he appeals to people who have no judgment ; why, of course, if we desired to cater to the vulgar tastes of the public, or to flatter the intellectual indolence and superficiality of the reader, we could be famous too, — if we were not above such things ! A girl makes a good match ; all those who were striving for the same good fortune at once begin to tell how LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 661 ehe encouraged the man, what means she employed to catch him. — As a rule, it is envy that pronounces judgment upon our dear brother and then with lynx eyes discovers the rea- sons for his fault. But pure malice also suffices ; nothing in this world affords the malicious man greater pleasure than the sight of the stains upon the honor of his fellow. It is this base tendency in human nature which the Gospel attacks with such zeal. Even if your opinion is correct, it is not your mission to sit in judgment upon your neighbor. He is not accountable to you but to God, and in His sight you are no less guilty than he. Hence, " Judge not that ye be not judged, condemn not that ye be not condemned." The opposite of unfeelingness is love, as Paul describes it : " It suffereth long and is kind, envieth not and vaunteth not itself, is not pufEed up, it doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." The thirteenth chapter of Corinthians has been called the Song of Love (hohe Lied der Liebe). Perhaps we may more properly call it the simplest description of love in its most modest form, of the little workaday, homespun love of neigh- bor, the love which does not vaunt itself, which does nothing extraordinary and grand and sensational, which does not give its body to be burned, or give its possessions to the poor, but simply consists in taking and bearing the neighbor as he is, which does not court favors from him but meets him every day with the same and greater kindness. This is the real, true love of neighbor, and when it enters a house it brings happiness, not the great happiness of which people speak, but the little workaday happiness, the true happiness. And this love and happiness as gladly abides in modest homes as in proud palaces, or much rather ; at any rate it desires to dwell in modest hearts alone, not in haughty and covetous souls. 652 DOCTRIISrE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 4. The significance of love of neighbor for human conduct hardly needs further comment after all we have said : it diminishes suffering and want, it increases welfare and happiness, it unites hearts in affection and trust. The immediate effect of active benevolence is that it lightens, elevates, and promotes the life of him upon whom it is bestowed. It also inspires him with courage and confi- dence for the future. It at the same time fills him with kindly feelings, not only towards the benefactor but towards the whole world ; charity wants to be passed along, to go from hand to hand, without end. Even when the helping hand does not succeed in removing the misery, the bitterness of the pain is assuaged by sympathy and condolence. The heart that would pine away and famish in solitude and neg- lect again revives, patience and hope or resignation enter the soul, and make life bearable. When, on the other hand, the unfortunate one is repelled and meets with harshness, it fills his heart with the bitterest feelings, it ultimately hardens it, making it misanthropic and wicked. How many a criminal may trace the beginning of his career to unkind, repellent treatment in misfortune ! If a helping hand had been extended at the right moment, it might have saved a human soul from destruction. It was not offered, the first step upon the wrong path was taken and drew all the others after it, until the road ended in the peni- tentiary. Want and bitterness over their helplessness, in the opinion of an experienced official in the criminal service, brings one half of all criminals to the penitentiary. ^ " From the cradle to the grave, the sun of life does not smile upon them, they see only the rough side of life. So long as they can remember, they have suffered this undeserved lot ; they, the serfs of misery and neglect, look with envy upon their unde- servedly happier fellows. And to their envy are joined feelings ^ H. von Valentini, Das Verbrechertum im Preussischen Staatf (1869), a book irhich contains many suggestive facts. LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 653 of hatred on account of the harshness and pride of the latter, a hatred which is quite natural in view of the superciliousness with which these regard them, — as though their respective stations in life were the result of individual merit or individual demerit." It is made easy for those reared in love on " the sunny side of life " to believe in eternal love, but how shall these children of the night attain to faith, hope, and love? There is only one way, charitable love. Harshness will not avail : it simply hardens them and makes them morose. But even love cannot heal with tenderness and softness : it must wield the strong rod of discipline. Active benevolence, however, also enriches and blesses the life of him who practises it. We are not made poorer by giving, says an old proverb ; ^ certainly not, we are made richer, if not in outward, at least in inner blessings. There is no purer, no more beautiful and lasting joy than that acquired by beneficence. The poorest little favor or service which you unselfishly offer the stranger whom you meet upon the street, has the power to yield you lasting pleasure in memory. And the pleasure is the intenser and the more lasting, the more you suppress your sensuous selfish inclinations in doing the deed. The triumph of our selfish inclinations, on the contrary, over the wishes and purposes of others always leaves a bitter after-taste, the bitterer, the greater the sacrifice of others' welfare at which it was bought. It has therefore been said, not unjustly, that the straight way to one's own happiness is to work for the happiness of others. A benevolent heart that is free from envy is the best endowment even so far as one's in- dividual happiness is concerned. The pleasure which it arouses in its surroundings is reflected back upon it, and calls forth sympathetic emotions. Perhaps, the only time you share in the happiness of others, wholly without envy, is when you have 1 [Compare the verse in Proverbs, XI., 24 : " There is that scattereth and yet increaseth ; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." " The liberal soul shall be made fat." — Tr.] 654 DOCTBXNE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIE& helped to make it. Benevolence wins confidence and affec- tion ; there is no commodity which bears greater interest and makes one so happy as this, and it may be acquired anew every day. And do not believe that you must be a rich man or a great lord in order to do good. No one is too poor or too weak to do good ; the kind word, the little favor, is a hun- dred times more desirable and not rarely infinitely more valuable than great favors or rich gifts. No man need be deprived of the blessing and pleasure of doing good. When you feel utterly miserable and in desperate straits, I once heard a preacher say, ask yourself whether there is not a single person in the world whom you can make happy. And the reverse is also true. There is no surer way to unhappiness than a selfish, heart. Intent solely upon his own happiness or what his momentary desires picture to him as such, the egoist sees nothing but rivals around him who are making for the same goal and endeavoring to outstrip him. In his breathless haste he is constantly goaded by fear and hatred to exert his utmost efforts. And notwith- standing all this, some one outstrips him, and now envy is tearing his vitals, the bitterest of all feelings, the grief aroused by the success of others, poisoned by the pain of his own defeat. Contentment can never find a place in a man of pronounced selfishness : envy, hatred, and fear constantly harrow his soul and never give him peace or let him enjoy what he has achieved. — In addition to this, selfishness arouses distrust and aversion in the surround- ings, feelings which manifest themselves in unkind deeds and malicious joy. Let the tyrant attempt to deceive him- self with the saying, I care not whether they hate me so Song as they fear me : — the day will come when the hatred will triumph in spite of the fear. Therefore : benevolence brings peace and joy ; selfishness arouses enmity and unhappiness; love is life; selfishness, leath. LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 655 5. Let me say a word about gratitude. Thankfulness is the feeling aroused in a healthy soul bji benevolence and beneficence ; the permanent state is devotion or piety. Grati- tude naturally tends to encourage benevolence, while in- gratitude discourages it: it is the declaration, so to speak, that assistance and good will have been wasted upon the recipient, for otherwise how could he fail joyfully and grate- fully to acknowledge the kindness ? Wasted also so far as the benefactor is concerned : frequent disappointments of this kind can change a philanthropist into a misanthrope. The complaint of the ingratitude of man is a common theme of pessimistic eloquence. And we shall have to con- fess that human nature, in general, has a better memory for injuries than for benefits. The psychological explana- tion is that gratitude does not flatter our vanity like re- venge. Gratitude seems to express inferiority ; revenge, on the contrary, is so sweet because it is connected with an intensification of self-love. I was down when he wounded me and defeated me ; now I have shown him what I can do. When gratitude has the same effect, when it can show itself by retaliation, we may count upon it much more readily than when it can be expressed only by devotion. But this re- lation is often obscured by feigned gratitude, which is ready with words, but not with deeds. La Rochefoucauld's remark applies to feigned gratitude : " Gratitude is mostly nothing but the declaration of a man's willingness to accept further benefits." Besides, we might also offer as a defense of human nature against the charge of ingratitude the fact that pure and un- selfish benevolence, benevolence which is rational and really beneficent, is not very common either. Perhaps ingratitude is just as common as selfish and irrational "beneficence." When the apish love of sentimental mothers reaps ingrati- tude, it is a just retribution for spoiling the child; they deserve no other reward, for what they sought was the satis- C56 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES faction of their own impulses. If an extravagant and importu- nate patron is forsaken as soon as he has nothing more to give, what else does he deserve ? He has as much right to complain of ingratitude, as Rousseau delicately puts it, as a fisherman has of accusing the fish of ingratitude for hav- ing devoured the bait and not having swallowed the hook* For this reason, too, it is always absurd for nations to accuse each other of ingratitude. Perhaps, then, we may say that sincere gratitude is just as common as genuine benevolence. Truly unselfish benevo- lence, which is not working for gratitude, will readily receive gratitude. This is particularly apparent in all permanent relations that are founded upon benevolence : the immediate natural effect of true and rational beneficence is affectionate piety. Parents who have trained their children to be honest, able, and upright men, will have no reason to complain of ingratitude. Teachers who faithfully fulfil their mission to develop human souls will not fail to arouse affectionate reverence in their pupils. A government that remains true to its high mission to administer justice upon earth may count upon the obedience and the loyalty of its subjects. 6. Benevolence is chiefly concerned with the relation of the individual to the individual. It appears in a new form in affection for and devotion to collective bodies. Let me add a few remarks in reference to this phase of it. Feelings of good will (evvoca) for collective bodies are mani- fested in three fundamental forms — aside from the family union, where the feeling of affection is still essentially an individual affair, — as love of home, love of country, and love of humanity. The tie that binds us to these collective bodies is woven of many threads. We discover in it, first, feelings of affec- tion and piety for particular persons ; these are transferred from the individuals to the communities of which the lattei' are members and representatives. Our parents and ances- LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 657 tors, our brothers and sisters aud playmates, our friends and our neighbors, attach us in gratitude and love to our homes and the home-folks. The memories of our* joys and sorrows, of the games and dreams of our childhood, the hopes and longings of our youth, are interwoven with the native heath and the native skies ; the home customs are inseparable from the home-country. Thus the heart is bound with a thousand threads to the home ; the farther away it is in space and time, the nearer it is to the heart, the more longingly our thoughts turn back to it. Through the home we are united with the people and the fatherland ; the community of spirit- ual life, as it is immediately expressed in language, the com- munity of historical life, the common reverence of the heroes and leaders of the people in war and victory as well as in the works of peace, bind us together in common feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. The life of the people is the soil on which the individual life grows ; from it the latter absorbs whatever of life and strength, mental and moral excellence it possesses. Hence the individual is bound to his country by ties of gratitude, reverence, love and affection. To these are added pride ; a common honor binds the individual to his home and his people; it even continues where the bond of love has been severed. The exile who leaves his home full of anger and hatred discovers in strange lands that his heart cannot forget his native heath. In foreign parts he learns to appreciate the value of his home, which forms an inalien- able endowment of his soul. The respect for his own people comes back to him, and prepares the soil for new feelings of attachment and love. The home and the people, finally, also unite the individual to Immanity. The nation with its historical life appropriates the great spiritual goods of humanity, assimilating them in its own peculiar way, and each member of the people participates in the life of human- ity, and thankfully acknowledges his membership in the great kingdom of spirits and of God upon earth. 658 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES We are accustomed to regard our relations to our own peo- ple as the most important of these relations, and this is most likely the truth. We call the subjective relation of the individual to his people patriotism, and this is at present reckoned among the highest virtues of man. The word is not yet old, and it is worthy of note that it is of foreign extraction. It was borrowed from the French during the last century, a sign that the thing itself is not old and not of native origin. If I am not mistaken, the word patriot did not come into general use until the French revolution. The Jacobins called themselves patriots in distinction from the Royalists. A patriot was one who endeavored to make the state an affair of the " people " or to make the people the subjects of the state, in distinction from those who regarded the state as belonging to the dynasty. The word patriotism, therefore, to this day, has especial reference to the state. It is used to characterize the proper attitude of the individual not so much to the people as to the state. Political ortho- doxy is always prone to claim patriotism for itself alone and to deny it to its opponents. The Jacobins monopolized the name patriot in revolutionary France, as did the advocates of absolutism in Prussia during the fifties. It is plain that the relation of the individual to his people is somewhat one-sidedly defined by this term, not to speak of its misuse by parties. A man may be deeply attached to his people, he may love it and live for it without exactly living for the state. Nay, a certain indifference to and even estrangement from the state and politics may go together with a deep feeling of affection for the people and all that concerns it. Goethe was certainly a sincere child of his people, and was devotedly attached to everything German ; and Luther was a thorough German. Nevertheless, we should hardly call these men patriots : it was not the state for which Ihey lived, which they loved, but the people. Indeed, we are forced to say : We cannot love the state as such, we can only LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 659 love a being ; the state, however, is not a being, but an institu- tion, a function. A people is a being that we can love ; the state we may esteem, respect, be proud *of, but we cannot love it. This one-sided accentuation of the individual's relation to the state, moreover, apparently depends upon the con- dition of our times. The life of the European nations is governed by the ideal of nationality, that is, the desire to construct national states. For three generations passionate attempts have been made to realize this ideal. I am cer- tainly far from wishing to deny or to lessen the value of these aspirations. The state is the natural form of a nation's existence. Without the state it is in danger of losing even its nationality, and hence no individual should be indifferent to the state as such. But the one-sided conception of the relation of the individual to his people prepares the way for certain abuses which were hardly known to former ages. Patriotism is now frequently used both as an advertisement for party fanaticism and as a cloak for chauvinism. National arrogance and hatred of foreigners hide behind its name, and abuse every one who does not agree with them. When it comes to French or Bohemian patriotism we have no trouble in recognizing the ugliness and absurdity of the thing ; but it is no more becoming to us Germans than to other nations. If patriotism continues to develop in this direction, it will become a morbid degenera- tion and a serious menace to the life of the European nations. If the instincts of those nations whose history and geographi- cal position make it advisable for them to live together in peace, continue, instead, in the direction of hatred and de- struction, they will, to speak with the Apostle, devour one another. Do not say that it is a necessity for the particular nation to cherish such " patriotic " feelings in view of its hostile neighbors. Are national pride, hatred, and contempt for neighboring nations, if not virtues, at least useful quali- 660 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES ties in the struggle for existence ? I think not. Hate impels men to seek quarrels, and pride turns their heads. But pride goes before the fall : this is as true of nations as of indi- viduals. Now, whoever does not believe that it is desirable for a nation to hate and be hostile to its neighbors, cannot regard such a disposition as a desirable endowment. A people must have a feeling of self-respect ; it cannot live with- out it. But there is a calm and firm self-reliance, which understands and respects what is foreign and yet is wholly conscious of its own value, which desires to be and to remain what it is, and does not bow down before the foreign either in imitation or in consequence of force. Such a healthy feeling of self-respect is wholly compatible with respect for and justice to foreigners, in the case of individuals as well as nations. Nay, arrogance and hatred are really always the signs of an irritable, diseased self-consciousness; that is, one that has no confidence in itself. The Germans used to pride themselves on their readiness to recognize and their ability to understand the spiritual life of foreigners. We have often and justly boasted that no nation has equalled us in assimilating the literature and poetry of other nations, and that none therefore has participated in the history of the past centuries in so universal a spirit as we. Freedom from selfish, arrogant, vain, and narrow-minded self-conceit, which the flatterers of popular passion call pa- triotism, has enabled the German people to do this. Have we still the right to boast of such freedom ? One thing we may say : Thus far the German people, or at least their political leaders, have borne the honors of their new position of power among the European nations with great and unusual modesty. But perhaps there is ground for adding: The German nation has reason to be on its guard, that it may not forfeit this mental freedom. The question concerning the function of education and par- ticularly of the school, in arousing patriotism, has been much LOVE OF NEIGHBOR 661 discussed. The main thing, in my opinion, is to guard love of country against degenerating into a false patriotism. Love and affection for one's own people and its great leaders in war and peace is a natural feeling, which arises spontaneously in the healthy mind reared under healthy conditions. Why should not a person borne and reared by a German mother, taught by German teachers, nurtured by German poets, be German in his feelings and thoughts ? And why should he not lovingly and faithfully cling to his people? And why should he not be proud of its virtues and achievements ? But respect for and justice to the foreign do not arise of their own accord. On the contrary, contempt and hatred are the natural feelings here. To suffer and understand the foreign is culture. It is a beautiful mission for our higher schools to offer such culture. The masses of the people hardly see beyond the boundaries of their own nation ; in war only do they come into closer contact with the foreign. The gymnasium in its old and in its new form makes the acquisition of foreign lan- guages the chief factor in its instruction. This is to enable the future governors and leaders of the people to understand and to preserve the historical connections of their own race. Such instruction assumes that the spiritual life of our people is not isolated and cannot thrive in isolation, — that our people is a member of the European family of nations, which contains other members of equal worth, by which its own life is sup- plemented and enriched. The ultimate goal of a humanistic education would be to enable the individual to participate more freely in the spiritual life of his own people, by teaching him to understand human life in its historical unity. That would be humanistic education in the highest sense of the term ; in it the love of country and appreciation of humanity would be fused. If the propagation of such humanistic culture were to weaken the feelings of enmity pervading the leading classes among the European nations, if it would in a measure prepare 662 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES the way for the " eternal peace " which the eighteenth century foretold, and which seems to be so infinitely remote to the nineteenth century, it would be no small gain. The European nations will have to accustom themselves to the thought tliat, inasmuch as providence has decreed that they must live to- gether, it will be best for them to settle their differences otherwise than by war. The spirit of brotherly love already prevails among them to such an extent that none of the great civilized nations would be willing to see any of the others annihilated, or to bring about such a result itself. Wars of extermination are no longer carried on among them ; quarrels are settled by forcible means at present, merely because a new and different method has not yet been discovered. It is to be hoped that the future will bring back enough of the humane cosmopolitanism of earlier times to restrict and supplement patriotism. It is also to be hoped that it will give back to us some of our old love of home. This, too, has been somewhat stifled by the present evolution of state and national patriotism. " Local patriotism," like cosmopolitan- ism, has for a long time been an object of contempt and abuse. We can understand why this is so. Germany was formerly split up into a lot of little states, until the establish- ment of a German united state became a necessity in order to enable the German people to act as a political subject among other nations, after having for centuries been nothing but a political object. But now that our legitimate and passionate yearning for political unity has been satisfied, let us hope that our people's deeply rooted love of home will again assert itself. It is evidently not desirable that we interest ourselves and participate solely in the public affairs of the Empire, or, what is worse, that we waste our efforts in political discussions and patriotic manifestations. The sphere of political life, in which the individual can find regular and fruitful employment, is for most persons circumscribed by the communities in which they live. The community is the proper place for the most LOVi; OF NEIGHBOR 663 essential functions of collective life ; the school, the church, charitable institutions, public enterprises of all kinds, offer the public-spirited man ample opportunity for exercising his capacities. Here even the plain man of the people can labor freely and fruitfully for the public weal, whereas in the natu- ral course of events he can hardly do anything for the state at large except what he iS commanded to do. C!HAPTEB XI VERACITY 1 1. Veracity may be regarded as a form of benevolence ; it is benevolence manifested in the communication of thoughts. We may, as in the case of benevolence, distinguish two phases of veracity : a negative side and a positive side. The former, corresponding to justice, is expressed by the formula of duty : Thou shalt not lie ; the latter, corresponding to love of neighbor, is expressed by the formula of duty : Serve thy neighbor with the truth. Let us first discuss the negative side. To lie, as we are accustomed to define it, means willingly and wittingly to tell an untruth in order to deceive others. Perhaps it will not be unnecessary to make the definition a little narrower by taking account of the fact that falsehood sometimes shelters itself behind formal excuses. In the first place, of course, words, be they spoken or written, are not essential to falsehood. We can lie without words, by acts and gestures, or even by keeping silent. An absent one is slandered in your presence ; you know that what is said is not true, but you have not the courage to contradict it ; it might cause you to be disliked or to be evilly spoken of, so you are 1 [Sidgwick, Bk. III., ch. VII. ; Stephen, ch.V. (IV.); Jhering, II., pp. 578 ff. ; Porter, Part II., ch. X.; Hoffding, XII. b; Spencer, Inductions, ch. IX.; Smyth, Part II., ch. III.; Dorner, 387-393 ; Runze, §§ 69 ft. — Kant, Uber ein vermdnt- Kches Recht aus Menschenliebe zu liigen, 1797; Metaphysik der Sitten (Harten- stein), VII., 234-241; Nietzsche, Jenseiis von Gut undBOse; Nordan, Conven- tional Lies; J. Motley, On Compromise. — Tr.] VERACITY 665 silent, or smile knowingly. That is lying. Or you wish an evil report concerning a third party to be circulated, but you are not willing to shoulder the resportsibility, and so you begin: "Have you heard what is being said of So-and-so?" The newspapers, as well as gossiping women, are in the habit of lying in this way : " It is said . . . ; " "In circles which are usually well informed it is rumored. . . ." To be sure ; how many things are there not rumored ? Equivocation is another favorite trick of the liar. L. Schmidt ^ gives a few examples from Greek life. The Locrians made a compact with the Siculians, and swore that they would keep it so long as they trod the same earth and carried their heads upon their shoulders. Previously, how- ever, they had put earth into their shoes, and had placed garlic heads upon their shoulders under their garments. Another favorite method of procedure, developed to an art by politicians and historians, is to let the facts themselves lie. In discussing one side of a question, an historian chooses the most venomous speeches and deeds of its ex- treme supporters, and the criticisms and self-reproaches of the moderate wing ; in presenting the other side he selects the most satisfactory tenets, the most commendable or tolerable acts of its friends. Thus by skilfully selecting and arranging we can make anything out of everything. This, too, is the method of the reviewer who does not like a book ; he tears out a handful of phrases or sentences, sur- rounds them abundantly with quotation marks, occasionally inserts a word or two, and places the stuffed monster before the eyes of the reader, thereby arousing his righteous in- dignation. There is no absurdity that cannot be drawn from a book in this way. A particularly favorite trick of recent years is to lie by arranging the figures. Figures never lie, it is said. This is not true ; they will prove whatever is expected of them. A series of figures is given : " Since the year 1872, 1 Ethik der Griechen, II., 5. 666 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES when such and such an official took charge of the school system, the number of youthful criminals has increased in the following progression . These figures are suggestive ! " Of course, says the harmless reader to himself, who is not trained in the art of rhetoric, and for him alone leading articles are written, this is the result of such a mode of government. All these things then come under the head of falsehood : To lie means to influence others to accept views which you do not regard as true yourself, by means of speech or silence, by simulation or dissimulation, and by the selection and arrangement of facts. 2. Why is lying wrong ? Intuitional ethics answers with common sense : Because it is inherently wrong and disgrace- ful. Kant reckons veracity among the duties to self; he regards falsehood as the abandonment of one's dignity as a man, and places it on a level with suicide : as the latter destroys the physical life, so the former destroys moral life. This view is well fitted for the practical-rhetorical treat- ment of the subject. Indeed, Kant is often an admirable moral preacher. But it is the business of moral philosophy to discover the objective ground of morality, and this we shall again have to seek in the effects which falsehood natur- ally tends to have upon the conduct of human life. They are not hard to find. Falsehood directly injures the deceived party in so far as false ideas lead to false acts. As a rule, this is the purpose of the lie : the deceiver, the flatterer, the slanderer, wishes to gain some advantage over another by deception. Thus falsehood is a means of injustice, and there- fore shares in the judgment pronounced upon the latter. But falsehood has a specific effect besides. So far as it can, it destroys faith and confidence among men, and consequently undermines human social life, the, foundation of all real human, of all mental-historical life. And this explains its particular reprehensibleness. We may illustrate the influence of false- VERACITY 667 hood by counterfeiting. The counterfeiter damages not only the individual upon whom he palms off the spurious coin and who cannot pass it; he also injures society, by destroying public confidence in all money : the existence of spurious coin brings the good money into disrepute. Should spurious coins become so numerous as to make it necessary to test every piece before accepting it, this would be equivalent to the abolition of money as such, for its purpose is to relieve the individual of the necessity of testing its value. Lying has the same effect. It falsifies the intellectual medium of exchange, so to speak. Lies invalidate the truth, and the outcome is universal distrust and isolation. The parties immediately concerned are directly affected. The deceived person first becoines distrustful of the liar, and, in case he has been deceived by many, of all human beings in general, and sep- arates himself from them. The liar fares similarly. He is isolated from his surroundings, first, owing to the distrust of those whom he deceives, which hardly ever fails to appear ; for one lie may pass undiscovered, but habitual falsehood can- not remain concealed, if for no other reason than that it lies in the very nature of untruths to contradict each other, whereas consistency is peculiar to truth. When the liar loses the confidence of others, he also loses confidence in them : it is psychologically necessary for the man who lies to expect others to do the same. There can be no doubt that this dual distrust is not a favorable condition of life : like a poisoned stratum of air it envelops a life and excludes it from fellowship with human beings ; the honest and sincere men, especially, are repelled, for they cannot breathe an atmosphere of falsehood and distrust. The corroding and poisonous character of falsehood becomes most apparent when it invades permanent social relations, family-life, friendship, education. A pupil lies to his teacher. Some misdemeanor has been committed in the class, the guilty party lies out of it, as the saying is. The result is 668 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES mutual distrust. The teacher begins to hold himself alool from his pupils, the frank relations between him and them are at an end, he begins to observe them stealthily, to spy upon them. The pupils notice it ; they begin to make concealment ; confidence and openness, the conditions of a happy relation between teacher and student, are gone. When occurrences of this kind become frequent, something of the prison atmosphere pervades the school, which chokes the good and the pure. Hence, nothing is more important than to preserve the spirit of truth and confidence within its walls. This, however, can be kept alive only where the spirit of freedom dwells. Hence it follows from the very nature of falsehood that it poisons speech, undermines confidence, destroys collective life, and so attacks the very fibres of human existence. I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting a beautiful passage from Luther's commentary on the Psalms which I find in Herder's Letters for the Promotion of Humanity : " It seems to me that there is no more pernicious vice on earth than falsehood and faithlessness, which divide all human societies. For falsehood and faithlessness first divide hearts ; when hearts are divided, hands also separate, and when hands separate, what can we do or accomplish ? We Germans still have a spark — may God keep it alive and strengthen it — of the old virtue : we are still a little ashamed of ourselves and do not like to be called liars; we do not laugh about it as do the French and the Greeks, or make a jest of it. And although French and Greek vices are making inroads among us, nevertheless we have retained so much of the old spirit that no one can utter or hear a more severe and abusive epithet than that of liar." Another factor helps to make the lie still more reprehen- sible ; it is a sign of cowardice. It steals upon its victim, instead of vanquishing him in open battle. A brave man will not lie. The accusation of falsehood always carries with it the charge of cowardice, hence it wounds a man VERACITY 669 more deeply than almost any other charge. You lie, means at the same time : You are a cowardly knave. 3. Everything that makes the lie despicable and base is included in calumny. We might rhetorically define it as the murderous attack of the assassin upon the ideal self of an- other. In Othello, Shakespeare portrays the natural history of calumny with awful faithfulness and cruelty. lago stran- gles the innocent wife with the hands of her husband. Had lago killed Desdemona with his own hand and robbed her as a pirate, he would have been an honest man beside the real lago. The fact that he cannot even be called to account be- fore a human judge makes the matter all the worse — for what did he do but act in good faith in calling Othello's attention to the dangers threatening his honor; well who never made a mistake ? Moreover, we must not forget that two persons are always necessary to make a slander possible. Just as the thief needs the receiver of stolen goods, the calumniator needs a person to accept his words and to put them in circulation. And just as stealing would be impossible on the large scale with- out receivers of stolen goods, the business of calumny would be impossible if there were not so many to delight in it and encourage it. In a letter written during the period of his banishment (1811) Freiherr von Stein bitterly reproaches this base tendency of human nature. " When once a man is marked as the victim of slander, his past life, his established character, the probability of the truth of the accusation, are not taken into account; the question simply is whether the charge will answer the intended purpose. In a short time the calumny is circulated everywhere; it triumphs, the enemies of the victim are active, the great multitude maliciously credulous, his friends pretending to be impartial are base ; they are silent, where they ought to take a firm stand. Finally one after the other goes over to the opposite party from pure love of virtue, from a sense of duty, and 670 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES delicacy of feeling. All passions which he has insulted, all presumptuousness which he has wounded, now revive; all wish to celebrate the day of revenge and to feast on the fat of the victim. " ^ Another modified form of the lie is flattery. It is so re- pulsive because it creeps in under the guise of friendship to defraud its victim. However, here again two people are necessary : one to do the flattering and one who allows him- self to be flattered. As a plaster draws blisters, so self- conceit provokes flattery. Hypocrisy is a form of flattery. Religious hypocrisy used to be common: we may define it as an attempt by the exact fulfilment of the ceremonies of the church to insinuate oneself into the good graces of God and to draw His attention from less agreeable phases of one's life. Religious hypocrisy has well-nigh died out in our world, at least among the Protestants ; nowadays it appears solely as a part of political hypocrisy, which tries to insinuate itself into the graces of earthly rulers. With shrewd zeal the hypocrite enters into the views, inclinations, and tastes of great or little lords, particularly into their ecclesiastical and religious opinions, and seeks and gains favor thereby. Nothing flatters a human being more than to be an authority ; authority, however, must be acknowledged by imitation. The effect of hypocrisy is the same as that of all lying; as forgery makes us suspect the genuine, hypocrisy brings re- ligion into hatred and contempt. Hence all truly religious natures hate hypocrisy, and all sincere persons hate assumed "orthodoxy" like death. Falsehood raised to the highest power is perjury. It is the lie accompanied by the formal and solemn assurance that it is the truth. Perjury has everywhere and always been re- garded as one of the greatest crimes, as a sign of extreme viciousness and baseness. We can defend ourselves against violence by violence, strategy we meet with strategy : these I Pertz, Stein's Leben, I., 449. VERACITY 671 are the means of war, which may be followed by an honor- able peace after the matter has been fought out. But perjury cuts off all possibility of a return of frieftdship. There is no defence, no weapon against perjury ; helplessly and with a feeling of horror man appeals to the gods, when he has been deceived by perjury, to punish such an enormous crime. L. Schmidt 1 calls our attention to the fact that the Iliad, con- trary to its leading ideas, does not regard death as the final punishment of perjury ; fidelity to oaths is universally looked upon by the Greeks as the most essential and, in a measure, most elementary part of justice, perjury as the most heinous crime. The necessity of absolutely proving evidence before court has led to the preservation of the oath in our judicial prac- tice. The legal prosecution of organized bands of perjurers every now and then shows beyond a doubt that with the weakening of the transcendent sanction the oath has lost some of its efficacy and has become a dreadfully dangerous weapon in the hands of unscrupulous men. This state of affairs evidently suggests the advisability of abolishing the oath from legal practice, a useless survival. At all events, it demands that the greatest care be taken in employing it. We must particularly restrict the right of doubtful char- acters to make oath by imposing severe punishments for its violation. And can we justify the practice of forcing the oath ? 2 1 Ethik der Gnechen, II., 3 ff. 2 An able judge, von Valentini, Das Verbrechertum in Preussen,p. 112, ex- presses the opinion that the administration of the oath hj the courts, its employ- ment as a " technical requisite," greatly encourages perjury. Indeed, how, in view of the fact that forty to fifty oaths are administered at a single session of a sheriff's court, mostly in farcical and trivial cases, can the oath preserve its es- pecially sabred character ? The ceremony with which the thing is surrounded almost malces matters worse. Besides this, the judges are by no means obliged to regard the sworn testimony as worthy of belief, and do not regard it as such : it really malies an extremely painful impression upon one, when the judge, after having just sworn a witness, straightway admonishes him, not always in the gentlest manner, to Iceep to the truth. We are similarly impressed by the attitndf 672 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES 4. The Lie of Necetsity. A problem that has given the moralists the greatest trouble is the lie of necessity. Is deception under all circumstances morally wrong, or can conditions arise under which it is permissible or even morally necessary ? In our actual judgments and actions we experience no diffi- culty in answering this question; everybody acknowledges the possibility of the " necessary lie. " There is not a phy- sician in the whole world who does not at times give decep- tive answers to the questions of his patients, who does not arouse hopes which he does not share. He does not reproach himself for doing so, neither do others blame him. Indeed, everybody does the same thing under similar circumstances. Suppose that, without knowing it, a man should be in an extremely dangerous position and that his rescue depended upon his being deceived for a minute, would any one in the slightest hesitate to encourage him in his delusion ? The newspapers recently reported a case analogous to this. Fire broke out during a performance in a theatre at Zurich. When the stage manager discovered it, he appeared before of the tax-officials with respect to the "self -assessment": after the person has made his returns, certifying that they are true, " according to his best knowl- edge and belief," he is informed that the authorities are inclined not to believe his statements, but merely regard them as valuable material for further investigations. It this is not an invitation to withhold returns, not to say to ignore the " to the best knowledge and belief " clause in the assessment-blank, I know nothing of psychology. Is not what the authorities presuppose permissible? — Many of til 8 so-called promissory oaths also tend to make persons careless in swearing oaths. Think of the academic oaths. The medical doctor's oath, which is cus- tomary in Berlin, begins : " I, John Doe, swear that I will not practise medicine for the sake of personal gain, but for the glory of God, for the welfare of man, and for the promotion of scientific knowledge,"' etc. But this is evidently a survival protected by the Latin language : the thing would be impossible in Ger- man. — Is it not possible that the prohibition against swearing in the Gospel is chiefly aimed at promissory oaths ? The reasons given seem to indicate it : You are not master of things, and of the future, you cannot make one hair white or black ; and yet you will sell your soul by an oath and bind yourself to do certain things. With what ease the church evades this explicit prohibition against swearing, and how tenaciously she adlieres to the law of the Sabbath, in spite of Its abolition ! VERACITY 673 the scenes and announced that, owing to the sudden illness of an actor, the performance would have to be suspended. The theatre was emptied without any trouble, and then burned to the ground. Will any one dare to condemn this happy idea as a lie ? And it is not even necessary that the deception be in the interest of the person deceived. It may also be practised in one's own interest, without the slightest hesitation, and meet with universal approval. An old woman is at home alone; a couple of tramps break into her house; she has presence of mind enough to call out the name of her husband, thereby deceiving the burglars. She will not herself suffer remorse for her behavior, nor will any one else reproach her for it. Nay, even the tramps themselves would not be so rigoristic as to blame hei-. The story is told that Columbus entered a smaller number of miles in the log-book during his first voyage of discovery than he actually traversed each day, in order to make the distance from home seem shorter to his timid crew. Will any one condemn the brave sailor's strategy as a moral fault ? Only among moral philosophers do we still find persons who regard the matter as serious. Kant declares: False- hood, that is, intentional untruthfulness, is under all cir- cumstances, " by its mere form, a crime of man against his own person, and a baseness which must make a man despi- cable in his own eyes. "^ When a man misdirects a mur- derer in search of his victim, and dexterously turns him into the hands of the police, we cannot excuse him: he has told a lie, and has therefore forfeited his dignity as a man. And Fichte once said, with his usual rhetorical fanaticism, "I would not break my word even to save humanity."^ Let us apply this principle in practice. Suppose that I had promised some one to call for him at five o'clock for a walk, and that on my way to his house I saw a child fall into the river. Tf I followed Fichte, I should say to myself: J Tugendlehre, § 9. * Life, II., 57. 674 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES " If you pull it out, you will have to go home and change your clothes, which will make it impossible for you to keep your engagement; hence you must hurry on, sorry though you may be. " Or would it be right for me to assume that my friend would give his consent in such a case, and, acting on this belief, to break my engagement ? But suppose I could not assume that he would consent. I have made a promise ; now I see what I could not have known before, or what is simply the result of new conditions; a third party, or I myself, might be seriously damaged by fulfilling the prom- ise. I beg to be released from my word, I am willing to pay any amount of indemnity; in vain. May I break my word ? Under no circumstances. I should have to say, according to Fichte's view: Let the world perish, that is not my concern; but it is my concern not to destroy my moral dignity as a human being by a lie! — Other moralists are somewhat more yielding, or have not the courage to draw the consequences of their views. Thus Martensen holds in his Theological Ethics:'^ Lies of necessity are, under certain circumstances, permitted on account of the weakness of human nature; but it must be confessed that "there is some sin in every such falsehood;" a conclusion which surely is not in accord with the words of the Gospel: "Let your communication be yea, yea, nay, nay." Practice not only contradicts the theory here, but is even theoretically correct in its opposition to these theorists. It may be that the lie of necessity does not fit into the system of a moralist, but that merely proves the inability of his system to comprehend moral things. A teleological ethics finds no difficulty in explaining the phenomenon in question. Intentional deception is objectively reprehensible, as was shown above, because it tends to destroy confidence, and thus to lead to the disintegration of the social organism. In cases where this effect cannot possibly occur, owing to the 1 II.. 264. VERACITY 675 very nature of things, it is not reprehensible. Let us take an example. No relation of confidence can be destroyed by deceiving a burglar, because absolutely noiie exists, neither a special relation, nor a universally-human one. In so far and so long as such lawbreakers follow their calling, they stand outside of the pale of confidence, and thereby forfeit all claims to the truth, nor will they expect to receive it. The case is somewhat similar in war. No soldier has ever scrupled against deceiving the enemy as to his own plans, tactics, or numbers. Strategy is one of the arts of war; it would be absurd to show your hand in war. It is said that the most honest man cheats in a horse-trade ; it is one of the rules of the game to keep your eyes open. The etymological relation between the words tauschen (to exchange) and tduschen (to deceive) seems to indicate that these rules are also applied to other branches of commerce. Well, decep- tion is likewise one of the rules of war : everybody practises it and expects the enemy to do the same. The rules, how- ever, apply only to the game. Whenever in war an individ- ual comes in contact with another individual not as a foe but as a human being, then the universal rule of human in- tercourse again demands its rights. The same is true when- ever the game of war is temporarily suspended by mutual agreement : to break an armistice, to ambush the bearer of a flag of truce, is disgraceful and dishonorable. The case is peculiar in diplomacy. In a certain sense the rules of war seem to hold here : Keep your eyes open ! No one shows his hand, and everybody will, to say the least, regard it as legitimate not to "disillusionize" a fellow- player under certain circumstances, nay, perhaps even to encourage him a little in his false belief. This is apparently because it is tacitly assumed in international intercourse that every state will be solely and unconditionally guided in its dealings with others by the regard for its own vital in- terests; that it will, so far as it can safely do so, assert 676 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES these even at the expense of other nations. There is no law governing the intercourse of states which can secure them against encroachments ; there is no power which can medi- ate between them or call the breaker of the peace to account. Hence a constant potential state of war exists between states. The rules of diplomatic intercourse show that in so far as war, in which force and strategy are absolutely permitted, is possible at any moment, the parties are reticent and distrustful of each other; they conceal their measures and agreements, their plans and intentions. But in so far as the real object of diplomacy is to maintain peace, to settle by negotiations what would otherwise have to be settled by the arbitrament of war, a certain measure of mutual confi- dence is required. If diplomats needed language merely to conceal their thoughts, it would evidently be wiser for nations not to speak to each other at all. — Besides, there seems to be the same tendency here as in commerce. At- tempts are being made in the latter field gradually to stamp out fraud, at least the coarser phases of it, as an unsuitable form of intercourse. So, too, in the diplomatic intercourse of nations: the closer they are drawing to each other, the more intimate their relations are becoming, the more the conviction seems to be growing that the straight course is better than the crooked course in the long run. And per- haps we may see in this an evidence that the European nations are approaching a condition of permanent peace, remote though it may seem at present. For evidently the probability of war and the measure of openness in diplomatic intercourse are in inverse proportion to each other. Hence, the fewer the relations of trust which can be dis- turbed, the more of its dangerous and objectionable character intentional deception loses, and the more openly it is actually practised, until it ultimately appears as an altogether legiti- mate means of warfare in the actual state of war. Where VERACITY 677 all ties are broken, where even the killing of others is de- sired, it can do no more harm; things are_so bad that decep- tion will not make them worse. Another case which may make intentional deception per- missible or necessary is the inability of the other party to understand or to bear the truth. It may, for example, under circumstances, have a quieting effect upon insane persons to enter into their delusions. It is also necessary to accom- modate oneself to the weakminded. This is true of old people who have grown weak-minded; they have lost the faculty of seeing and judging things in their true relations, but not the faculty of becoming excited by occasionally mis- interpreting them. We are compelled, for example, to make certain arrangements, contrary to the wishes of our old parents. Is it right to conceal our plans, or to deny them ? It is a hard thing to do; it seems like a breach of old confi- dential relations. And yet every one will at times decide to pursue such a course, and justly so, for what good would it do to tell them ? We could not make them see the neces- sity of our action; the information would therefore simply grieve them, while the deception, if not detected, would be harmless. The case is different in our intercourse with children ; and here we are often too ready to have recourse to the most convenient form of deception that happens to pres- ent itself. The deception persists in memory; when the intelligence develops and recognizes it as such, it may after- wards seriously undermine the child's faith. Besides, an- other means of escape is always at hand ; we can refuse to answer the child's questions by saying, "You do not under- stand these things yet," or, "They do not concern you." It would, however, be wholly impossible to treat old people in this way, even if it were proper. Here, then, we must make use of language, as the physician occasionally pre- scribes a pretended remedy, simply in order to quiet tho patient. 678 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES But, some one might ask in troubled tones, Where, then, shall we draw the line ? The transition to childish old age is a gradual one. Where may one begin to deceive ? And if I may deceive a weak-minded person, then why not a stupid blockhead ? And where shall this end ? And who is to decide how to classify the individuals in question ? Only one answer can be made to such questions. Such fixed boundaries do not exist in morals. The law draws hard and fast, and therefore arbitrary, lines, while morality has every- where to do with gradual transitions. The particular case must necessarily be decided by the individual's own insight and conscience, and with a view to the concrete conditions. Morality cannot give him a scheme which shall enable him to settle the matter with mechanical certainty. It can merely indicate the general points of view from which the decision is to be rendered. The case is not essentially different for the physician in his intercourse with patients. Here, too, we have a rela- tion of trust, and deception is not without its dangers. Perhaps we are all a little incredulous in reference to what the physician says, both when he tries to quiet us and when he warns us. He does it, we believe, simply for effect. Nevertheless, we cannot expect absolute openness from the physician in every case. If, in order to assist his art, he skilfully and quietly deceives the patient and his friends as to the magnitude of the danger, he does not de- serve blame but praise. It is a part of his art to keep up courage and hope ; to that end he also makes use of speech, even at the risk of subsequently disappointing the patient and of weakening the latter's faith in his word as well as in the word of physicians in general. It was shown above ^ that the violation of formal right is under all circumstances an evil, but that it may become permissible or necessary in order to ward off a greater evil from oneself or others. The 1 Pp. 630 ff . VERACITY 679 same is true here. The lie of necessity, like the law of necessity, may become a moral duty, — a duty which even the most truthful man cannot always evade, however wil- ling he may be to forfeit his right to deceive. Confidence in human speech is a great good, hut it is not the only good thing in the world. Everybody meets with similar cases in life. A man has had some trouble; he has been undeservedly abused; a crisis threatens to overtake his business. He comes home, deter- mined not to say anything about the matter. But he looks pale; his family ask him, what has happened? Is it right to say, " Nothing, it is warm, I have a headache ? " I believe the conditions may be such that no one would hesitate to practise deception here. The man in our example does not like to tell the truth, he does not wish his friends at home to hear anything about the matter ; why should they worry over it ? To evade their questions may be worse than to tell the truth. — Here, too, relations of confidence exist, and deception is not without danger. In case they should hear of his troubles from others who will not spare their feelings, they may not only he more greatly disturbed, but their con- fidence may receive a serious shock. And yet a man may make up his mind to add dissimulation to intentional deception. Or, is dissimulation absolutely wrong, according to these "rigorous" moralists? That it belongs to the category of deception cannot be denied. When a man with his heart full of care and bitterness seems cheerful and calm in the circle of his family, so that no one notices it, he has cer- tainly deceived them in the most complete manner possible. Is that not allowed either ? Has he no right to look cheerful when he is inwardly sad, or calm when he is in trouble ? Is this, too, an abandonment of his dignity as a man ? These moral philosophers should have made clear to themselves the consequences of their assertion. Or is it possible only to 680 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES deceive by means of the tongue and not with the eyes and face ? Or ought we always to show everything we feel ? Ought I then to tell a friend who has an unfortunate leaning to art, when he presents me with a picture as a birthday gift : " My dear friend, your intentions are undoubtedly good, but I wish you would spare me ? " Or shall I declare, when he expects me to say something about the present : " Unfortu- nately, I cannot tell you anything, for if I told you the truth, you would be angry, but if I didn't tell the truth, this would be contrary to the moral law ? " Of course, it may be my duty to say to my friend frankly and distinctly, in case his hobby is making him ridiculous, or is causing him to neglect his duties : " Stop it, you will never accomplish anything, and you are simply hurting yourself." The good-natured praise of questionable achievements may grow into base flattery. But all this will not shake any one but an extremist in the belief that it may, under circumstances, be right and proper to tell a man what will give him harmless pleasure, even though this does not express one's real opinion, instead of telling him things which it will neither please him nor benefit him to hear. To the same category belong the conventional half-truths and untruths of social intercourse. We welcome a visitor who comes at an inopportune time; at the end of a letter we assure a man whom we do not know, or whom we look upon as a thorough villain, of our high esteem. The neces- sity and justification for this lies in the fact that smooth and peaceful intercourse is not possible among men as they are constituted, without the exercise of some constraint. The customary politeness is the oil which prevents, so far as possible, the creaking and pulling of the machine. The angels in heaven do not need it. Where there are no inner discords and outer obstacles, perfect openness is possible; human beings as they are constituted cannot endure it. It is for this reason that Goethe delicately and truthfully says: VERACITY 681 Fragst du nach der Kunst zu leben? Lern' mit Narr und Bosem leben. Mit den Weisen, mit den Gutep, Wird es sich von selbst ergeben.i Of course, where is the boundary between necessary polite- ness and repulsive flattery and falsehood? No system of morals can draw the line: moral tact alone must decide. And the thing is not without its dangers. A person who lives much in society easily forms the habit of lying, his conscience gradually becomes seared, it becomes a second nature and finally a necessity for him to lie. We are there- fore ready to suspect a man who exhibits great skill in the art of polite speech. We are more apt to trust one who is somewhat awkward and backward in speaking conventional untruths. Hence our conclusion would be: Be truthful; this holds unconditionally; but Speak the truth does not hold uncon- ditionally. 5. How shall we account for this strange " rigorism " of the moralists, which is everywhere contradicted by life ? Are they perhaps influenced by the curious notion that the " stricter " their systems, the better it will be for the moral- ity of mankind ? It almost seems so. If our moral systems, they seem to think, leave the smallest loophole for falsehood, man's inclination to lie will gradually enlarge it, and he will always find an excuse for not speaking the truth. In case, however, these systems absolutely prohibit falsehood, and threaten it with the most awful punishments, — loss of human dignity and self-respect, — then he will be on his guard. As though men always first referred to a handbook of morals before opening their mouths ! ^ These lines, by the way, might be taken as the translation of a passage in the Imitation of Christ : " It is no great matter to associate with the good and gentle; for this is naturally pleasing to all, and every one willingly enjoyeth peace, and loveth those best that agree with him. But to be able to live peace- ably with hard and perverse persons, or with the disorderly, or with such as go contrary to us, is a great grace, and a most commendable and manly thing." ill., 3.) 682 DOCTRINE OP VIRTUES AND DUTIES But perhaps this rigorism has still another ground. It is surprising that we do not find it among the Greek moral philosophers. Intentional deception is not only permitted by them under certain circumstances, but even demanded. According to Plato, the authorities in the ideal State must employ deception as a means of the welfare of the gov- erned. Socrates and the Stoics are of the same opinion. Is our sense of truth more finely developed than theirs? Are we so much superior to them in veracity ? In my opinion, the matter might be explained differently. I have repeat- edly referred to the fact that we, to quote Lessiug, speak most of the virtues which we least possess, and also, that we condemn those vices most to which we are most inclined. The Greek philosophers — Schopenhauer is right in this — exhibit a measure of openness and straightforwardness in the presentation of their thoughts wliich we seldom find in the philosophical literature of modern times. Among the mod- erns there is a tendency to compromise and extemporize, to accommodation, to weaken the logical consequences of views, to embellishment, to ambiguity, to intentional obscurity, which contrasts unfavorably with the openness and transpar- ency of the ancients. Kant once confessed that though he would never say anything he did not believe, he believed many things which he would never say. A Greek might have replied to him : In that case I do not care very much for what you have to say, for I desire to know not what you are allowed to think with the consent of the high author- ities, but what you actually think yourself ! We can hardly doubt that church affairs have something to do with this attitude. Intellectual veracity, sincerity in matters of thought and faith, consistency in thinking, is not one of the virtues encouraged by the church. Primitive Christianity had nothing whatever in common with theoreti- cal knowledge ; although it practically demanded veracity of the highest kind, that is, martyrdom. "When the church VERACITY 683 became triumphant, and it was no longer the confession of the creed but non-conformity to it that entailed martyrdom, and when the faith was reduced to a kihd of scientific sys- tem in theology, the spirit of humility and obedience, which the church and Christianity both fostered, stifled the theoret- ical love of truth : the spirit of obedience which the individual manifested towards the church and the authorities in his whole mode of life characterized his entire philosophy. L. Wiese states in his Autobiography that he has frequently observed a certain lack of openness in his intercourse with educated Catholics, even among persons who are otherwise honest and upright. This lack of openness may be found not only among Catholics, but also among Protestants, although the fact that the individual is freer in his relations to the church and the doctrines of the church may perhaps lessen the fault in the latter case. It is an historically necessary effect of church life as such, in so far as the demand that we submit to the church law and the creed follows inevitably from the nature of the church. So long as authoritative doctrines concerning all things in heaven and earth are formed and adhered to on the one side, and scientific and historical research con- tinue to develop new conceptions of things on the other, the conflict will be inevitable. Under such conditions the aver- age nature strives, for the most part, to move on the diagonal between the creed and knowledge. Historical faith and new insight simultaneously influence the mind and urge it, in accordance with the law of the parallelogram of forces, in the median direction. Examine the commentaries on the Gospels or the Lives of Christ: the impulse to save what can be saved of the old time-honored conceptions and inter- pretations, and, on the other hand, to concede as much to scientific research as must be conceded in order that one may be regarded as an enlightened and progressive man, determines their content. Or think of the attempts which have been made to read into Genesis the conceptions of mod- 684 DOCTRIiS'E OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES ern geology. It is to be presumed that Darwinism will be discovered there before very long. This perversion of the intellect is not necessarily accom- panied by a perversion of the will; a frank and honest heart may exist side by side with these diagonal tendencies of the intellect. A man may hesitate to depart from the faith of the church, without being necessarily inspired by the fear of man and the desire to get along in the world. Still it cannot be denied that the lack of a theoretical love of truth, the tendency to accommodation, is often connected with quite worldly considerations and intentions. When Kepler lost his position and his income at Prague, after the downfall of Rudolph's Empire, there was a prospect of his being called to a professorship in his home university atTiibingen. The place was in all respects a desirable one; but he felt himself obliged, as an honest man, first to inform the Duke that his views on the doctrine of transubstantiation were not quite orthodox, that he had not been able to con- vince himself of the ubiquity of the body of Christ. Well, Kepler was not called. His biographer Reuschle adds, in reporting this episode, that Kepler belonged to that class of honest men, to be one of whom, as Hamlet says, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. Indeed, no one will claim that Kepler represents the modern type of scholar in this respect. Leibniz would be a more fitting example. He was never in want of a system of thought to show the similarity between his thinking and that of some other person, were it an atheistic philosopher or a church believer, a Protestant or a Jesuit, an advocate of imperial unity or of the sover- eignty of the princes in Germany. With this status of affairs, it seems to me, the inclination to inveigh against falsehood and to stigmatize deception as absolutely reprehensible and disgraceful, has something to do. We feel the need, in the face of our constant danger, of em- phasizing to ourselves and to others, often in the strongest VERACITY 685 terms, the value of truthfulness and the disgrace of lying and of trifling with the truth. The Greek philosophers did not feel this need so much, because they were less exposed to temptation. Schopenhauer, whose proud, harsh, and incon- siderate temperament protected him against the tendency to accommodation, occasionally accuses Kant of affectation on account of his violent repudiation of every form of deception. Others are of different opinion ; they admire Kant's system precisely because of the harsh rigor of its formula of duty, which exclude all exceptions. They also praise Luther as a hero of truth, and heap all kinds of abuse upon Erasmus on account of his tendency to accommodation and conciliation. Will the initiated conclude from this that the tribe of Erasmus has died out, and that our theologians and histori- ans are all little Luthers ? 6. We now turn to the positive side of veracity. It corre- sponds to love of neighbor, and is expressed in the formula of duty : Serve thy neighbor with the truth. Since the con- duct of man is, to a considerable extent, dependent upon ideas, true ideas are of prime importance to his welfare. The universal duty of love of neighbor, therefore, includec the duty to assist one's neighbor in ridding himself of false ideas and of acquiring true ones. This phase of the question has been too much neglected by moralists, a fact which accounts for their meagre treatment of veracity and also explains their inability to do justice to the lie of necessity. Whoever lives a life of truth in the main, will have no trouble in settling the question of decep- tion, whenever it may become necessary or expedient. But the person whose truthfulness consists solely in refraining from telling lies, will be afraid of totally destroying his repu- tation in case he should ever happen to say what is not true. Such purely negative veracity is, of course, a rather paltry thing; it easily degenerates into the mere art of avoiding direct falsehood. Had the disciples of Christ, after the 686 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES death of the Master, merely refused to deny Him directly, had they returned to their former callings, and, obeying the commands of the authorities and the dictates of prudence, locked up the memories of the past in their own hearts, had they in pursuance of the maxim that it is not our duty to say everything we believe, carefully evaded every discussion of their experiences, they certainly could have escaped the re- proach of falsehood, but they would surely never have become what they now are : witnesses of the truth, whose testimony is shaping the destiny of the centuries. Positive veracity, which first gives to negative veracity its real meaning and value, manifests itself, first, in the personal intercourse with individuals, where it assumes the form of advice, instruction, admonition, and correction ; sec- ondly, in the public communication of the truth, where it takes the form of research, teaching, and preaching. According to the first form, it is my duty to help the indi- vidual whom I find in search of the right path, or following the wrong path, according to my better lights. This duty, too, must be qualified. Just as the duty of love of neighbor cannot mean that every one is constantly to offer his aid to everybody he meets, the duty of veracity cannot mean that we are at all times obliged to instruct and advise people, to admonish and set them right. In addition to the limitations placed upon this duty by the same considerations which were indicated above in respect to love of neighbor in general, we must take into account other special features depending upon the special nature of this kind of charity. The duty to instruct and set right presupposes two things : first, that I am myself sure of the right path ; secondly, that the interested party is inclined to profit by my advice. We are essentially governed by these considerations in our ac- tual practice. I see a stranger in the mountains turning into a road that leads nowhere ; I do not hesitate to call to him and to direct him. When, on the other hand, I find VERACITY 687 a person on the point of embarking upon a mercantile or literary venture, which I regard as sure to fail, I seriously deliberate before advising him. If the man is a stranger to me, I let him alone. I do not know enough of his situation, his powers, his resources, to know what he can do; nor can I assume that he has confidence enough in my judgment to accept my advice : perhaps it would simply confuse him or anger him. I therefore, at least, wait until I am asked, and even then it will often be doubtful whether 1 ought to give the desired information. There are people who ask others' advice and then do as they please, simply in order to shift the blame upon them in case of failure, whether they have advised for or against the project. Whenever these difficulties are not in the way I shall be more inclined to communicate my views of the matter. The better 1 know the person and the circumstances, and the more interest I take in his welfare because of my particular relations to him, the more willing I shall he to advise him. The ability to judge where and when it is proper to aid others with advice and instruction, may be called discre- tion. The opposite, indiscretion, the inability to keep from advising and instructing people, is a quality that will make a person disliked by his fellows sooner than anything else, especially when it appears in young men. It is particularly necessary for one to be on one's guard when it comes to rep- rimanding or blaming people. Uncalled-for blame angers a man and strengthens him in his perverseness. The habit of finding fault and speaking evil is a real vice. Here the pur- pose is not to serve the neighbor with the truth, but to flat- ter one's self-love and vanity. The Gospel does not warn us so earnestly against fault-finding for nothing. Insinuat- ing itself into our hearts in the guise of sincerity and love of truth, this habit becomes a soul-destroying vice. It extin- guishes brotherly love : we naturally hate a man whom we have wronged, even though it be in secret. It leads to 688 DOCTRINE OP VIRTUES AND DUTIES flattery and falsehood : we try to make the interested person believe that we will not pronounce a similar judgment upon him when his back is turned. It prevents us from being true to ourselves: the man who is always beholding the mote that is in his brother's eye, at last cannot see the beam that is in his own eye. Hence the rule is : Speak of evil only when the good is promoted thereby; and, for the rest, turn all things to good.^ 7. The other phase of the problem, the public communica- tion of the truth, demands a somewhat more elaborate treatment. To know the truth as a whole, as contained in philosophy and science, is not a function of the individual mind as such ; a people, or, in the last analysis, humanity, is the bearer of the truth, the individual shares in it as the member of a people. The little fraction which he possesses, he possesses as the heir of the past; he thinks with the logical and metaphysical categories which the popular mind has devel- oped in the course of thousands of years, and has incor- porated into grammatical forms. He sees things through the ideas and notions which his age places at his dis- posal, he labors upon the solution of the problems which it suggests to him. On the other hand, it is no less true that 1 In Wackernagel's Treasury of German Poetry and Wisdom (Edelsteine deutscher Dichtung und Weisheit), vol. XIII., is found a sermon of Brother David of Augsburg, which offers a piece of advice which we ought to take to heart : " Ziuch din gemiiete von allem, das dich niht anget. Laz einen jeglichen sin dine ahten unde sinen siten halten unde schaf dfl mit gote din dine. Swes aber dfi maht gebezzert warden, des nim alleine war; das ander IsLz hin gen. Bekiimber din herze niht mit urteile, wan dfl niht wizzen kanst, umbbe welhe Sache oder in welhem siune daz geschiht, daz dfl urteilst ; wan als wir flzen ofte missesehen einez fiir daz ander, also misseraten wir ofte ein guotez fiir ein boesez, als der schelhe, der zwei siht fiir einez und ist daran betrogen. Maht duz aber niht zn gaote keren, dennoch bekiimber dich niht da mite. Ez ist vil unverrihtunge in der kristenlieit, der dfl aller niht verrihten maht. Lid einez mit dem andern. Des dfl niht trflwest gebezzern, da iiebe din gedult an. Swa aber von diuem swigen iht ungevelliges wahseu mohte, daz von diner rede mae gebezzert werden, d4 sprich zuo, senfteclichen, ernstliche, ane strit, daz dfl dich d& mite unschuldigest, daz duz iht teilhaftic slst, des man dich anspreche." VERACITY 689 the collective mind exercises the functions only through individual minds as its organs. Here a notable difference may be observed: individuals do not all stand in the same relation to this function. The masses always participate in the truth in a rather receptive, passive manner, while nature chooses only a few distin- guished minds as bearers and increasers of knowledge. If we designate the latter with the old term of clergy {clems), which includes all spiritual leaders of the people, its inves- tigators and teachers, its thinkers and poets, we may say: The public communication of the truth is the true life-calling of the elerus, and veracity is the specific duty, as it were the professional virtue of the clericus. But we may again distinguish two phases in this virtue : we may call them sincerity and the love of truth. The former is the universal and elementary virtue of the clericus : it consists in this, that he simply and clearly, conscien- tiously and faithfully, employs the truth in teaching and preaching, in theory and in practice. It is the fundamental precondition of his power to do good in so far as the latter depends upon the confidence which the laymen have in him. But confidence is gained only by simplicity and sincerity of heart and intellect. Inquisitive love of truth, on the other hand, is the special duty of the true investigator and path- finder ; it is the passionate impulse which incites the historical or natural-scientific investigator to discover new facts and to penetrate more deeply into their relations. It is the im- pulse which, urging the thinker constantly to test the estab- lished views and theories, is forever on its guard against error even in the form of established opinions. It is the love of truth which inspires the poet and thinker who seeks to comprehend and express the secret meaning of life and the universe in new thoughts and symbols. It is the love of truth, finally, which impels the great leaders of mankind, the prophets and reformers, to discover new, untrodden paths of 4i 690 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES life. Plus ultra, that is the watchword of these pathfinders of the future, who are laboring for the civilization of hu- manity. They are restrained by no authority, by no preju- dice, be it ever so sacred; they follow the light which burns in their hearts. The love of truth finds its highest expression in martyr- dom. We should expect the nations to turn to their great leaders and pathfinders in thankful admiration. And so they do, but it is only after their death that mortal men are reck- oned among the gods. Martyrdom is the great purifier by which humanity tests the genuineness of new truths ; it is the narrow portal through which heroes pass into immor- tality. This has been the method of humanity from times immemorial, and it is not hard to see the historical necessity of this fact, which is so surprising at first sight. 8. Let me first try to show the psychological necessity. The conceptions and truths of a people become — and that is their true function — the ideal basis of its institutions, of the state and the law, of the church and the school. All kinds of arts and practices depend upon our views and ideas of the nature of things and of men, their relations to each other and to the universe. Originally the entire life of every nation and all its institutions were based upon religion. Every religion, however, contains a philosophy of history and a metaphysic, — the precipitate of all the experiences of a people with the world and its relations to the world. Hence it follows that every attempt at a radical change of views is regarded as a menace to the entire life ; the weaken- ing of the theoretical foundations will result in the shatter- ing of all the institutions founded upon them. And this is not an illusion. All great revolutions in the world of institu- tions had as their starting-point revolutions in the world of thoughts. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the most recent events of European history. The long series of revolutions which fill the pages of modern history are the VERACITY 691 after-effects of the changes in the world of ideas which, after the fifteenth century, undermined the mediaeval conception of the universe which had been systematized In the dogmas of the church. The great historical and geographical, cosmical and physical discoveries, which were made in surprising numbers in the neighborhood of the sixteenth century, first made possible the ecclesiastical revolutions, then the eco- nomic and political revolutions, which since then have shaken Germany, England, and France, and which have not yet come to an end. Wherever, however, the world of thought remains stable, as was the case in China, the world of institutions persists in its old forms. It is for this reason that the institutions resist every at- tempt that may be made to change the conceptions. They defend tradition as the basis of their existence. We might imagine them arguing as follows : The welfare of a people depends upon the stability and trustworthiness of its in- stitutions. A revolution that affects any important part of its institutions is always a serious, nay, a dangerous crisis. The stability of these, however, depends upon their authority, hence it cannot be permitted to question their theoretical foundations. Every criticism against the funda- mental conceptions upon which the institutions rest, under- mines the ground upon which the security and welfare, nay, the very life, of the people depend. Criticism must there- fore stop short of the principles which underlie the church, the state, and society. — Though this applies to all, it applies particularly to the clerus. For their function is to serve so- ciety by preserving and defending the truth. Things would be in a bad shape if any one could at any time set up his own notions and private opinions, and sit in judgment upon these fundamental truths. The institutions themselves are supported by the private interests which are intertwined with them. Institutions do not exist in the abstract, but in human beings, who have 692 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES adapted their entire lives to them. In the stability of the educational institutions, the military institutions, the polit- ical and ecclesiastical systems, those are particularly and directly interested who are employed as teachers and officers, as state and church officials. I mean interested not merely in the vulgar sense that they and their families depend for their support upon the permanence of the institutions — ■ which is often no longer the case in consequence of our pres- ent pension system — but interested especially in the ideal sense, for whoever denies the necessity or the value of these institutions, deprives these persons of the ideal basis of their existence; he seems, by demanding a change of system, to declare that their functions and their lives are futile. A schoolmaster of the eighteenth century, who had reached an honorable old age in the practice of his profession, instructing the young in Latin composition, could not but have regarded the reforms of the innovators who repudiated these things as exploded errors and desired to introduce others — mathe- matics and natural science, German and French — as an abandonment of something that had been tried by experience, of something hallowed by tradition. Should that which he and his father and his grandfather had learned and practised and admired as a masterpiece of human culture and erudition, be now set aside ? And should things be put in its place which he did not possess and did not need, — quite unnecessary things, no doubt ; for had he not been educated and learned, respected and happy without them ? Impossible ; only crim- inal carelessness and ignorance of the true value of things can lead to such perverse thoughts ! In the same way, the clergy- man will meet all attempts to change the church institutions or the creed ; the general, attacks upon the military organization or the army-ration ; the privy councillor, changes in the state constitution and administrative practice. All of them will feel inclined to look upon the demanded changes at least as quite unnecessary innovations, usually, however, as VERACITY 693 the beginnings of an obnoxious and ruinous revolution. Should they really be introduced, the ruin of the country, the destruction of the army, the overthrow of religion, would be the inevitable result. Thus our learned school authorities have for the last three hundred years prophesied the return of the barbarism of the Middle Ages every time they were disturbed in their obsolete pedantry. In order to guard against all such calamities from the very outset, all author- ities are agreed that the best and safest, and therefore most advisable thing to do is to deal rigorously with the unbridled criticism to which youthful, inexperienced, or malicious heads are unfortunately always inclined. The opposition of the authorities finds support in the in- stinctive aversion of all privileged and propertied classes to changes, and in the inertia of the masses. The propertied classes are always conservative; they are "saturated," and therefore intent upon preservation and peace. Happy and contented are those in possession — thus we might translate the old maxim of the jurists ; they do not crave for the new, but fear it. But the masses, too, are conservative by nature. The established order is the habitual order; we have adapted ourselves to it; the new is, under all circumstances, strange and inconvenient, apt to be ridiculous and forbidding. How many sighs may not have been caused during the seventies by the new weights and measures and the new coins ! Things did n't fit, the litre did n't suit the pot nor the metre the body. We feel uncomfortable in a new house; nothing is in its place, no cozy nook reminds us of pleasant hours. New institutions affect a nation in the same way, and therefore it shuns change. And for the same reason the masses have an instinctive fear of all criticism; they, too, feel that this undermines the ground upon which the institutions rest which have become endeared to them or endurable through habit. Bitter experiences or strong pressure are required to arouse in them a strong desire for change. 694 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES We might at last also speak of the inertia of the old concep' tiona themselves. When the Copernican theory of the celes- tial motions was first advanced, it was regarded by the authorities as an unfruitful or absurd hypothesis, which did not deserve serious consideration, except, perhaps, to be refuted so that the devil might not play his tricks with it and use it to deride the word of God. They did not find the new view in any way suited to explain the phenomena; the old geocentric idea explained things so naturally that, in comparison with it, the new one seemed awkward, nay, absurd and nonsensical. For, do we not feel that the earth is fixed, do we observe even the slightest evidence of this fabulous motion which is falsely ascribed to it ? The new theory was developed by Kepler and Galileo, and the age of ridicule was followed by the age of refutation and persecu- tion. The old ideas really began to appreciate their peril, which was not yet the case in the sixteenth century. Now they reacted with all the means at their command; what these were we may learn from the biographies of Kepler and Galileo. The discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey met with a similar fate. The physicians who had for so many centuries looked at things and treated men according to the Galenian theory could not see what advan- tages were to be derived from the new hypothesis, either theoretically or practically. And how unreasonable to de- mand that one should repudiate one's own past, and over- throw the authorities of the centuries on account of this queer-headed fellow! In the same way the authorities re- jected Darwin's biological theories and Strauss's researches in evangelical history, in a later century, as untrue, useless, and dangerous. Thus the old truths are protected by a mighty dam of con- servative interests against the flood of new thoughts. No new truths shall come into the world ; in this the authorities and the masses, the established order and the prevailing VERACITY 695 truths, are agreed. That is, no important and great truths, no new ideas and fundamental conceptions ; expositions and elaborations, supplementations and corrections, applications and adaptations of the recognized theories and opinions, — these are permitted, and not only permitted, but welcomed and publicly rewarded. Perhaps there never was a time which was so liberal in rewarding such work as the present. And this is perfectly proper and commendable : the great truths would have made their way even without the rewards. Al- though Truth is, to quote Bacon, a bride without a dowry, she has never wanted for suitors. Petty and laborious tasks, on the other hand, the investigation of manuscripts and the description of fungi and bugs, the entire work of scientific registration, which, too, is necessary, possibly lack inner attractiveness, and it is therefore right that the efficient performance of such duties should be publicly rewarded. The consequence of the opposition of the combined con- servative interests is, then, that new ideas are invariably presented to the world by martyrs. A peculiar custom is ascribed to the Locrians : whoever introduced a measure for altering the existing laws, was compelled to appear in the popular meeting in which he argued for it with a rope around his neck, by which he was hung up if he did not succeed in convincing his fellow-citizens. An ingenious custom ! History acts in the same way, with the difference, however, that she first uses the rope and convinces herself afterwards. 9. Thus the attitude of mankind to new truths is psycho- logically necessary. But it is also teleologically necessary. Historical life is evidently not possible without fixed and permanent institutions ; they are the means by which collec- tive reason determines and governs the life of the individual. The many, we might say, somewhat modifying a remark of Heraclitus, although they believe they are living according to their own insight, are in reality governed by the common 696 DOCTRINE OP VIRTUES AND DUTIES reason. Now institutions could not acquire stability, if new ideas were to rush through the heads of men, meeting with no resistance, like the wind over a stubble-field. Permanent conceptions are the preconditions of permanent institutions. Hence, in order that historical life may be possible, it is necessary that the thoughts become fixed and take firm root in the minds of men, and offer resistance to new thoughts which seek to push them out. Perhaps they cannot be estab- lished firmly enough, at first, without a transcendent sanc- tion. This would explain the teleological necessity of a religious metaphysic, which we actually find everywhere, as the original foundation of the faith and the life of a people, of its morals and laws, and which usually offers such great resistance to the introduction of new truths. Nay, we can manifestly form no conception whatever of a mental-historical life in which we should not have to battle for the truth against error and prejudice; of what would it consist ? Without friction no motion. Nor need we expect these pathfinders and martyrs of truth to quarrel with fate on this account. Lessing's words re- garding the possession and pursuit of truth are well known. He surely would not have desired that truths be acquired otherwise than by struggle. Not all of those who have battled for the truth were as fond of struggle as Lessing. Yet it is doubtful whether any one among them would have been willing to change the order of nature, had it been in his power to do so. That constitutes the special glory of a witness of the truth, an inner voice might have whispered to him, in case the tempter had approached him, to be slan- dered and persecuted by the present. If, instead of this, the discoverers and pioneers of new truths were honored during their lives, as they are honored by posterity, these honors, too, would be taken away from them by the skilful and the ambitious. Then the vain and self-conceited would be eternally pushing themselves to the front with new opin- VERACITY 697 ions. Owing to this beneficent arrangement, the spiritual leadership of humanity is finally reserved for men of great, earnest, and unselfish hearts. That would be impossible if the truth flattered their contemporaries. And, therefore, this inner voice may have concluded, it is good that the stones intended as corner-stones of the future should be rejected by the builders of the present. Wenn das Gute wiirde vergolten, So ware es keine Kunst es zu thun ; Aber Verdienst ist es nun Zu thun, wofiir du wirst gescholten. Thus all those may console themselves with Riickert who are abused for truth and justice' sake, — if, indeed, they need any consolation. For it is worthy of note that the great martyrs of truth did not leave the world with hatred and bitterness. Jesus prayed upon the cross for his persecutors : "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." They did not intend to persecute the truth, but error, — destructive error. Nay, they themselves had to serve the truth as unconscious organs. "Must not the Son of man suffer and die in order that all things might be fulfilled ? " How could the victory be won without the last battle ? A paradoxically-inclined person might even reason as fol- lows : It is really to be deplored that so little zeal is shown in persecuting new truths in our times. The result is that great characters are no longer formed, as of old, when wit- nesses of the truth and pioneers of thought were crucified and burned. Take the life of Carlyle. Beyond doubt, he was by nature and temperament made of the stuff of witnesses of the truth, prophets, and martyrs : what might he not have be- come if he had lived three centuries earlier ! In this weak nineteenth century he was partially overwhelmed by paltry troubles, — troubles with reviewers and publishers of period- icals, troubles with his neighbors' cocks and dogs. These were his battles, battles of no very elevating nature, how-' 698 DOCTRINE OP VIRTUES AND DUTIES ever honestly and valiantly he may have fought them. This state of affairs, too, makes it hard for men to recognize what is truly great and enduring. Whether a man is thoroughly in earnest with a cause will be perfectly evident only in case he is willing to offer his life for it. However, I do not deem it superfluous to add a remark to these entire reflections, Universal affirmative propositions cannot, as is known, be converted simply. From the propo- sition, All great new truths were persecuted and rejected as heresies at their first appearance, it does not follow that all heresies and paradoxes are great new truths. Writers who are despised and repudiated by their contemporaries are in the habit of reasoning thus, and of appealing from the pres- ent to posterity. But posterity does not accept all such appeals. Not all those who are called are chosen; there are false prophets and even false martyrs. Great and extraordinary powers are needed to bear the overthrow of recognized truths. When common natures are driven by accident and circumstances to battle against recognized truths and established authorities, they become empty blatherskites. Are these more common in our age than formerly ? If so, we may perhaps attribute it to the fact that serious persecutions no longer occur in our times; minds were winnowed by martyrdom. 10. I shall close this entire discussion with a considera- tion of the question: Does the duty of communicating truth universally demand the destruction of error wherever and in whatever form it may appear ? It is one of the great con- troversies which have always moved mankind. We may de- fine it as the controversy between the will and the intellect, between the practical and speculative sides of human nature. The will, turned towards self-preservation, demands, as was shown above, stability of institutions, and therefore also of the conceptions upon which they are grounded. The spiritual and temporal authorities, which we may term the VERACITY 699 representatives of the will in history, therefore always incline to the demand that certain things be fixed once and for all, which criticism should not be permitted to disturb. The intellect, on the contrary, refuses to close the debate; to hinder the continuation of the investigation means for it the perpetuation of error. The end of all research is the absolute accommodation of knowledge to reality. But this goal is infinitely remote, and hence the attempt better to adapt the conceptual system to reality must be constantly renewed. Nor are the fundamental principles excepted; they, too, must be subjected to progressive changes, if only for the reason that the constant extension and intensification of particular knowledge ultimately demands a rearrange- ment of the facts. The antagonism between these two tendencies, formulated as a conflict of principles, turns upon the question : Is truth under all circumstances good and error harmful f Or may the preservation of error at times be necessary, and its destruc- tion harmful ? The politicians, if we may designate the rep- resentatives of the will by this term, affirm the latter, the philosophers, the representatives of the intellect, the former question. If the question is asked absolutely and universally, it will be impossible to answer it otherwise than with the philoso- phers : Truth is good, error harmful. Since things do not govern themselves according to our opinions, we must govern our opinions according to things. Things, says Bishop Butler, are what they are, and their effects will be what they are ; why should we wish to deceive ourselves ? A negro attempts to make rain or to cure diseases by magic. He is doubly harmed ; he wastes his energies, while disease and drouth remain. On the other hand, it seems to be impossible to deny that the destruction of an erroneous idea does not, under all cir- cumstances, promote the welfare of him who harbors it 700 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES Hence an inadequate idea may be better tlian none at all; and the conditions may be such as to make it possible to undermine the false conception without establishing the true one. It may be possible to deprive a negro of his faith in the fetich, without at the same time giving him true ideas of the natural connection of things. Would he then be bene- fited by being freed from error ? Fetiches are employed by negroes for the protection of property; the thief fears the magic, and it frequently happens that stolen goods are re- turned in consequence. It may be a very imperfect police force, but it is perhaps better than none at all. A wooden leg, says Schopenhauer, is better than none at all, and any religion better than none. We must remember that truths are not ready-made things, which pass from hand to hand like coins ; truths are living functions, and do not exist in any other form. Hence they cannot really be communicated. A person may assist me in creating thoughts, but he cannot transfer his thoughts to me ; I can only think the thoughts which I myself produce. And the assistance which he renders me herein does not always consist in his repeating to me the thoughts with which he is familiar. The straightest path is by no means always the shortest in history. At the beginning of the thirteenth cen- tury the Middle Ages became acquainted with the natural- scientific writings of Aristotle. Our natural scientists will hardly see in them anything but a more or less subtle web of errors. And yet these books were undoubtedly of great value to the thirteenth century, perhaps of much greater value than the most perfect text-books of the present could have been to it. If the best handbooks of physics, chemistry, and astronomy, which the nineteenth century has brought forth, had fallen from the skies, in the thirteenth century, they would most likely have been thrown aside, after a brief examination, as utterly unintelligible and useless things. The thinkers of those days would not have known what to do VERACITY 701 with them, any more than we know what to do with books full of cabalistic symbols and formulae. Hence, if any one in his zeal for the truth, if, for instance, that omnipotent being of Descartes, had interfered, not in order to deceive, but to prevent deception, and had destroyed the Aristotelian books and sent the others down from heaven, what would have been the result ? Evidently the development of natural science among the Western nations would have been, if not prevented, at least retarded for several centuries. Without the assistance of a teacher adapted to their needs, these nations would have had to enter upon the long road to knowledge alone, and who knows whether they ever would have found it ? Had the solution of the riddle — if we are bold enough to regard the text-books of the present as such — been communicated to them, it would scarcely have helped them. It is well known that investigators for centuries tried to find the philosopher's stone, which was supposed to be able to turn everything it touched into gold. They did not find the stone, but the science of chemistry. The stone was a fiction, but the fiction led to the truth after all : for does not chemistry turn everything into gold ? Now the different stages of development are not only suc- cessive, but also simultaneous. The electrical arc light and the tallow candle exist side by side ; and each may be appro- priate in its place. So, too, different physical and meta- physical conceptions and fundamental principles exist side by side ; the investigator and thinker and the little mother in the remote mountain nook,, cannot think the world with the same thoughts. Truth is one, the conception of things projected upon the perfect intellect ; but the real in- tellects are more or less imperfect, and therefore require different methods of conceiving things. Prom this point of view the controversy between the poli- ticians and the philosophers, it seems to me, may be settled. The philosophers are right in this : no limits are to be set 702 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES to research. Whatever new thoughts a nation produces, will be suitable and good for it. We may cherish the belief that nature, here as everywhere, brings forth at the proper time what is appropriate and necessary. Every advance in knowl- edge, viewed from the standpoint of the total development of a popular life, is a genuine advance. The investigator as such can therefore be concerned with no other question than this : What is true ? But since there can be no research with- out communication, we must say further that no limit shall be set to the communication of knowledge. The scientific writer has but one concern : How shall I most clearly and definitely present the things as I see them ? Whoever allows himself to be governed by considerations and purposes of a different kind, whoever is thinking, first and last, how he may please this man and avoid displeasing that one, does not serve the truth, and therefore the truth also despises him. Truth gives herself only to him who seeks for her alone. The inconsiderate and " unintentional " books are the endur- ing books. The author ought not even to think of the good of the reader but only of the subject itself; the more he is wrapped up in this, the better he will write. " With philosoph- ical systems," the old Wandshecker Bote once said, "which are invented by their authors for others, and are constructed as fig leaves or for the sake of controversy or for show, sensible people will have nothing to do. But in philoso- phers who seek for light and truth to satisfy their own needs, and to remove the load of untruth oppressing their hearts, other people have the deepest interest." So far the philosophers are right. The politicians, on the other hand, are right in this, that when it comes to imparting knowledge by instruction, which is designed for particular persons, we must be guided not only by a regard for the sub- ject but by a i-egard for the person. This consideration — we may call it the pedagogical consideration — may prevent the teacher from saying everything he thinks, and from saying VERACITY 703 what he thinks just as he thinks it in his own mind. We do not tell the simplest experience to two different persons in the same way; we take into account the person, and govern our narrative and voice, the selection and arrange- ment of the facts, accordingly. How could we speak of greater things, how could we speak of God and the world, to persons of different age, education, inclinations, and views in the same words ? It is the same history of mankind which is taught in the Volksschule, in the gymnasium, and the university; and yet how different must be the method of treatment in order that it may be good, instructive, and edifying in each place. The same also applies to ultimate principles: the world is one and the same, and so is the truth; but it cannot reflect the same countenance in every mirror. What is true of the teacher in the school is true also of the preacher in the pulpit. To him, too, the pedagogical law is applicable : Discuss the truth in such a way that these par- ticular hearers before you may be instructed and edified thereby. Let us suppose that his congregation lives in an out-of-the-way village on the moor, to which not even the faintest rumor of the things which have occurred in theology and literature during the last hundred years has penetrated, where the names of Strauss and Renan are as little known as those of Kant and Schleiermacher. Here the Bible is still accepted in the literal sense as the word of God, which has been transmitted to us by the holy men to whom it was entrusted. Our clergyman, however, has been convinced by higher criticism that the Sacred Scriptures were made in a very human way, like other writings, that different concep- tions, contradictions, and even errors are contained in them, not to speak of the uncertainties of tradition. Ought this to keep him from speaking to his congregation of the Bible as the word of God ? Or ought he, for example, to lecture on the results of higher criticism, in order to free them of their 704 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES time-honored prejudices and errors ? What would he accom- plish by that ? If he succeeded in taking from the peasants their old faith, what could he give them in return ? Strauss's Life of Christ or Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason ? By that, he would simply succeed in bringing into contempt the only book which hitherto served them as a guide and a light, as a poetical pleasure in life and a consolation in death. For they would surely be apt to say, in case they believed him: So, then, we have been deceived by this book; we thought it was God's word, and now we see it is the word of man, and hence we had better cast it aside and read what the wise men of to-day write. That is what educated people do : they accept the conclusion of criticism that the Bible is not God's word, and therefore cease reading it. Hence if our preacher does not wish that to happen, if he desires, as in fact he does, the Bible to be the first, the most important, nay, perhaps the only book needed by his moor-peasants, and perhaps also by other human beings, which it will do them more good to read every day than the most widely-circulated daily newspaper with its three edi- tions a day, and the most cultured weekly and monthly jour- nal besides : if he believes this, he will without scruple and hesitation speak of the book in the language in which the peasants on the moor are accustomed to hear it spoken of. Is he telling them the untruth ? What does it mean to say that the Bible is God's word ? Is it a falsehood ? Is it a literary-historical notice like the statement that Gutzkow is the author of the Magician of Rome? No, it is a metaphor which expresses a judgment of value in the most emphatic form. It means that its contents are so grand and true that it is a divine book, and comes from God. The same preacher might, if he were transferred to different surroundings and now had to speak to readers of Strauss and Kant, change his language without changing his view, and without proving false to the truth in either case, He would, entering into VERACITY 705 their conceptions, say to them : All that you hare read or heard or even written about these books is certainly highly interesting, and some of it perhaps also true. But now for- get all that for a moment, and consider with me what is said in these books, which originated in such and such a way. Very serious things are said, it seems to me, — things which are often told with wonderful and unique simplicity and power; so that I am in a certain sense brought back to the view that this book, like no other book in the world, con- tains divine words and a revelation of God, — a view which Goethe and Herder held, whom my hearers will perhaps be more inclined to believe in these matters than a modern the- ologian. — If to build up (otKoSoy^eti') and not to tear down is the real business of the preacher as well as of the teacher, he must, it seems to me, take this position. This would be, as the Apostle says, speaking the truth in love and not in anger {d\r]$eveiv iv ayairy).^ The same preacher might, finally, if, as a scholar, he pub- lished philological-historical investigations of the sacred Scriptures, also speak in still another strain. Here he would again, in order to fulfil the duty of veracity, avoid the very thing that he cannot and should not avoid as a preacher, that is, accommodation to the thoughts and language of others. And he would likewise avoid the attempts at concil- iation, the makeshifts, and the weak excuses, employed to save a theory, the squinting at orthodoxy, the haggling for the truth, the circumvention of the confession that a thou- sand things remain riddles to him, in fact everything that makes many commentaries on the Gospels so unbearable to every truthful man. Here, indeed, we need a new Luther who will make short work of the commentaries and controversies.^ 1 Ephesians, IV., 15. 2 Objections hare been raised against this view. A sincere and truthful nature, k is contended, cannot do this. I confess the difficulty without controversy, but I believe it is not due to the thing itself but to the conditions in which our 706 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES From this point of view the duties of a church and school administration are to be determined. No man should be in- terfered with in his calling as a teacher on account of his dissenting opinions, but only on the ground of pedagogical blunders. The preacher and the teacher is not employed as a hireling to present " correct " views, it is his business to express his faith, his convictions, and his soul. In case he exhibits a lack of skill, he should receive advice from the more experienced; but if he does not wish to accept it or cannot understand it, he must choose another calling; not everybody is called to preach or to teach. Nor is everybody qualified to criticise another's method of teaching, surely not one whose chief claim to distinction is " correctness of thought" and an ability to write official documents. Harsh attempts clergymen find themselves placed at present. If the village were, as was assumed, absolutely isolated, if it contained only the peasants with their faith and the clergyman with his faith and his knowledge, one difficulty would still remain ; how are people to understand each other who do not think the same thoughts ? But the moral difficulty would not exist. The latter is due to the fact that the preacher lives in an environment in which positions and promotions are open to the professors of the creed, whatever may be their real attitude to it ; a proud and upright nature may find it impossible to tolerate even the appearance of being in- fluenced by such considerations. And besides, where shall we find a village into which the disconnected elements of the new ideas have not been carried, say by a soldier returning home from the capital or by a social-democratic pamphlet ? Under such circumstances I can easily understand the painfulness of the situar tion, and I am far from blaming a, man who cannot endure it any longer. I simply say : A man can assume a different attitude without deserving to be accused of insincerity. — The case is different so soon as he is asked by the people : Do you really believe that God is the author of the Bible ? The question suggests doubt, and doubt is an indication of a desire for knowledge, obscure though it may be ; and this calls for instruction, instruction in the real history of the origin of the Bible, in which case it will perhaps be discovered that this is a difficult problem, probably much more difficult than the inquirers surmised. And to the over-curious he may reply : My dear friend, if you would keep the word, yon would find out whether it was of God or not. On the other hand, to repel an honest doubter would be to prove false to the truth. And the so wide- spread distrust of the clergy and their sincerity is a mortifying proof that this has often been done. Nor will the distrust disappear so long as the conditions continue to which it owes its origin : that is, so long as the good positions are given to those who know how to profess and to be silent. The Taxc^.yva had u«i difficulty in convincing men of the genuineness of their faith. VERACITY 701 at levelling make men bitter and dull. This office more than any other requires wisdom and self-control, acuteness of vision and leniency of judgment, and, aBove all, a wealth of knowledge and experience with respect to the things upon which mental power depends, to enable us not only to judge but also to give help. Lichtenberg's advice is admirable, and all those who belong to the spiritual regime should take it to heart every day : " Train your mind to doubt and your heart to toleration. " And a word of Goethe ought also to be borne in mind: "If older persons were only willing to adopt true pedagogical methods, they would not prohibit a young man from doing what gives him pleasure, whatever it may be, nor set him against it, unless they could at the same time give him something in place of it." Besides, I do not wish to hide the fact that we have, in my opinion, magnified the difficulties existing in this field in a manner not warranted by the nature of the case. In a certain measure public instruction will always be behind the times. The school will, in the main, always be concerned with transmitting the stock of recognized truths. Now new truths never make their appearance in the world as recog- nized truths, but as heterodox ones. They cannot, even for this reason, gain admission to the schools. Then, again, the teachers have, for the most part, been educated by the older generation. This made it impossible for the Copernican theory to become a branch in the curriculum of the sixteenth century; nor can the Darwinian theory gain entrance into the schools of the nineteenth century ; — although I am not of the opinion that the teacher who desires to speak of it and can do it intelligently and tactfully should be prohibited from doing so. On the contrary, it is much wiser that a learned and reliable man should point out the significance and bear- ing of the new conception, which has spread so rapidly and has had such great influence upon our times, than that we should leave the matter to the accidental and perhaps very 708 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES inadequate treatment of the first penny-a-liner wlio happens along. But be this as it may, it will at some future time seem very strange that our age has so placidly adhered to a system of religious instruction which arose many centuries ago under entirely different conditions of intellectual life, and which is, in so many respects, decidedly opposed to the facts and ideas which are regarded as firmly established outside of the school and church. It is a secret to no one, not even to the pupils of our gymnasia, that much of what our present religious instruction obliges teachers and pupils to accept as literal truth — think of the Old Testament — is not regarded in that light anywhere in the world, not even by our school directors or ministerial councillors, who in their role of supervisors insist upon the " correctness " of the teaching. Our philological-historical and natural-scientific investigators are so utterly out of line with the dogmatic doctrine of our creed that they pay absolutely no attention to it, that they do not even take the trouble to contradict it. And everybody knows how little the great poets and thinkers of the epoch which we teach our pupils to regard as the classic age of our spiritual life, cared for the teachings of the church, nay, in part, also for the Christian religion. I cannot help thinking that religious instruction which overlooks this fact, or simply mentions it in order to deplore it and to accuse these men of infidelity and perhaps also of frivolousness, cannot, as a rule, produce the effects which we expect and desire: appreciation of Christianity as an historical phenomenon and reverence for its founder. If the instruction is imparted by a one-sided young theologian, who has great faith in the correctness of his dogmatic views, and combines with this little capacity for guiding souls, the opposite effect is apt to ensue : distrust and aversion, feelings which spread from their source to everything connected with it VERACITY 709 A book recently fell into my hands which I was unable to read without some reluctance: Max Nordau's Conventional Lies.^ This book is conspicuous neither for its literary merit nor for the depth of its views ; it is not even amusing. It contains nothing but the assurance, a hundred times repeated, that our entire life is one great falsehood; religion and the church, the monarchy and the parliament, liberalism and con- servatism, marriage and the family, sociableness and society, — everything is a lie, particularly religion. We pretend to regard it as the most sacred and certain thing, while in reality it is the most indifferent thing to us in the world. This book has passed through sixteen editions in the course of a few years, and must therefore have been bought and read. I asked a bookseller. Who reads the book ? and re- ceived the answer, Why, everybody. That means, of course, everybody who goes to the book-store ; that is, all educated people, all those who have attended the gymnasium and the university. We may think what we choose of the judgment shown by these readers; it remains a highly significant fact that such a book has met with such success. What makes the work so attractive ? I can discover no reason for it except this, that it declares openly and forcibly what a great many of its readers think and feel. An age is characterized more by the books which it reads than by those which it writes. And this book of Lies does not stand alone ; there is an entire literature which deals with the same theme. What attracted the readers of Strauss's Old and New Faith^ or Biichner's Force and Matter,^ if not the openness with which these writers repudiated the old faith ? What is it that in- spires Diihring and Nietzsche but the desire to unmask false- hood. What impels the modern novel writers and dramatists I Die hmventionelhn Lilgen der Kulturmenschheit. * Der alte und neue Glaube, translated by M. Blind. • Translated by Collingswood. 710 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES but the desire to analyze the falseness and the inner rottenness of the times, and to expose them to the microscopic gaze of the reader ? An entire literature which makes a business of un- masking falsehood, — this, beyond doubt, is the trait which the history of literature of a later age will regard as highly charac- teristic of the spirit of the dying nineteenth century. That the conflict between what we really think and believe, and what we teach our youth to say or to believe in our church and school instruction, is partially to blame for this, no one who has eyes to see will deny. In almost every life this reaction appears sooner or later, with more or less violence; and since it usually happens at an age which other conditions also help to make critical, it often leads to a serious crisis in which many a young man receives permanent injury, and many a one is ruined for life. With the church faith, moral- ity becomes an object of suspicion, and the enlightenment leads to an ostensible repudiation of morality. When indo- lence, regard for others, or cowardice keeps others from professing their thoughts, or from confessing their doubts to themselves, hypocrisy or inner falsehood utterly destroys the moral life.^ I see but one way out of this difficulty. During the for- ties and the fifties many indulged in the hope that the conflict might be overcome by a more rigorous use of authority in favor of the old orthodoxy. Even governments, in a large measure, followed the advice that science be forced to a 1 Fr. Jodl admirsbly points out the danger in a thoughtful lecture on the Nature and Aims of the Ethical Movement in Germany (1893) [Wesen und Ziele der ethischen Bewegung in Deutschland] : " Year after year the highest and most sacred things, ethical convictions and ideals, are imparted to the younger generation, mixed with dogmatic propositions, which absolutely contradict the mental tendency which all other forces in life and education aim to develop. And thus a double evil is eternally produced which like a cancer eats away our spiritual life: inwardly the ethical principles and ideals break down with the weak supports to which they have been artificially attached, outwardly they are adhered to, often with conscious hypocrisy, on account of the attitude of the state. Religion becomes the state dress for our Byzantinism, behind which inter- nal shallowness, nay, rottenness, with difficulty conceals itself." VERACITY 711 change of front, or at least that instruction be governed, so far as possible, by the old formulae. The result is apparent : they have thereby created these readers of the literature men- tioned above. Hence only one way is left : to accommodate the church dogma to the theoretical thoughts and conceptions which are possible to our time. In this way Christianity would not be given up as a practical life-principle, but freed from bonds which impede its progress. What robs the Gos- pel of its efficacy in our times is its amalgamation with the old church dogma. If it were offered us as something purely human and historical, it would even now move the hearts of men. The formulae of the longer and shorter catechisms stifle and kill it. It looks as if this view were making some headway within theological circles, at least upon Protestant soil. If the movement were to lead to a real and permanent peace be- tween religion and science, I should regard it as a blessing for the European nations. Nations cannot live without re- ligion; religion, however, cannot live permanently if it is in conflict with philosophy and science. But the possibility of the peace lies, in the direction in which Kant sought it and believed himself to have found it a hundred years ago. Let scientific research proceed as far as possible upon her course, regardless of the objections of the dogma ; the entire historical and natural realm is absolutely open to her investi- gations. But the relation of the human mind to reality is not exhausted by scientific knowledge. It cannot help con- structing thoughts concerning the meaning of the whole ; these thoughts, however, are not a matter of demonstration, like physical theories or historical facts; they are based upon the soul's participation in things, upon the selective judgment of value ; they rest upon the volitional side of man's nature. In their unity they make up the faith of the human soul. There will therefore be unity of faith between all those who recognize the same highest good. But the dogma, 712 DOCTRINE OF VIRTUES AND DUTIES as the formula of the faith, would be an expression of the conception of reality from the point of view of the highest good. A dogma in this sense could never come in conflict with science, because it would never make any assertions concerning that aspect of things which is accessible to science. It would bind the will, but not the understanding. INDEX [The letter n. Btands for note, ant places.] Asterisks are inserted to assist the reader in finding ixsport* Abbott, 194 n. 2, 222 n. 1, 224 n. 1, 321 n. 1, 584 n. 1. Advice, 686. .Sschylus, 411. ^Esthetics, 19. Albee, 185 n. 2, n. 3. Alexander, S., 193. Almsgiving, 642 flE. Altruism and egoism, 379 * fi. ; how judged morally, 391 fF. Ambition, 674 ff. Ambrose, 76, 170* f. Amor Dei, Spinoza's, 183. Anaxagoras, 59. Angelus Silesius, 441. Anaelm, 120 f. Anthropology, 2. Antiquitv contrasted with Middle Ages, 119 £E." Anzcngruber, 375 n. 1. Apocalypse, 105. A priori method in ethics, 6 ff. Aristotle, 39 n. 1, 60, 224, 251 n. 1, 257, 273 ff ., 374, 407 n. 1 , 426, 430 L, 454 n. 2, 475 n. 1, 478, 483 n. 1, 495, 534, 536 n. 1, 569 11. 1, 599 n. 1; his definition of ethics, 1; his ethical system, 48* ff. ; his conception of ethics as a practical science, 25 ; his conception of highest good, 36 f. ; and Spinoza, 52 j his con- ception of the tragedy, 263 f. Arnold, M., 288. Art, 283, 432, 556* ff.; affectation of, 560 f.; its effects on human soul, 558 f. ; and life, 559 ff.; in Middle Ages, 125, 562; modem, 563 ff.; foreign elements in modem, 563 ff. Asceticism, 488 * ff. ; in Greek and Chris- tian ethics, 167 ff.; Jesus's attitude towards, 93 ff. ; in Middle Ages, 119 f, 171 f. ; in Plato, 47 f. ; and Reformation, 132 f. Atheism, 425, 430. Athletics, 519 ff., 526. Atomism and religion, 423 ff. Auerbach, B., 306. Aufklarung, 28, 40, 140 f. Augustine, 32, 321 n. 1, 454 n. 3,487; his ethical system, 171*; his conception of evil, 332; his conception of virtues, 69; and Luther, 131. Authoritativeness of conscience, 342 ff., 363 ff. Avarice, 636 ff. Bacon, 379 n. 1, 695; on atheism, 430; on causality, 6 f. ; his modern ideals, 137 * ff. Bad, 321* ff.; definition of the, 248 f.j good and, 222 ff. Baer, 607 n. 1. Bain, 192* n. 1, 251 n. 1, 253 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 346 n. 1, 379 n. 1. Baldwin, 253 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 341 n. 1, 343 .1. 1, 405 n. 1, 452 n. 1. Barbarian conception of life, 37 ff. ; con- trasted with Greek and Christian ideals, 167 ff. Barratt, 192 * n. 1, 261 n. 1. Baumann, 215 n. 1, 462 n. 1. Baumgartner, 592 n. 2. Baur, 65 n. 1, 98 n. 1. Bayle, 327 n. 1. Beccaria, his theory of capital punishment, 611. Beneficence, 596 ff. Benevolence, 592* ff., 599, 638* ff., S64. Bentham, 190 *, 223, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 354, 380 n. 4, 382, 606 n. 1. Berner, 610, 631 f. Bestmann, 65 n. 1. Bias of Priene, 336. Bildung, 554 f. Biiiniarck^ 531. 714 INDEX Blackie, 483 n. 2. Blind, 90 n. 5, 709 n. 2. BluDtschli, 2G2 n. 1, 550. Bodily life, 605 ff. Bowne, 193 » n. 1, 416 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 606 n. 1. Bowring, 190 n. 1 . Bradley, 193 * n. 1, 227 n. 1, 251 n. 1, 350 II. 1. Brentano, 340 n. 1. Brillat-Savarin, 506 n. 1. Brinckmann, 324 n. 1. Biichner, 709. Buckle, 136 f. Buddha, 114 f. Buddhism and Christianity, 114 f. Buhle, 147 n. 1. Burckhardt, 111, 127 n. 1, 128, 372. Butler, 340 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 699. Byron, 303, 444 n. 1. Calderwood, 35 n. 1, 192* n. 4, 340 n. 1. Calling, 630 ff. Calumny, 669 f. Calvin, 4B4 n. 4; on free-will, 455. Campe, 484 n. 2. Capital, 533 ff. Capital punishment, 611 f. Cardinal virtues, 45. Carlyle, 375, 697 ; his conception of highest good, 263 ; his conception of evil, 331 n. 1; bis estimate of suicide, 588 n. 1. Carrifere, 127 n. 1, 215 n. 1. Carus, P., 114 n. 1. Cassian, 85 f. Catholic ethics, 169 ff. Catholicism, 125 n. 1, 136, 160 f., 169 ff. Cathrein, 215 n. 1. Causality and free-will, 460 n. 1. Celsus, his criticism of Christianity, 98 f. Certainty of moral law, 356 ff. Chamfort, 523. Chamisso, 413. Character, influence of prosperity upon, 407 ff. Charity, 638 ff.; Christian, 83 f., 157 n. 1.; in Middle Ages, 124. Charity-craze, 646 ff. Charlemagne, 118. Christianity, 157 ff., 402, 613 ff., 638 ff. ; and Buddhism, 114 f. ; and charity, 83 f. ; and courage, 69 ff. ; and earthly goods, 87 ff.; and family-life, 84 ff."; and honor, 78 f. ; and humility, 79 ; and immortality, 444 f. ; and justice, 613 ff. ; ■nd knowledge, 67 f.; and liberality, 82; and miracles, 435 ff. ; and the modern spirit, 155 ff. ; its moral ideal, 65 ff. ; contrasted with barbarian ideal, 167, ff., with Buddhism, 114 f., with Greek ideal, 65 ff., with other ideals, 33 ff. ; Nietz- sche's criticism of, 150 ff. ; and pessi- mism, 405 f . ; and pity, 81 t. ; and pleasure, 74 f.; and Romans, 98 ff. ; and self-esteem, 81 f. ; and silence, 76; and the state, 72 ff. ; its triumph, 112 ff ; and the Greek virtues, 67 ff.; and wealth, 77 f. Chrysostom, 646. Church, 116 ff., 123 ff., 126, 131 f., 409, 436, 682 ff., 706 ff. Cbristianization of antiquity, 98 ff. ; of the Germans, 117 ff. Cicero, 47, 53 n. 1, 56 n. 1. Civilization, and art, 559 ff. ; Christianity and, 91 ff.; and morality, 314 ff.; and success, 314 ff. ; and wars, 395 ff. Clarke, 192*, 340 n. 1. Classical education and patriotism, 661 f. Clement of Alexandria, 77. Clergy, 119 f., 132, 689. Clothing, 517 ff. Cohen, 194 n. 1. Colt, 415 n. 1, 447 n. 1. CoUingwood, 709 n. 3. Columbus, 673. Comenius, 95. Compassion, 592* ff. ; Christian, 81 f. Compulsion in law, 604 ff. Comte, 48 n. 1, 191 ; and altruism, 379 f. Confidence, 666 f. Conscience, 340* ff . ; authority of, 363 ff. ; individualization of, 368 ff. ; infallibility of, 357 ff. ; origin of, 340 ff. ; its tran- scendent sanction, 366 f . ; Kant's theory of, 350 ff . ; Shaftesbury's view of, 186 ff. ; Socrates and, 371 n. 1. ; utility of, 232 f. Conservatism and liberalism, 690 ff. Conversion, of Germans to Christianity and antiquity, 663 ff.; of Old World to Christianity 98 ff. Coulanges, Fustel de, 416 n. 1. Courage, 484 f ., 495* ff. ; Greek and Chris- tian estimates of, contrasted, 69 ff.j Plato's conception of, 45. Cowardice, 495 ff.; 668 f. Creed, religion and, 434 ff. Crime, charity and, 662 ff. ; poverty and, 541 n. 1. Criminal characters, 371 ff. Crispin, 228 f. Criticism, higher, 703 ff. Cruelty, 648 ff. Cudworth, 192* 340 n. 1. Culture, 543 ff. Culture-religions and religions of redemp- tion, 163 ff. Cumberland, 185*, 379 n. 1, INDEX 715 Cupidity, 491 ff. Custom and duty, 343« ff.; and instinct, 8 f. ; law, morality, and religion, 415 S. ; and will, 343 ff. Cynics, 109. Cyrenaics, 251 n. 1. Dante, 48 n 1. Darwin, 251 n. 1, 274 f., 340 n. 1, 344 n. 2, 379 11. 1, 433; his ethical theory, 192 * f . ; his theory of conscience, 341 £. David of Augsburg, 688 n. 1. Death, 335 * S. ; Epicurus'a attitude to- wards, 57 f. ; Greek and Christian con- ceptions of, 67. Deception, 664 ff. Democritus, 56 n. 2, 251 n. 1. Descartes and the modern spirit, 140 ff. Desire, impulse, and will, 220 f. Determinism, 452 ff. Dewey, 193 * n. 1. Diogenes Laertius, 53 f., 66 n. 1, 277 n. 2, 337 n. 1. Diplomacy, 675 ff. Discretion, 687. Dishonor, 573. Disposition of agent and worth of act, 224 ff. Distrust, 666 ff. Doring, 215 n. 1. Dorner, A., 29 n. 1, 122 n. 1, 215 n. 1, 475 n. 1, 483 n. 1, 505 n. 1, 529 n. 1, 569 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 638 n. 1, 664 n. 1. Dorner, I. A., 179. Dostoievski, 375 n. 1. Dress, 517 ff. Drobisch, 464 n. 1. Drunkenness, 479, 507 * ff., 590. Duhr, 239 n. 1. Duhring, 215 n. 1, 584 n. 1. Duncker, 114 n. 1. Duns Scotus, 454 n. 4. Diirer, his conception of art, 658 n. 1. Duties, 47D ff. Duty and Conscience, 340 • ff. ; and cus- tom, 343 f . ; and inclination, 346 ff. ; and merit, 377 f. Dwelling, 615 ff. ECKERMANN, 431, 580. Economic life, 529 ff. ; virtues, 536 ff. Education, 543 ff.; bodily, 505 ff.; intel- lectual, 543 ff.; moral, 476 ff., 483 ff., 498 ; religious, 708 ff. Effects of acts and disposition of agent, 224 ff. Egoism, criticism of, 244 ff. Egoism and altruism, 244 ff., 379 * ff . ; how judged morally, 391 ff. ; in Hobbes and Spinoza, 380; in Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, 186. Einjahrigenschlin, 551 f. Eliot, George, 90 n. 5, 306. Emerson, 522. Empiricism and rationalism in ethics, 6 ff. End justifies the means, 233 ff. Ends and means, 253 ff., 275 ff. Enemy, love of, 616 ff. Energism, 223 f ., 251 * ff., 270 ff. Enlightenment, 28, 40, 146 f., 336, 554; ethical conceptions of, 201 f . Ennui, 532. Epictetus, 55, 62, 106* f., 493, 501, 624. Epicureans, 587. Epicurus, 56 * ff., 251 n. 1 ; his conception of philosophj', 61. Equality, 624 ff. Equanimity, 500 ff. Equity, 616 ff. Equivocation, 665. Erasmus and Luther, 131. Erdmann, J. E., 35 n. 1, 519 n. 1. Error, harmfulness of, 699 f. Essenes, 109. Ethics, aesthetics and, 19 ; Aristotle's con- ception of, 1; Christian, 33 f., 167, 169 ff.; definition of, 1 ff.; function of, 4 ff . ; Greek, 33 ff . ; Greek conception of, 1; history of, 33 ff.; intuitional and teleological, 222 ff.; mediseval, 169 ff.; metaphysics and, 44 f .; method of, 6 ff. ; modern, 179 ff.; natural science and, 6 ff. ; nature of, 1 ff.; as a practical science, 1 ff . ; practical value of, 25 ff. ; relation of, to psychology and anthro- pology, 2; rationalistic and empirical, 6 ff.; 'theological, 169 ff. Ethical societies, 483 n. 2. Ethical virtues, Greek and Christian con- ceptions of, contrasted, 68 f. Eudsmonia, 36 ff.; Aristotle's conception of, 49; S'oic conception of, 54. Eudffimonism, 194 ff., 251 ff. Eucken, 17 n. 1, 35 n. 1. Eutuchia and eudsemonia, 407 ff. Everett, 475 n. 1. Evil, 321 * ff. ; physical and moral, 322 ff.j responsibility and, 461 f. Evolution, 278; egoism, altruism and, 394 ff. ; ethics and, 214 f. Evolutional ethics, 192 f. Evolutionistic view of conscience, 364 f. Examinations, 649 f. Exercise, 519 ff. Expediency and truth, 672 ff. Extravagance, 536 ff. 716 INDEX Faith and creed, 434 ff.; and life, 421 ff. Falsehood, 664 fE. Fame, 569 ft. Family-lite and primitive Christianity, 81 ff. Family-rights, 634. Fashion, 518 f. Faultfinding, 650 f., 687. Faust, 408 f. ; and conscience, 372. Fechner, 339 n. 1, 427. Feeling, as source of moral knowledge, 11 f . ; and will, 221. Fetichism, 417 f. Feuchtersleben, 483 n. 2. Fichte, J. G., 340 n. 1, 353, 483 ii. 1; his altruism, 380 n. 2; and the lie of neces- sity, 673 f. Fichte, J. H., 179 n. 3. Fischer, K., 127 n. 1, 179 n. 3. Fisher, 65 n. 1, 98 n. 1. Flattery, 670, 681. Forgiveness, 616 ff. Formal and material judgments of acts, 227 ff. Forster, 194 n. 1. Fouill^e, 179 n. 3, 452 n. 1. Fowler. 185 n. 2; and Wilson, 192 n. 1, 251 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 475 n. 1, 483 n. 1, 505 u. 1, 529 n. 1, 569 „. 1, 592 n. 1, 599 n. 1. Francke, A. H., 80, 305. Franklin, 484 n. 2. Frederick the Great, 588; his pessimism, 300. Freedom and causality, 460 n. 1.; of teaching, 706 f. ; of thought, 698 ft.; of the will, 452 ff. Free-mindedness, 577 f. Free-will, 452 ff. Freytag, 306. Friedliinder, 98 n. 1, 101 ff., 523. Frugnljty, 536 ff. Fullerton, 181 n. 2. Galileo and Hobbes, 179 f. Galitzin, Princess, 82. Gallwitz, 215 n. ],222n. 1. Gass, 65 n. 1, 74 n. 2, 171 n. 1, 340 n. 1. Geiger, 127 n. 1. Geldart, 90 n. 3. Gellert, 199. Gellius, 252 n. 1. General culture, 547 ff. Gerhardt, Paul, 161. German ethics, 193 ff. Gilman, N. P., 475 n. 1. Gizycki, 179 n. 3, 185 ii. 2, 189, 251 n. 1, 415 n. 1 ; his criticism of Paulsen's ener- gism, 283 ff.; his criticism of Paulsen's conception of religion and morality, 446 ff. Gladiators at Rome, 103 ff. Gliickseligkeit, 37 ff. Gluttony, 506 f. God, 43, 160 f., 219, 282, 428 ff., 436, 442 f. ; as the highest good, 282 f . ; Kingdom of, 280, 318. Goethe, 308, 320, 333, 335, 355, 371 n. 1, 402, 410, 425, 430 ff., 483 n. 2, 552, 554, 568. 579 f., 594 f., 658, 680, 705,707; and Christianity, 164; his conception of evil, 328 ff. ; his ideal, 201 f. ; his optimism, 301 f. Good, and bad, 222* ff. ; definition of, 248 f. ; the highest, 251 ff. Goods, doctrine of, 4. Gordon, C. G., 503 n. 1. Gothenburg system, 512. Gotthelf, J., 302. Gracchus, Caius, 103, Gratitude, 655 f. Greek art, 561 f. ; Greek, barbarian, and Christian conceptions contrasted, 167 ff. ; Greek and Christian conceptions con- trasted, 65 ff. ; Greek and Christian spirit, 163 ff. ; Greek civilization and Middle Ages, 121; Greek ethics, 33 ff.; Greek ethics, summary of, 58 ff'. Green, T. H., 189 n. 3, 193* 251 u. 1, 452 n. 1. Gregory of Tours, 142 f . Guhrauer, 145 n. 1. Gurv, his theological svstem of ethics, 17*3 ff. Guyau, 179 n. 3, 364 n. 2. Gwinner, 210 n. 1. Gymnastics, 519 ff. Habit, ethical importance of, 241 f. Habitation, 515 ff. Haldane and Kemp, 209 n. 1. Hamann, 164. Hamerling, 326. Hamlet, his pessimism, 307 n. 1, 335. Happiness, 270 * ff.; Aristotle's conception of, 49 ff. ; Greek and Christian concep- tions of, 169 f. ; its influence on char- acter, 407 *ff.; Spinoza's conception of, 183 f. ; Stoics' conception of, 54 f.; vir. tueand, 400* ff. Harnack, 65 n. 1, 488 n. 1.; his estimate of Catholicism, 125 n. 1. Harris, 394 n. 1. Hartley, 380 n. 4. Hartmann, 215 n. 1, 288 n. 2, 584 n. 1. Hasbach, 327 n. 1. INDEX 717 Hase, 68 n. 1 ; his conception of the char- acter of Jesus, 89 ft. Hatch, 186 n. 4. Haureau, 169 n. 1. Health, 383, 506 f£. Heartlessness, 648 S. Hedonism, 251 * ff. ; criticism of, 251 S. ; and energism, 223. Hedonistic pessimism, 289 fE. Hedonists, 251 n. 1. Hegel, 204 f., 274, 426 ; his theorj' of pun- ishment, 606 f. Hegesias, 257 n, 1. Hehn, v., 514 n.l, 595 n. 2. Heliand, 119. Helvetius, 380 n. 4. Herbart, 232, 259, 340 ii. 1; his ethics, 208* f. Herder, 189, 554, 668, 705. Herodotus, 1, 37 &. Hesiod, his pessimism, 309, 404 f. Hettner, 147 n. 1. Highest good, 17 ft., 270 * fE. ; how known, 10 ff. High-mindedness, 579. Hilty, 483 n. 2. Hippocrates, 366. Hirscher, 178. History, optimistic view of, 329 fE. ; pessi- mistic view of, 318 ff. ; philosophy of, 18, 281, 308 ff., 318 ff. Hobbes, 185, 244, 274, 340 n. 1, 401, 624; his determinism, 455 f. ; his egoism, 380; his ethical system, 179 * ff. ; and Galileo, 179 f.; his pessimism, 208 ; his political system, 143 * f ., 180 f. ; and Shaftesbury, 188. Hodgson, 192 n. 1. Hoffding, 29 n. 1, 215 n. 1, 222 n. 1, 253 n. 1, 275 n. 3, 321 n. 1, 34U n. 1, 341 n. 1, 343 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 415 u. 1, 505 n. 1, 569 n. 1, 543 n. 1, 584 n. 1, 606 n. 1, 627 n. 1, 638 n. 1, 664 n. 1. Holbach, 380 n. 4. Holland, 699 n. 1. Honor, 569* ff., 635; Greek and Christian estimates of, 78 f.; and love of honor, 569 ff. ; its teleology, 571 ff. Hufeland, 506. Hugo, v., 611 n. 2. Humanists and Luther, 130 f. Humanity, idea of, 280 ff. ; love of, 656 ff. Humboldt, W. von, 164, 413 f. Hume, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 402, 426, 460 n. 1.; his ethics, 189 f . ; on suicide, 584 n. 1, 587 f. Humility, 673* ff. ; Greek and Christian estimate of, 79. Hutcheson, 186, 199, 228 n. 1, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 379 n. 1. Huxley, 192 n. 4, 394 n. 1, 556. Hyde, 475 n. 1. ' Hypocrisy, 670. Hyslop, 29 n. 1, 35 n. 1, 189 n. 3, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 415 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 599 n. 1. Ideal, in conscience, 368 ff. ; of life, 270 ff. Idealism and materialism, 422 ff. Ideals, Greek and Christian contrasted, 87 ff. ; history of, 273 ff. Idleness, 530 ff. Ignorance, stupidity and, 549 ff. Ihering, see Jhering. Ill-humor, 500 ff. Imitation, 242 f. Immortalitv, belief in, 419 f. ; ethics and, 439 * ff. Impudence, 581. Impulse, 343 ff. ; desire and will, 220 f. Impulses and virtues, 475 ff. Inclination, 346 ff. ; and duty, 340 ff. , criticism of Kantian view of, 350 ff. Independence of character, 498. Indifferent goods, 55. Indiscretion, 687. Individualism, 134 f., 368 ff. ; during the Renaissance, 129 ; and Universalism, 243 ff. Individualization of conscience, 368 ff'. Infallibility of conscience, 357 ff. Infidelity and morality, 421 ff. Ingratitude, 655 f. Injustice, 602 ff. Innovations, 690 ff. Insanity, moral, 376 n. 1. Insolence, 581. Instinct and custom, 8 f., 343 ff. Instruction, 647 ff. Intellect, 58 ff., 67 ff., 266 ff., 543 ff. Intellectual activity in Middle Ages, 120 f. Intellectual life, 278 f. Intelligence, relation of, to feelings, 266 ff. Intemperance, 485 ff. Intentional deception, 672 ff. Intolerance, 635 ff. Intoxication, 507 ff. Intuitionalism, 192 ; criticism of, 350* ff. ; and utilitarianism, 222 ff. Jacobins, 658. Jahn, 625. James, 253 n. 1, 343 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 544 n. 1, 569 n. 1. Janet, 35 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 360 n. 1, 415 n. 1. Jesuits, 169 ff., 233 ff., 269. Jesus, 326, 330, 334, 410, 420, 619, 697 ; and 718 INDEX asceticism, 93 ff. ; and Buddha, 115 ; and conscience, 370 f. ; different conceptions of his character, 89 f . ; his love of nature, 165. Jewish-Greek philosophy, 109. Jhering, 71, 215 ... 1, 222 n. 1, 275 n. 3, 340 n. 1, 380 n. 1, 517 n. 3, 529 n. 1, 541 n. 1, 569 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 610, 615 f., 664 n. 1. Job, 410. JodI, 35 n. 1, 179 n. 3, 204, 253 n. 1, 341 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 710 n. 1. John the Baptist, 66. Jonas, 205 n. 2. Jowett, 41 n. 1, 631 n. 1. Judas, 77 ; moral estimate of his suicide, 591. Julian, 82, 159. Justice, 599* ff. ; Greek and Christian opinion of, 71 f. ; in Middle Ages, 123 f . ; negative side of, 599 ff. ; in New Testa- ment, 613 if. i Plato's conception of, 45 f . ; positive side of, 602 ff. ; teleology of, 602 ff. Kakt, 222 n. 1, 223, 227 n. 1, 251 n. 1, 259, 274, 320 n. 1, 321 u. 1, 325, 328, 340 n. 1, 420, 426, 431, 456, 584 u. 1, 600 f ., 664 n. 1 ; criticism of, 350 ff . ; and English ethics, 194; his ethics, 194 * ff.; his estimate of falsehood, 666 ; his con- ception of immortality, 440 ff. ; and the lie of necessity, 673; his pessimism, 298; his theory of punishment, 606, of capital punishment, 611 ; his rigorism, 23 f. ; and Bousseau, 198 ff. ; and utilitarianism, 198 ff. Keim, 98 ; his conception of the character of Jesus, 90. Keller, 122 n. 1. Kempis, Thomas k, 177, 681 n. 1. Kepler, 576, 684. Kern, 337 n. 1. Kidd, 394 n. 1. Kierkegaard, 122 n. 1. Knowledge, 543 * ff. ; and conduct, 61 f . ; development of, 543 f . ; Greek and Chris- tian estimate of, 67 f . ; of self, 579 ff. ; value of, 545 ff. Kostlin, 35 n. 1, 56 n. 2. Krafit-Ebing, 376 n. 1, 508 n. 1. Kreibig, 373 n. 1. Kuelpe, 452 n. 1. Laas, 42 n. 1, 215 n. 1. Labor, 529; Greek estimate of, 62 n. 1. La Bruyto, 380 n. 4. Ladd, 2*53 n. 1, 341 n. 1, 343 n. 1, 452 n. 1. Lagarde, P., 155, 483 n. 9. Lamettrie, 380 n, 4. Lange, F. A., his view of Christianity, 162 f. Laotsee, 474. La Rochefoucauld, 380 n. 4, 593, 655; his pessimism, 298. Laspeyres, 517 n. 1. Law, morality and, 627 ff. ; morality, reli- gion, and, 415 ff. Law-suit, Christian conception of the, 72. Lear, 581. Lecky, 65 n. 1, 85 f., 98 n. 1, 109, 179 n. 3, 251 n. 1, 222 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 488 n. 1, 584 n. 1, 587 n. 1. 638 n. 1. Lehrfreiheit, 706 ff. Leibniz, 274, 321 n. 1, 401, 426, 456, 460 n. 1, 684; his conception of evil, 332 j and the modern spirit, 144 f. Leo X., 129. Leopardi, his pessimism, 287. Lessing, 320 n. 1, 483 n. 2, 696. Lex divina and lex naturae, 172 f., 178. Liberalism and conservatism, 690 ff. Liberality, Greek and Christian estimates of, contrasted, 82 ff. Lichtenberg, 707. Lie of necessity, 672 * ff. ; Greek view of, 682 f. ; modern view of, 682 ff. Lies, 664 ff. Life, an end in itself, 294 ff. Liszt, Fr., 610, Locke, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 486, 533. Locrians, 665, 695. Lombroso, 446, 481 n. 1. Long, 55 n. 1. Lotze, 193 n. ], 233, 426, 460 n. 1 ; his criticism of Schleiermacher, 208. Louis XIV., 272. Love, 638 * ff. ; of country, 656 ff . ; of ene- my, 616 ff. ; of home, 656 ff . ; of humanity, 656 ff.; of neighbor, 699, 638 * ff.; tele- ology of, 662 ff. ; of truth, 689 f. Lubbock, 523. Lucian, 62 n. 1. Lucretius, 66 n. 1, 57 f. Luthardt, 35 n. 1, 65 n. 1. Luther, 121, 129 ff., 420, 577, 658, 668; on free-will, 455. Luxuries, 538 ff. Lying, 664 * ff . ; why wrong, 666 ff. Mackenzie, 29 n. 1, 193 * 251 n. 1, 329 n. 1, 350 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 415 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 599 n. 1. Mackintosh, 179 n. 3. Magnanimity, 616 ff. Magnificence, 83. INDEX 719 Slainlander, 288 n. 2, 584 n. 1. Malice, 648 ff. Mandeville, 189, 327 n. 1, 380 n. 4. Manichaeans, 332. Manual training, 526 f. Manzoni, 490. Marcus Aurelius, 106, lOT ff., 218, 411; his estimate of Christianitj', 100. Marion, 29 n. 1. Marriage, Christian view of, 86 f. Martensen, 179, 437, 674. Martineau, 35 n. 1, 192 n. 4, 222 n. 1, 224 n. 1, 227 n. 1, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 342 n. 2, 452 n. 1. Martins, 510 n. 1. Martyrdom, 690 ff . ; necessity of, in history, 695 f. JIasaryk, 534 n. 1. Materialism and idealism, 422 ff. Maxwell, 185 n. 3. Meal, 506. Means and ends, 275 ff. Mediaeval conception of life, 116 ff.j ethn- ics, 169 ff. Menander, 410. Menoikeiis, 56. Menzies, 65 n. 1. Mephistopheles and evil, 328 ff. Merit and duty, 377 ff. Metaphysics, morality and, 421 ff. ; Paul- sen's, 219 ff. Metropolis, influence of, on mode of life, 491, 519 fi'. Meyr, M., 290. Middle Ages, 21 f. ; their conception of life, 116 * ff . ; ethical systems of, 169 » ff. Middleman, 127 n. 1. Mill, James, 190 * f., 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1; on pleasure and desire, 254 f. Mill, J. S., 191 * f., 222 n. 1, 223, 251 n. 1, 275, 340 n. 1, 354, 379 n. 1, 427, 599 n. 1; his optimism, 316 f. Milton, his conception of art, 558 n. 1. Miracles, religion and, 435 ff. ; science and, 435 ff. Modern ethics, 179 ff. Modesty, 491 ff., 581 ff. Moeser, 612. Monasticism, 85, 100, 116 f., 119 ff., 133, 168, 488 fi. Monotheism, 418 f. Moral evil and physical evil, 322 • ff.; moral insanity, 376 n. 1, 481; moral in- struction, 25 ff., 40 f., 476 ff., 483 ff., 498; moral law and natural law, 13 ff., 225 f., 348 f., 362 f., 376, 448 f.; moral laws not strictly universal, 19 ff., 233 ff., 357 ff.; uihilism, 373 ff.; moral preach- ing, 23 f., 47, 55, 478 ff., 489 f . ; moral training, 476 fl. ; moral philosophy, see Ethics. • Moralistic pessimism, 297 ff. Morality, law and, 627 ff.; metaphysics and, 421 ff. ; religion and, 415 ff. ; of Rome, 101 ff. More, Thomas, his Utopia, 588 n. 1. Morley, J., 664 n. 1. Morselli, 584 ff. Moses, 614. Motives, egoistic and altruistic, 381 ff . ; and morality of acts, 227 ff. Muirhead, 29 n. 1, 193 * n. 1, 251 n. 1, 321 n. 1, 350 n. 1. Munro, 56 n. 1. Munsterberg, 29 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 452 n. 1. Murray, 251 n. 1. Nationalism in Middle Ages, 124. Natural law and moral law, 13 ff. Natural rights, 624 ff. Naturalism and supevnaturalism, 105 f. Necessity, lie of, 672 ff. ; law of, 631 f. Neo-Platonists, 589; precursors of, 109. Neo-Pythagoreans, 109. Nero, 100. Neumann, 17 n. 1. New truths, reception of, 690 ff. Nibelungenlied and Iliad, 119. Nietzsche, 28, 47, 65, 371 n. 1, 606 n. 1, 664 n. 1; and Christianity, 150 ff. ; his egoism, 380; his immoralism, 150 ff. ; his influence on young, 153 ff. Nihilism, moral, 373 ff. ; theoretical, 424. Noack, 474. Nordau, 373 n. 1, 664 n. 1, 709. Notrecht, 632 f. Nova Atlantis, Bacon's, 137 ff. Nutridon, 506 ff. Oaths, 671. Objective and subjective morality, 370 ff. CEdipus, 411. Oettingen, 215 n. 1, 515 n. 1, 529 n. 1, 543 n. 1, 584 n. 1, 606 n. 1, 638 n. 1. Old age, 113 f., 296 f., 335, 443; and pes- simism, 309. Oldenberg, 114 n. 1. Optimism, 182, 301* ff., 321 "ff., 400 ff.; in age of enlightenment, 146 f. Orderliness, 499. Oriental religions in Rome, 111 f. Orthodoxy, 670. Overbeck, 124 n. 1. Over-education, 549 ff. Pain, as motive, 257 ff. ; function of, 264 f.; and pleasure, 291 ff. 720 INDEX Paley, 192* n. 1, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 380 n. 4, 483 n. 1, 529 n. 1, 584 u. 1, 599 n. 1, 638 n. 1. Partisanship, 239, 601 1. Patience, 499 f. Patriotism, 656 £E. ; in education, 660 S. Paul, 614; and justice, 72; his conception of life, 66 f . ; his doctrine of love, 651 ; his opinion of marriage, 86 f . ; his pessimism, 405 ; and the pursuit of pleasure, 75. Paulsen, 321 u. 1, 415 n. 2, 460 n. 1, 545 n. 1. Peck, 106 n. 1. Penal right, 604. Penzig, 453 n. 1. Perfection, 4, 10 if., 17 ff., 201 f., 223 f., 251 ff., 270 * ff., Stoic idea of, 54. Perjury, 670 f. Perseverance, 498 f. Personal liberty, 635; and drunkenness, 507 ff. Personality, 4G8. Perthes, 645 n. 1. Pertz, 670 n. 1. Peschel, 127 n. 1. Pessimism, 210, 246 f., 287* ff., 402 ff.; criticism of, 148 ff.; in nineteenth cen- tury, 147 ff. Pestalozzi, 240. Petrarch, his character, 213 f. Petronius, 102. Pfaffentum, 122. Philo, 109. Philosophy, 369, 542 ff., 545; and ethics among the Greeks, 68 ff. ; of history, pessimistic view of, 308 ff. ; in Boman Empire, 109 f. Physical culture, 505 ff. Pity, 592* ff.; Christian, 81 f. Plato, 39 n. 1, 251 n. 1, 273, 279, 371 f., 373 n. 1, 426, 531 f., 682; and asceticism, 47 f.; his ethics, 41* ff.; his politics, 46 ft.; and schoolmen, 43; and Sophists, 42 f. Play, 487, 519 ff., 556 ff. Pleasure, as end of life, 251 * ff. ; as un- conscious end of action, 255 ff. ; Chris- tian conception of, 75 f. ; Epicurus's con- ception of, 56 ff. ; as freedom from pain, 291 ff. ; function and significance of, 265 f.; our judgment of, as absolute end, 268 ff. ; Luther's conception of, 130; Paul's conception of, 75; Plato's con- ception of, 47 f. ; Stoic conception of, 54. Pleasure-theory, 251 ff. Plotinus, 109, 321 n. 1. Pliimaoher, 287 n. 1. Poetry, in Middle Ages, 118 f. Politeness, 648 ff., 680 f. Political life and Greek ethics, 62 ff. Politics, 143 f. Pollock, 415 n. 1. Poly crates, 412. Polytheism, 418. Pontius Pilate, 300. Porter, 192* n. 4, 194 n. 1, 475 n. 1, 483 n. 3, 505 a. 1, 529 n. 1, 543 n. 1, 569 n. 1, 584 n. 1, 592 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 638 u. 1, 664 n. 1. Positive right, 603 ff.; teleological neces- sity of, 603 ff. Positivism and religion, 446 ff. Poverty, crime and, 541 u. 1; and the economic virtues, 540 ff. Practical knowledge, 543 f. Practical value of ethics, 25 ff. Practice and theory, 1 ff. Preaching the truth, 702 ff. Predestination, 455. Pride, 573 f. ; Greek and Christian estimates of, 79 f. Primary school, 548. Primitive Christianity and mediaeval Chris- tianity, 121 ff. Private right, 604. Procrastination, 499. Prodigality, 636 ff. Profession, 630 ff. Professional education, 547 ff. Proletarianism, 530. Property rights, 634 f. Prosperity and virtue, 400 f. Protagoras, 40. Protestant ethics, 178 f. Prudence and virtue, 40 f. Pudor, 581. Punishment, 606 *ff.; intuitionalistic view of, 606 f. ; and responsibility, 460 ff.; teleological view of, 607 ff. Pusillanimity, 578 ff. Quietism, 332 ff. Ransom, 90 n. 3. Rationalism, empiricism and, in ethics, 6 ff. ; and the Reformation, 134 f. Rationalistic view of conscience, 445 ff. Realism in literature, 303 ff. Reason, 181 ff., 277 f., 468 ff. ; as source of moral knowledge, 11 f.; and impulse, 476 ff. Recreation, 627 f. R^e, 216 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 364. Reformation, 126* ff. ; and church life, 131 ff. ; and civilization, 130 ff. ; and INDEX 721 Tationalism, 134 f.; and Benaissance, difference between, 130 ff, Kegulus, 247. Religion, 60 ft., 113 ff.; and art, 429, 568 ; and miracles, 435 ff . ; and morality, 161, 345 f., 415* ff., 492; nature of, 417 ff., 431 ff., and science, 431 ff. Religious instruction, 126 ff., 708 ff. Remorse, 240, 340, 620 f. Renaissance, 126 » ff., 558, 563 ff. Reuan, 178 ; his conception of the character of Jesus, 90 f. Responsibility, 460 ff. Rest, 527 f. Retaliation, 242 f., 616 ff. Reuschle, 576 n. 1, 684. Renter, Fritz, his optimism, 302 f. Revenge, impulse of, 619 f. Reverence, 431 ff. ReWewers, 582 f., 623 f., 665. Revolution, 690 f. Richter, 303. Riehl, 452 n. 1. Rights, 599, 603* ff.; natural, 624 ff.; the principle of, 624 ff . ; the different spheres of, 633 ff. Ritchie, 599 n. 1. Rolph, 257 n. 1. Roman Empire, 523 f.; conversion of, to Christianity, 100 ff. Roman morals, 101 ff. Romans, 483 n. 3. Romanticism, 310. Rothe, 178. Rousseau, 202, 340 n. I, 480, 505 n. 1, 656; Kant and, 193 S.; his practice and his preaching, 214; his pessimism, 148, 314 ff.; his philosophy of history, 309. Rousselot, 169 n. 1. Riickert, 313 n. 1, 355, 481, 696. Runze, 29 n. 1, 215 n. 1, 321 n. 1, 415 n. 1, 475 n. 1, 480 n. 1, 483 n. 1, 505 n. 1, 519 n. 1, 529 n. 1, 640 n. 1, 543 n. 1, 569 n. 1, 584 n. 1, 592 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 606 n. 1, 638 n. 1, 664 n. 1. Rupprecht, 517 n. 1. Russia, 523. Sacramekts, 66 f. Sacrifice, 388 f . ; Christian, 159 f . ; teleolo- gical explanation of, 247 f. Sailer, 178. Saints, 85, 166, 178. Salter, 483 n. 2. Sand, 230. Santayana, 251 n. 1, 519 n. 1. Sardanapalus, 39, 375. Satiety of life, 171, 376. Savonarola, 84 ^ Villari's Life of, 97 n. 1. Schadenfreude, 593 f. Schelling, 310. Schiller, 355; his relation to Kant, 202 f.; his ridicule of Kant's rigorism, 351 ff. Schleiermacher, 178, 274; his ethical sys- tem, 205 * ff. ; his view of capital punish- ment, 611; his conception of moral law as natural law, 17 n. 1. Schmidt L., 35 n. 1, 58, 371 n. 1, 400, 496, 579, 587 n. 1, 665, 671. Scholasticism, 120 f., 454 f. School, function of, 547 ff. Schoolmen and Plato, 43. Schopenhauer, 209 * «., 257 n. 1, 426, 478, 569 n. 1, 580, 584 n. 1. 589, 682, 700; his altruism, 379 ff. ; and Buddhism, 115 ; his character, 211 ff. ; and Christianity, 164 ; on compassion, 598 ; on egoism, 246 f. ; on free-will, 453; his pessimism, 147 ff., 287 ff. ; his practice and his preaching, 210 ff. ; on the practical value of ethics, 25 f. Schremph, 122 n. 1. Schuppe, 215 n. 1. Schurman, 29 n. 1, 192 n. 5, 194 n. 1, 342 n. 1, 415 n. 1. Schwarz, 340 n. 1. Schweinichen, 510. Schweitzer, 205 n. 2. Science, Bacon and, 137 ff . ; Christian and modern estimates of, 136 ff.; function of, 543 ff. ; religion and, 431 ff. ; theism and, 425 ff. ; classified as theoretical and practical, 1 ff. Secondary school, 548. Secularization of Christianity, 121 ff. Seidlitz, 583. Selby-Bigge, 189 n. 3. Self-conceit, see Vanity. Self-control, 483 * ff. ;" Greek admiration of, 483 n. 2; Plato's conception of, 45. Self-education, 468 f., 477 f. Selfishness, 648 ff. Self-knowledge, 579 ff. Self-preservation, 179 ff., 185, 248, 271, 380, 388, 569. Self-sacrifice, 247 f ., 338 f. Seneca, 100, 106 », 523, 587 n. 2. Semi-refinement, semi-culture, 549 ff. Sense of justice, 602. Sense-perception, 266 f., 543 f. Servile-mindedness, 577 f. Seth, J., 29 n. 1, 35 u. 1, 193 * n. 1, 251 n. 1, 415 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 485 n. 1, 543 n. 1, 592 n. 1, 599 n. 1. 722 INDEX Shaftesbury, 274, 340 n. 1; 379 n. 1, 402. Shakespeare, 307 n. 1, 669. Shamanism, 417 f. Sidgwick, 29 n. 1, 35 n. 1, 193 *, 222 n. I, 251 n. 1, 256 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 452 n. 1, 459 n. 1, 475 n. 1, 483 n. 1, 592 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 638 n. 1, 664 n. 1 ; on conscience, 368. Sigwart, 215 n. 1, 452 n. 1. Silence, Christian injunction of, 76. Simmel, 29 n. 1, 215 n. 1, 251 n. 1, 340 n. 1, 379 n. 1. Sin, (^*hristian conception of, 158 f. Sincerity, 689 ff., 705 n. 2. Sitte, 343 fE. Slander, 669 f. Slavery, in Middle Ages, 124. Smyth, 179 » n. 2, 340 n. 1, 379 n. 1, 415 n. 1, 483 n. 1, 543 n. 1, 599 n. 1, 664 n. 1. Sneath, 179 n. 4. Social virtues, 278 f . ; and evolution, 394 ff. Socrates, 51 f., 326, 411, 682; his con- science, 371 n. 1; his ethics, 39* ff. ; and Sophists, 40. Soldan, 142. Solon and Croesus, 37 S. Sommer, 287 n. 1. Sophists, 40 ff., 373 n. 1; and Plato, 42 f. ; and Socrates, 40. {Tia4>po