^iT'-^^ii^jlTj-^jlj^lfij^glil^ Copyright N^ r COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/hintstowardtheorOOstor Hints Toward a Theory of Ethics THEO. B. STORK PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR BY THE LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY PHILADELPHIA, PA. LIBRARY of GONORESS Tvra Oopltff fieoeive^ P£B 21 190r ^^ 8«pyrtf ht Entry %KS% Ck^ XXe.i No. OOPY B, ^^y^^ Copyright, 1907, BY THEO. B. STORK. \i HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. I. If the question were put to the ordinary man in the street : " Why do you do that which is un- pleasant?" he probably would reply: "Because I think I must," or for " must " he might substi- tute "ought." There you have ethics in a sen- tence. It is a rough paraphrase from the opposite point of view of St. Paul's famous statement : *' What I would that I do not, but what I hate that I do." It is the eternal conflict of the ought of duty and the desire of bodily appetite. It is a recognition of that ethical antithesis between w^hat we call by the general name, duty, and pleasure, an antithesis which, on a more careful consideration, will reveal itself as in reality a conflict between different pleas- ures : for the " ought " or " must " of duty, properly understood, is as essentially a creature of pleasure and pain as the most sensual of pleasures. (3) 4 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. All men, so far as we have knowledge of them, no matter what their condition of civilization or of barbarism, of knowledge or of ignorance, possess this feeling of the " must " or the " ought " in some shape. The particular acts to which this obligation of doing, or not doing, attaches vary widely : the obligation as a coercive impulse not at all. It has this remarkable characteristic, that it constrains the man to act often against his wishes and his desires, to do what he does not want to do. It is as real a fact as any fact of the material world, and as im- possible to be ignored ; it starts as a constraining power in the consciousness, opposed, set over against all other desires or appetites of the Kgo, and arro- gating to itself an authority that declares it superior to them in its demands for compliance with its be- hests. It often constrains the Kgo to accept pain for pleasure, contrary to its usual, and what might be called its natural, impulse. It is true that always there is experienced by the Ego a pleasurable condi- tion of consciousness, when, in obedience to this sense of obligation it gives up its other desires, and if it refuses obedience, a painful condition ensues ; so that even in thus giving up pleasure and accept- ing pain, the Ego may be said to be still moved by HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 5 desire for the one and fear of the other. The sense of obligation, the "must," the "ought," is the cause, not the 'result of these pleasurable or painful conditions produced by obedience or disobedience to its commands. It is because the Ego feels this obligation that it experiences pleasure when it yields obedience to it. The pleasure is one that results from the discharge of a debt due, its cause lies in the previous and ante- cedent obligation. Without the sense of obligation, the feeling of necessity to do some particular thing, there would have been no pleasure resulting from the doing thereof. Separate in thought, analyze them as we will, the obligation of the " ought," and the pleasure or pain annexed to the obedience or disobedience to it are in reality indissolubly united. In that pleasure or pain lies the sanction of its obli- gation. If I felt no pleasure in obeying, no pain in disobeying, what effect could the obligation have on my will ? An obligation without these would in fact be no obligation. This has been recognized by thinkers of the most widely different schools. The spiritually-minded Cardinal Newman admits the importance of the part played by pleasure and pain as elements in the obligation of the "ought." In 6 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. " Grammar of Assent" (1870, New York, Catholic Publication Society), page loi, he says : " The feeling of consciousness being ... a certain keen sensibility pleasant or painful — self-approval and hope, or compunction and fear — attended on certain of our actions, which in consequence we call right or wrong." Kant remarks to the same general effect : ^' Moral conceptions are not perfectly pure concep- tions of reason, because an empirical element — of pleasure or pain — lies at the foundation of them."* 2. This sense of obligation, this "eternal ought," as it lies elemental, immanent, but unde- veloped in the Ego, is a pure abstraction, that is, it is, to borrow a Hegelian phrase, purely formal, it has no context, it is not concrete, is not actualized, objectified. Its meaning is furnished when the ma- terial is presented to consciousness by sensations. Then this principle, this tendency, this sense of obligation to act in one way and not in another acquires, like the categories of cognition, its mean- ing. Until then it is blind : its reality is made manifest by this. But before we take the second step in the explanation of this mass of phenomena "^ " Of the Ideal in General: Critique of Pure Reason" (Meiklejohn's Translation). HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 7 called ethics, and show how meaning is finally given to this empty form of the " ought " so that the " ought " becomes concrete, gains substantial real- ity, becomes infused with meaning by contact with the outside world of sensation, we have to ask and to answer the vital question. Where and how does this sense of obligation, this " ought," arise in the consciousness of the Ego ? We can only understand this by taking a funda- mental and primitive view of consciousness in its earliest stages. For, of course, this " ought " does not spring fully fledged, a IMinerva from the brain of Jupiter. It first emerges into consciousness in the shape of the feeling, or perception, or sense which the Ego has the instant that it comes in con- tact with the manifold presented to it in intuition that it, the percipient Ego, is only a part of a whole ; that all the manifold is part of a whole in which the percipient Ego and the perceived non- Ego, are united by some bond, in some way, under some law, which creates mutual dependence, consti- tutes mutual relations, obligations. Both Ego and non-Ego are felt to be parts of some whole, greater than either and inclusive of both, yet vague, not clearly conceived, but only dimly felt. 8 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 3. We may trace this feeling, this instinct of unity, if we may call it so, through all the subse- quent development of the Ego. It has many sides, and we may regard it, therefore, in various ways ; but two especially demand attention. First, on the side of cognition, of thought, the Ego shows the working of this great fundamental principle in its instinctive, spontaneous activity when dealing with the manifold in intuition. In the simplest, the first efforts of the Ego to deal with the various sensations presented in consciousness, this instinct of unity compels it in the very act of perception to seek to collect the various sensations into groups, make bundles of them, which it binds together with a name, feigns for itself the notion substance as a nexzcs for each bundle, and, thus labeled for future reference, stores it away as an idea in memory. Proceeding a step further, it conpares the various bundles thus made and strives to still further unite and classify, and, with a more conscious effort than in the first instance, endeavors to connect them into an intelligible whole. And so on and on, with more and more of intellectual effort, the Ego proceeds, always tending by its spontaneous activity, which might properly be called an instinct, so primitive is HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 9 it, to bring all that it perceives in consciousness, including itself, into unity. 4. A detailed examination of the more advanced sophisticated mental processes of the Kgo will make still clearer the compulsion of the necessity of this primitive sense. The Bgo in all its processes of thinking assumes this as the fundamental notion. The great category of causality, that essential of every intellectual process known to us is no more than a corollary of this fundamental primitive instinct or impulse of the Ego to consider itself and all other as part of a whole. Causality predi- cates itself on this unity of the universe, for in this shape, among others, does this impulse emerge into thought as a cognition. It assumes for its own validity that all things stand bound together as parts of a great whole. Various, indeed, are the figures, the conceptions, under which the thinking of this has been attempted. Many of these have been utterly mistaken, such as that of the Greek philosophers, who conceived the unity of the Uni- verse regarding the stars as a series of crystal spheres, each revolving within the other, or the idea of the Chinese thinker, who considered the world as resting on a tortoise, and the tortoise on lO HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. an elephant. Yet this as truly indicated the working of the primitive instinct of the Ego to- ward the unity of the universe as the approved and accepted conception of the universe which swung the stars, racing with lightning speed through the darkness of space under the law of gravitation. The category of causality, to change our meta- phor, contains in it, as in a seed, the unity of the universe, that is, it demands for its validity that there should be something which binds all things visible and invisible together. It is a more elab- orate statement of the primitive formal principle of consciousness as we saw it emerging, vague and dim, and only felt as an impulse. If causality is inexorable in compelling our thinking, so also is its demand that there should be a bond, a some- thing, call it a law, a relation, a connection, a per- sonal authority, or an impersonal, incomprehensi- ble nexus or bond which holds all the chaos of the perceived phenomena together, gives them a com- mon foundation. The conipulsion of this neces- sity penetrates to the smallest details of our think- ing. It is found in that assumption that the simpler, the more universal, the form of any discoverable law, the more convincingly does it approve itself HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. II to our reasoning, and the more satisfactory is it. When a simple law is substituted for a more com- plex, when many apparently disconnected facts are grouped under the unity of a single law, and many laws under a single still higher law, there is experi- enced a feeling of satisfaction, and also an assurance of the correctness of the reasoning process by which this has been accomplished. Indeed, these two results seem identical, that is, the understanding being enabled the more readily to comprehend the manifold by reason of the simpler law, is also pene- trated with a sense of having come nearer to the truth of the universe in thus coming nearer to its unity. So strong is this impulse to unity or sense of unity in the universe, which is the primitive in- stinct of the Kgo, that it even compels it to contra- dictions of thought. In violation of all logic this impulse or sense urges us to assume as true in all cases what we find to be true in a great number, confers the attribute of universality on what is simply very general. Which simply means that the instinct of the Ego for the unity of the universe is so powerful that it feels that what has been found to be a law for many cases ought to be the uni- 12 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. versal law, since it is compelled to think all things not as a chaos of many separate laws, but a hier- archy of graduated, carefully arranged uniform rules of conduct for all things, animate or inanimate. A conflict of laws in this sense is incomprehensible. There is a repugnance to thinking that one law may govern part of the same set of phenomena and an- other different law govern another part. Uniformit)' is demanded by its instinct or impulse of unit>\ We might trace this instinct or impulse into many other details of our thinking, but perhaps enough has been said to illustrate its all-per^^ading nature. We add, however, by way of conclusion of this part of our exposition, two other instances. We find it impossible, for example, to think any object independent of all other objects, and this impossibility declares itself in two ways : First^ to perceive one object we have always to do so by its differences from other objects. Bain's law of relativity tells us that all consciousness is conscious- ness of difference. We define it in size, for exam- ple, by its limitations, which are expressed in terms of other objects surrounding it ; we note its color by contrast, and so on. We could not cognize an object existing in a void destitute of other objects. HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 1 3 Secondly^ to know an object we always require and mean a knowledge of its relations with other ob- jects. When an unknown object, an object never previously cognized, is presented to the Kgo, the first step to gaining a proper understanding of it (the attaining that mental satisfaction which is the reverse of ignorance) is to inquire its relations to other objects. If the object be a new chemical ele- ment, it is the knowing what its reactions are, what its atomic weight, that is, its weight as compared with other elements, and so on. We assume that each object, each separate ele- ment, even of the mass of sensations which pre- sent themselves to consciousness, has relations to every other. This we do in regard to utterly un- known and hitherto unperceived objects as well as in regard to those objects whose relations have be- come known to us through experience. All human knowledge may indeed be well characterized as a knowledge of relations. Of absolute knowledge we know nothing ; the very name is a mere negative, without meaning or substantial context, implying simply a contrast with relative knowledge. Too much attention and emphasis cannot well be bestowed on the manner of display of this activ- 14 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. ity of the Ego, this sense of unity in the domain of thinking, on the side of cognition, that is to say. Every attempt of the Ego even to perceive the ex- ternal world intelligibly is pervaded by this con- straining, all-governing impulse. That we cannot account for it or explain it only proves how elemental and inwrought it is in the nature of the Ego itself impressed upon it, not like so many things, by the operations of experience, but something apart and above and independent of all experience. For how can we explain, by refer- ence to experience, that first step toward intelligent perception of external objects, that collecting by the spontaneous activity of the Ego all the separate sensations into groups ? Experience does not sug- gest this, for it presents them, by different organs of smell, touch, sight, and so on, as separate un- connected elements to consciousness. But the ne- cessity of the Ego's thinking requires that they should not be so regarded. It cannot understand them so, is the popular expression of its difficulty. It is a necessity, in other words, of the human understanding, in order to think the external world satisfactorily to itself, intelligibly, that it should thus collect the separate sensations and unite them. HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 1 5 It is an Egoistic impulse solely, because it cannot be otherwise derived, for it opposes itself to the chaotic heterogeneity of sensations, is often dis- tressed by them, as when it receives inconsistent sensations, let us say a sensation of cold and of heat from what it thinks is the same object : it must reconcile the two sensations which are to its perception and understanding opposing, contra- dictory. It is satisfied when it discovers that the two sensations are really the same, and that the apparent inconsistency lies in the different degrees of heat of the percipient nerves of the epidermis ; to one set of nerves excited by a greater degree of heat the sensation produced by the object is that of cold to another set numbed by an absence of heat, it seems hot. Uniformity of law and of causal action, self-consistency are both but corollaries of this impulse to unity, as expressed in our thinking. * * How strong this Egoistic impulse toward the unity of the universe is may be inferred from the fact that some of the ablest thinkers have actually transferred several of its corollaries to the world of reality : have made of a purely Egoistic principle of thinking a criterion of reality. Thus Mr. Bradley, in his "Appearance and^Reality, " edition 1893, pages 136-140, /»(2jj/w, makes the principle of contradiction a test of reality. "Ulti- mate reality is such that it does not contradict itself : here is an absolute criterion. . . . The bewildering mass of phenomenal. 1 6 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 5. There is still less reason for supposing an ex- periential source for the impulse to always seek ever higher and simpler laws for the operations of the ex- ternal world manifest to us in sensations. For if we can suppose that the mere succession in time or juxtaposition in space might compel, or at least suggest, a uniting in thought of separate and dis- diversity must hence somehow be at unity and self-consistent ; for it cannot be elsewhere than in reality, and reality excludes discord , , . We know that the real is one, but its oneness is so far ambiguous . . . And so we conclude that the real- ity must be a single whole . . . For we have seen that the absolute must be a harmonious system." All these deductions are but the consequences of the elemental impulse or instinct of the Ego toward unity of the universe. This compels it to exclude contradictions of one part by an- other, requires consistency of part with part, and harmony of each with each and all, with that unity itself which it is com- pelled to think as embracing all the parts, no matter how apparently diverse. When we thus make reality an object of thought, and declare it must be so and so, non-contradictory, har- monious, united in some whole, we so declare it simply by virtue of that impulse to unity which coerces us in thinking, we merely declare a necessity of thought, and cannot extend the necessity to the absolute, to the reality itself. A necessity of thought can never thus be made a necessity of reality of the absolute. This view does not neglect the idealistic position that thought is itself part of reality, constitutes it by some mysterious union with the non-Ego. Thought thus considered cannot be an object of thought, and nothing can be predicated about it : it is a con- stituent part of reality in this aspect, and cannot be thought any more than any other reality can be thought. To say that it must be self-consistent, harmonious, and so on, HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 1 7 tinct sensations, certainly sucH a supposition is not possible for that tendency of the Ego to seek simpler explanations of given phenomena. There is not in either case any adequate answer to the query : Why is the Ego not satisfied to accept all sensations just as they present themselves, detached, separate, inde- pendent each of the other? And if it must think them, why cannot it think each the product of a separate cause, each supported by a separate some- thing, each entirely independent of every other? And why cannot the Ego presume for each and every operation which it beholds its own independent law or rule or principle created and acting pro hac is simply to say that so we must think it, for these are all terms of thinking, nothing more, and the attempt to give them a more extensive application is very like a man trying to lift him- self up by pulling on his boot-straps. Kant pronounced the final word when he declared : " Realities (as simple affirmation) never logically contradict each other is a proposition perfectly true respecting the relation of conceptions, but whether as regards nature and things in themselves (of which we have not the slightest conception) is without any the least meaning. For real opposition in which B — A is = O exists everywhere, an opposition, that is, in which one reality united with another in the same subject annihilates the effects of the other."* The proposition means no more, according to Kant, than that a conception containing only affirmatives contains no negatives. * " Amphiboly of Conceptions of Reflection, Critique of Pure Reason." 3 1 8 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. vice alone and never recurring ? Why can the Ego not suppose a new creation and a new law for every sensation, ever\' perceived action of the external world ? This, certainly, is what experience shows to it. There is but one answer, the Ego is so con- stituted by its nature. If it were to derive its im- pulse, its spontaneous activity, from its experience, it would most naturally accept all sensations and all phenomena as they present themselves and seek no connection or relation other than that of which it is aware in space and time, a simple physical or temporal adjoining. In the more advanced and higher activity of the thinking Ego in that unifying impulse that is mani- fested in a seeking after simpler, more comprehen- sive laws as the explanation of the phenomenal universe, it is even more evident that the impulse is purely Egoistic and not derived from experience either directly or indirectly. For how is the truth of any newly-discovered law assured to us ? What proof of it do we regard as conclusive ? You will answer, the proof of experience ; if the alleged law fits in with the facts of experience, we pronounce the law true. But in the last analysis, what is this fitting of the law with the facts of experience ? In HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 1 9 what does this really consist ? Simply that the law fits more facts than any other, unifies more, satisfies that impulse toward unity, that sense of the one- ness of all better than any other. The proof is simply an appeal, not in reality to facts — such an appeal is impossible — but to the nature, the consti- tution of the Ego, which must think unity into the world and is assured by reason of this necessity of the truth of all laws that tend in that direction. The facts of experience, as facts, did not impeach directly any of the old and now abandoned laws of physics. Men built the pyramids, the hanging gar- dens, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Coliseum, not- withstanding an ignorance of that law of gravitation as discovered by Newton. And again, we may note, as a further evidence of this Egoistic impulse toward unity, that all the search for new, and what we call in obedience to this impulse, higher laws, takes the direction of simpler laws. A theory or hypothesis that would propose to resolve the law of gravitation into two or more other laws, that is to account for its facts by two laws instead of the single law, would be discredited by that circumstance alone, whereas a law which would take the place of the law of gravitation, by showing that it was 20 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. simply a subordinate law of a still more com- prehensive simpler law, say a law of electricity, which would thus subsume the facts of the law of gravitation under the law of light, heat, and elec- tricity, would at once approve itself to the Ego by reason of the increased satisfaction afforded by it to that impulse toward unity. 6. Thus we see that the most conclusive proof of the truth and reality of all our knowledge is simply in the last analysis an appeal to that impulse of unity which is the Ego's elemental, primitive instinct in its thinking. It is curious to note in this connection that the man of science, the dealer in material facts as con- trasted with the subtle metaphysical speculations which he characterizes as dreams, as fancies, is com- pelled to test his own theories, to measure the truth of his substantial facts with this immaterial yard- stick, this impulse to unity of the Ego as exhibited in thinking. The test of the truth of a law by ex- perience, by the evidence of facts, is apparent only, an illusion of the mind. For, take the history of the discovery of any given law. Undoubtedly it has its inception in experience, the sole source of our knowledge of the external world. Some particular HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 21 action of one thing or another is observed, and a law is inferred as accounting for that action ; but upon further experience of other actions that law is found not to apply or to account for them ; it is then re- jected as not a true law ; that is, it does not set forth the reality. A new law is then sought which will cover the new action as well as the old. But on what rational ground is this rejection of the first law and the inventing of a new law demanded ? It is not contended that the first law did not fully account for the action from which it was originally inferred ; it still is as adequate as ever to explain that. Nor is it possible to actually bring the law into contact with the external reality and thus prove or disprove its validity, its correspondence with actual truth. No, it is rejected because it fails to explain the later learned facts ; and the new law is preferred as nearer the truth, as more correctly embodying the reality simply because it explains both sets of facts ; in other words, comes nearer to the satisfaction of the Ego's impulse to unity. The test of truth, there- fore, is not correspondence with the facts of expe- rience as such, for on this basis there might truly be a separate, reasonable, adequate law governing every transaction of the external world that be- 22 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. comes known to us through sensation. There is nothing in the external world as manifested to us that forbids this. What in reality forbids it, com- pels our acceptance of one or two general laws as true rather than a number of separate individual laws, is simply this impulse of the Ego to unity which will not permit us to so think the universe. Indeed, the ver>' idea of law, of some general rule governing all or many of the actions of the external world, is based on this impulse to unity, this feeling of the oneness with itself of all the world, external and internal. 7. It may be argued that this notion of law, this expectation of uniformity, is not the outcome of the Egoistic sense of the unity of the universe, but simply of an experience which finds that always the same thing follows regularly a certain other given thing, and thus there is inspired in the Ego an expectation of uniformity, of regularity. That is to say, the Ego simply accepts that uniformity of operation in all the transactions presented by ex- perience, as a fact of the external world. It is as receptive, as passive, in this as in any other act of perception of the non-Ego. But, then, how does it happen that when a different thing, something un- HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 23 expected, not uniform with past experience, is pre- sented, it experiences a shock of incredulity, of disbelief, even in the truth of its experience thereof ? Why does it not accept this new experience as it is assumed to have done the previous experience of uni- formity, regularity ? Because, it may be said, that having received and accepted as a fact of experience the previous regularity and uniformity of past trans- actions, this unexpected, ununiform, irregular trans- action of the external world, by its failure to agree with this regularity and uniformity, contradicts the previous experience. But there is no non-Egoistic principle, no experiential source for such a rule as this. Why should all experience be non-contradict- ory, self-consistent, uniform with itself, so that a violation of uniformity should thus cause a ques- tion of the truth of the experience ? To be able to so pronounce on the deliverances of experience requiring of them self-consistency, uniformity, reofularitv as a bado^e of truth, and to doubt them when wanting this badge, evidently requires some- thing — call it a rule, an instinct, a belief — supe- rior and independent of experience. INIoreover, experience, strictly considered, does not present in its bare facts, as delivered to consciousness, 24 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. any uniformity or regularity. It is only when, in obedience to its instinct for unity, the Ego searches out and collects the various and divergent facts, and groups them together by selecting their points of likeness — disregarding, of its own motion, their differences as trivial or non-essential — that anything like uniformity of operation is inferred from the facts of experience. The rising and setting of the sun is always referred to as the standard of Nature's uniformity of action as presented to the Ego in ex- perience. Yet, who of all the millions of men who, since the beginning of the world, have beheld the untold and unknown number of those risings and settings, ever saw one exactly like another? Are we not told, indeed, that there are no two things precisely the same ! The notion of uniformity, which, if it ever arose from experience, must cer- tainly have in part sprung from this great daily operation of the external world, sunrise and sunset, could only be reached by discarding as unessential some details of that experience, and emphasizing others as essential — a purely Egoistic exercise of activity — an early exhibition, in fact, of that sense of unity which of itself, without hint from experi- ence, seeks uniformity, regularity, unity, in all the HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 25 universe. In short, we are fetched up again, and by a slightly different path, to that primitive ele- mental feeling of unity in all the universe. An ingenious attack * on all our reasoning is based iipon this very peculiarity of the Ego, that is, its elimination of differences in the objects of experi- ence and its emphasis of likenesses in this working out of its impulse toward unity, this effort to unite under a single rule or law all the various. The conclusions of logic, we are told, are made impos- sible of justification in reality, because logic pre- supposes as a basis for its judgments that which is impossible, to wit, that two objects can be exactly identical. F'or example, in the syllogism : All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal ; it is assumed that the term "Socrates" is identical with the term "man." Such identity cannot really exist, and no conclu- sion based on that identity is, therefore, valid. This neglects the all-important fact that in thinking the Ego is dealing, not with realities, with the things- in-themselves, but with Eidola, thought-counters of its own manufacture, which are made by its spon- taneous activity under this impulse of unity which * See Rodder's "The Adversaries of the Skeptic," p. 115. 4 26 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. seeks out for itself likenesses, disregards differences, and thus seeks unity by classifying all the objects of experience according to their points of resem- blance, ignoring their differences. I^ogic frames its judgment, not on the real " Socrates," not on the real " man," but on these thought-counters of its own manufacture. It is utterly beside the mark to say that it is impossible for two real objects to be exactly identical ; for these counters are not real- ities ; they are the creations of the Ego, formed, it is true, out of the materials furnished by the non- Ego, but made for its own purpose, by the Ego, to be identical. It is on the identity of these counters alone that logical conclusions are based. The log- ical process goes no further, claims no greater valid- ity than this, that it shows the correct and legiti- mate method of dealing with these counters of thought. Its justification depends, not on the question whether the counters truly represent real- ity (a question impossible of solution), but simply on the far different question, namely, whether its process truly represents the relations between the counters ; that, for example, if two counters are exactly like a third counter, then the two counters are like each other, and so on. HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 27 It is competent to ask if all logic deals with counters only of whose reality we can predicate nothing, exactly how such juggling with shadows and ghosts can add to our knowledge, to which the reply is plain, that logic makes no such pretense. It simply adjusts and classifies our knowledge, puts it into a useful shape, so that we may apply it. The statements that men are mortal, and that Socrates is a man, contain implicitly the knowledge that Socrates is mortal. By the logical process the Bgo is made aware of this explicitly. I have dwelt on this misconception at some length because it illustrates so pointedly the nature of the logical process, and exhibits it as a striking illus- tration of that impulse to unity in thought. For it is only by this impulse that logic is made possi- ble. This impulse to unity in thinking leads the Bgo to seek points of likeness in all the objects of experience, to disregard differences, if possible, and thus create for its thinking, for its logical processes, identical ideas or counters of thought in place of^ the partially similar objects of experience. 8. A brief observation of the manner of action by the Ego in a recent concrete instance of this sort may assist us to a still clearer vision. The action of 28 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. radium is a fact of experience which apparently contradicts the uniformity of past experience, form- ulated in that rule styled the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter. For radium, unlike any matter hitherto known, gives o£E energy apparently without any diminution in its bulk or power to so continue. In other words, it is a fact contradictory of that uniformity of operation which has been observed and learned from experience of other matter. Mark the manner in which the Kgo meets this new fact. It does not admit it as a new, hitherto unknown operation of matter, which is probably subject to a different rule from that known as the conservation of energy. This would be the simplest and most obvious treatment. Not at all : its sense of unity will not permit this, except as a last resource. On the contrary, it is forced by this sense of unity into one of two possible positions, either that the fact of radium is imperfectly per- ceived, and that a more careful observation will compel it to conform to the previous rule, or that the rule of the conservation of energy, confirmed by innumerable tests and never before impeached, except by this solitary exception, is untrue, and that a new rule must be framed to include and ac- HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 29 count for the new fact, radium. That is to say, it prefers to doubt the truth of apparent experience in either case, either in innumerable instances form- ulated in the rule or in the case of the single in- stance presented by radium, rather than violate its sense of unity, or rather than violate its assump- tion that all the facts of the external world are gov- erned by the same law. Its sense of unity will not suffer it to admit two not mutually contradictory rules necessarily, for each might govern its own set of facts, but two rules where previously only one had obtained. Could there be stronger testimony to the compulsory power of that sense and desire of unity in cognition? Of it Kant has remarked that it is " a principle which extends further than any experience or obser- vation of ours and which, without giving us any positive knowledge of anything in the region of ex- perience, guides us to the goal of systematic unity." And again : " All that we can be certain of from the above considerations is that this systematic unity is a logical principle. . . . But the assertion that objects, and the understanding by which they are cognized, are so constituted as to be determined to systematic unity. . . . Such assertion . , . would 30 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. render their systematic unity not subjectively and logically — in its character of method — but object- ively, necessary." * He also points out its use as a test of subjective truth : " The object of the hypothetical employment of reason is, therefore, the systematic unity of cog- nitions, and this unity is the criterion of the truth of a rule." f Bacon himself, in a less metaphysical, more practi- cal way, as became his subject, has similarly pointed out in the "Novum Organum," this Egoistic impulse toward unity. " The human understanding from its peculiar nature easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds, and although many things in nature be sui ge^ieris and most irregular, will yet invent parallels and conjugates and relatives where no such thing is. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles, thus rejecting entirely spiral and serpentine lines, excepting as explanatory terms." % 9. So much, then, for the exposition of the cog- * Of the Regulative Employment of the Ideas of Pure Reason : " Critique of Pure Reason." I Transcendental Dialectic, Regulative Employment of the Ideas of Pure Reason : " Critique of Pure Reason." X *' Novum Organum," sec. 45. HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 3 1 nitive or thinking side of the Bgo's primitive im- pulse to unity, as manifested in its effort to force the world into the mold of its thought into con- formity with its ideas of unity. On its ethical side this sense of unity, of being part of one great whole, develops into that sense of obligation, that feeling of the " eternal ought " which lies at the root of all conduct of the Ego. It emerges from consciousness a vague, empty form, a blind impulse, without object or purpose, until the coming into consciousness of sensations from the external world furnish it with content and material. Knowing thus itself as only a part, it naturally feels itself as subordinate to the whole, regards itself as owing, and the whole as demanding, something from it. Thus two ethical impulses or feelings manifest themselves, out of which all the rules of conduct spring. First, we have the equality of each part to every other, no one part has superior and dif- ferent rights or obligations from another. Secondly, we have the superiority of the whole to any part, whence arise not onlv the duties which the indi- vidual Ego owes to the whole, but the duties which it owes to other parts of that whole, those duties which, fully developed and defined, are styled the 32 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. altruistic duties ; for it is plain that it is only through the existence of a whole, superior to any part, that any mutual obligations can be established by the parts toward each other. Considered as separate, in- dividual parts, without reference to any whole, by their very equality, each with the other, they owe no obligations, have no rights respecting each other. Their equality is simply negative, exacts only the negative requirement that each shall not infringe the entity of any other part. It cannot yield any obligation to help or perfect the entity of another part, except through the obligation to help or per- fect the whole, of which that other is a part. lo. Here lay a difficulty of that great expounder of altruistic conduct, Herbert Spencer. He at- tempted to base these altruistic acts on the self- pleasing act of each individual, each part of the whole, and endeavored thus to show that altruistic acts were simply a development of, a refinement upon, those primitive and necessary acts of self- preservation that are instinctive, and which, be- cause at once rewarded by pleasurable consequences, require no explanation. It was asserted that since altruistic acts helped the race or tribe that practiced them, the race or tribe which did so would survive, HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 33 while the utterly selfish, self-centered individuals who refused to render these altruistic services to each other would perish. Thus, the habit of altru- ism would become established, since only those who practiced it would survive. The ancient philosopher exclaimed, that grant him but the spot to plant his lever, and he would move the world. So with this theory, grant to it but that first altruistic act, that first deed of self- sacrifice, and all the rest of the beautiful train of reasoning follows. It is the first step that costs, that first jump from self to other-pleasing acts. Sad to say, the theory itself forbids the saltatory feat that is so essential. How theoretically is the individual living creature whose every act is posited as prompted only by self-pleasing motives, to be brought to perform that first other-pleasing act ? Other-pleasing, altruistic acts can never be based, either mediately or immediately, upon self-pleasing impulses. Those self-pleasing impulses are, it is true, the first, the most primitive, the instinctive impulses of the Ego ; they are the natural appetites, desires, wants of the individual part, in which is manifested its existence as a separate entity distinct from the whole, and in a sense antagonistic, if not 5 34 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. to the whole, to every other individual part ; for those appetites demand all the requirements, assert the existence of the individual part to the exclu- sion of other parts, if that be necessary, and lead to that natural battle for life which we behold con- tinually waging between the individual parts of the whole. The sense of obligation does not attach to the self-pleasing and instinctive acts of self-preserva- tion ; they precede any such sophisticated reflective action of the Kgo, and stand in no need of it. It is only after the recognition of a whole, and of a duty to each other part as making up that whole, that the Kgo perceives that the same sanction, the same sense of obligation, although unnecessary as a motive, nevertheless theoretically applies to and justifies self-pleasing just as much as other-pleasing acts, that both are based on a duty to the whole. II. Here lies, too, the answer to a very common query about good and evil, considered only as affect- ing the individual part, separate and independent of the whole. Right conduct, considered simply as a means of producing pleasurable conditions for the individual part appears to import no obligation ; for why may not the individual refuse such and HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 35 prefer evil? There appears no reason why man may not choose evil, if he prefers to be miserable. A man owes no obligation to himself which he can- not ignore. But when, on reflection, it is evident that the good and evil of the universe, the welfare of the unity is involved in the welfare of the indi- vidual part, then emerges the obligation to that unity which requires the individual part to conserve its own welfare as part of the welfare of the whole. A man is, therefore, not at liberty to do with himself as he will, destroy his life, maim his limbs, ruin his body, or weaken his mind. He is bound to seek pleasurable conditions in consciousness, rather than painful, not because he is not at liberty to dis- regard his own personal good, but because he must not disregard the good of the unity of the universe represented in his personal good. The good of the parts is necessarily, in most instances, the good of the whole. And when he is justified in disregard- ing his own good or evil, it must always be by reason of the obligation which he owes to the observation of the good and evil of the whole. In truth, nearly all moral problems are found to lie in this an- tagonism which apparently arises between the good of the part and the good of the whole. 36 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 12. It has been remarked that this sense of obliga- tion to the whole, to the unity of the universe, emerges first from consciousness as a mere form of feeling, without any significance. The Bgo feels itself a part of a great whole, but knows not ex- actly the ethical significance thereof ; it recognizes no particular duty as springing thereout. It feels a necessity to serve that unity, but it knows not what that unity is, nor what particular concrete action will serve it. Its only means of learning this, of filling up the empty form of the " ought " with content is experience. It learns from experience, from sensations of the external world, its only source, of knowledge, what is good and what is evil for itself, for the whole, the unity, and for the other parts. In other words, it has to measure the good and evil of the universe by its own experience of good and evil. Of God's macrocosm it perforce makes man's microcosm. It fills in the content of this empty form of obligation which it feels to the whole by its own experience of good and evil. That which is good in experience for itself, it per- force considers good for every other part and for the whole. Thus understood, not as the source of the obliga- HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 2)1 tion, of " the ought," but as its interpretation in the domain of experience, as its translation from the formal and abstract into the actual and concrete, Hedonism furnishes the only rational system of ethics. It furnishes the only adequate reply to the question of the ancient philosopher. What is the good? The Ego has the primitive compulsory in- stinct that it must serve the unity of the universe and all its parts, including itself. But how is this service to be rendered ? what is the meaning of it ? what acts or course of conduct will do this? In other words, what is good for the universe and its parts ? All the answers to this have been attempts more or less elaborate to define what is the good, and they have all come at the last to this simple definition : that is good which produces pleasurable conditions in consciousness. It would seem almost a logical necessity that some such definition should be made. It is the only one competent ; for, ob- serve, the nature of the case requires a test of good- ness that shall be immediately apprehended by the Ego, not doubtful, or requiring discussion or inves- tigation for knowing it. It is assumed, as a matter of course, that the Ego has within itself the power or faculty of judging 2,8 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. what is good and what evil, something that knows the good in such a way that appeal ma}' be made to it with the utmost confidence in an ability to at once and directly recognize it. This is a very im- portant assumption, and, as already remarked, an absolutely essential one. For in all discussions, in all questions, if they are ever to reach a decision by the Ego, there must be some simple elemental admitted truth or principle which requires only to be named to be acknowledged as self-evident. Some things must be self-evident, or the task of proving the truth of any fact or theory would be hopeless. There must always be something by which doubt- ful questions may be tested and settled without appeal. In the domain of logic the principle of contradiction, of equality, that two things equal to the same thing are equal to each other, and the like are such. 13. So in ethics there must be this simple, ele- mental, self-evident, self-sufficing test of the good to furnish the foundation of the ethical structure, something to which all teachers, all expounders of duty, of the " ought," may appeal with full confi- dence that the Ego's pronouncement will be final, ultimate, satisfactory, indubitable, so that if the Ego HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 39 once recognizes that the teaching Agrees with, is af- firmed by that test, it will at once concede the truth of the teaching. Observe that the distinction between the sense of obligation, the " ought " and the con- tent thereof, the concrete expression of it in acts is to be carefully marked. This teaching concerns itself only with the latter, with ascertaining, in other words, what is the good of that universe and of these parts which the " ought " compels us to observe. 14. All ethical systems concern themselves with this good as the essence of their teaching, as, in fact, the only province properly theirs, for with the " ought " they have no concern ; it stands as a neces- sity beyond their investigation, something given and to be accepted as elemental, something as- sumed as the basis of all their teaching. And in the last analysis their teaching all resolves itself into Hedonism, into the pleasurable conditions of consciousness as the final test of the good, a test which answers all the requirements, is simple, final, elemental, self-evident, as little capable of doubt as the existence of that consciousness itself of which it forms a part. Some systems, like the Utilitarian, admit this 40 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. test by implication when they define the good as the useful. For if we declare that what is useful to man is good it is impossible to refuse to go one step further and answer the question that inevita- bly knocks at the door : useful for what ? Otherwise the inquirer is left with no answer at all. If it defines its useful intelligibly it must do so in terms of Hedonism. That is useful to man which produces him pleasurable conditions in consciousness ; this is the final end of usefulness, the ne plus ultra of reasons that which is, its own reason and requires no further justification. Even those systems which declare the good to be the creation of some authority, some to us apparently arbitrary power whose dictum it is, will be found finally to appeal to the Ego's apprehension of the good, the pleasurable in consciousness, for the reason why it is good, for the justification of its goodness. Christ Himself, the divine teacher, did not disdain to represent heaven as a place of de- light, of happiness, of the good, vaguely in detail — a definite picturing of it was doubtless impossible — yet most positively in manner of assertion. And so hell, the result of wrong conduct, was represented as painful and productive of torments. In other HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 4 1 words, the good was interpreted by human experi- ence and through the pleasurable conditions of con- sciousness. In like manner the earlier Mosaic Deca- logue gave point and reason to many of its injunc- tions. Thus we are told that the swearer will not be held guiltless by the Almighty, that the dutiful child shall enjoy many days. The obvious inten- tion being to identify the doing of what is right with the good. Indeed, the contrary doctrine is revolting to the intellect and monstrous to that ethical sense or feeling which is common to all men. That doing right should not result in good, i. e.^ the pleasurable, or doing wrong, in evil, i. e.^ the painful, is incredible. 15. In all possible ethical systems there is an undoubted identity of right with the good, the pleas- urable, and of wrong with the evil, the painful. But it by no means follows that a thing is right be- cause it produces good, or wrong because it produces evil, to the actor, to the agent. As we have seen, what makes right or wrong is this sense of obli- gation, this " ought " which the Ego feels with regard to the unity of the universe and all acts that concern it. What will produce good to that unity of the universe is right, and what will produce evil 42 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. is wrong, because thus the Ego, as already pointed out, must think the unity of the universe, which its sense of obligation, its " ought " commands it to serve, is to be helped. That this course of action will also produce good or evil in like manner to itself as an inevitable consequence is a mere inci- dent : for its own good and evil are only significant when identical, as they not only usually are, but to our feeling must be with the good of the universe. It is conceivable, however, for an ethical system to sweep aside all questions of the good, to refuse to reason about it, to assert that to be right which is commanded by a superior power without justifica- tion, explanation, or other appeal to the reasoning faculties. Of such it is plain we cannot reason, since it expressly rejects all reason except to note that without reason it is impossible in our minds to attribute that moral quality which we do attribute to our conception of that sense of obligation, that " ought " that commands us to do right and refrain from wrong. Without reason, justification, expla- nation, we cannot voluntarily do an act because of this sense of obligation. If I do an act simply because I must, because a superior power compels me, my will, i. e.^ myself, takes no part ; it is not HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 43 my act ; to make it such I must will to do it, must desire to do it because of an internal compulsion. If I recognize an act to be right, and in consequence of that recognition of its rightness voluntarily and freely will and desire to do it, then you have a moral act, you realize the kind of obligation which we attach to the doing a right, the refusing to do a wrong act. The other is simply the act of a slave obeying an arbitrary and possibly unjust master. To be voluntary, the act must be understood. We cannot conceive an obligation of which we do not understand the reason, exercising a moral compul- sion. To make it moral it must be voluntarily recognized. There must be a free, intelligent recognition of the obligation ; thus only can a moral quality be infused into our acts of obedience thereto. On this point Hegel remarks : " Impulses and inclinations . . . are sometimes contrasted with the rporality of duty for duty's sake. But impulse and passion are the very life-blood of all action ; they are needed if the agent is really to be in his aim and the execution thereof."* That is to say, my act of obedience to the obli- ■^ " Philosophy of Mind " (Wallace's Translation), sec. 475. 44 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. gation of the "ought" must be prompted by no mechanical compulsion from without, but by my own desire and feeling and wish to obey, so only is such obedience truly my act. 1 6. When we come, as we now do, to the interpre- tation of this "ought " into conduct, the filling up of this sense of unity by a content furnished from experience, we find it assuming the most widely divergent concrete shapes. The Indian mother's sacrifice of her infant to the crocodile ; the refined and subtle sense of duty called Puritanical, which declares that all mortification of self, all denial of selfish pleasures is morally obligatory ; the ascetic of Catholic Christianity, as well as the self-torturing Mohammedan fakirs, all express in widely different fashion this same " ought." Hence has sprung that deeply ineradicably impressed notion of man- kind that to deny the individual to sacrifice the part to the whole is the cardinal principle of moral obligation. A curious twisting of thought thus takes place which, forgetting that all suffering or self-sacrifice is only justified by reason of the produc- tion of the good thereby, seems to elevate the sacri- fice of self, the suffering, the pain, which are only justifiable as a means to the good, that is the HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 45, pleasurable in consciousness, into an end in itself. It is for this reason that we always consider praise- worthy acts of self-sacrifice, of self-denial, no matter how mistaken we may think the actors ; for such acts evince unmistakably their source to be that sense of obligation to the unity of the universe, that com- pulsion of the " ought." They must be the expres- sion of the duty of the part to the whole, otherwise they are inexplicable. The great significance of the " ought," as already mentioned, is its universality. No race or tribe of men has been discovered without a trace of it in some shape ; but its expression in such widely varying forms as those just alluded to is only explicable, on the basis of the necessity for the transforming of it by that process of Egoistic interpretation into the concrete into conduct, not only, as already pointed out, by the experience of the good furnished by the external world, but also by the intellectual process required to ascertain what will be the appropriate means of producing the good of the universe ; how best the part which the Ego is shall act for the good of the whole. In the errors of thinking thus rendered possible, we find the reconciliation of the contradictory conduct 46 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. of concededly good men, the burning of Serv^etus by Calvin, the constant meeting of Christian men in the deadly conflict of battle, some on one side, some on the other, and the like. For we must hold that so long as the part the individual Ego submits itself in good faith to the compulsion of its sense of obligation to the unity of the universe, its errors of thinking the good of that unity and the methods of serving it have no moral significance. 17. It remains to point out that this "ought," this sense of obligation to the unity of the universe on its ethical side, cannot be derived from the external world of sensation. It is as independent of experience as the cognitive side of this unity, the unity of thought, was seen to be. It contra- dicts the sensations presented by the external world to the Ego just as the law of unity of thought contradicts the chaos of the manifold presented in intuition. The sensations of the external world command the Ego to shape its conduct so as to avoid the painful and accept only the pleasurable. In all animal life there would seem to be a law of conduct almost mechanical in its automatic action, impelling the living creature to avoid the one and seek the other. It might be styled a law of self- HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 47 preservation essential to its material welfare. But the " ought " ignores this, lays down altruistic rules of conduct impossible of derivation from the self- pleasing law of the external world, and issues com- mands that often result in conduct exactly the reverse of that commanded by the sensations of experience. Another consideration leads us to the same con- clusion. For it is impossible that the moral quality which this sense of obligation possesses can be derived from experience. The mere fact that an act will procure for me pleasurable conditions in consciousness or avoid painful, imports no obligation that I am bound to recognize. I feel at liberty, without violation of any obligation to take or refuse either pleasure or pain. The sense of obliga- tion which I feel must be internal to have the proper moral quality, must be recognized as the result of my own spontaneous activity, my own recognition of its necessity and the reason thereof. It cannot have that quasi-automatic character which we have seen governs the action of mere pleasur- able or painful sensations on the animal nature of man. Nor can it be asserted that this ignoring and 48 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. denial of the immediately pleasurable sensations at the command of the " ought " is a contradic- tion of the Hedonistic principle of ethical conduct. Such a denial is but the sacrifice of the imme- diately pleasurable to the ultimately pleasurable ; for when I at the command of the " ought " give up pleasure or accept pain, I do it governed by the desire for that pleasurable condition of conscious- ness which is the result of obedience to that " ought," governed by the fear of the painful con- dition which is the result of disobedience. 1 8. The acutely critical reader may remark upon this exposition of the obligation of the " ought," and its interpretation by experience of the good that, after all, it merely identifies the law of con- duct with the law of thought, and exhibits each as but two sides, two phases of the elemental Egoistic sense of unity in the universe ; that beyond this we know nothing but that it is so. We have suc- ceeded only in simplifying, resolving the two into a single, all-pervading principle and instinct of the Bgo ; and have thus satisfied one of the Egoistic im- pulses already adverted to as illustrating the work- ing of the principle itself, in the domain of thought ; that is to say, we have reached a more universal, a HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 49 more unifying principle, which, is always more satisfying to the Ego and carries with it an assur- ance of a nearer approach to the reality. Anything more than this is impossible to human intelligence. It is the only demonstration in our power. Let the critic ask himself what further proof of a different and higher kind he can conceive. Would he have a reason, an explanation, a cause for the elemental instinct of unity ; would he ask for an actual test of it by a comparison with reality ; if so, let him state how these are to be furnished. As well might he propose a reason and explanation, a cause, or a test by reality for the laws of thinking, for the smell of a rose. 19. But there is still a further development of this elemental sense of unity of the Ego that we have now to discuss. It is involved in the exposi- tion of this last element of the ethical theory, the good. We have seen that, without experience and the content it furnishes to this sense of unity of the universe, this " ought," as a principle of conduct, is purely formal, a mere feeling or instinct of the Ego, that it is under a necessity to act as a part in a great whole, destitute, however, of all positive knowledge of what the whole is, or what relation 7 50 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. the part the Ego itself is bears to that whole, or what acts the necessity it feels demands of it. The good which the Bgo learns through its ex- perience furnishes this knowledge, this content, and we have seen that this good, pursued to its last hiding place, is the pleasurable condition of consciousness. This alone furnished the Bgo with such a self-evident, indisputable, indubitable test of the good as the circumstances required. For it was known directly, immediately, by the Ego, re- quired no discussion or argument, and could no more be doubted than the existence of conscious- ness itself, of which it was, in fact, a phase or mode of existence. To call the good pleasure sim- ply, rather than a pleasurable condition of conscious- ness, fails to mark precisely the true nature of the effect produced on the consciousness of the Ego by what we loosely call pleasure, as if it were a some- thing separate, independent of the subject Ego which experiences it. Moreover pleasure has ac- quired by usage an almost indissoluble connection with certain material causes of it, and its use might, therefore, seem to prejudge the question which now presents itself for consideration, to wit, the various causes of pleasure and pain, which, in experience, HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF KTHICS. 5 1 furnish to the Ego that knowledge of the good which gives reality and concrete meaning to the "ought." At the first blush it may seem as if all the pleasure and pain of the Ego were simply the pro- duction of sensations, agreeable or disagreeable in and of themselves. But although undoubtedly this is the popular notion, accepted with little or no question, a very superficial consideration of the ordi- nary transactions of life will show its inadequacy. For the more obvious bodily pleasures it seems suf- ficient, the satisfaction of the appetites, the feast of the eye on color, the ear on sound, the nose on smell, require no explanation, save that there is a direct pleasure, immediate and elemental, connected with each. But even these simple, uncomplicated in- stances of pleasure, if we steadily regard them, re- veal depths of which at first we did not dream. Their very simplicity is their difficulty. Such an acute and clear thinker as Mr. Huxley has failed to catch the whole significance of them, when he re- marks that pain is not knowledge, but becomes part of knowledge when we think of it in relation to another pain. " There is only a verbal difference between having a sensation and knowing one has it ; 52 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. they are simply two phrases for the same mental state." * There is all the difference in the world between having a pain which imports no knowledge and thinking a pain as related to something else which does import knowledge of relations, the only knowledge the human mind is capable of. Having the pain or the pleasure is not a possibility of thought : that is, the pain or the pleasure is a modi- fication of the Ego, of myself, it is something which, for the time, I am. It is a mode of my own existence. I cannot objectify or think it any more than I can really objectify or think myself. I can frame for myself an idea or symbol of it as I can of myself, and think that, and when I do this I may con- sider that I am thinking the pain itself, and that thus" thinking it, in connection with other objects of thought, with myself as an object, I may declare that I know I have a pain. To say that I know I have a pain requires that I should think the pain and myself in certain relations, neither of which is possible. I make ideas of each and can thus think them, but these ideas are not the realities any more than other ideas of external objects are the; reali- ties from which they are formed. * " Essay on Hume," page 86. HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 53 20. There is a very curious consequence of this, hinted at by acute thinkers, but never fully devel- oped ; * it is the inability of the Ego to compare pleasures and pains, except by the degree of intensity and by duration, or quantitatively. The inability to think pain or pleasure forbids comparison, for, in order to recognize and know differences and thus compare we must not only do what has been shown to be impossible, make these states of the Ego ob- jects of thought, but in order to compare properly, we must be able to recall, at will, one and the other and place them side by side contemporaneously, which is even more impossible. 21. Their causes we are able to compare and dis- tinguish, and often such operations are mistaken for a comparison of the states themselves. A ramble in the country, the eating a toothsome viand, the hearing agreeable music, are very different pleas- ures, we say, speaking popularly, but, critically ex- amined, the distinction is made, not in the pleasur- * Herbert Spencer has remarked: "Pleasures are more like one another than are the feelings (causes?) which yield them. . . . The wave of delight produced by the sight of a grand landscape is qualitatively much the same as that produced by an expressive musical cadence. There is close kinship between the agreeable feelings aroused, the one by a kind word, and the other by a highly poetical thought." — " Psychology," ^ 128. 54 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. able condition these severally create, but in the in- tensity, the duration, the sequential condition of satiety, weariness, and so on. Perhaps it would be more accurate to assert, not that there are no differ- ences in these pleasurable conditions of conscious- ness, but rather that we possess no means of measur- ing them. Another curious consequence of the impossibility of thinking pleasure or pain is that we gain from them no knowledge. Knowledge is always with us a knowledge of relations ; we know only rela- tions, and to know them we must be able to think the objects known in relation, to objectify them with other objects in consciousness and observe these relations. This point, however, requires no elaboration, but deserves mention, because, possi- bly, an acute critic might remark that pleasure and pain seem not to differ from other realities in the requirement that, when we seek to think them, we must make ideas of them ; that we are in fact unable to think realities of any kind. This is, of course, true ; the difference, however, lies here, that other realities of the external world we only know indirectly by sensations, which have ever to be perceived, to be subjected, to that HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 55 Spontaneous activity of the Ego, which, out of sensa- tions forms perceptions, while pleasure and pain, we do know directly as realities, they are one of the few realities known directly to us. When, how- ever, we think them, we substitute for these reali- ties the ideas of them, and thus confuse ideas of pleasure and pain with the realities which we ac- tually experience and thus know. Such confusion can never arise with regard to external realities which we know, not as realities, but only as per- ceptions, formulated for us by the spontaneous ac- tivity of the Ego. 22. We have gone, perhaps it may seem, too minutely into this discussion of the deliverances of consciousness on the question of pleasure and pain ; but it is to be remembered that it is only as we keep close to consciousness as given that we can approach the truth as we are permitted to know it. Out of the cloth consciousness we are compelled to cut the coat philosophy, and out of it alone. It is impossible to turn the leaves of this our only book of knowledge too often or too carefully. Again and again must we peruse and re-peruse its every word and letter. In it and for us is locked up the wisdom of the ages. Its slightest operation holds 56 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. more meaning for us than the flight of the stars, for it conditions all our knowledge. We may repeat then that these painful or pleas- urable conditions of consciousness which we call happiness or misery, and which we express by the simple declaration, " I am happy," " I am miser- able," are too elemental to permit further analysis. We cannot discriminate the " happy " or the ^'miserable " into various kinds of happiness or of misery. These are modifications of the Bgo itself which defy comparisons. Fixing, as we naturally do, attention on the causes, the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery, we feel a logical necessity for asserting that where the means are so various and differ so widely, the results must like- wise differ. A good dinner, a symphony of Beeth- oven, a novel of Thackeray, a self-sacrificing deed, are so different, that the pleasurable condi- tion produced in consciousness by them must differ. The doctrine that all pleasurable conditions of consciousness are essentially the same is so para- doxical as to be almost shocking. We are so accustomed to attributing moral superiority to one over another, arguing on this illogical basis that the pleasure must be superior morally, which is pro- HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF KTHICS. 57 duced by a cause which we assume better than some other. There is, however, no warrant in reason for such assumption. All pleasurable con- ditions are of nature, of God's gift ; none is supe- rior or inferior. In and by themselves all are good and equal. On what rational basis is the pleasure of a good dinner to be declared morally inferior to the pleasure of a charitable deed or of a noble poem? But it may be asked : " Why, if all pleasures are alike morally, should there be any choice of pleas- ures such as we see exercised daily by men ? It is much like the case of a traveler to whom various roads present themselves all leading to the same place. Bach traveler will choose that road which suits him best and have a very decided preference for one over another, although all have the same terminus. So it is with pleasure each man takes that road to it that suits him best, and there may be a very great moral difference in these roads ; some may be of the very lowest and most debased character ; others of the purest and noblest ; some, while not of themselves wrong or immoral, are made so by the circumstances under which they are made use of. 8 58 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 23. It must also be noted that while unable to distinguish qualitative differences in pleasurable conditions, we do recognize a very important difference in intensity ; a difference which often governs the choice of the seeker after pleasure. A drink of w^hisky not only furnishes an easy and expeditious road to the pleasurable condition, but it makes the pleasurable condition far more intense in degree than the reading of a poem of Browning. It may not last so long or be unattended w^ith sequela of a disagreeable sort, and these differences also enter into the question of choice. 24. These conditions of consciousness which we call happiness or misery are produced by the sum total of all the content of consciousness, sense- impressions, ideas, etc. I know immediately and directly when I am happy or miserable ; it is a mode of my existence, a state of my consciousness which allows of no doubt. I call it my feeling of happi- ness or of misery. With this feeling are alw^ays associated the content of consciousness cognitively considered, pictures or ideas of places, people, objects, and being thus associated a certain color or individuality is given to the feeling of happiness or misery which they accompany, so that a false HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 59 appearance of a real difference in the feeling itself is often produced. It is thus that we are led to imagine that feeling of happiness resulting from the good dinner differs from the happiness result- ing from the poem of Browning. And so of all those feelings which we style so variously accord- ing to the particular cognitions which accompany them, feelings of anger, of gratitude, of jealousy, and so on through all the emotions of the Kgo. As a matter of fact, not only are all feelings of pleasure and of pain indistinguishable from others in its own class, but all those other apparently separate and different feelings are in reality simply either pleasure or pain masquerading under the motley dress of various ideas with which they are associated and which serve to disguise their true identity. In reality there are but two feelings — pleasure and pain. That is to say, there is no qualitative difference cognizable by us in any of our feelings except those qualities which we call pleasure and pain. Popularly and loosely we speak of feelings of sorrow, of anger, of shame, of triumph, of love, of all that catalogue of feelings which it is impossible to exhaustively enumerate. These seem to con- 6o HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. stitute a vast gamut of what are not really difEerent feelings, but simply different accompaniments, differ- ent associations in the domain of cognition with those two feelings — pleasure and pain. All these feelings are distinguished one from the other by those items of the content of consciousness asso- ciated with them, but in themselves and by them- selves these feelings are always simple, elemental, either pleasure or pain, no more, no less, essen- tially. And it is as pleasure and pain that they exert their influence on the actions of the Ego ; for pleasure and pain, like the mighty giants, Gog and Magog, that stand guard with their great clubs over the door of London's Lord Llayor, stand over the Ego and coerce its every act. 25. In short, there are but two feelings, or classes — if you prefer it — of feelings, and all feelings how- ever complicated or apparently different from each other will be found, on careful examination, to re- solve themselves into one or the other. My sorrow for the death of a friend and my disap- pointment over a pecuniar}- loss are qualitatively ex- actly the same. I distinguish them not from any difference in the intrinsic quality of the pain I feel HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 6 1 in connection with each, but by the widely different content of consciousness that accompanies each. The causes of the two feelings are radically differ- ent. The absence of the familiar face, of the pleas- ant intercourse with my friend, are very different from the subtracting of a certain sum from my bank account, or the foregoing, perhaps, in con- sequence thereof, of a new suit of clothes, or a trip into the country. So the duration of the feeling and its intensity differ widely ; in the case of the friend I know that there is no earthly cure for his loss, my feeling is hopeless ; with regard to the money lost I feel, if a sanguine man, that to-morrow I may regain it, and possibly much more. Thus the two feelings, while essentially the same, are different in these conspicuous features — their causes, their duration, the actions required by them of the Ego, upon which the attention of the Ego is naturally fixed because it is upon these that its interest converges in its effort to avoid the painful and obtain the pleasurable. 26. Other feelings differ more conspicuously in the resulting actions which they prompt and which in like manner serve to differentiate what are in their elemental reality precisely the same feelings.. 62 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. Thus compassion and anger find expression in the very opposite actions of the Ego. I behold a man cruelly beating a horse and the sight causes a painful condition in my conscious- ness, it offends my ideas of humanity, or, to express it psychologically, these external sense-impressions are not homogeneous with the fixed ideas in my consciousness regarding the proper treatment of horses, and this painful feeling I seek to cure by in- terfering with the human in behalf of the equine brute, and thus restoring homogeneity to my con- sciousness. I am said to be moved by a feeling of compassion. Or, I receive a blow or a disagreeable speech from an acquaintance and I experience a painful condi- tion of consciousness caused by the insult to my self-love, my self-respect. I have a feeling of anger, we say, which makes me wish to strike back or to make a cutting retort, because in this way I shall be able to restore that homogeneity to my conscious- ness which has been rudely disturbed by the intru- sion of sense-impressions contradictory of those ideas of my own importance or worth which are in my consciousness. But both feelings, compassion and anger, are nothing but painful conditions of con- HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 63 sciousness caused by different sense-impressions and leading to very different actions by the Ego, yet having precisely the same object or purpose, the removal of the painful conditions, the restoration of homogeneity to consciousness, and prompted by a feeling of simple pain, which is in both cases essentially the same. 27. All these feelings which seem so diverse, so complicated, so full of infinite shades and delicate distinctions, possess these simply by virtue of their causes or their consequents. They may seem as various as the colors of an artist's palette, but in reality they are, like them, resolvable into very simple constituents. The prismatic element- ary colors of all feelings are simply two, pleasure and pain, and all that we fancy singularly indi- vidual and peculiar about any given feeling is attributable simply to its causes and consequents with which we color and confuse it. Fortunately for the final demonstration of this we are not re- stricted to our own necessarily imperfect analysis of the phenomena of consciousness, but may appeal to a far less biased and sophisticated authority, namely, to the automatic and spontaneous deliver- ances of consciousness itself in sleep. For in dreams 64 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. and in nightmare it is a matter of common knowledge that no distinction is made between the various painful feelings or between the various pleasurable feelings experienced. Painful feelings that are, in fact, the result of physical causes, physical pains, are not distinguished from those which are the re- sult of mental causes. The mind acting thus with- out conscious direction of the will makes no distinc- tion between the painful condition produced by a stomach-ache and that produced by some mental anxiety. Mental pain and physical pain are treated as exactly the same feeling, so that with the utmost indifference a physical or a mental cause is assigned to either, which, of course, would be impossible were there a true qualitative difference between them, cognizable by consciouness. 28. The painful feeling excited in consciousness by indigestion and by humiliation, or by mortifica- tion of self-respect, are indistinguishable. An emi- nent medical authority, Dr. Maudsley,* relates of his own experience that intestinal discomfort caused him to dream that he was conducting a post- mortem on a body in the dissecting room which un- *Mandsley's "Pathology of Mind" (Appleton's Edition, 1880), page 33. HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 65 expectedly came to life, that he struck it with a mallet, that he plucked out its heart, and that he felt an ^Hndescribable feeling of puz sled surprise mtd apprehension^ with a resolution to escape^ at any cost^ the consequences of cutting up a living body ; there was^ however^ a strong sense of personal repression or hu7niliatio7iy The italics are mine, but are an exact quotation of his words expressing the cause or reason assigned by his dreaming consciousness to the physical pain caused by some stomachic or other intestinal disorder of his system. The personal ex- perience of the reader will doubtless supply him with numerous other instances where he has, per- haps, — as it has happened to the writer, — dreamed that he suffered much mental distress and anxiety over catching a train that was just starting while he was making change for his ticket at the office window which he could not succeed in getting right. When he awoke he found himself suffer- ing in reality from a headache, for which conscious- ness had, in its effort to account for it, invented the train-catching incident with its mental anxiety. In like manner it is related of a woman who was suffering from incipient small-pox, that she dreamed that her husband was about to die on the scaffold, 9 66 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. thus attributing to the physical pain of the bodily disease a purely mental cause. Her mind, acting- without volition in sleep, was unable to distinguish any qualitative difference between the pain of the disease and the pain of the mental distress over her husband's condition. Sometimes one sort of physical cause is substituted for another. Dr. Maudsley* quotes the case of a man who, having had a blister applied to his scalp, dreamed that he was being scalped by red Indians. 29. But it may be well to quote Maudsley's account of the causes of dreams, thus we shall appreciate better the bearing of the facts as illus- trating our theory. He says if " One is apt to think that the images and events of a distressing dream are the causes of the feeling of distress which is experienced, but they are not really so ; the feeling is more truly the cause of the images ; it is, so to speak, the mother mood of them." In other words, dreams are the attempts of the Ego to think feelings which, coming into consciousness, force themselves, as it were, upon an Ego, whose senses of sight, hearing, touch, all its other avenues ■^Maudsley's " Pathology of Mind," page 28. t Maudsley's " Pathology of Mind," (Edition 1880), page 24. HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 67 of information, are closed by sleep, so that it is left without their aid in construing the various disjecta membra into a perception intelligible to its reason. It cannot shut out the feeling, and, therefore, is forced to think it ; that is, to frame it into a per- ception in accordance with the law of its sponta- neous activity in this respect. A simple feeling is impossible of thought for two very distinct reasons : first, because, as we have already seen, all feeling as a modification of the subject, the Bgo itself, is, like the subject, incapable of being made the object of thought. All that the Ego can do is to form for itself what I have called a thought-counter, a thought representation of the feeling, and think the feeling just as it thinks external objects. It thinks not the feeling itself, but a representation of the feeling. But, secondly, it cannot think the feel- ing even in this way by itself as it is given to it, because it must think the feeling as it thinks all other objects, as part of that chain of causes and effects in which all things are and must be thought. It must think it under the categories of causality and the like. And, therefore, it invents for the feeling, the causes, the effects which are necessary for thinking it, supplying from its storehouse of 68 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. memor\- the necessary material which the actual content of conscio'usness as presented it by the non-Ego fails to supply. In other words, the Ego dreams in order to think the feelingr intellioqblv which it is compelled to think. 30. In this process we find an apt illustration of the difference between having^ a feeling^ and know- ing that one has it, a difference which Professor Huxley undertook to ignore. Having the feeling is the condition of the dreamer when he first feels or perceives the sound or the pain, knowing that he has it is his condition when he by dreaming attempts to think it ; that is, to recognize that he has the feeling with all that this implies of cause, effect, relationship to other objects of thought. Knowing implies thinking. The act of knowing implies a recognition of relationship of the thing known to other things. To know that I have a feeling requires that I should be conscious of a relation be- tween myself and the feeling, that I should have performed that primitive, but by no means simple, operation of making thought-counters of myself and of my feeling and have placed them in that relationship with each other which the laws of thought require. HINTS TOWARD A THKORY OF ETHICS. 69 31. This effort of the Ego to think feeling or sen- sation is often instantaneous ; a lightning flash of the mind in its operation of knowing. Many stories might be related illustrating this. Thus, it is told of a man awakened by the slamming of a door, that in the interval between hearing the sound and awak- ening he had dreamed that he had entered the army, had deserted, and was about to be shot. The sound of the guns that were to put him to death was the sound of the door that awoke him. Even more strik- ing is a story related in the St. Louis Medical Re- view of a physician who while making a call was overcome with drowsiness. He was asked : " How long may you stay in B ? " His answer, which came promptly enough, was : " That depends on the Western Union." He explained that he referred to a telegram. In truth, however, his answer re- ferred to the fact of a dream which he had between the first part of the question, " How long," and the last, " may you stay in B ? " He dreamed that after a long and tedious experiment he had invented a wonderful apparatus for holding telegraph poles in a vertical position, had negotiated with the Postal Telegraph Company for its sale, but unsuccessfully, and had gone to the rival company. He was told 70 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. they were considering a German invention for the same purpose. He crossed the ocean to examine the foreign device, returned, explained the differences to the intending purchaser, and was awaiting a reply when he awoke in time to hear the end of the question. Apparently the events of the dream occu- pied months, in reality they had consumed the time required for uttering four words. Here, in a nutshell, we have the whole process of thinking into a rational perception, a sensation which has been presented to consciousness naked and alone. At first a mere sound in consciousness without cause, without relation to any other object the Ego refuses to so think it. It has the sensa- sation, but to know that it has it, there is need for thinking it into some relation with itself, with other sensations ; for nothing can be thought entirely by itself. Until it does this it cannot be said to know the sensation. 32. So much for the nature of the feeling of pleas- ure and pain, and of the feelings apparently differ- ent but in reality founded on them, to which we give such a variety of designations, according to the ideas, the pictures, the causes, and the effects, with which they are associated. HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 7 1 That many of these pleasures and pains, or, as I prefer to call them, these pleasurable or painful con- ditions in consciousness, are caused directly and immediately by sensations from the external world we have seen. But there is a great number of pleas- urable as well as of painful conditions of conscious- ness which cannot be so caused, if we are to judge by the manner of their appearance in consciousness. Among such may be named pleasurable conditions or pleasures belonging to ambition, to friendship, to love of country and of persons in its highest sense, to work, to art in its many divisions of music, poetry, painting, the drama ; and so among painful conditions or pains may be named those of grief, envy, dishonor, hatred. It is impossible to name exhaustively, or even accurately, the intricate and complicated pleasurable or painful conditions thus constituted in the consciousness of the Ego. 33. Perhaps the impossibility of deriving these directly or indirectly from pleasurable or painful sensations cannot be more clearly shown than by an examination of an attempt by one eminent phi- losopher to so derive them. The principle of asso- ciation, as it is called, is invoked and we are told that wealth, friends, power, and the like, produce 72 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. - for US pleasurable conditions in consciousness and thus lead us to desire them and seek for them be- cause they have become associated with the pleas- ures of sensation which they procure for us. They thus, we are told by our author,* occupy and fix the attention of the mind even more than the pleasurable sensations themselves. I shall remark more at length on this principle of association and its true interpretation later on ; at present we have only to discuss its adequacy as an explanation. In regard to friends, we are told that we receive pleas- ure from them because of " states or circumstances in which a greater proportion than usual of our pleas- ures come to be associated with the idea of the individual . . . and in the expectation of future pleasures "t from them. We regard them as useful by their services in procuring material benefits, and so come to look upon them as agreeable in them- selves. According to this theorv' the pleasurable condition produced by friends in our conscious- ness would seem very much like that of any inani- mate souvenir associated in our mind with past or future pleasures which memorv' or imagination ^Mills' " Analysis of the Human Mind," Vol. II., passim, t Mills' " Analyis of the Human Mind." Vol. II., p. 216. HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. ']2) may call up for us. A locket or picture performs very mucli the same service as the friend in this explanation. At best, the friend is pleasure-pro- ducing much as a useful tool by which we hope to get something desirable. Common sense revolts at this view as low morally, and untrue and unsatis- factory philosophically. We recall the famous friendships of all time, Damon and Pythias, David and Jonathan, Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna, in refutation of it. Our own introspec- tion informs us of the pleasurable condition we feel in the intercourse, the interchange of like thoughts and feelings with friends, and we fix there much of the cause of our pleasure in them. Moreover, if we carry the principle, as its author does, to other pleas- urable things and endeavor to explain the desire and love of wealth, of country, and so on, we are met with difficulties for which the principle is unable to account except lamely. We behold the miser, for the sake of wealth, giving up, not temporarily, but finally and forever, all the agreeable sensations which we are told cause him to desire it as the means of their procurement ; we see the patriot giving his life for his country, and thus losing by a single act all the agreeable sensations which alone, lO 74 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. we are told, made him love it. Acts so conspicu- ously contradictory of the theory cast a suspicion upon its truth that it is impossible to disregard. For these reasons the explanation of the pleasur- able conditions of consciousness due to friends, wealth, ambition, and so on, as founded on directly pleasurable sensations, cannot be accepted. 34. That in one sense all pleasurable conditions, as well as all other conditions of consciousness, have their basis in sensations is undeniable ; for without sensations we should have no content of consciousness. It is also true that the primitive consciousness of the young child, or even of the uncultivated savage, filled with the sensations pre- sented to it by the external world, constituting, in fact, conscious existence for the particular Ego is pleasurable in the absence of directly painful sensations. Mere existence without actual pain, in other words, is a positively pleasurable condition, and mere existence means the reception of sensa- tions from the external world, for so only is con- scious existence possible. This is readily perceived in those consciousnesses least sophisticated and nearest to their natural state. In children and savages there is a very consider- HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 75 able pleasure produced by simply the procession of new sensations, one after the other, without regard to their particular significance mentally, or their re- sults in the way of directly pleasurable sensations. It is the mere filling of consciousness with content that causes the pleasure, and, while any one of the items may be indifferent in the sense that any other might be substituted for it without affecting the pleasurable condition, yet we cannot infer that any item is indifferent in the sense that it does not con- tribute its share to that condition. A child of very tender years is often seen to clap its hands with joy, to crow and exhibit other signs of delight, simply from the perception of a bright color, or rapidly moving object, a loud sound, none of which can have association for it nor any pleasurable or painful meaning other than that of filling its consciousness with content, variable and changing, giving body and matter to consciousness. 35. We must, therefore, conceive of conscious- ness as a vast sea of contents, ideas, sensations, etc., which, if harmonious, constitute for the Ego a pleasurable condition. A very little reflection will assure us that, for the most part, it is this harmony, this homogeneity of consciousness that makes us 76 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. happy, rather than any particular and especial pleasure-producing sensation, such as the taste of food, smell of flowers, and the like. For these, by their very nature, rapidly exhaust, apparently, the capacity of the Ego to appreciate or enjoy them. Satiety follows satisfaction. Ask the practical question of e very-day experience how many minutes of the twenty-four hours are filled by such pleas- ures ; their share of the Ego's attention is almost nothing to the pleasurable conditions constituted by the harmonious, homogeneous state of consciousness constituted by the items of its content all agreeing together. 36. In addition to sensations or sense-impressions, we have, as a very important part of the content of consciousness, the ideas formed out of them as the raw material and shaped as variously as the Egoes, of whose spontaneous activity they are the product. How exactly these ideas, representative at first of the external world, gradually become modified and changed so as to picture for the Ego its desires, wishes, hopes, and the like, we need not inquire, but that such modifications do take place we know, so that the will of the Ego thus finds its expression. % HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. yj Pleasurable sensations undoubtedly play their part in impressing ideas upon the Bgo, making ideas of food, safety, warmth, and other primitive needs of the Bgo fixed ideas, pictured in conscious- ness, under images of objects which afford satisfac- tions of these needs. In this instance they become fixed by reason of association with pleasurable sen- sations, but not simply and only because of the pleasurable character of the sensations ; for asso- ciation with painful sensations has a like power of fixing ideas in consciousness, although perhaps not so frequently. The point to be remarked, how- ever, is the great psychological truth with which we have particular concern, that ideas once fixed in consciousness, no matter how, have first a strong and overpowering influence on its pleasurable and painful conditions, and secondly, and in consequence thereof, upon its actions. These fixed ideas, in their function of expressing the desires, hopes, fears, and so on, of the Ego, are, in fact, its will. ^j. First, upon its pleasurable or painful condi- tions : the Ego is never happy unless its ideas and the sense-impressions of the external world as pre- sented in consciousness are homogeneous, agree with each other. 78 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. One of its first spontaneous activities is to shape its ideas in conformity with the sense-impressions of the external world, so that they may correspond one with the other, a failure to correspond causes a painful condition in consciousness. The earliest manifestation of this is often called the influence of environment by which the living creature seeks to fit itself into its surroundings. This is evident, if we consider that the fitting of the living creature into its environment can only be brought about by the constant repetition of the same acts, done under the influence of fixed ideas, formed to accord with the sense-impressions received from the external world. These ideas, once thus fixed, have the ten- dency to get themselves executed in the external world, as all such ideas do, since they are no more, no less, than the concrete expression in this respect of the will of the living creature. No mere momentary impulse, caused by a painful or pleasurable sensa- tion, could have this effect of bringing about an adaptation by the creature to its environment. It is only when made a fixed idea — if you choose by previous pleasurable or painful sensations — and thus made a constant rule of action through the desire of homogeneity in consciousness, that the habitual HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 79 usage can become the shaping factor in the animal's life, which is necessary to bring about a change in its character. There is a notable instance of this process re- lated in Genesis, where we are told of the peeling of poplar and hazel rods by the astute Jacob, and the setting of them up in the watering troughs as a means of inducing the breeding cattle to bring forth striped and mottled offspring. This shows that environment works not alone or altogether by pleasurable or painful sensations, although undoubt- edly these are the most powerful instruments for the fixing of ideas in consciousness, but that properly understood environment works its effects by means of ideas impressed on consciousness, no matter how, by actual pleasure or pain, or by the constant presentation of some spectacle, such as the striped rods of the cunning Jacob, but that, in either case, it is the desire of homogeneity in consciousness, of ideas and sense-impressions, that is the means of producing the results attributed to environment. 38. Later on this desire for homogeneity in con- sciousness, between all the content, ideas, and sense- impressions, becomes a seeking for knowledge, a failure of the ideas to correspond with the sense- So HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF KTHICS. impressions is called error, or ignorance. Why the Kgo should find this correspondence of ideas with sense-impressions productive of agreeable conditions in consciousness, why it should prefer knowledge to ignorance is elemental. There is no reason ex- cept that it is so ; homogeneity of all the content of consciousness is pleasurable, and the want of it painful. 39. If a more artificial explanation be attempted that knowledge is useful and enables the Ego to satisfy its wants better, and so on, it might be pointed out that long before any such sophisticated process of reasoning was possible to the Ego it sought instinctively for this homogeneity. More- over, as we shall see later on, the same desire for homogeneity leads the scientific discoverer and the student to seek knowledge, which, at any rate for immediate purposes, is purely abstract with no use- ful end in view, for the pure pleasure of the homo- geneity of consciousness, the correspondence or harmony of ideas with the sense-impressions pre- sented to it. 40. Secondly, these ideas control the action of the Ego. Of this Herbert Spencer, with his won- derful faculty for impersonal self-analysis, affords a HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OK ETHICS. 8 1 valuable, because entirely unconscious instance. He remarks of himself in his Autobiography (Vol. I., p. 445) : " There was here again illustrated a trait upon which I have before commented — the liability to be tyrannized over by a resolution once formed, consciousness becoming so possessed by the end in view (the fixed idea of our discussion) that all thought of anything adverse is excluded." He adds : " Had not my wishes so possessed me as to ■exclude ideas of possible consequences ? " For what is the will of the Ego, of which so much is said, but those ideas expressing concretely its want in ■each particular case ? Of abstract will we know nothing. And what is it that impels the Ego to its various acts but this tyranny of " resolution once formed," as Spencer •describes it — the desire, in short, to behold realized in the external world the ideas of consciousness ? This is that supreme pleasure called getting one's way, attaining one's purpose, having one's will, which in terms of consciousness is the making the sense-impressions of the external world — by which alone we know it — correspond with the ideas of the internal world of consciousness. In other words, it is no more than the homogeneity of consciousness. II J 82 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 41. What this homogeneity of consciousness is will appear from the examples already given and those which are to follow. Let it be accepted now * as a brief label placed upon this state of conscious- ness subject to fuller definition by illustration and exemplification later. Consciousness thus consti- tuted of ideas and sensations, sense-impressions, may be likened to a great lake whose rule of well- being might be that splendid motto of William the Silent, Tranquillus in Saevis Undis. So long as no conflict arises between the various items of its content, each item helping to constitute a great harmonious whole contributes to the pleasurable condition of consciousness, and the greater the num- ber and the variety of the items, provided homo- geneity is maintained, the greater the pleasurable condition. 42. The struggle of the Ego for homogeneity in consciousness manifests itself in one of two ways, either by making its ideas correspond with its sense- impressions, or by making its sense-impressions correspond with its ideas. The first method is that of the student, the naturalist, the discoverer, of all degrees, from the child up ; for it is evident that the first effort of the child in learning the various HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 83 facts of nature by experiment is this process in its least sophisticated form. The second method is that of the workman, the artist, the statesman, the general, the leader of men, who seek to shape their work, their art, their country, and so on, in accord- ance with their ideas. Either way is a legitimate one for obtaining that pleasurable condition of con- sciousness which is produced by homogeneity of all its items with each other. The first method is largely a purely receptive process of the Ego by which it makes its conscious- ness a mirror, so to speak, of the external world. Of this little need be said. It is of the second that the discussion is important. The effort to shape the external world into the likeness of the ideas in consciousness is often explained as the executing one's wishes, having one's way, getting one's will. To do this gives pleasure, we are told, but this is no philosophical or satisfactory explanation. It is to explain the simple by the complex. Why should getting one's way give pleasure ? Often it pro- duces for the getter anything but pleasurable sen- sations. The ambition of an Alexander or a Napo- leon probably gave neither b}^ its success a single pleasurable sensation which they might not have 84 HINTS TOWARD A THKORY OF KTHICS. gotten far more cheaply otherwise. So of states- men, so of the arduous labors of all those men who have accomplished great achievements. It is be- cause getting one's way, accomplishing what one plans, gives to consciousness that high degree of homogeneity which is produced by the reception of sense-impressions from the external world in per- fect accord and harmony with the previously formed ideas that it is pleasurable. The applause of such accomplishing is only another phase of the same process ; it means the agreement of other Egoes wdth the accomplishing Kgo signified by their praise, their tribute of respect or admiration. 43. With the artist, be he painter, dramatist^ musician, sculptor, the explanation is even more clear. He works out his idea in whatever material he selects with no possible motive but this desire to produce homogeneity in the content of con- sciousness. For, popularly expressed, the artistic impulse is simply a cry for sympathy. It is found in its rudimentary form in the picture writing of the savages, the untutored scribblings of the street boy on fences : " I love Kate," " I can lick Bill,'*' ''Jimmy is a dandy." Here are the beginnings of art. Even the mut- HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 85 tered oath or half-stifled exclamation of the angry cabman or porter may claim the same origin. What the actual satisfaction is that we find in these expressions in times of excited feeling we all know by experience. We call it speaking one's mind, having it out. But the true philosophical explana- tion lies in this effort for homogeneity in conscious- ness which is helped by having the external world, even in this evanescent way, re-echo our ideas, our feelings, and so be homogeneous with our conscious- ness. In works of art the satisfaction seems to be two- fold ; for there is, first, that homogeneity which is gained for consciousness by the beholding in some external, tangible shape the symbol of the idea which was in consciousness ; and there is, secondly, the active sympathy of other Egoes which echo back to consciousness what it has expressed. It is that which is seen in its simplest form when we communicate our sorrow or joy or fainter emotions to a friend who receives and echoes them back, not exactly the same, but homogeneously to our con- sciousness. How much, for example, is the pleas- ure of a picture, a poem, a symphony, enhanced by the presence of a friend to whom we may exclaim : 86 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. " How beautiful ! " How much is detracted from such pleasures if we receive an unsympathetic reply : " I do not like it," "I can see nothing in it." 44. In a similar manner the pleasurable condi- tion involved in scientific or philosophic pursuits may be said to consist in the shaping the ideas of the consciousness into some outward form that sufficiently and adequately represents them. For- tunately we have a clear and satisfactory account of this given by a man who was himself a distinguished metaphysician, and who has analyzed the causes of the pleasure produced for him by his own philo- sophical work. Herbert Spencer, in his Auto- biography (Vol. II., page 524,) sets forth his own motives for writing. Among others, not omitting ambition and a desire for recognition, Jie mentions two : " The immediate gratification which results from seizing and working out ideas, as I once heard a scientific friend say that the greatest satisfaction he knew was that yielded by a successful day's hunting — figuratively thus expressing the discovery of facts and truths. And it has been to me a source of continued pleasure, distinct from other pleasures, to evolve new thoughts and to be in some HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 87 sort a spectator of the way in which, under per- sistent contemplation, they gradually unfolded into completeness. There is a keen delight in intellec- tual conquest — in appropriating a portion of the unknown and bringing it wdthin the realm of the known." — Ibid.^ page 526. The second motive he calls the architectonic instinct. " During these thirty years it has been a source of frequent elation to see each division and each part of a division working out into congruity with the rest — to see each component fitting into its place and helping to make a harmonious whole." He asks of a par- ticular piece of work, begun late in his career, and still unfinished : " What spurs me to this undertak- ing?" and proceeds to answer the question in im- personal, characteristic fashion that the work, while not uninteresting in itself, has no great public im- portance, nor will it add greatly to his reputation long ago securely established. "Clearly, then," he continues, " my desire to do it is the desire to fill up a gap in my work. My feeling is analogous to that of the architect when contemplating the unfinished wing of a building he has designed, or one with the roof only half built. There appears to be in me a dash of the artist, which has all along made the 88 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. achievement of beauty a stimulus," explaining by " beauty " the beauty proper to philosophic struc- ture, completeness of treatment, lucidity, finish, symmetry. All of which is a remarkable confirma- tion by one of the most keenly analytic of men that the true pleasurable condition of consciousness, pro- duced by philosophical or scientific pursuits, is a species of attaining of that unity of will which is constituted by the orderly arranging in outer ex- ternality of the inner ideas of the consciousness, so that a true correspondence, homogeneity of con- sciousness, may thus result. At least it may be con- fidently said that the " association " theory affords no adequate explanation of the pleasure thus pro- duced. 45. And so of love, of friendship, of society, good fellowship with others ; the pleasurable con- dition results from that more or less close corre- spondence of thought, emotion, feeling, ideas, that these relations afford for consciousness. 46. It may not be out of place, by way of addi- tional proof of the strength of this impulse toward homogeneity, simply and solely for its own sake, without regard to any other pleasurable or painful consequences, to adduce some very striking morbid HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 89 examples of it. It is well known that in the phe- nomena known as hypnotism hypnotic subjects may be so impressed with ideas or commands to be ex- ecuted after awaking from their sleep, that, with- out knowing why or wherefore they will execute them. Innumerable instances might be cited of persons of weak or diseased minds, who have be- come so impressed with some often extravagant and absurd fixed idea, that with no apparent motive, at the peril of life and limb, they will put it into execution. Men have been thus known to leap from win- dows, apparently with no object, without purpose, simply because the idea of doing so had in some way become impressed upon consciousness. It is a matter also of common observation that when ac- counts of some particular crime or foolish act are found in the newspapers, a crop of similar acts is almost sure to follow the publication. One suicide prompts others, and so of lynchings, bridge jump- ings, train wreckings, abductions, and even mur- ders. In a famous German story there is a circumstan- tial account of how a malevolent old woman in- duced an imaginative and impressionable victim to 12 90 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. hang himself by the singular use of this psycholog- ical principle. She hung out opposite his window an effigy of himself suspended from a gallows. Day after day the horrible picture was dangled before his eyes, and at last he succumbed to its influence and actually did what this vivid representation now impressed as a " fixed idea " on his consciousness suggested. His act was prompted simply by a desire (grown overwhelming by long contemplation of the one fixed idea) for homogeneity of sensation of the external world with the fixed idea of the in- ternal world. The same may be remarked of famous books. It is said, to cite a celebrated instance, that after the publication of Goethe's " Sorrows of Werther," the suicides in Germany increased with startling rapidity. One of the strongest influences on human character is that of example ; the tendency to imi- tate the acts of others is inborn, ineradicable. No one likes to be singular, that is, to have a conscious- ness not homogeneous in content with that of his neighbors. And whether the craving for homo- geneity takes the violent form of becoming pos- sessed with the idea of a crime or of some daring feat, or whether it takes the milder . shape of simply HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 9 1 adopting the opinions of those around us, the great principles are the same. First, that the Ego is eager to adopt as its own the ideas presented to it, and to thus attain homogeneity of its conscious- ness with the external world ; and, secondly, that having adopted the idea it has under the same im- pulse to attain homogeneity a strong tendency to put that idea into action, to cause the non-Ego, as perceived by it through sensations, to correspond with that idea. In other words, it causes a pleas- urable condition in consciousness to have the facts of the world of non-Ego correspond with the ideas of the consciousness of the Ego, and vice versa. But it need scarcely be pointed out that this, reduced to its simplest form, means that the homogeneity of the Ego is helped by the presentation to consciousness of sensations from the outside world of non-Ego that are homogeneous with the ideas in conscious- ness. This explains the otherwise inexplicable mental phenomena of the frequent doing of the acts just referred to without any apparent purpose, for no cause save that the idea has become fixed in the consciousness of the performer, and its realization in act will tend to an increase of that homogeneity which is so productive of pleasurable conditions in 92 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. consciousness by causing sensation to correspond with the idea. 47. This also affords us a ready understanding of the apparent truth in that principle of association by which some philosophers have attempted to ex- plain why money, friends, dignity, power, one's native land, become objects of desire in themselves, independent entirely of the agreeable or pleasur- able sensations by which, according to the theory, they were originally rendered so. These instru- ments, we are told, for procuring pleasurable sensa- tions occupy the attention of the mind even more than the pleasurable sensations themselves. They thus come to take the place of the pleasurable sen- sations themselves of which originally they were but the instruments of procuration. This state- ment reveals the true nature of the transaction. It proves that this is but another instance of the fixed ideas which we have been discussing. The ideas of these instruments of pleasurable conditions, wealth, friends, whatever you please, that have either by experience or in any other way become impressed on consciousness have thus attained the position of "fixed ideas" which the Kgo then has a great desire to realize in the world of non-Ego llJL HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF KTHICS. 93 under the impulse of the law of homogeneity as previously shown. The use of the word "associa- tion," to describe the process by which these objects thus become objects of desire in themselves, may be allowed if we understand that it is thus they become fixed ideas. But if by association is meant some magic mental process by which a desire for one thing is transferred to another, or if it is meant that the instrument of procuring pleasurable things- becomes in itself pleasurable, very much like a. cherished souvenir of a loved relative because it re- calls the person by starting a train of memories by association, then we fall into confusion. It must be considered simply as the process by which a certain idea is impressed on the consciousness,, which thus becomes something to be executed by the Ego in the world of non-Ego in order to bring about homogeneity. If the contrary view were correct, and it was only the result of association, how would it come about that painful sensations have a like effect with agree- able sensations, although not so -commonly, in ren- dering certain acts or things desirable, such as suicide, jumping from heights, and the like ? Or how would it happen that in pursuit of things made^ 94 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. thus desirable, such as wealth, power, fame, men scorn all the pleasurable sensations which these may procure not for a time, but utterly, totally, de- liberately, consciously placing the alleged instrument as the final object of desire without any reference to, or rather, to the exclusion of the pleasurable sensa- tions, future or present, by associations with which they are alleged by the theor}^ to have become de- sirable ? So a man for his friend, his family, or his country, will give up life and with it all the pleas- urable sensations which, by the theory of associa- tion, make these desirable. Moreover, there are many things highly desirable that is pleasurable-condition producing to one man which are the contrary to another simply because of the difference in the fixed ideas of each. These things, too, are often so intangible that it is im- possible to trace them, even by association, to any sensational source. The ideas of the discoverer, of the reformer, the philanthropist, the scholar, for which each struggles and often sacrifices health and life, can only, by ar very artificial and strained con- struction, be shown to have any foundation in sen- sation, pleasurable or painful. Such, for example, is that goal of the scientific discoverer, the unity HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 95 of law in the universe ; this he seeks to establish, not because such goal has become by any pleas- urable sensations desirable, but simply because he wishes to make the external world of sensation correspond, agree, be harmonious with his idea of it. 48. Why this homogeneity of consciousness should cause this pleasurable condition in con- sciousness — why having a fixed idea there should be this impulse to make a copy of it in sensations, to translate it into matter, if we choose to put it so — is elemental. All the reason we can declare is that to have the non-Ego, as known to us in sensa- tions, homogeneous in the consciousness with the ideas of the Bgo, is a pleasurable condition. It is, in all probability, another side of that great Ego- istic impulse toward the unity of the universe already expounded. To explain this homogeneity in the aspect now considered of executing ideas of the Ego in the matter of the non-Ego, as the get- ting one's way, doing one's will, takes us from the elemental and simple to the sophisticated and com- plex. Why should getting one's will, obtaining an object not in itself pleasurable, be desirable ? Be- cause, we may be told, it gives us pleasure. But 96 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. liow and why ? By this homogeneity of conscious- ness, the correspondence brought about by our act between the non-Ego and the Ego as represented in consciousness by sensations, sense-impressions, and ideas. 49. Unless, therefore, we restrict the meaning of our statement to the simple necessity of the pres- ence of sensations for the constituting of conscious- ness, it cannot be properly said that the pleasurable or painful conditions of consciousness depend to any very great extent on sensations. It is rather on the relation of these sensations to each other and to the ideas of consciousness that such conditions chiefly depend, as has already been pointed out. If we lay aside philosophical abstractions and those precon- ceptions of what ought to be, and attempt that diffi- cult task of merely seeing things as they are pre- sented, without prejudices, we shall behold a very different state of affairs. If we ask ourselves the question, How is the daily duration of waking con- sciousness made pleasurable or painful ? we surely cannot say by eating and drinking, by directly pleasurable sensations of any kind. Such sensa- tions, of necessity, fill a very brief space of the day ; work, amusements, what, for want of a better mA'i HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 97 name, may be classed as daily routine, fill the time until we lapse into the unconsciousness of slumber. Or, if we ask the broader question, What do we seek in the plan of our life work, what does the youth hope for, the middle-aged strive after, and the old fold his hands over, in the quiet content of accomplishment or in the resignation of failure? surely no man will be so bold as to pronounce that it is the seeking for directly pleasurable or the avoidance of directly painful sensations. Even the most sordid, the meanest struggle of the poorest man for a bare subsistence, cannot be said to be simply this. Even such an one, so far from seeking merely pleasurable sensations as a means of producing a pleasurable condition in his consciousness, is driven to seek painful sensations of fatigue, of weariness, caused by his labor, in order to bring about that pleasurable condition of consciousness which we call an assurance that his bread and butter are secured. Now, observe, this pleasurable condition is produced not by the directly pleasurable sensa- tion of eating the bread and butter, the satisfaction is not a satisfaction of hunger, it is a satisfaction of an entirely different sort. It is a satisfaction of that craving for homogeneity by consciousness, that 13 98 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. the idea of the obtaining bread and butter should find a correspondence with itself in the sense-impressions of the external world. His consciousness is thus kept homogeneous with itself and he is happy, con- tented. It is true that this idea of obtaining bread and butter, of laboring to that end and being paid therefor, has been impressed as an idea upon his consciousness by the directly pleasurable sensations connected therewith, but if we are to be philosoph- ically accurate we must note that the direct motive, the immediate pleasurable condition for which he strives by his labor, is the making the external world of sense-impressions homogeneous with that idea of the getting of food. Hence the popular phrase expressive of the content of the laboring man : He has plenty of work ; not plenty of food, paupers have that in our almshouses. It is only another expression for the pleasurable condition of consciousness caused by homogeneity of con- tent. And so of the duration of the pleasurable condition, for the one brief hour of the pleasurable condition produced for the laborer by the directly pleasurable sensation of eating his bread and butter, we have the whole working day filled by the pleas- urable condition of his consciousness produced by iair HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 99 this homogeneity of his idea and the sense-impres- sions affecting it. 50. When, therefore, we have conceded the one point, that the idea of food and of labor for obtain- ing it is impressed upon the consciousness by the directly pleasurable sensations of food and drink, we have conceded the utmost that can be demanded for the effect of directly pleasurable sensations on the pleasurable conditions of consciousness in such a transaction. Even the most intensely pleasurable or painful sensations which take possession of consciousness as a rapture of pleasure or an agony of pain have their direct effect greatly modified and even neutral- ized by the other content of consciousness. Pain undergone for some deliberate purpose in harmony with some fixed idea of the consciousness, becomes less intense, or even a positively pleasurable condi- tion of consciousness, according as it is incurred at the hands of the surgeon to avoid loss of limb or life, or to testify faith in God. How many martyrs, by reason of this, have died in physical agony with smiles on their lips, hymns of praise on their tongues ! Any theory of pleasure and pain that leaves these facts unexplained is unsatisfactory^. LOFC lOO HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 51. A fair and more comprehensive statement would be, that while consciousness depends for its very existence on the presentation to it of sensations from the external world, and while some of these sensations have the power of and by themselves of producing pleasurable or painful conditions, nevertheless, the relation of these sensations to each other, and to the ideas in consciousness, is the important and deciding element in most cases. The pain- or pleasure-producing sensation coming into consciousness has its full effect as such, pro- vided there be nothing in the ideas or other content of consciousness to hinder or modify what may be called the natural effect of the particular sensation. Probably, as Herbert Spencer has beautifully pointed out, the very existence of the Bgo depends upon this arrangement, that certain sensations should be pleasurable, and thus immediately oper- ative on the will, so as to induce the performance of those life-preserving acts which are essential, and, in like manner, that other sensations, which are to act as a warning to the Ego of danger are immediately painful, and so operate prohibitively on the will at a time when this alone would pre- serve the existence of the Ego. HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. lOI In this way, doubtless, pleasurable and painful sensations are an important factor in impressing these ideas on consciousness, which thus becoming "fixed ideas," have a large share in constituting the content of consciousness, and thus affecting that homogeneity of consciousness which is the law of most of its pleasurable or painful conditions. 52. We now return to the question of what this homogeneity of consciousness consists in ; and, first, we may, as an aid to our answer, rehearse some of our conclusions. Feeling, we see, as we understand it, as a modification of the Ego itself, and as the motive of all its acts, is nothing more than pleasure or pain. It is incapable of distinction qualitatively ; all pains and all pleasures are the same in this sense, and, as has been shown, are so treated, in fact, by the Ego when acting spontane- ously and automatically in dreams. Feeling in itself has no moral significance ; it serves, however, in the domain of experience as the translator into the concrete of the abstract principle of the " ought," which is again the ethical expression of that elemental primitive sense of the unity of the universe which the Ego recognizes in its thinking, and which, when it comes to act, I02 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. causes it to feel that its acts must never violate that unity, must observe it, be ruled and shaped so as to be in accord with it. This is the state- ment of the "ought," in its primitive, elemental, blind phase as a mere impulse of the Ego to act in unity with the universe. It shows itself in a thousand unintelligent, instinctive ways : in the tendency to be like its environment, that is, one of the earliest forms of the impulse to unity, in the feeling that the whole is more important than any part, in the impulse to seek purpose and end for every act, whether our own or that of another, and to regard an act or series of acts, say a life, devoid of purpose, as evil, useless, unjustifiable. This means always a purpose, an end, other than indi- vidual purpose or end, a purpose or end that has relation to others. For the seeking of purpose and the requiring of purpose other than individual for all acts is simply another recognition that all acts, as all things known to us, stand, not independently, but in relation to each other, that a unity binds all together, and for an act to be without purpose or end is for that act to deny that unity. What pre- cisely that unity is, how the purpose of an act is related to it, may be very indefinite, very vague ; HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. IO3 the intellectual vision of it may be even mistaken, the moral obligation that it have a purpose other than an individual one, the " ought " is none the less imperative. 53. And so all acts of self-sacrifice, all giving up of the individual part to the whole, have been re- garded from the earliest times by all men — no mat- ter what their education, their degree of civiliza- tion, or of barbarism — as praiseworthy, whether it were a sacrifice to a god on an altar, or in battle for a tribe, a race, a nation. It mattered not the particular object or end of the sacrifice, the princi- ple of the surrender of the part to the good of the whole rendered the act righteous, morally obliga- tory, admirable. It was from this law of unity, of sacrifice of the part to the whole, that there was derived the virtue and vitality of those awful and horrible rites of heathen primitive people, in which hecatombs of human captives were killed to appease a god Dagon or some other dread creation of their imagination, which thus gave concrete reality to that blind im- pulse of the Ego to serve the whole by the sacri- fice of the part, and which conceived the whole as symbolized in some cruel god whose wrath re- I04 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. quired the sacrifice of the subordinate parts in this bloodthirsty manner. These and many more are minor instinctive manifestations of this sense of obligation of the individual part to the universal whole. 54. It is this essential universality of the " ought '' in the midst of unessential diversity of manifesta- tion that is the badge of its authority, its creden- tials, the certificate of its truth. These differences of manifestation seem to impeach its universality until we understand that they are caused by the necessity for translation of the abstract principle into the concrete act ; that the feeling or impulse toward the observance of the unity of the universe by subordination of every part thereto requires for its embodiment in acts both an intellectual under- standing of what that unity really consists in, and what ways and means are calculated to attain the end proposed, namely, the unity of the universe, and that, further, there is required an experiential knowledge of what is good and what evil. For we can only learn by personal experience what is good and what evil for that unity : we must base all our judgments on this personal experience, assuming for our purpose, and as the only possible assump- HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 105 tion under the circumstances, that the good and €vil which we know in experience is the good and €vil of the unity we feel bound to serve. 55. We have seen, further, that this good and evil are really the pleasurable and painful conditions of consciousness which are popularly called pleasure and pain, and that these pleasurable or painful con- ditions of consciousness are chiefly produced by this homogeneity of the content of consciousness, which has been described as the harmony or agreement of all the contents of consciousness, the ideas, cogni- tions, thoughts, sense-impressions, which constitute it with each other. In fine, this homogeneity is no more than another manifestation of this impulse toward unity. It is the desire of consciousness for unity with itself and with the external world, the sense-impressions from which make up so much of its content. What we have called the homogeneity of consciousness is in reality the unity, more or less complete, of the individual will with the uni- versal will. For these pictures, ideas, representa- tions, fashioned by the Ego for itself, are the con- crete embodiment or expression of its will ; thus only is will known to consciousness by a concrete representation of its desires, wishes, hopes. Of ab- 14 Io6 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. stract will, if there be such, a thing, consciousness has no knowledge. When, therefore, the sense- impressions from the external world, which are the expressions of the universal will as presented to consciousness, agree with these ideas, etc., the ex- pression of the individual will, there is a unity of the individual will with the universal. This is the highest unity known to consciousness, and is pro- ductive when even partially realized of the intensest pleasurable condition. We all have experienced examples of it, have felt the thrill with a wonder- ing sense of mystery, as if treading on the thresh- old of unknown regions of our deepest selves ; when we have been carried out of ourselves by some tre- mendous feeling of a crowd, or of a nation, felt together and in common each with every other. Then we felt imperfectly that unity of our will with the universal will, that loss of the individual in the whole, that is yet not a loss, but a finding, such a realization of the individual in the whole as was never possible for the individual part by and for itself. So the soldier feels as he rushes onward, an insignificant yet all-significant unit of a great army fighting with a common impulse for country, liberty, for any great unifying idea : so the martyr, HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. I07 dying for his faith, either alone or with his fellows, but always under a vast common flood of devotion that is shared consciously by many others. In a fainter degree we also know the increased pleasurable condition of consciousness produced by the sympathetic presence of a friend whose ideas expressed to us in harmony with our own furnish an- other example of unity of will with will, of homoge- neity of consciousness, for his expressions conveyed to us through the senses become part of the content of our own consciousnes and add to its homogeneity. 56. On the contrary side we discern that one of the most unhappy conditions known to conscious- ness consists in that want of unity of will with will which is familiarly known as hatred, with all its mean and subordinate modifications of envy, jeal- ousy, malice, ill-will. Probably the misery of the wicked, the damned of the Inferno, is nothing more than this disunity of will, this hatred of others which naturally results in the hatred of the whole, of the universe, of God ; for hatred of the parts would logically lead to hatred of the whole at last. If you love not men whom you see, how shall you love God whom you have not seen ? we are told in the Scriptures. Io8 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. Ivove is heaven, hate is hell, in this wide, uni- versal sense I have tried to outline. The supreme happiness of heaven we may picture as the perfect, all-comprehensive union of individual will with universal will, not by the merging, the disappearing of the less in the greater, but by the gaining of its true significance, the beauty of its individual mean- ing, from its union with the whole. So a single separately dissonant note gains its melody when it unites with others to make a great symphony of perfect harmony and beauty. 57. Thus we get from examination of our own experience imperfect glimpses of what in our sub- ject is incapable of exact statement. All our ex- periential knowledge of the universal will must be but partial, imperfect. The universal will, as known to finite creatures, must always be finite, but a quasi universal, since a true, complete, universal passeth our capacity of knowledge. 58. In this condition, therefore, in which the Ega and its other are at last one, there is no further difference, no contention, no struggle. But in our experience we have knowledge only of faint, more or less complete approaches to it that but serve as hints or shadows of the reality, of that perfect unity iiii mmmmmfammit. HINTS TOWARD A THKORY OF ETHICS. 109 of individual will with universal will, which is impossible to our experience. 59. All the struggle of the world of men for happiness is thus revealed as a struggle for unity of will in one or other imperfect shape, in some blind fashion that misses often the true path which lies not at all by that, so generally taken, of attempt- ing to force the universal will in its partial manifesta- tion to us by the immediate phenomena of experi- ence (those sense-impressions of the external world) into the narrow mold of the individual will. Such a task, clearly understood, reveals itself as impossible. These blind ways are commonly the pursuit of wealth, that term representing for the Ego all the command of the non-Ego supposedly necessary to obtain the unity of the will of the external world with that of the Ego ; the pursuit of power, another name for the same essential idea ; and so on through the various attempts of the Ego to coerce the -universal will into unity with its individual will. The success of these attempts, resulting in a partial accomplishment of their object, is not unat- tended with satisfaction such as might be expected ; but that it can never be lasting and fully com- pleted is evident. The will of the part cannot be- no HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. come the will of the whole, of the universe, without a violation of that great primary, elemental impulse to unity of the Bgo which in the domain of action manifests itself as the sense of the subordination of the part to the whole, not the whole to the part. 60. In accordance with the law of the subordina- tion of the part to the whole, the only true way of hringing about unity of will between the Ego and its universe — no matter how imperfectly known in experience — is by compelling the individual will to conform to the universal will as it is imperfectly apprehended. It has already been shown that the pleasurable condition of consciousness which results from this unity of will when established in consciousness is love. It may seem a novel view of that much-dis- cussed feeling of the Ego to view it thus in its essential source. And it will not escape the accu- rate student that the name is properly applicable to every pleasurable condition of consciousness which is due to the harmony of the will of the Ego with that of its other, either Egoistic or non-Egoistic The pleasurable condition of consciousness result- ing from the successful accomplishment of some long-cherished plan which thus represents a unity HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. Ill of will of a restricted sort is in its origin the same as that of a long-established friendship. Both have their source in unity of will, the unity in the one case being that constituted by an agreement between the ideas (the plan) of the Kgo and the external world, made known by sense-impressions to it (the achievement) ; the other being a unity of the ideas of one Ego with the ideas of another. The source of the pleasurable condition lies in an identical cause, the unity of will, the homogeneity of consciousness. It is needless to repeat that the pleasurable conditions resulting from them must be qualitatively the same, so far as we can know ; for it has already been established that there is no cog- nizable difference between pleasures in this respect. 6i. And so we may sum up our conclusions in this fashion : homogeneity of consciousness, unity of individual will with the universal will, is of all degrees from the mere reception and assimilation by the child of the sensations of the external world, with its simple joy therein, to that unity of will with will which is called love, not merely in the restricted personal sense, but in that universal sense which Christ taught, love of the world and all therein, and of that unity of the universe which 112 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. we symbolize to ourselves as a personal God with, human qualities. As between two loving individuals we recognize this unity of will more clearly than as between the single individual and the whole, but the existence of that unity of the individual will with the uni- versal will is a reality more vague, more shadowy, more spiritual, yet none the less real. The history of the disagreement and of the subsequent agree- ment of the two is set forth in the story of the " Fall of Man," as it is called, when all nature lost its unity with man, the beasts of the earth, before kind and docile, became his enemies and he himself fell to fighting and quarreling with himself and them. Bven plants no longer yielded their fruit without a struggle, disunion of will pervaded all nature as men knew it. Then came the At-onement, the process divinely pictured of the restoration of the unity of the individual will with the universal. An impersonal, universal will, a blind universe without human qualities, was a conception extreme- ly distasteful to the Bgo ; if it thought the universal will it longed to think it under a human or personal guise. A universe or an universal will that ran on without anthropomorphic ^government, unseeing. HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. II 3 unsympathizing, without human qualities, seemed harsh, cruel, utterly unhomogeneous with the con- sciousness of the Ego.* So from the earliest times the Ego made all the forces of nature, every ex- pression of the universal will, in the fashion of man, idealized, etherealized, but yet substantially human. So it gave the winds a God, the light- ning and thunder, the sea, the earth, to almost every aspect and feature of nature some human divinity — if it were no more than a dryad or a nymph — was given. The conceptions changed, but the human quality of that universal will of the uni- verse never was lost ; it seemed with every change to become more human, more near to the individual will in its character. The stern, awe-inspiring Jehovah of the Jews that gathered up into itself and stood for the will of the universe instead of the gods of Olympus, gave way to the mild, tender Christ, who seemed to lose all the sternness of the power and majesty of a God in the human quali- * It may be objected that such a human conception of the Almighty was an absurd limiting of Him to the mere measure of a man ; but properly conceived this should not be so ; it is not declaring that God is man to endow Him with those human qualities which the Ego craves. He is man so far, and much more than man ; it is simply asserting that the greater, the in- comprehensible God, includes the lesser, comprehensible man. 15 114 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. ties of mercy, sympathy, love, who was pictured in the wonderful words of Scripture as '* not one which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points like as we are, yet without sin " (Hebrews iv. 15). 62. We now come to see what that good of which so much has been said really is. The su?n- nni77i bomim^ the good of all goods, the very essence of the good for the individual part, is unity of will with the universal will, which is when interpreted in terms of consciousness, love, not of course, in any physical, but rather in that Platonic sense to which Aristophanes, in Plato's dialogue, ''The S>Tn- posium," alludes: ''Human nature was originally one, and we were a whole, and the desire and pur- suit of the whole is called love/' "^ Or, as ^li. Haldane has expressed it : '' Love is the perception, the feeling, the knowledge of the unit}- between self and its other," or again, more imaginatively, '' Love is the highest relation of spirit to spirit." "^ Or, as we have stated it : Love is the unity of will with will. * Joweti's Translation of Plato, edition 1S71, Vol. I., page 509. t " Pathway to Reality," Haldane. London : John Murray, 1904. Review of same in Edinburgh Review, July, 1904. HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. II 5 It is a state of consciousness that may be truly called religious, for it recognizes dynamically as its own will the universal will, recognizes the relation of the tie that binds it to the unity of the universe. It finds its highest pleasurable condition in the observance of that unity which, on its cognitive side, is expressed by the impulse to unite all knowledge under a single all-embracing law, ex- pressing for thought the unity of the universe, and that recognizes for a knowledge of truth all knowl- edge that approximates the fulfilhnent of this law of unity : which on its ethical side compels the Ego, under the obligation of the " ought," to act only for the good of that unity, and which receives its reward for such action, as well as its impulse thereto, from that pleasurable condition of con- sciousness which is constituted by unity of will with the universal will. Thus is seen that virtue and the reward of virtue are one and the same. For that unity of will which is the summum bonum of all pleasurable conditions, is itself and in itself a beatitude, is also in itself right, and the source and motive of all right doing. Having the pleas- urable condition of unity of will with the universal will, it is impossible that the Ego should, by actions Il6 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. contrary to that unity of will, offend that unity of the universe thus felt in consciousness. Homogeneity of consciousness compels homo- geneity of conduct ; any break in the unity of wills must first manifest itself here before it emerges into action. Thus is understood the import of that great saying : Love is the fulfilling of the law ; for love is unity of individual will with universal will. The substantial identity of these three aspects of the impulse to unity is now manifest. Unity of feeling, homogeneity of consciousness constituting a pleasurable condition of consciousness, unity of thinking constituting intelligible understanding of the external world, unity of action constituting the observance of the good of the unity of the uni- verse, are all rooted in that primitive abstract im- pulse of the Ego toward unity which in them finds its concrete expression. 63. A ready answer is found here for some of the foolish questions that men have curiously inquired into, more, one would think, with the idle curiosity of a child than with a truly sober desire for knowl- edge. The vulgar gibe against Christianity, for example, is brought forward that all religion, so far as it is hedonistic in the offer of rewards and HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. II 7 punishments, is the perfection of selfishness. Or, in a little different way but to the same effect, it is asked if the doing right for a reward or avoiding evil through fear of punishment is not a low type of virtue ? Doing right is now seen to be its own reward in this way, that it is created by and re-creates that unity of will of the individual with the universe which is the highest pleasurable condition of con- sciousness. It is not selfish, although it produces for the Bgo its highest good, because it at the same time produces good for that unity of the universe : nor is it unselfish, although it does acts tending to conserve the unity of the universe, for at the same time it produces pleasurable conditions for itself. Selfishness and unselfishness have here no signifi- cance ; they lose it in their true relation, and are each the other. They cease to be opposed, but each passes over and is sublimated into its oppo- site. And so the birth and existence of evil in the face of an all-powerful universal will is seen to be not only possible, but necessary. For if evil is the opposition of the individual will to the universal, we may see that for the universal to destroy the Il8 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. Opposing will of the individnal, to forbid it all choice, and so prevent its willing and doing evil, that is, acts contrary to the universal will, would be to destroy the will itself, and so destroy all possi- bility of that good which must consist in that unity of the individual will with the universal will which shall preserve the individual will at the same time that it unites it with the universal will, making of both a harmonious whole. END. FEB 21 1907 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS lllli III I i !IM I INI I III! 013 531 591 6 fill '•:i ■III III m