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This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOh SETH, JAMES TITLE: A STUDY OF ETHICAL PRINCIPLES PLA CE: NEW YORK DA TE: 1894 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative // Restrictions on Use: BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARCFT Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record SlMMliMmH«tMill »i ' •■yi w ii iiiaiaifcaiBi— w» ■ ■ ■ » ! « I I.. m „ ' »jkmamitiUtBa0IIUliim Barnard D170 Se7 Seth, James, 1860.192U. A study of ethical principles New York, Scribner, 1902 • -4.. I Li, •-.J w iJ » 6th ed. ^ FILM SIZE: _35_/HxnA_ IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA DATE FILMED: TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: /^. ^3. INITIALS___,Otffr_ FILMED BY: RESEARCH PUBLtcATlONS. INC VVOODBRT nnF PT Association for information and Image Management 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/!)87-8202 Centimeter 12 3 4 liiiiliiiili llj iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiliiiiliiiilii 5 6 7 8 iiliiiiliiiilii iiiiiii 10 11 12 13 14 15 mm iiiilmiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiil Inches TTT 1 TTT T 1.0 I.I 1.25 T TTT 1^ 2.5 1^ lllll^-^ 2.2 16.3 ISO _ 2.0 L& 1.8 1.4 1.6 TTT TTT MfiNUFflCTURED TO flllM STPNDfiRDS BY RPPLIED IMRGE, INC. \T0 S>et in tit^ (Dittj 0f ll^tv york gilxrarig. *l fT Cop/ iiji;ai;M. V r, 2 2- - A STUDY OF ETHICAL PEINCIPLES A STUDY OF ETHICAL PEINCIPLES BY JAMES SETH, M.A. PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN BROWN UNIVERSITY, U.S.A. CHARLES SCRIBXER'S SOXS 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON 1894 All Righta reserved x .> PEE FACE. The present volume is the outcome of several years of continuous reflection and teaching in this department of philosophy. As the title indicates, it does not profess to develop a system of Ethics, but rather to discuss the principles which must underlie such a system ; and while the treatment does not claim to be, in any strict sense, original, an effort has been made to re-think the entire subject, and to make the discussion throughout as funda- mental as possible. My chief hope is that I may have been able to throw some light upon the real course of ethical thought in ancient and in modern times. I have been anxious, in particular, to recover, and, in some measure, to re-state the contribution of the Greeks, and especially of Aristotle, to moral philosophy. For, in many respects, the ancient statement of the questions seems to me more instructive than the modern. As regards the method of discussion adopted, I have stated in the Introduction my reasons for the position Vlll PREFACE. that, to be fundamental, ethical thought must be philo- sophical rather than merely scientific. The intimate re- lation of Ethics to Metaphysics necessitated the Third Part, "Metaphysical Implications of Morality." Here particularly, in the investigation of the Metaphysic of Ethics, there seemed a call for further philosophic effort. The use of two terms calls for a word of explanation. I have distinguished " Eudaemonism " from " Hedonism," and adopted the former term to characterise my own position. Though these two terms are often identified, some writers have been careful to distinguish them ; and it seemed to me most important, for reasons which will appear, to emphasise the distinction, and to use " Eu- dc^monism" in its original or Aristotelian sense. The second point is the distinction drawn between " the in- dividual " and " the person." The distinction comes, of course, from Hegel ; but, in making it a leading distinction throughout the discussion, I am following the example of Professor Laurie of Edinburgh in his * Ethica, or the Ethics of Eeason,' a book to which I probably owe more than to the work of any other living writer on Ethics. My other obligations I have tried to acknowledge in the course of the book, but it is difficult to make such acknow- ledgments complete. I have especially to thank my col- league, Professor Walter G. Everett, for many helpful suggestions made while the work was in manuscript, and PREFACE. IX f \ my brother, Professor Andrew Seth, of the University of Edinburgh, for his aid and advice while it was passing through the press. In the chapter on the " Problem of Freedom " (and, to a less extent, in that on the " Psychological Basis ") I have made use of a pamphlet entitled * Freedom as Ethical Postulate,' published in 1891, and now out of print. JAMES SETH. Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, ■August 1894. L CONTENTS. i:n^troductio:n". CHAPTER I. THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 1. Preliminary definition of Ethics. What is Morality ? What is Conduct ? Conduct and Character .... 2. In what sense is Ethics practical ? Relations of moral theory and practice ....... 3. Relations of moral faith and ethical insight. Impossibility of absolute moral scepticism ..... 4. Business of Ethics to define the Good or the Moral Ideal, by scrutiny of the various interpretations of it . 5. Ancient and Modern conceptions of the Moral Ideal compared. (a) Duty and the Chief Good ; their logical connection. Personality as Moral Ideal ..... 6. (b) Ancient Ideal political, modern individualistic ; the in- adequacy of each, and their reconciliation in Personality , 7. Resulting definition of Ethics as the investigation of the uni- fying principle of human life .... PAGE 10 13 15 18 20 CHAPTER 11. THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 1. The Method of Ethics philosophical rather than scientific 2. The Physical and Biological Methods . 3. The Psychological Method .... 21 ,22 .23 xu CONTENTS. CONTENTS. Xlll 4. The Historical Method ....•• 5. Ethics as an " inexact " science . . • • • 6. The Metaphysical Method . . • • • 7. Relation of Ethics to Theologj' . . . • • CHAPTER III. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 1. Necessity of psychological basis ; an inadequate view of human life rests upon an inadequate view of human nature 2. Voluntary activity presupposes involuntary ; various forms of the latter ...••• 3. Voluntary activity, how distinguished from involuntary ; voli tion as control of impulsive and instinctive tendencies ; con trast of animal and human life 4. The process of volition : its various elements, (a) pause ; (6) deliberation ; (c) choice .... 5. Nature and character. Eflfort. Second nature 6. Limitations of volition: (a) Economy. (&) Continuity, (c Fixity of character , . . • • 7. Intellectual elements in volition : (a) Conception. (6) Memory (c) Imagination . . . • • 8. Will and Feeling. Is pleasure the object of choice ? . 1. {A) Pure Hedonism, or Cyrenaicism . . . • 2. {B) Modified Hedonism : (a) Ancient, or Epicureanism 3. (6) Modern Hedonism, or Utilitarianism. Its chief variations from Ancient: (1) Optimistic v. Pessimistic. (2) Altruistic V. Egoistic. (3) Qualitative v. Quantitative . 4. (c) Evolutional Utilitarianism . . . . • 5. {d) Rational Utilitarianism . . . • • 24 27 28 32 35 38 39 44 48 52 60 65 PAKT I. THE MORAL IDEAL. Types of Ethical Theory: Hedonism, Rigorism, Eud^monism 77 CHAPTER I. hedonism, or the ethics of sensibility. I. — Development of the Theory. 81 87 94 101 110 m- II. — Critical Estimate of Hedonism. 6. (a) Its psychological inadequacy .... 7. (b) Its inadequate interpretation of Character . 8. (c) Its resolution of Virtue into Expediency 9. (d) Its account of Duty . . . . . • . 10. (e) Failure of Sensibility to provide the principle of its own distribution. (1) Within the individual life. (2) Between the individual and society ..... 11. (/) The final metaphysical alternative .... 12. The merit and demerit of Hedonism .... CHAPTER IL rigorism, or the ethics of reason. 1. Rigorism : its rational and idealistic standpoint. Its two forms — extreme and moderate ..... 2. {A) Extreme Rigorism, (a) Ancient : (a) Cynicism. {$) Stoi- cism. How it dififers from Cynicism: (1) Idealism v. Naturalism. (2) Cosmopolitanism v. Individualism. (3) The Stoic Melancholy ..... 3. (&) Modern : (o) Christian Asceticism .... 4. (3) Kantian Transcendentalism ..... 5. Criticism of Extreme Rigorism, and transition to Moderate 6. {B) Moderate Rigorism, (a) Its beginnings in Greek philosophy 7. (b) Its modern expressions, (a) Butler's theory of Conscience 8. Criticism of Butler's theory . . . . . 9. {$) Intuitionism. Its divergences from Butler. Its defects . 10. The service of Rigorism to ethical theory 11. Transition to Eudsemonism ..... CHAPTER IIL eud^monism, or the ethics of personality. 1. The Ethical Dualism. Its theoretical expression 2. Its practical expression .... 3. Attempts at reconciliation 4. The solution of Christianity 5. The ethical problem : the meaning of Self-realisation 6. Definition of Personality : the Individual and the Person 115 119 122 125 129 145 147 152 155 163 165 167 173 174 180 183 189 191 193 196 198 199 203 205 XIV CONTENTS. 7. The rational or personal self : its intellectual and ethical funo tions compared 8. The sentient or individual self . 9. " Be a Person " . 10. " Die to live." Meaning of " Self-sacrifice " 11. Pleasure and Happiness . 12. Egoism and Altruism ... 13. The ethical significance of Law : the meaning of Duty. Animal "innocence" and "knowledge of good and evil." Various forms of Law. Its absoluteness . . . • 14. Expressions of Eudsemonism : (a) in Philosophy. Butler. Hegel. Plato. Aristotle . . . . • 15. (6) In Literature ..•••• PART IT. THE MORAL LIFE. Introductory. Virtues and Duties. The Unity of the Moral Life ...••••• 207 210 211 213 216 217 219 226 237 249 CHAPTER L CONTENTS. CHAPTER IL THE SOCIAL LIFE. I. — The Social Virtues : Justice and Benevolence. 1. The relation of the social to the individual life . 2. Social virtue — its nature and its limit .... 3. Its two aspects, negative and positive: Justice and Benevo- lence. Their mutual relations and respective spheres 4. Benevolence ....... 5. Benevolence and Culture ..... n. — TJie Social Orgaiiisation of Life: the Ethical Basis and Functions of the State, 6. The social organisation of Hfe : the ethical institutions : Society and the State ..... 7. Is the State an End-in-itself ? . 8. The ethical basis of the State .... 9. The limit of State action . ... 10. The ethical functions of the State : (a) Justice 11. (6) Benevolence ...... Note. The Theory of Punishment XV 283 286 288 292 295 297 304 307 313 315 324 333 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. I. — Temperance, or Self-discipline. 1. Its fundamental importance . . 2. Its negative aspect . . . • • 3. Relation of negative to positive aspect . 4. Its positive aspect . . . • • II. — Culture, or Self-development. 5. Its fundamental importance . . . • 6. Meaning of Culture ..... 7. The place of physical culture .... 8. The individual nature of Self -development 9. Necessity of transcending our individuality. The ideal life 10. Dangers of Moral Idealism .... 11. Ethical supremacy of the moral Ideal . ... 12. Culture and Philanthropy .... 13. Self-reverence. The dignity and sohtude of Personality 251 253 255 257 258 259 260 262 265 268 273 276 279 PART III. METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MORALITY. The Three Problems of the Metaphysic of Ethics ; their Mutual Relations ...... 341 CHAPTER L THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 1. Statement of the problem ..... 2. The " moral method " . 3. The " reconciling project "..... 4. Definition of moral Freedom : its limitations . 5. The resulting metaphysical problem. The problem of Freedom is the problem of Personality. The alternative solutions — the empirical and the transcendental 345 350 354 357 359 XVI CONTENTS. 6. The transcendental solution . . . . • 7. Difficulties of the transcendental solution : (a) psychological difficulty ofifered by the ''presentational " theory of Will . 8. (6) metaphysical difficulty of Transcendentalism itself. (1) In Kantianism, an empty and unreal Freedom . 9. (2) In Hegelianism, a new Determinism, (i.) The Self = the character, (ii.) The Self = God . . . . 10. Resulting conception of Freedom .... CHAPTER II. THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 1. The necessity of the theological question 2. Agnosticism and Positivism 3. Naturalism 4. Man and Nature 5. The modern statement of the problem 6. Its ancient statement 7. The Christian solution . 8. The Ideal and the Real . 9. The Personality of God . 10. Objections to Anthropomorphism : (a) from the standpoint of Natural Evolution .... 11. {h) From the standpoint of Dialectical Evolution 12. Intellect ualism and Moralism : Reason and Will 363 366 376 379 386 389 393 397 402 408 410 416 417 423 426 431 441 INTRODUCTION CHAPTER III. THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY. 1. The alternatives of thought 2. Immortality as the implication of Morality 3. Personal Immortality .... 447 448 454 CHAPTER I. THE ETHICAL PEOBLEM. 1. Ethics, or Moral Philosophy, is the Philosophy of Morality or Conduct. A preliminary notion of what is meant by these terms will serve to bring out the nature of the inquiry on which we are entering. " Morality " is described by Locke as " the proper science and business of mankind in general." In the same spirit Aristotle says that the task of Ethics is the investigation of the peculiar and characteristic function of man — the activity {ivepyeca), with its corresponding excellence (dperr]), of man as man. And " can we sup- pose that, while a carpenter and a cobbler each has a function and a business of his own, man has no business and no function assigned him by nature?"^ Morality might in this sense be called the universal and character- istic element in human activity, its human element par ex- celleTice, as distinguished from its particular, technical, and accidental elements. Not that the moral is a smaller and sacred sphere within the wider spheres of secular interests and activities. It is rather the all-inclusive sphere of human 1 Nic. Eth., i. 7, 11. Prelimin- ary defiui- tiou of Ethics. What is Morality ? 4 INTRODUCTION. What is Conduct ? Conduct and Character. i .1 life, the universal form which embraces its most varied contents. It is that in presence of which all differences of age and country, rank and occupation, disappear, and the man stands forth in all the unique and intense signi- ficance of his human nature. Morality is the great level- ler ; life, no less than death, makes all men equal. We may be so lost in the minute details and distracting shows of daily life that we cannot see the grand uniformity in out- line of our human nature and our human task ; here, as elsewhere, we are apt to lose the wood in the trees. But at times this uniformity is brought home to us with start- lino- clearness, and we discover, beneath the utmost diver- sity of worldly circumstance and outward calling, our common nature and our common task. The delineation of this common human task, of this " proper business of mankind in general," is the endeavour of ethical philo- sophy. Matthew Arnold was fond of calling conduct "three- fourths of life." I suppose the other fourth was the pro- vince of the intellectual and aesthetic as distinguished from the moral life. But when truly conceived, as expres- sive of character, conduct is the whole of life. As there is no action which may not be regarded as, directly or in- directly, an exponent of character, so there is no most secret thought or impulse of the mind but manifests itself in the life of conduct. If, however, with Spencer, we ex- tend the term " conduct " so as to cover merely mechanical as well as reflex organic movements, then we must limit the sphere of Ethics to " conduct as the expression of char- acter." But, in the sense indicated, the " conduct of life " may be taken as synonymous with " morality." Such con- THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 5 duct embraces the life of intellect and emotion, as well as that which is, in a narrower sense, called " practice " — the life of overt activity. Man's life is one, in its most diverse phases ; one full moral tide runs through them all. But let us analyse conduct a little more closely. Spen- cer defines it as " the adjustment of acts to ends," and we may say it is equivalent to " purposive activity," or more strictly, in conformity with what has just been said, " con- sciously purposive activity." It is the element of purpose, the choice of ends and of the means towards their accom- plishment, that constitutes conduct ; and it is this inner side of conduct that we are to study. Now, choice is an act of will. But since each choice is not an isolated act of will, but the several choices constitute a continuous and connected series, and all together form, and in turn result from, a certain settled habit or trend of will, a certain type of character, we may say that conduct is the ex- pression of character in activity. Activity which is not thus expressive is not conduct ; and since " a will that wills nothing is a chimera," and a will which has not acquired some tendency in its choice of activities is no less chimerical, we may add that there is no character without conduct. Conduct, therefore, points to character, or settled habit of will. But will is here no mere faculty, it is a man's " proper self." The will is the self in action ; and in order to act, the self must also feel and know. Only thus can it act as a self. The question of Ethics, accordingly, may be stated in either of two forms: What is man's chief end ? or what is the true, normal, or typical form of human self-hood ? Man has a choice of ends : what is !^ 6 INTRODUCTION. that end which is so worthy of his choice that all else is to be chosen merely as the means towards its fulfilment ? And since, in the last analysis, the object of his choice is a certain type of self-hood, this question resolves itself into the other : Into what universal human form shall he mould all the particular activities of his life ? This ques- tion, in either form of it, is at once a practical and a theoretical question. To man his own nature, like his world, is at first a chaos, to be reduced to cosmos. As he must subdue to the order and system of a world of objects the varied mass of sensible presentations that crowd in upon him at every moment of his waking life, so must he subdue to the order and system of a rational life the mass of clamant and conflicting forces that seek to master him— those impulses, passions, appetites, affections that seem each to claim him for itself. The latter question is, like the former, first a practical and then a theoretical question. The first business of thought about the world —the business of ordinary thought— is to make the world orderlv enoudi to be a world in which we can live. Its second business is to understand the world for the sake of understanding it, and the outcome of this is the deeper scientific and philosophic unity of things. So the first business of thought about the life of man is to establish a certain unity and system in actual human practice. Its second business is to understand that life for the sake of understanding it, and the outcome of this is the deeper ethical theory of life. In what 2. Ethics is often called Practical, as opposed to sense is xj^^^^g^.^^^ Philosophy or Metaphysics. The description THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. is correct, if it is meant that Ethics is the philosophy or Ethics theory of Practice, and is indeed only another way of Relations saying w^hat we have just said. It suggests, however, theory ana the question of the relations of moral theory and practice. ^'^^^ ^^^' Life or practice always precedes its theory or explanation ; we are men before we are moralists. The moral life, though it implies an intellectual element from the first, is, in its beginnings, and for long, a matter of instinct, of tradition, of authority. Moral progress, whether in the indi\ddual or in the race, may be largely accounted for as a blind " struggle " of moral ideals in which the " fittest " survive. Human experience is a continuous and keen " scrutiny " of these ideals ; history is a grand contest of moral forces, in which the strongest are the victors. The conceptions of good and evil, virtue and vice, duty and desert, which guide the life, not merely of the child but of the mass of mankind, are largely accepted, like in- tellectual notions, in blind and unquestioning faith. But moral, like intellectual, manhood implies emancipation from such a merely instinctive life. The good man, like the wise man, " puts away childish things " ; as a rational being, he must seek to reduce his life, like his world, to system. The words of the oracle inevitably make them- selves heard, yvooOc aeavrov. Man must know himself, come to terms with himself. The contradictions and rivalries of ethical codes, the varying canons of moral criticism, the apparent chaos of moral practice, force upon him the need of a moral theory. The demand is made for a rationale of morality, for principles which shall give his life coherence ; and the transition is made from the practical to the theoretical standpoint, from life to the 8 INTRODUCTION. THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. philosophy of life. Just when this transition is made, just when morality passes from the instinctive to the reflective stage, whether in the life of the race or of the individual, it is impossible to say. For, after all, practice implies theory. While a clear and adequate theory can only be expected after long crude practice, yet every life implies a certain plan, some conception, however vague and ill-defined, of what life means.^ No life is altogether haphazard or " from hand to mouth." Only the animal lives from moment to moment ; even the child-man and the vicious man " look before and after," if they do not, like the good man, " see life steadily and see it whole." Every action implies a purpose, that is, a thought of something to be done, and therefore worth doing. The individual action does not stand alone, it connects itself with others, and these again with others, in the past and in the future ; nor can we stop at any point in the pro- gress or in the regress. In every action there is implied a view, narrower or larger, of life as a whole, some conception of its total scope and meaning for the man. The individual act is never a res completa, an indepen- dent whole : to complete it you must always view it in the totality of its relations, in the entire context of the life of which it is a part. A man does not, in general, make up his mind afresh about the particular action or consider it on its own merits ; he refers it to its place in the general scheme or plan of life which he has adopted at some time in the past. But such a scheme or plan of 1 Cf. Professor Dewey's excellent article on "Moral Theory and Practice," in 'International Journal of Ethics,' Jan. 1891. life is already a theory, an implicit philosophy of life. It is impossible, therefore, to make an absolute distinction between the loose moral reflection of ordinary life, and that deeper and more systematic reflection which is entitled to be called "moral philosophy." An inter- mediate stage of "proverbial morality" would, in any case, have to be distinguished. If every one is a meta- physician, every one is, still more inevitably, a moral philosopher. Moral philosophy is only a deeper, more strenuous, and more systematic reflection upon life, a thinkiifui of it out to clearness and coherence. The re- flection of the ordinary man, even in the proverbial form, is unsystematic and discontinuous; the system of man's life, the principles on which it may be reduced to system, remain for the more patient and theoretical inquiry of moral philosophy. On the other hand, as it is impossible to separate prac- tice from theory, so it is impossible to separate theory from practice. As Aristotle insisted, the abiding interest of the moral philosopher is practical, as well as theoretical. Wisdom has its natural outflow in goodness, as proverbial morality has always declared ; the head guides the hand, the intellect the will. This inseparable connection of theory and practice was profoundly understood by the Greek philosophers, with whom Socrates' maxim that "virtue is knowledge" was always a guiding idea, as well as by the Hebrews, for whom wisdom and good- ness, folly and sin, were synonymous terms. It is also familiar to us from the teachings of Christianity, whose Founder claims to be at once the Truth and 10 INTRODUCTION. THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 11 Relations of moral faith ami ethical in- sight. Im- possibility of absolute moral scep- ticism. the Life, and preaches that " life eternal " is " to know " the Father and the Son.^ A larger and deeper conception of the meaning of life inevitably brings with it a larger and deeper life. Intellectual superficiality is a main source of moral evil; folly and vice are largely synonymous. Accordingly, the first step towards moral reformation is to rouse reflection in a man or people ; to give them a new insight into the significance of moral alternative. The claims of morality will not be satisfied until the rigour of these claims is understood. All moral awakening is'' primarily an intellectual awakening, a ^'repentance" or "change of mind" {iierdvoia). Moral insight is the necessary condition of moral life, and the philosophy which deepens such insight is at once theoretical and practical, in its interest and in its value. By fixing our attention upon the ideal. Ethics tends to raise the level of the actual. The very intellectual effort is itself morally elevating ; such a turn of the attention is full of meaning for character. A moral truth does not remain a merely intellectual apprehension ; it rouses the emotions, and de- mands expression, through them, in action or in life. 3. Ethics is the effort to convert into rational insight that faith in a moral Ideal or absolute human Good which is at the root of all moral life. That such a moral faith is always present in morality, and is the source of all moral inspiration, hardly needs to be proved. Moral, like in- tellectual, scepticism can only be relative and partial. If absolute intellectual scepticism means " speechlessness," 1 The central Johannine conception of "Light" similarly emphasises the unity of the intellectual and the moral life. absolute moral scepticism means death, or cessation from activity. Life, like thought, is the constant refutation of scepticism. As the continued effort to think is the re- futation of intellectual scepticism, the continued effort to live is the refutation of moral scepticism. We " live by faith." The effort to live, the "perseverare in esse suo," implies, in a rational or reflective being, the convic- tion that life is worth living, that there are objects in life, that there is some supreme Object or sovereign Good for man. Such a faith may be a blind illusion, as Pessimism declares ; but it is none the less actual and inevitable. The ordinary man, it is true, does not realise that he has this faith, except in so far as he reflects upon his life. His plan of life is largely implicit ; he estimates the *' goods" of life by reference to a silently guiding idea of the Good. To press the Socratic question. Good for what? and thus to substitute for a blind unthinking faith the insight of reason, is to pass from ordinary thought to philosophy. Now when the philosophical question is pressed, there is at once revealed a seemingly chaotic variety of " Goods," which refuse to be reduced to any common denominator. " One man's meat is another man's poison." If the meta- physician is tempted to ask despairingly, in view of the conflict of intellectual opinion. What is Truth ? the ethi- cal philosopher is no less tempted, in face of a similar conflict of moral opinion, to ask, What is Good ? What seems good to me is my good, what seems good to you is yours ; there is no moral criterion. Here, at any rate, we seem to be reduced to absolute subjectivity. Yet the philosopher cannot, any more than the ordinary man. 12 INTRODUCTION. THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 13 escape from faith in an absolute Good. Like the ordinary man, he may have his difficulties in defining it, and may waver between different theories of its form and content. But any and every theory of it implies the faith that there is such a thing. This moral faith is the " matter " con- stantly given to the moralist that he may endue it with philosophic " form." He cannot destroy the matter, he can only seek to form it ; his task is the progressive conversion of ordinary moral faith, of the moral "common- sense" of mankind, into rational insight. It is his to explain, not to explain away, this moral faith or common- sense. That there is an absolute or ideal Good is the assumption of every ethical theory— an assumption which simply means that, here as everywhere, the universe is rational. Philosophy seeks to verify this assumption or to reduce it to knowledge, by exhibiting its rationality. Variety of opinion as to what the Good is, is always con- fined within the limits of a perfect unanimity of conviction that there is an absolute Good. Even the Utilitarian, insisting though he does on the relativity of all moral distinctions, on the merely consequential and extrinsic nature of goodness, yet recognises in Happiness a good which is absolute. Similarly, the Evolutionist, with his Well-being or Welfare, sees in life, no less than the Per- fectionist or the Theologian, "one grand far-off divine event." To lose sight of this, to surrender the conviction of an absolute human Good, would be fatal to all ethical inquiry. Its spur and impulse would be gone. But Ethics, like Metaphysics, is a tree which, though every bough it has ever borne may be cut away, will always spring up afresh ; for its roots are deep in the soil of human life. As the faith in a supreme Good must remain as long as life lasts, the philosophic effort to convert that faith into the rational insight of ethical theory must also continue. 4. It is the business of Ethics, then, to scrutinise the various ideals which, in the life of the individual and of the race, are found competing for the mastery. Life itself is such a scrutiny ; human history is one long process of testinij, and the "fittest" or the best ideals "survive.' But the scrutiny of history is largely, though by no means entirely, unconscious. The scrutiny of philosophy is conscious and explicit. Ethics, as moral reflection, in- stitutes a systematic examination of human ideals, and seeks to correlate them in relation to the true or ab- solute Ideal of humanity. The accidental and the im- perfect in them must be gradually eliminated, until, as the reward of long and patient search, the absolute Good at last shines through. As Logic or the theory of thought seeks, beneath the apparent unreason and accident of everyday thought and fact, a common reason and a common truth, so does Ethics seek, beneath the apparent contra- dictions of human life, a supreme and universal Good — the norm and criterion of all actual goodness. Or we may say, with Aristotle, that Ethics is the in- vestigation of the final End or Purpose of human life. The Good (to dyaOov) is the End (reXoc, to ov evcKo), that End to which all other so-called ends are really means. Such a teleological view is necessary in the case of human life, irrespective of the farther question whether we can, with Aristotle, extend it to the universe, and include the Business of Ethics to define the Good or the Moral Ideal, by scrutiny of the various interpreta- tions of it. 14 INTRODUCTION. THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 15 human in the divine or universal End. Human life, at any rate, is unintelligible apart from the idea of Purpose ; the teleological and the ethical views are one. Other views— c'.^., the physical— are possible and com- petent ; but we cannot rest in them as final. The question of Ethics is. What is man's chief End ; what is the supreme Purpose in the fulfilment of which he shall fulfil himself; what is the central and governing principle according to which he shall organise his life ? It is to be remembered, moreover, that the moral life is, like the psychical life generally, rather an organic growth than a mechanism or fixed arrangement. Like the organ- ism, it preserves its essential identity through all the vari- ations of its historical development ; it evolves continuously in virtue of an inner principle. To discover this constant principle of the evolution of morality is the business of Ethics. The task of the moral philosopher is not to con- struct a system of rules for the conduct of life— we do not live by rule— but to lay bare the nerve of the moral life, the very essence of which is spontaneity and growth away from any fixed form or type. Each age has its own moral type, which the historian of morality studies; and the hero of an earlier age is not the hero of a later. Neither Aristotle's /i€ja\6yfrvxo<; nor the mediaeval "saint" will serve as our moral type. The search of Ethics is for the organising principle of morality, for a principle which shall explain and co-ordinate all the changing forms of its historical development. Nor are we to commit what we may call the " moralist's fallacy " of confusing the philosophic or reflective moral consciousness with the ordinary or naive. The principles of the moral life, we must remember, are not to any great extent explicit ; its ideals are not clearly realised in the consciousness of the plain man. To a certain extent, of course, the ethical life is a thinking life, up to a certain point it must understand itself ; it is not to be pictured as parallel with the physical life, which proceeds in entire ignorance of its own principles. But its thought need not (JO far, and it is not the business of Ethics to substitute its explicit theory, its rational insight and comprehension, for the implicit and naive moral intelligence of ordinary life. Nor is the proof of an ethical theory to be sought in the discovery, in the ordinary moral consciousness of any age or community, of such a theory of its life. That life is conducted rather by " tact," by a practical insight of which it cannot give the grounds. This was the feeling even of a Socrates, who attributed such unaccountable promptings to the unerring voice of the divinity that guided his destiny. The moral life precipitates itself in these unformulated principles of action; we acquire a faculty of quick and sure moral judgment, as we acquire a similar faculty of scientific or artistic judgment. This ability comes with " the years that bring the philosophic mind " ; it is the ripe fruit of the good life. 5. Modern moralists, it is true, prefer to raise the ques- tion in another form, and to ask, not "What is man's chief End?" but "What is man's Duty; what is the supreme Law of his life ? " The " right " is the favourite category of modern Ethics, as the " good " is that of ancient. But this is, truly understood, only another form of the same question. Eor the Good or chief End of man does Ancient and Mod- ern concep- tions of the Moral Ideal compared. (a) Duty and the Chief Good ; their log- ical con- nection. 16 INTRODUCTION. Personality not fulfil itself, as the divine Purpose in nature does ; idear^ man is not, or, at least, cannot regard himself as, a mere instrument or vehicle of the realisation of the Purpose in his life. His Good presents itself to him as an Ideal, which he may or may not realise in practice ; that is what dis- tinguishes the moral from the natural life. The Law of man's life is not, like that of nature's, inevitable ; it may be broken as well as kept ; that is why we call it a moral law. While a physical law or a " law of nature " is simply a statement of that which always happens, a moral law is that which ought to be, but perhaps never strictly is. So that, while the ethical category has changed from the Sum- mum Bonum of the ancients to the Duty and Law of the moderns, the underlying conception is the same, and the logic of the transition from the one category to the other is easily understood. Perhaps the conception of a Moral Ideal may be taken as combining the classical idea of Chief Good or End with the modern idea of Law, and its antith- esis between Duty and attainment, between the Ought- to-be and the Is. For both the ancient and the modern conceptions of the Moral Ideal have a tendency to imperfection ; the former is apt to be an external, the latter a mechanical view. The ancients were apt to regard the End as something to be acquired or got, rather than as an ideal to be attained. But, as Aristotle and Kant have both insisted, man must be his own End ; he cannot subordinate himself as a means to any further end. The moral ideal is an ideal of char- acter. In ancient philosophy we can trace a gradual pro- gress towards this more adequate view. As the conception of Happiness is gradually deepened, it is seen to consist THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 17 i 11 in an inner rather than an outer well-being, in a life of activity rather than in a state of dependence on external goods, in a settled condition or habit of will rather than in any outward circumstances or fortune. The true for- tune of the soul, it is felt, is in its own hands, both to attain and to keep. The modern or Christian view is more spiritual and idealistic. " Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you ; " " take no thought for the morrow." The claims of righteousness become paramount. "Do the right, though the heavens fall." The danger for this view is the tendency so to exaggerate the notion of Law as to conceive of life as mere obedience to a code of rules or precepts. Such a view of morality is mechanical. Life according to rule is as inadequate a con- ception as the pursuit of an external end ; and it is only gradually that we have regained the classical conception of ethical " good," and have learned once more to think of the moral life as a fulfilment rather than a negation and restraint, and to place law in its true position as a means rather than an end. The ancient and the modern views of the moral ideal are thus alike inadequate and mutually complementary ; they must be harmonised in a deeper view. The End of life is an ideal of character, to be realised by the indi- vidual, and his attitude to it is one of obligation or duty to realise it. It is something not to be got or to be done, but to he or to hecome. It is not to be sought without, but within ; it is the man himself, in that true or essential nature, in the realisation of which is fulfilled his duty to others and to God. All duty is ultimately duty to oneself. B ( ■ I I (6) Ancient Ideal pol- itical, modern in- dividual- istic ; the inadequacy of each, and their reconcili- ation in Personal- ity. ^g INTRODUCTION. 6 A second characteristic difference between the stand- 6. A secona c reflection brings point of ^-^^^-\'^^^^^^^ of such a personal view out still more clearly the ^ecess^y J ^^^ ^^^^ , political or ^0^^'^^^^^^ ,e was philosopher or vidualistic. io tne LTreeK, w ^ not all the interests of life were summed up n those ^iship ; he had no sphere of " private mora^^ T, option of - -te — ^^^^^^^ to the Greek mind, that it seemea i g^^^^.e pretation of the entire f-^^f'^'^^^^^, ^he State I its adequacy was shaken by ^^^^^^J ^^ ,,, ,,,. ^^-"' -\ Xof ;:^ ti 1 a^^^^^^^^^^^ '- ^-- TetX :» ti n of G,:. citizenship was abandoned, as when the notion u ^^ citizenship of a commonplace to us, Nve ae ^^^.^^ ^^ 1 »„ ^f tlip moral reflection oi tTreece, S nd IrM tl If -o^^e- ^1--^ ^'^'^ practice are Plato and AristoLie. x ^,^p,^p The modern defective, it is in the opposite extreme J ethical standpoint has been that .« ^^^^^^^^ ^, ,,, This change of standpoint ^ ^.^^^^^ ^^ ".tite value acceptance of ^^^^^^^^'^^j:;'^::' ^.Z we might of the individual as a moial person o ^^ --^ ;.f ^^^^72 nW "dividual has THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 19 individualism is as inadequate as the principle of mere citizenship. Hence the difficulty of reconciling the claims of self with the claims of society— a difficulty which can hardly be said to have existed for the ancients, who had not yet separated the individual from his society, and to whom, accordingly, the two interests were one and the same. Hence, too, the fantastic and impossible concep- tion of a purely selfish life, which has caused modern moralists such trouble. Hence the ignoring of the im- portance of ethical institutions, especially that of the State, resulting in the view of the State as having a merely negative or " police " function, and the Hobbes-Eousseau theory of society itself as an artificial product, the result of contract between individuals who, like mutually exclusive atoms, are naturally antagonists. For, in reality, these two spheres of life are inseparable. The interests and claims of the social and of the indi- vidual life overlap, and are reciprocally inclusive. These are not two lives, but two sides or aspects of one undi- vided life. You cannot isolate the moral individual; to do so would be to de-moralise him, to annihilate his moral nature. His very life as a moral being consists in a net- work of relations which link his individual life with the wider life of his fellows. It is literally true that "no man liveth to himself," there is no retiring into the privacy and solitude of a merely individual life. Man is a social or political being. On the other hand, the individual is more than a member of society ; he is not the mere organ of the body poHtic. He too is an organ- ism, and has a life and ends of his own. The Good is, for every individual, a social or common Good, a Good in i 20 INTEODUCTION. 21 which he cannot claim such private property as to ex- clude his fellows ; their good is his, and his theirs. Yet the Good— the only Good we know as absolute — is always a personal, not an impersonal good, a good of moral per- sons. The person, not society, is the ultimate ethical unit and reality. Resulting 7. The task of Ethics, therefore, is the discovery of the of EthicTas central principle of moral or spiritual life, as the task of ti'-ati'Jn of P^iology is the discovery of the central principle of physical the unify- j^fg ^he undertakinsj is a hard and difficult one ; and mg pnn- ^ it is possible that Life, moral as well as physical, may "elude definition." It may be that all we can do, in the one sphere as in the other, is to describe its progressive outward manifestations; the life-principle itself may re- main a secret. In that case, a Science of Ethics, as distinguished from a Metaphysic of Ethics or a Moral Philosophy, would alone be possible. But the philosophic task must first be attempted, and not given up at the outset. May we not reasonably hope, with Aristotle, that the ovaia or essential nature will reveal itself in the (f>v(Tt<^ or TL iarcp of actual morality ? ciple of human life. CHAPTER II. THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 1. Ethics being an integral part of Philosophy, its The Meth method must be the method of Philosophy rather than icsphiio- that of Science. The general distinction between Philo- rather than sophy and Science must be applied here. If Ethics is to '^^^^'°^^^^- provide a philosophy of life, and not merely a science of it, its method cannot be the merely scientific one of observation and generalisation of the " phenomena " of existing or past conduct and character. Such a scientific account of morality is no doubt legitimate, and, as Aris- totle insisted no less strenuously than recent " scientific " moralists, we must begin wdth " the facts." But philo- sophy must attempt here as elsewhere to travel beyond the scientific explanation to one that is deeper and ulti- mate. Beyond the Science of Ethics, whether it be " phys- ical Ethics," " psychological Ethics," or " historical Ethics," is the "Metaphysic of Ethics" or ethical Philosophy. The modern tendency, the tendency especially of con- temporary thought, is to " naturalise the moral man," to exhibit the evolution of human conduct and character 9 9 INTRODUCTION. THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 23 from sub-human forms, to substitute physics for meta- physics, positivism for transcendentalism, science for philosophy. But we must not prejudge the ethical question — the question whether there is any unique element in the nature and life of man — by adopting the method of science and excluding that of philosophy. It is perfectly legitimate to attempt the resolution of man into nature, but the demonstration of such an identity would be itself a philosophical achievement. To adopt at the outset a naturalistic interpretation of morality, or to deny the possibility of an ethical philosophy, would be to beg the question of Ethics. The Phys- 2. The proposed " scientific " method of Ethics assumes Bfoiogicai various forms in the hands of contemporary writers. Methods, ^^^.^j^ Spencer, for example, and with the Evolutionary school in general, it is sometimes the method of physics and mechanics, sometimes the method of biology. Con- duct is regarded as a complex of movements, a series of adjustments of the human being to his environment. The Science of Ethics, accordingly, is the result of the application to human life of the Darwinian law of evolu- tion by natural selection ; the same formula of adjustment of the being to its environment covers the process of the physical and of the ethical life. Whether the adjustment is one of mechanical movement, of life, or of conscious purpose is, it is held, a matter of detail. There is a difference of complexity, but the process is one and continuous throughout. Even Professor Alexander, who, like Mr Leslie Stephen, emphasises the inner significance of conduct as the expression of character, would make Ethics the verification of the evolutionary laws of " struggle for existence " and " survival of the fittest." ^ Now, it is obvious that conduct is a series of outward movements or activities, of biological and mechanical phenomena, and that it may be interpreted as such. But the ethical inter- pretation of it must be based on another view ; in the view of Ethics, the outward movements and activities are merely the index and expression of a certain type of character. To apply biological and mechanical categories to character (or to conduct as conduct) is to indulge in unscientific, metaphorical, and pictorial thought. 3. Recognising this peculiarity in the subject-matter The Psy- of Ethics, other writers would have us adopt the psycho- Method.^ logical method. The facts, it is acknowledged, are in this case facts of consciousness, psychological phenomena ; but we must not seek to travel beyond these facts. Let us classify the motives from which men act ; let us analyse, simplify, and unify this complex mass of inner activities. Let us trace the genesis of conscience, and show how the conception of an Ought-to-be has slowly emerged from the apprehension of the Is of human life. This psychological Ethics is no new thing : Ethics and Psychology have been long confused. But the progress of Psychology towards the position of a " natural science " has helped us to understand the distinction between its province and that of Ethics ; here, as elsewhere, scientific progress has come with self -limitation. The task of Psychology, it is now generally understood, is not to investigate the essential nature of mind, but only to give a methodical account ^ Cf . Alexander's ' Moral Order and Progress,' passim. 24 INTRODUCTION. THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 25 The His- torical Method. of its phases or elements. It deals with the phenomenal manifestations of mind, it does not investigate the ulti- mate significance of these manifestations ~ the place and function of self -consciousness in the economy of the universe. The latter problem is that of Philo- sophy. If we apply this distinction to morality, it will mean that while Psychology is perfectly competent to provide a "phenomenology" of the moral conscious- ness, it remains for ethical Philosophy to interpret the meaning of these phenomena. In particular, Ethics must investigate the objective validity of the grand moral distinction between the ideal and the actual, the Ought-to-be and the Is, a distinction which, inas- much as it is primarily a distinction within the sphere of consciousness, is for Psychology merely phenomenal and subjective. Accepting from Psychology the scientific explanation of moral phenomena, on their inner or psy- chical side, as it accepts from Physics and Biology the scientific explanation of the same phenomena on their outer or physical side. Ethics reserves to itself the task of accounting for the entire body of these phenomena, of (rivins their raiso7i d'etre, of explaining their '' morality." 4. The demand that the ethical investigation be con- ducted according to scientific method takes yet another form, closely connected with the preceding— viz., that the true method of Ethics is the historical. The present popularity of this method is largely due to the fact that it is the method of evolution. To understand any pheno- menon, it is said, is to know its genesis : being and becoming are one and the same. And since there is an evolution of morality, as of all else, the clue to its explanation will be found in the process of its historical development. Ethics assumes, therefore, the universal form of current science, and becomes a " study of origins." " Here, then, at last," says President Schurman, "we have an answer to the question, How is ethics as a science possible? If it is ever to rise above the analytical procedure of logic, it can only be by becoming one of the historical sciences. Given the earliest morality of which we have any written record, to trace from it through progressive stages the morality of to-dRy,—that is the problem, and the only problem, which can fall to a truly scientific ethics." '^ It is to the " history of moral ideals and institutions," there- fore, that this writer, with many other ethical thinkers, looks for " the solution of many of those vexed questions which have never failed to stimulate, and have always baffled, the ingenuity of all the schools of analytical philo- sophers." "The observation and classification of ethical facts, whether manifested in the individual or in the race, constitute the business of the science of ethics ; all else is hypothesis, speculation, fancy. . . . Ethics, if it is to become truly a science, must shun the path of specula- tion, and follow closely the historical method." ^ ^ 'Ethical Import of Darwinism,' 31. It should be noted that Dr Schurman, unlike many who use similar language about the method of Ethics, recognises the legitimacy of an ethical "philosophy" based upon the historical investigation above described. 2 Cf. Leslie Stephen {' Science of Ethics,' 447, 448). " Ethical investiga- tions, like others, will have some definite results when we turn to what are called historical methods of inquiry. . . . The tendency of modern speculation to take that form, or to look into the history of the past for an answer to pi-oblems which were once attacked by looking simply into our own minds, implies a recognition of this principle." '"■i .f ' 26 INTRODUCTION. THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 27 But to make Ethics a merely historical science would be to give up all that is historically included under the term. The aim of Ethics is higher than the mere clas- sification of moral "phenomena"; its business is to investigate their essential nature, to determine their objective meaning, to define the End or Ideal of which they are the progressive realisation. It is doubtless ethically instructive to study the history of morality, but just because it is the story of the gradual actualisation of the Moral Ideal in character and conduct, in individual and social life. The study of the history is an invaluable aid to the apprehension of the Ideal itself. But this ethical interest in history is quite different from the historical interest. Ethics is interested in historical facts, not as facts, but as containing the partial revelation of an Ideal without which the history itself would be impossible. It is not in the historical facts themselves, but in their eternal meaning and ultimate explanation, that the ethical interest centres. Ethics is, like Logic and ^Esthetics, a normative or ideal science. Its business is the discovery of the moral Ideal or criterion, and the appreciation of actual morality in terms of this Ideal. And though it is true that it is only by the study of its actual historical development that we can hope to discover the essential nature of the moral life, yet in practice it will too often be found that the advocates of the historical method are the victims of the fallacious idea that the earlier and simpler contains the explanation of the later and more complex, that the primitive is the primary, and the simple the essential. This idea, which inspired the Kousseau Ethics of " Nature," is also at the root of the prevalent tendency to identify Ethics with Anthropology, and to find the key to all the mystery of man's nature in the crudities of infant and savage life. But surely the principle of Evolution, truly understood, teaches us to recognise the meaning of the lower forms in the higher, of the earlier in the later, rather than vice versd. The flower and fruit do not betray or cancel the life of the seed ; rather the one is the revelation of the other, the explanation of its real nature. If we are to be faithful to the principle of Evolution, we must recognise an identity and continuity in the changing forms of moral life. But if Evolution means progress, then it is in the later rather than in the earlier forms of morality, in the present rather than in the past, whether historic or prehistoric, that we must seek the key to the interpretation of the ethical process as a whole; for the later stages are more adequate ex- ponents of its meaning than the earlier, and the present than the past. 5. If by " scientific method " it is simply meant that Ethics as 3.11 ' ' IP Ethics must seek to be methodical, we need not quarrel exact' with the phrase. But, even so, we must guard against misunderstanding. While the ideal of Science is exact or accurate knowledge, yet, within the scientific sphere itself, there is a distinction between the " exact sciences " and those whose procedure and results cannot be so character- ised. Mathematics and, to a large extent, physics are exact sciences; biology, in its various subdivisions, and still more obviously, psychology, are not exact. Nor is this difference in scientific method due to the difference in the progress of these sciences ; it is rather the result of ail "m- »» science. The Meta- physical Method. 28 INTRODUCTION. the difference of their subject-matter. Life and thought cannot be measured, as can space and time, matter and motion. If, therefore, Ethics were to become a science in the stricter sense of the term, it is among the inexact, not among the exact sciences, that we should expect to find it. Mill proposed such a " science of ethology," which, taking human character as its subject-matter, should attempt the reduction of moral phenomena to a uniformity like that to which the physical sciences reduce the phenomena of nature. And if due allowance is made for the difference in the subject-matter,— the same kind of allowance as the biologist makes when he distinguishes his science from that of physics, or the psychologist when he distinguishes his from that of physiology,— I do not know that we need dissent from such a definition of Ethics as a science.^ 6. Only I would claim for Ethics, in addition to the narrower task of science, even so conceived, the larger philosophic task. As already indicated, the science of Ethics must have for its complement an ethical philosophy or a metaphysic of Ethics. But here we are met by the agnostic objection to all metaphysics. Mr Leslie Stephen, the " Apologist " of Agnosticism, tells us, in his ' Science of Ethics,' - that, in his opinion, " it is useless to look for any further light from metaphysical inquiries." His demand is for ethical realism, which means for him ethical empiricism, positivism, or phenomenalism. Let us keep to the moral facts or phenomena, to " moral reality," and 1 Cf. Aristotle's reiterated insistence that we must not demand a greater scientific exactitude than the nature of the subject-matter per- mits, and that the subject-matter of Ethics is inexact. ^ 450. THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 29 not seek to penetrate to its transcendental background, or think to find the sanctions of human conduct in the divine or the ideal. If we understand the inter-relations of the facts of the moral life, we shall sufficiently under- stand their moral significance. Let us ascertain " the meaning to be attached to morality so long as we remain in the world of experience ; and if, in the transcendental world, you can find a deeper foundation for morality, that does not concern me. I am content to build upon the solid earth. You may, if you please, go down to the elephant or the tortoise." ^ It is not necessary " to begin at the very beginning, and to solve the whole problem of the universe " before you '' get down to morality." " My view, therefore, is that the science of Ethics deals with realities; that metaphysical speculation does not help us to ascertain the relevant facts. . . . This is virtually to challenge the metaphysician to show that he is of any use in the matter." ^ This challenge the metaphysician need have no hesita- tion in accepting, and his answer to it will consist in a careful definition of the ethical problem and of the possible solutions of it. That problem is not, What are the facts or phenomena of morality ? but. How are we to interpret the facts ? What is their ultimate significance ? The former question will no doubt help us to answer the latter ; knowledge of the (f)v^ with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them." ^ Deeper reflection upon the course of human affairs led the Epicureans, as it had led the Cyrenaics, to pessimism. The Good, in the sense of positive pleasure, is not, they find, the lot of man ; all that he may hope for is the nega- tive pleasure that comes with the release from pain. " By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul." And even this is not always to be attained. If we would escape the pain of unsatisfied desire, we must reduce our desires. Fortune is to be feared, even when bringing gifts ; for she is capricious, and may at any moment withhold her gifts. Let us give as few hostages to Fortune, then, as we can ; let us assert our independence of her, and, in our own self-sufficiency, be- come indifferent to her fickle moods. Let us return, as far as may be, to the " state of nature," for nature's wants are few. " Of desires some are natural and some are ground- less ; and of the " natural, some are necessary as well as natural, and some are natural only. And of the necessary desires, some are necessary if we are to be happy, and some if the body is to remain unperturbed, and some if we are even to live. By the clear and certain understand- ing of these things we learn to make every preference and aversion, so that the body may have health and the soul tranquillity, seeing that this is the sum and end of a blessed life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear ; and when once we have attained this, all the tempest of the soul is laid, seeing that the living creature has not to go to find something that is wanting, 1 Epicurus' Letter (Wallace's 'Epicureanism,' 129-131). 92 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 93 or to seek something else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we need pleasure, is, when we are grieved because of the absence of pleasure ; but when we feel no pain, then we no longer stand in need of pleasure." ^ The great maxim of the Epicurean life is, therefore, like that of the Stoic, that we cultivate a temper of indiffer- ence to pleasure and pain, such a tranquillity of soul (aTapa^Lo) as no assault of fortune shall avail to disturb, such an inner peace of spirit as shall make us independent of fortune's freaks. For the Epicureans have lost the ft Socratic faith in a divine Providence, the counterpart of human prudence, which secures that a well-planned life shall be successful in attaining its goal of pleasure. Their gods have retired from the world, and become careless of human affairs. The true wisdom, then, is to break the bonds that link our destiny with the world's, and to assert our independence of fate. Through moderation of desire, and tranquillity of soul, we become masters of our own destiny, and learn that our true good is to be sought within rather than without. It is our fear of external evil or calamity, not calamity itself, that is the chief source of pain. Let us cease to fear that which in itself is not terrible. Even death, the greatest of so-called evils, the worst of all the blows which fortune can inflict upon us, is an evil only to him who fears it ; even to it we can become indifferent. " Accustom thyself in the belief that death is nothing to us ; for good and evil are only where they are felt, and death is the absence of all feeling; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to ^ Epicurus' Letter, loc. cit. us makes enjoyable the mortality of life, not by adding to years an illimitable time, but by taking away the yearn- ing after immortality. For in life there can be nothing to fear to him who has thoroughly apprehended that there is nothing to cause fear in what time we are not alive. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatsoever causes no annoyance when it is present causes only a groundless pain by the expectation thereof. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that when we are, death is not yet, and when death comes, then we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or the dead ; for it is not found with the living, and the dead exist no longer." Of this Epicurean ideal we could not have a better picture than that which Horace gives in the Seventh Satire of the Second Book : " Who, then, is free ? He who is wise, over himself true lord, unterrified by want and death and bonds ; who can his passions stem, and glory scorn ; in himself complete, like a sphere, perfectly round ; so that no external object can rest on the polished surface ; against such a one Fortune's assault is broken." It is an ideal of rational self-control, of deliverance from the storms of passion through the peace-speaking voice of reason. The state of sensibility is still the ethical End and criterion ; but all the attention is directed to the means by which that End may be compassed, and the means are not sentient but rational. Nay, the End itself, as we have just seen, is rather a state of indifference, of neutral feeling, of insensibility, than a positive state of feeling at all. 94 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 95 (b) Modern Hedonism, or Utili- tarianism. Its chief variations from Anci- ent : (1) Optimistic V. Pessim- istic. 3. Modern Hedonism differs widely from Ancient, British from Greek. If we take Mill as the representa- tive of the modern doctrine, perhaps the differences may be said to resolve themselves, in the last analysis, into three. (1) Ancient Hedonism, whether of the Cyrenaic or of the Epicurean type, was pessimistic. Modern Hedonism is, on the whole, optimistic.^ Where the Greek moralists found themselves forced to conceive the End as escape from pain rather than as positive pleasure, their sue- cessors in England (as well as recently in Germany) have no hesitation in returning to the original Cyrenaic con- ception of the End as real enjoyment, as not merely the absence of pain, but the presence of pleasure. Mill, it is true, in a significant admission, made almost incident- ally in the course of his main argument, comes near striking once more the old pessimistic note. "Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrange- ments that any one can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his own, yet so long as the world is in that imperfect state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest virtue to be found in man. I will add, that in this condition of the world, paradoxical as the assertion may be, the conscious ability to do without happiness gives the best prospect of realising such happiness as is attainable. For nothing except that consciousness can raise a person above the chances of life, by making him feel that, let fate and fortune do their worst, they have not power to subdue him ; which, once felt, frees him from excess of 1 The pessimistic tendency has of late, to a certain extent, reasserted itself. anxiety concerning the evils of life, and enables him, like many a Stoic in the worst times of the Eoman Empire, to cultivate in tranquillity the sources of satis- faction accessible to him, without concerning himself about the uncertainty of their duration, any more than about their inevitable end." ^ But Mill is delivered from pessimism by his firm conviction that the condition of the world is changing for the better, and that in the end the course of virtue must " run smooth." The source of this confidence, in Mill and his successors, is not the rehabilitation of the old Socratic faith in a divine Provi- dence ; another ground of confidence is found in the new insight into the course of things which Science has brought to man. Knowledge is Power, and the might of virtue lies in the fact that it has Nature on its side. The principle of Evolution, it is maintained, shows us that goodness does not work against Nature, but rather assists Nature in her work. Hedonism, therefore, finds a new basis in Evolutionism, and puts forward the new claim of being the only " scientific " interpretation of morality. Yet we find the most brilliant living Evolu- tionist maintaining that the " ethical process " and the "cosmical process" are fundamentally antagonistic,- and one of the ablest of living evolutionary hedonists ad- mitting that "the attempt to establish an absolute co- incidence between virtue and happiness is in ethics what the attempting to square the circle or to discover per- petual motion is in geometry and mechanics."^ ^ ' Utilitarianism,' ch. ii. - Huxley, Romanes Lectures, 'Evolution and Ethics.' 3 Leslie Stephen, ' Science of Ethics. ' I 1 9G THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 97 (2) Altru- istic V. Egoistic. (2) The standpoint of ancient Hedonism was that of the individual, the standpoint of modern is that of society or mankind in general, or even, as with Mill, of the entire sentient creation. While ancient Hedonism was egoistic, the modern is altruistic or universalistic. " The greatest happiness of the greatest number" has taken the place of the greatest happiness of the individual ; the End has been extended beyond the conception of its ancient ad- vocates. The " wise man " of the Epicurean school was wise for his own interests; his chief virtues were self- sufficiency and eelf-dependence. It is true that the Epicurean society was held together by the practice, on a fine scale, of the virtue of Friendship, and that they lived, in many respects, a common life ; but this feature of their practice had no counterpart in their ethical theory. The modern hedonist, realising this defect, and the necessity of differentiating his expanded theory of the End from the narrow conception of the elder school, has invented a new name to express this difference— viz., "Utilitarianism." The new conception has been only gradually reached, however ; there is an interesting bridge between the old egoistic form of hedonism and the new altruistic or " utilitarian " version of it, in the philosophy of Paley. To this "lawyer-like mind" it seemed that we ought to seek " the happiness of mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happi- ness." The happiness of mankind, he holds, is the " sub- ject" or content of morality, but "everlasting happiness" tone's own, of course— is the " motive." The End, there- fore, is one's own individual happiness, and the happiness of others is to be sought merely as a means to that End. Such a theory is, it is obvious, thoroughly egoistic ; it is only an improved version of the egoism of Hobbes, which formed* the starting-point of modern ethical reflection. It is to Hume, Bentham, and Mill that we owe the substitution of the General Happiness for that of the individual, as the end of life. According to each of these writers the true standpoint is that of society, not that of the individual; from the social standpoint alone can we estimate aright the claims either of our own happi- ness or of the happiness of others. MilFs statement is the most adequate on this important point. The " utilitarian standard " is " not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether." The End, thus conceived, yields the true principle of the distribution of happiness. "As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Xazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality." Bentham had already enunciated this principle in the formula: "Each to count for one, and no one for more than one." But a new question is thus raised for the hedonist — viz., how to reconcile the happiness of all with the happiness of each, or altruism with egoism. " Why am I bound to promote the general happiness ? If my own happiness Kes in something else, why may I not give that the preference ? " Mill answers that there are two kinds of sanction for altruistic conduct, external and internal. Both had been recognised by his G »'■ (3) Quali- tative V, Quanti- tative. 98 THE MORAL IDEAL. predecessors. Bentham mentions four sanctions, all " ex- ternal" — viz., the physical, the political, the moral or popular, and the religious. All four are forces brought to bear upon the individual from without, and their common object is to produce an identity, or at least community, of interest between the individual and society, in such wise that he shall " find his account " in living conformably to the claims of the general happiness. But such external sanctions, alone, would provide only a secondary and indirect vindication for altruistic conduct. The individual whose life was governed by such con- straints would still be, in character and inner motive, if not in outward act, an egoist ; his end would still be egoistic, though it was accomplished by altruistic means. To the external sanctions must, therefore, be added the internal sanction which Hume and Mill alike describe as a "feeling for the happiness of mankind," a "basis of powerful natural sentiment " for " utilitarian morality," a feeling of " regard to the pleasures and pains of others," which, if not " innate " or fully developed from the first, is none the less " natural." " This firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind ; the desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures, which is already a power- ful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become stronger, even without express inculcation, from the influences of advancing civilisation." (3) The third characteristic feature of modern Hedonism, as contrasted with ancient, is the new interpretation which it offers of the gradation of pleasures. It is Mill's chief innovation that he introduces a distinction of quality, in addition to the old distinction of quantity. The End thus HEDONISM. 99 receives, in addition to its new extension, a new refine- ment. The Epicureans had emphasised the distinction between the pleasures of the body and those of the mind, and had unhesitatingly awarded the superiority to the latter, on the ground of their greater durabiHty and their comparative freedom from painful consequences ; but they had not maintained the intrinsic preferableness of the mental pleasures. To Paley and Bentham, as well as to the Epicureans, all pleasures are still essentially, or in kind, the same. "I hold," says Paley, '^that pleasures differ in nothing, but in continuance and intensity." Ben- tham holds that, besides intensity and duration,the elements of "certainty," "propinquity," "fecundity" (the likeli- hood of their being followed by other pleasures), and "purity" (the unlikelihood of their being followed by pain), must enter as elements into the "hedonistic cal- culus." Such were the interpretations of the distinction prior to Mill ; the distinction was emphasised, but it was explained in the end as a distinction of quantity, not of quality. Mill holds that the distinction of quality is in- dependent of that of quantity, and that the qualitative distinction is as real and legitimate as the quantitative. " There is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelincrs and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanence, safety, costli- ness, &c., of the former — that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on 100 THE MORAL IDEAL. all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case ; but they might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact that some hiTids of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasure should be supposed to depend on quantity alone." As to the criterion of quality in pleasures, or " what makes one pleasure more valuable than aiiother, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer." That answer is the one which Plato gave Ions: aofo, the answer of the widest and most competent experience. " Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both, give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of dis- content, and would not resign it for any amount of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superior- ity in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account. Now it is an unquestion- able fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the HEDONISM. 101 lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures ; no intelligent human being would con- sent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignor- amus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, or the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he, for the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in common with him. . . . We may give what explanation we please of this unwillingness, . . . but its most appropriate ap- pellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them." This higher nature, with its higher demand of happiness, carries with it inevitably a certain discontent. Yet " it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied ; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides." 4. Not the least important modern modification of the (c) Evoi- hedonistic theory is its affiliation to an evolutionary utmteri- view of morality. The current form of Hedonism is ^'"'°'' Evolutional Utilitarianism. The reform in ethical method which the evolutionary moralists seek to introduce is, in words, the same as Kant's reform of metaphysics — viz., to 102 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 103 make it scientific. Apply the principle of Evolution to the phenomena of moral life, as it has already been ap- plied to the phenomena of physical life, and the former, equally with the latter, will fall into order and system. Morality, like Nature, has evolved; and neither can be understood except in the light of its evolution. Nay, the evolution of morality is part and parcel of the general evolution of nature, its crown and climax indeed, but of the same warp and woof. In the successful application of his theory to ©loral life, therefore, the Evolutionist sees the satisfaction of his highest ambition ; for it is here that the critical point is reached which shall decide whether or not his conception is potent to reduce all knowledge to unity. If morality offers no resistance to its application, its adequacy is once for all completely vindicated. Thus we are offered by the Evolutionists what Green called a " natural science of morals." According to Mr Spencer, Morality is '' that form which universal conduct assumes during the last stages of its evolution." Conduct is " the adjustment of acts to ends," and in the growing complexity and completeness of this adjustment consists its evolution. Things and actions are - good or bad according as they are well or ill adapted to achieve prescribed ends," or "according as the adjust- ments of acts to ends are or are not efficient." And, ultimately, their goodness o'r badness is determined by the measure in which all minor ends are merged in the grand end of self and race-preservation. Thus " the ideal goal to the natural evolution of conduct " is at the same time " the ideal standard of conduct ethically considered." The universal End of conduct, therefore, is "life"— its preservation and development. But " in calling good the conduct which subserves life, and bad the conduct which hinders or destroys it, and in so implying that life is a blessing and not a curse, we are inevitably asserting that conduct is good or bad according as its total effects are pleasurable or painful." Looking at the inner side of conduct, and seeking to trace " the genesis of the moral consciousness," Mr Spen- cer finds its " essential trait " to be " the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings " ; and " the general truth disclosed by the study of evolving conduct, sub-human and human," is that, " for the better preservation of life, the primitive, simple, presentative feel- ings must be controlled by the later-evolved, compound, and representative feelings." Mr Spencer mentions three controls of this kind — the political, the religious, and the social. These do not, however, severally or together, " constitute the moral control, but are only preparatory to it — are controls within which the moral control evolves." " The restraints properly distinguished as moral are unlike those restraints out of which they evolve, and with which they are long confounded, in this — they refer not to the extrinsic effects of actions, but to their intrinsic effects. The truly moral deterrent is . . . constituted ... by a representation of the necessary natural results." Thus arises " the feeling of moral obligation," " the sen- timent of duty." " It is an abstract sentiment generated in a manner analogous to that in which abstract ideas are generated." On reflection, we observe that the common characteristic of the feelings which prompt to "good" conduct is that "they are all complex, re-representative 104 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 105 [; > feelings, occupied with the future rather than the pres- ent. The idea of authoritativeness has, therefore, come to be connected with feelings having these traits." There is, however, another element in the " abstract conscious- ness of duty "—viz., " the element of coerciveness." This Mr Spencer derives from the various forms of pre-moral restraint just mentioned. But, since the constant ten- dency of conduct is to free itself from these restraints, and to become self-dependent and truly "moral," "the sense of duty or^ moral obligation [i.e., as coercive] is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moralisation increases. . . . While at first the motive contains an element of coercion, at last this element of coercion dies out, and the act is performed without any conscious- ness of being obliged to perform it ; " and thus " the doing of work, originally under the consciousness that it ought to be done, may eventually cease to have any such accom- panying consciousness " and the right action will be done " with a simple feeling of satisfaction in doing it." Since the consciousness of obligation arises from the incomplete adaptation of the individual to the social conditions of his life, "with complete adaptation to the social state, that element in the moral consciousness which is ex- pressed by the word obligation will disappear. The higher actions required for the harmonious carrying on of life will be as much matters of course as are those lower actions which the simple desires prompt. In their proper times and places and proportions, the moral sen- timents will guide men just as spontaneously and ade- quately as now do the sensations."^ 1 'Data of Ethics,' 127-129. For the conflict between the interests of society and those of the individual, which is the source of the feeling of Obligation as coercive, is not absolute and permanent. A "conciliation" of these interests is possible. Egoism and Altruism both have their rights. When we study the history of evolving life, we find that " self-sacrifice is no less primordial than self-preservation," and that, through- out, "altruism has been evolving simultaneously with egoism." "From the dawn of life egoism has been de- pendent upon altruism, as altruism has been dependent upon egoism ; and in the course of evolution the recip- rocal services of the two have been increasing." Thus "pure egoism and pure altruism are both illegitimate;" and " in the progressing ideas and usages of mankind " a " compromise between egoism and altruism has been slowly establishing itself." Nay, a " concihation has been, and is, taking place between the interests of each citizen and the interests of citizens at large; tending ever to- wards a state in which the two become merged in one, and in which the feelings answering to them respectively fall into complete concord." Thus " altruism of a social kind . . . may be expected to attain a level at which it will be like parental altruism in spontaneity — a level such that ministration to others' happiness will become a daily need." This consummation will be brought about by the same agency which has effected the present partial conciliation — viz., sympathy, " which must advance as fast as conditions permit." During the earlier stages of the evolution sympathy is largely painful, on account of the existence of " much non- adaptation and much consequent unhappiness." " Gradually, then, and only gradually, as 106 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 107 these various causes of unhappiness become less, can sym- pathy become greater. ... But as the moulding and re- moulding of man and society into mutual fitness pro- gresses, and as the pains caused by unfitness decrease, sympathy can increase in presence of the pleasures that come from fitness. The two changes are, indeed, so related that each furthers the other." And the goal of evolution can only be perfect identity of interests, and the con- sciousness of that identity. One favourite conception of the Evolutionary school is missed in Mr Spencer's statement of the theory, that of the " Social Organism." Mr Leslie Stephen has used this idea with special skill in his ' Science of Ethics.' " Scientific " Utilitarianism, he insists, must rest upon a deeper view of society and of its relation to the individual. The old Utilitarianism conceived society as a mere " aggregate " of individuals. The utilitarian was still an " individualist " ; though he spoke of " the greatest number " of individuals, the individual was still his unit. Now, according to Mr Stephen, the true unit is not the individual, but society, which is not a mere " aggregate " of individuals, but an organism," of which the individual is a member. " So- ciety may be regarded as an organism, implying ... a social tissue, modified in various ways so as to form the organs adapted to various specific purposes." Further, the social organism and the underlying social tissue are to be regarded as evolving. The social tissue is being gradu- ally modified so as to form organs ever more perfectly adapted to fulfil the various functions of the organism as a whole ; and the goal of the movement is the evolution of the social " type "—that is, of that form of society which represents " maximum efficiency " of the given means to the given end of social life. In short, we may say that the problem which is receiving its gradual solution in the evolution of society is the production of a " social tissue," or fundamental structure, the most "vitally efficient." In describing the ethical End. therefore, we must substi- tute for " the greatest happiness of the greatest number " of individuals, the "health" of the social organism, or, still more accurately, of the social tissue. The true " util- ity " is not the external utility of consequences. Life is not " a series of detached acts, in each of which a man can calculate the sum of happiness or misery attainable by different courses." It is an organic growth ; and the re- sults of any given action are fully appreciated, only when the action is regarded, not as affecting its temporary " state," but as entering into and modifying the very sub- stance of its fundamental structure. The " scientific cri- terion," therefore, is not Happiness, but Health. "We obtain unity of principle when we consider, not the vari- ous external relations, but the internal condition of the organism. . . . We only get a tenable and simple law when we start from the structure, which is itself a unit." Nor are the two criteria — health and happiness — " really divergent ; on the contrary, they necessarily tend to coin- cide." The general correlation of the painful and the pernicious, the pleasurable and the beneficial, is obvious. " ' The useful,' in the sense of pleasure-giving, must ap- proximately coincide with the * useful ' in the sense of life- preserving. . . . We must suppose that pain and pleasure are the correlatives of certain states which may be roughly 108 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 109 II i ! I I regarded as the smooth and the distracted workmg of the physical machinery, and that, given those states, the sen- sations must always be present." And in the evolution of society we can trace the gradual approximation to coin- cidence of these two senses of " utility." Objectively considered, then, moral laws may be iden- tified with the conditions of social vitality, and morality may be called " the sum of the preservative instincts of a society." That these laws should be perceived with increasing clearness as the evolution proceeds, is a cor- ollary of the theory of Evolution ; as the social type is gradually elaborated, the conditions of its realisation will be more clearly perceived. Thus we reach the true interpretation of the subjective side of morality. Cor- responding to social welfare or health — the objective end — there is, in the member of society, a social in- stinct or sympathy with that welfare or health. The old opposition between the individual and society is fundamentally erroneous, depending as it does upon the inadequate mechanical conception of society already re- ferred to. " The difference between the sympathetic and the non-sympathetic feelings is a difference in their law or in the fundamental axiom which they embody." " The sympathetic being becomes, in virtue of his sympathies, a constituent part of a larger organisation. He is no more intelligible by himself alone than the limb is in all its properties intelligible without reference to the body." Just as " we can only obtain the law of the action of the several limbs" when we take the whole body into account, so with the feelings of "the being who has become part of the social organism. . . . Though feelings of the individual, their law can only be deter- mined by reference to the general social conditions." As a member of society, and not a mere individual, man cannot but be sympathetic. The growth of society im- plies, as its correlate, " the growth of a certain body of sentiment " in its members ; and, in accordance with the law of Natural Selection, this instinct, as pre-eminently useful to the social organism, w^ill be developed — at once extended and enlightened. "Every extension of reason- ing power implies a wider and closer identification of self with others, and therefore a greater tendencv to merge ' o I/O the prudential in the social axiom as a first principle of conduct." Thus what is generated in the course of Evolution is not merely a type of conduct, but a " type of character " ; not merely altruistic conduct, but "the elaboration and regulation of the sympathetic character which takes place through the social factor." We can trace the gradual process from the external to the internal form of mor- ality, from the law " Do this " to the law " Be this." We see how approval of a certain type of conduct develops into "approval of a certain type of character, the exist- ence of which fits the individual for membership of a thoroughly efficient and healthy social tissue." This, it is insisted, is the true account of Conscience. *' Moral approval is the name of the sentiment developed through the social medium, which modifies a man's character in such a way as to fit him to be an efficient member of the social tissue. It is the spiritual pressure which generates and maintains morality," the representative and spokesman of morality in the individual consciousness. I I I i 1 110 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. Ill (d) Ratiou- al Utili- tarianism. il "The conscience is the utterance of the public spirit of the race, ordering us to obey the primary conditions of its welfare." ^ 5. Hedonism is the Ethics of Sensibility, and we have traced how thinker after thinker of this school, each avail- ing himself of the new insight unavailable to his prede- cessors, has striven to solve the ethical problem in terms of feeling, to interpret the Good, whether our own or that of others, as, in the last analysis, a sentient rather than a rational or intellectual Good. In particular, we have watched the gradual solution of the problem of the rela- tion of the Good of the individual to the Good of others, the problem of Egoism and Altruism. We have seen Mill reconciling these two Goods, or rather resolving them into one, through our " feeling of unity with our fellow- men," a sympathy which identifies their good with our own, and which all the influences of advancing civilisation and moral education are tending to foster and develop. We have seen the Evolutionists relying upon the same agency of sympathetic feeling for the accomplishment of the desired reconciliation, and invoking the law of Evolu- tion and the conception of the Social Organism in behalf of their prediction of an ultimate harmony of the interests of all with the interests of each. Now, Professor Sidgwick, coming to the solution of the problem as it is thus handed to him, or rather as it is handed to him by Mill (for he does not take any apparent interest in the Evolutionary solu- tion of it), concludes that, as a problem of mere feeling, it 1 The above sketch of Evolutional Utilitarianism is taken from an article by the author on the " Evolution of Morality " (' Mind,' xiv. 27). is insoluble, and that the only possible solution of it is a rational solution. His endeavour, therefore, is to establish the rationality of Utilitarianism, and thus to provide its needed " proof." That proof is not, as Mill held, psycholo- gical, but logical ; and he sets himself, as he says, to dis- cover " the rational basis that I had long perceived to be wanting to the Utilitarianism of Bentham [and of Mill] regarded as an ethical doctrine." The resulting theory he calls " Eational Utilitarianism." Agreeing with the hedonistic interpretation of the End as a sentient Good or a Good of feelinij:, Mr Sidijwick finds it necessary to appeal to reason for the regidative principles — the principles of the distribution of this Good. (1) Without passing beyond the circle of the individual life, we find it necessary to employ a rational principle in the choice of sentient satisfaction. The bridge on which we pass from pure to modified Hedonism, from Cyrenaicism to Epicureanism, from the irresponsible en- joyment of the moment to a well-planned and successful life of pleasure, from pleasure to Happiness, is a bridge of reason, not of feeling. To feeling, the present moment's claim to satisfaction is paramount — its claim is felt more imperatively than that of any other ; it is to the eye of thought alone that the true perspective of the moments and of their capacities of pleasure is revealed. When we reflect or think, we see that the Good is not a thing of the passing moments, but of the total life ; reason carries us, as feeling never could, past a regard for our " momentary good " to a regard for our " good on the whole." Feeling needs the instruction of reason — our self-love has to be- come a rational, as distinguished from a merely sentient ^ } I I 1" u I. 112 THE MORAL IDEAL. a t( t love of self. Keason dictates an " impartial concern for all parts of our conscious life," an equal regard for the rights of all the moments, the future as well as the present, the remote as well as the near; teaches short- sighted Veeling, with its eye filled with the present, that ^Hereafter is to be regarded as much as JSToiv" and that a smaller present good is not to be preferred to a greater future good." When the Good is enjoyed, now or then, to-morrow or next year, is, or may be, to Eeason a matter of indifference, while to Feeling it is almost everything ; it is for Reason to educate Feeling, until Feeling shares her own perspective. This rational principle which guides us in the distribution of our own Good is Prudence. But the path of Prudence is not itself alone the path of Virtue. Even one's own " good on the whole " is not ipso facto the same as the general good. Whence shall we derive the principle of the distribution of Good when the Good is the Good of all, and not merely that of the in- dividual. How construct the bridge that will span the interval between our own good and that of others, and correlate altruistic with egoistic conduct? For, once more, mere Feeling does not constitute the bridge between Egoism and Altruism. The dualism of Prudence and Virtue, regard for our own good and regard for the good of others or the general good, remains for Feeling irresolvable. Society never quite annexes the individual ; his good and its never absolutely coincide in the sphere of sensibility. But reason solves the problem which is for feeling in- soluble. The true proof of Utilitarianism or Altruistic Hedonism is not psychological, but logical. When " the egoist offers the proposition that his happiness or pleasure HEDONISM. 113 is good, not only for him, but absolutely, he gives the ground needed for such a proof. For we can then point out to him that his happiness cannot be a more important part of Good, taken universally, than the equal happiness of any other person. And thus, starting with his own principle, he must accept the wider notion of universal happiness or pleasure, as representing the real end of Eeason, the absolutely Good or Desirable." To feeling it makes all the difference in the world, whether it is my own happiness or some one else's that is in question ; to reason this distinction also is, like the distinction of time, a matter of indifference. As, to the eye of reason, there is no distinction between the near and the remote, but every moment of the individual life has its equal right to satis- faction, so is there no distinction between meum and tmtm, but eacli individual, as equally a sentient being, has an equal right to consideration. " Here again, just as in the former case, by considering the relation of the integrant parts to the whole and to each other, we may obtain the self-evident principle that the good of any individual is of no more importance, as a part of universal good, than the good of any other ; unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more good is likely to be realised in the one case than in the other. And as rational beings, we are manifestly bound to aim at good generally, not merely at this or that part of it." That " impartiality " which Bentham and Mill declared essential to utilitarian morality, in which " each is to count for one, and no one for more than one," is the impartiality of reason, to which mere feeling could never attain. This rational principle, which alone can guide us in the dis- i I 114 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 115 tribution of happiness between ourselves and others, is " the abstract principle of the duty of Benevolence." To Prudence must be added Benevolence. But, in order to a perfectly rational distribution of Happiness, whether among the competing moments of the individual life or among competing individuals, yet a third principle of reason must be invoked. Whether we are considering the sum-total of our own happiness or of the general happiness, we find that the constituent parts have not all» an equal importance. Some moments in the individual life arc more important than others, because they have a larger or a peculiar capacity for pleasure ; and some individuals are more important than others, because they too have a larger or a peculiar capacity for pleasure. Neither in the individual nor in the social sphere is there a dead level of absolute equality ; there are rational grounds for recognising inequality in both. Accordingly, if the maximum of happiness is to be realised, the strict literal " impartiality " of the prin- ciples of Prudence and Benevolence must be enlightened by the better insight of a higher Justice which, with its yet stricter scrutiny and more perfect impartiality, shall recognise the true claim and the varying importance of each moment and of each individual. It is, indeed, rather a principle of Equity than of Justice, a " Lesbian rule " which adapts itself to the inequalities and variations of that living experience which it measures. As such, it is the true and ultimate economic principle of Hedonism. In- stead of depressing the maximum to a rigid average, by distributing the " greatest happiness " equally among the " greatest number " of moments or of individuals, the prin- ciple of Justice directs us to aim at the greatest total happiness, or the greatest happiness "on the whole," whether in our own experience or in that of the race. IT. — Critical Estimate of Hedonism. 6. The formal merits of Hedonism as a philosophical («) its psy. theory of morals are of the highest order. It is a bold inade^''^^ and skilfully executed effort to satisfy the philosophical '^"^''^^• demand for unity. It offers a clear and definite con- ception of the End of life, a principle of unity under which its most diverse elements are capable of being brought, and under which they receive at least a very plausible interpretation. It acknowledges the growth and change which have characterised the course of moral theory and practice; it recognises the fact that morality is an evolution, and has a history ; and it offers a philosophy of this history, a theory of this evolution. Nor does it fall into the fallacy of reading its own philo- sophical theory into the ordinary naive moral conscious- ness of mankind. The dominating tendency of the entire ethical movement, it insists, is utilitarian and hedonistic ; but this tendency is present unconsciously and implicitly oftener than consciously and explicitly. Until we reflect, we may not realise that the End which we seek in all our actions is pleasure ; but let us once reflect, and we cannot fail to detect its constant presence and opera- tion. And when we follow the history of the theory, from its ancient beginnings in Cyrenaicism to its classical development in Epicureanism, and from the Egoism of Paley to the Altruism of Bentham and Mill, and the 116 THE MORAL IDEAL. Evolutionism of Spencer and his school, we must admire not only the strenuous perseverance with which the old formula has been stretched again and again so as to ac- commodate higher and hitherto unconsidered aspects of the ethical problem, but also the skill and open-mindedness, the sense of moral reality, the vitality of thought, which have enabled the theory to adapt itself so readily and so naturally to new moral and intellectual conditions. A peculiar and, to a certain extent, an unwarranted plausibility has, however, accrued to the theory from its appropriation of the term "Happiness" to express its conception of the ethical end. We hear the theory as often called " Eudc^monism " as " Hedonism," the " Happi- ness-theory " as the " Pleasure-theory." It would conduce to clearness of thought if these terms were kept apart. For, as Aristotle says, we are all agreed in describing the End as Happiness (evSaifJiovlal but we differ as to the definition of Happiness. Pleasure (^Bovrj) is one among other interpretations of Happiness, and, though it may be the most usual, its justice and adequacy must be con- sidered and vindicated, like those of any other interpre- tation. Happiness is, in itself, merely equivalent to " Well-being " or " Welfare," and the nature of this may be described in other terms, as well as in those of Pleasure. Pleasure is cTSthetic or emotional welfare, welfare of Sen- sibility ; but there is also intellectual welfare, and that welfare' of the Will or total active Self which is rather well-doing than well-being (e^ ?r}i; Kal e^ TrpdrreLv), The Welfare or Happiness may be that of the sentient, or of the intellectual, or of the total (sentient and intellectual) or active Self. No doubt. Pleasure, or the Happiness of HEDONISM. 117 the sentient self, is the only term we have to describe the content of Happiness. But to exclude the possibility of any other interpretation by identifying Happiness and Pleasure at the outset, and using these terms interchange- ably throughout the discussion, is, it seems to me, to employ a " question-begging epithet." The thesis, of which Hedonism ought to be the demonstration, is that Happi- ness is pleasure or the "sum of pleasures." Eealising this to be the true state of the argument, we may now proceed to consider the legitimacy and adequacy of the hedonistic interpretation of Happiness. There need be the less hesitation in styling the theory in question the " pleasure-theory," rather than, more vaguely if more plausibly, the " happiness-theory," since the Epicureans of old, almost as eagerly as Mill and his successors in our own time, have maintained the claims of the term "pleasure" to the highest emotional connotation. The real question at issue, let us understand, is the legitimacy of the limitation of the conception of Happiness to the sentient or emotional sphere. Now, the fundamental inadequacy of Hedonism, already suggested in the above remarks, is a psychological one^ The hedonistic theory of life is based upon a one-sided theory of human nature. Man is regarded as, fundamentally and essentially, a sentient being, a creature of sensibility ; and therefore the end of his life is conceived in terms of sensibility, or as sentient satisfaction. Now, there is no doubt that sensibility is a large and important element in human life; the question is, whether it is the ultimate and characteristic element. This question must, I think, be answered in the negative. We are so constituted as to 118 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 119 be susceptible to pleasure and pain, and we might con- ceivably make this susceptibility the sole guide of our life. That we cannot do so consistently with our nature, is because we are also so constituted as to regulate our feelings by reference not only to one another, but to the rational nature which belongs to our humanity and differ- entiates us from the animal creation. In the animal life, pleasure and pain are the " sovereign masters " ; in ours, they are subjected to the higher sovereignty of reason. " If pleasure is the sovereign good, it ought to satisfy absolutely all our faculties ; not only our sensibility, but also our intelligence and will." Or rather, it must satisfy the "nature" which these faculties, in their unity and totality, constitute, and must satisfy that " nature " in its unity and totality. But pleasure, or sentient satisfaction, is not a category adequate to the interpretation of the life of such a being as man. The hedonistic theory of life purchases its simplicity and lucidity at the expense of depth and comprehensiveness of view. Its formula is too simple. Its End is abstract and one-sided, the exponent of the life of feeling merely; the true End must be the exponent of the rational, as well as of the sentient self. It may be difficult to describe such an End ; but the dif- ficulty of the ethical task is the inevitable result of the complexity of man's nature. The very clearness and simplicity of Hedonism is, in this sense, its condemnation. It is doubtless pleasing to the logical sense to see the whole of our complex human life reduced to the simple terms of Sensibility. But the true principle of unity must take fuller account of the complexity of the problem ; insight must not be sacrificed to system — the true system will be the result of the deepest insight. Festina lente is the watchword in Ethics as in Metaphysics ; the true thinker, in either sphere, will not make haste. And if Plato was right when he said that the good life is a harmony of diverse elements, he was also right when he said that the key to this harmony is to be found rather in Keason than in Sensibility. To a psychologist who, like Mill and Bain, or like the ancient Cyrenaics, resolves our entire experience into feeling or sensibility, such a criticism would not, of course, appeal. He would disallow the distinction between reason and sensibility, and maintain that the former differs from the latter only in respect of its greater com- plexity, that " reason," so - called, is but the complex product of associated feelings. Hedonism in Ethics is the logical correlate of Sensationalism in Psychology. But, short of such a psychological demonstration, the Aristo- telian argument holds, that the End of any being must be in accordance with its peculiar nature ; and, since sensibilitv assimilates man to the animals, and reason differentiates him from them, his true well-being must be found in a rationally guided life, rather than in a life whose sole guide and " sovereign master " is . sensibility. 7. This psychological error produces in its turn a mis- (5) its inad- . equate in- leadmg and inverted view of Character, an estimate of terpreta- it which surely misses its true significance. The most character, obvious defect of the theory is its externalism. Its point of view is that of consequences and results, and only in- directly that of motives and intentions ; conduct alone is 120 THE MORAL IDEAL. of direct and primary importance, the significance of character is indirect and secondary. The attainment of a certain type of character, or of a certain bent of will, is, indeed, of the highest importance, but only because it is the surest guarantee for a certain type of activity. The latter is desirable in itself, and as an end ; the former is desirable only as the best means towards the attainment of this end. Character, in other words, is instrumental ; the " good-will "»is a means to an end, not an end-in- itself ; will, like reason, is subordinated to feeling. The whole estimate of motives, as compared with actual con- sequences, in the hedonistic school, implies this view; but we have the explicit statement of Mill himself as to the real importance of the good will. " It is because of the importance to others of being able to rely absolutely on our feelings and conduct, and to oneself of being able to rely on one's own, that the will to do right ought to be cultivated into this habitual independence. In other words, this state of the will is a means to good, not in- trinsically a good." 1 Which is to say that the state of feeling, or the production of pleasure, is the end, "the only thing always and altogether good " ; while the char- acter of the will is only a means to this end. Professor Gizycki forms precisely the same estimate of the good will: "Virtue is the highest excellence of man. It is not an excellence of the body, but of the mind ; and not of the understanding, but of the will. Virtue, therefore, is excellence of will, or, in short, a good will. Why is it the highest excellence? Because nothing so much accords with the ultimate standard of all values. The 1 t Utilitarianism,' ch. iv. HEDONISM. 121 character of man is the principal source of the happiness, as well as of the misery, of mankind. Certainly also health, strength, and intelligence are essential conditions of human welfare ; but the good-will is still more essen- tial, for only it guarantees a benevolent direction of the others." ^ The good man, then, according to the hedon- istic estimate, is simply a reliable instrument, warranted not to go wrong, but to continue steadily producing the greatest amount of happiness possible in the circum- stances, whether for himself or for others. Now, this interpretation of character, it seems to me, falsifies the healthy moral consciousness of mankind, by simply reversing its estimate. That estimate is that character, the attainment of a certain type of personality or bent of will, is not a means but an end-in-itself ; that this, and not the production of a certain state of feeling, is the only thing which is always and altogether good, and itself "the ultimate standard of all values." And why ? Because character is the expression and exponent of the total personality. Neither the emotional nor the in- tellectual state, but that state of Will which includes them both, is the ultimate and absolute Good, the chief End of man. It is true that this form of heing is always at the same time a form of doing, that character and conduct are inseparable, that eft? expresses itself in ivepyeLa. But the character is not there for the sake of the conduct, the being for the sake of the doing. That would still be an external view, and would make character merely instru- mental. This is true even of Mr Stephen's view that moral progress is always from the form " Bo this " to the 1 'Moral Philosophy,' 112 (Eng. tr.) 122 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 123 form " Be this." As long as we thus distinguish the being from the doing, the character from the conduct, our inter- pretation must be inadequate. For we are still thinking of will as if it were a machine, cunningly contrived so as to produce something beyond itself. But, as Aristotle points out, the activity may be itself the end, and in natural activities {(^vaiKai), as distinguished from artificial {rexvLicai), this is the case. Above all, in the case of the human will, the Qnd is not something beyond the activity, but is simply ivipyeca -v/r^x^?, such an ivipjeia as leads to the formation of a certain e^t?, or habit of similar activity. The will is not to be regarded as making something else (even a state of feeling), but always and only as making itself. By separating the action from the person, conduct from character, and by placing the emphasis on the con- duct rather than on the person, Hedonism misses the real significance of both. The ethical importance of actions is only indirect, as the exponents of character ; the ethical importance of character is direct and absolute. Charac- ter and activity are inseparable ; character is a habitual activity. But the ethical activity which is identical with character is not properly regarded as productive of any- thing beyond itself ; it is its own end, and exceeding great reward. (c)itsre.so- 8. In yet another respect does the hedonistic theory vSTuetito invalidate, instead of explaining, the healthy moral con- fnc^y.*^'" sciousness of mankind ; it resolves Virtue into Prudence, and sees in Duty only a larger and wiser Expediency. The distinction between good and evil becomes a merely relative one, a distinction of degree and not of kind. All motives being essentially the same, moral evil is resolved into intellectual error; the ethical distinction disappears in the psychological identity. " On the hedon- istic supposition, every object willed is on its inner side, or in respect of that which moves the person willing, the same. The difference between objects willed lies on their outer side, in effects which follow from them, but are not included in them as motives to the person willing." Thus Bentham says that though "it is common to speak of actions as proceeding from good or bad motives," "the expression is far from being an accurate one," and it is " requisite to settle the precise meaning of it, and observe how far it quadrates with the truth of things. With respect to goodness and badness, as it is with everything else that is not itself either pain or pleasure, so is it with motives. If they are good or bad, it is only on account of their efi'ects : good, on account of their tendency to pro- duce pleasure, or avert pain ; bad, on account of their tendency to produce pain, or avert pleasure. Now the case is, that from one and the same motive, and from every kind of motive, may proceed actions that are good, others that are bad, and others that are indifferent." ^ He concludes that "there is no such thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a bad one." " Let a man's motive be ill-will ; call it even malice, envy, cruelty ; it is still a kind of pleasure that is his motive : the pleasure he takes at the thought of the pain which he sees, or expects to see, his adversary undergo. Now even this wretched pleasure, taken by itself, is good : it may be faint ; it may be short: it must at any rate be impure: yet while it ^ ' Principles of Morals and Legislation,' chap. x. sees. 11, 12. 124 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 125 lasts, and before any bad consequences arrive, it is as good as any other that is not more intense." ^ In this interpretation of motives we see demonstrated once more the externalism and the intellectualism of the theory.- The criterion is found outside the action, in the conse- quences ; not within the action, in the motive. Actions are simply tendencies to produce certain o^esidts ; and in so far as we are forced from the outer to the inner view of the action, from* the result itself to the tendency, our judgment proceeds entirely upon the relative intellectual efficiency of the tendency in question. The difference between Virtue and Vice is reduced to one between Prudence and Imprudence. The intellectual process may be more or less correct, the vision of the consequences may be more or less clear ; but, inasmuch as the moral or practical source of the action is always found in the same persistent and dominant desire for pleasure, the intrinsic value of the action remains invariable. As Professor Laurie puts it : "A man may be careless or stupid, and cast up the columns of his conduct-ledger wrong ; or he may be foolish, unwise, intellectually perverse ; but noth- inc^ more and nothing worse." Of such a theory must we not say, with Green, that " though excellent men have argued themselves into it, it is a doctrine which, nakedly put, offends the unsophisticated conscience ; " that, instead of explaining morality. Hedonism explains it away ? For the very essence of morality is that the distinction between aood and evil is a distinction of jprinciple and not merely of residt, an intrinsic and essential, not an extrinsic and contingent distinction. With the elimination of this dis- 1 Loc. cit., sec. 10, note. tinction in principle, the strictly ethical element in the case is eliminated. With the glory of the Ideal, vanishes also the shame and sorrow of failure to attain it; with the critical significance of moral alternative vanishes also the infinite possibility of moral life ; all its lights and shadows, all the strangely interesting "colours of good and evil" disappear, leaving the blank monotony of a prudential calculation. 9. Hedonism seems to me still further to break down {d) its ac- count of moral reality by its interpretation of moral law as essen- Duty, tially identical with physical, by its resolution of the ideal into the actual, of the Ought into the Is. This criticism has been well put by Professor Sidgwick in the statement that "psychological hedonism is incompatible with ethical hedonism." If it is the law of our nature to seek pleasure, then there is no more meaning in the com- mand, " Thou shalt seek it," than there would be in the command, "Thou shalt fall" to the stone, whose nature it is to fall. The law or uniformity of nature is in the one case physical, in the other psychological; but in both cases it is uniformity of nature. In the words of Ben- tham, so " sovereign " are those " masters " — pain and pleasure — that " it is for them alone," not only " to point out what we ought to do," but " to determine what we shall do. On the one hand, the standard of right and wrong, on the other, the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think ; every effort we can make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire. i 126 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 127 but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while." ^ If pleasure is the constant and inevitable object of desire, and also the true end of life, it cannot present itself, except temporarily or relatively, as ethical Law or Ought, as " dictate " or '' imperative." But, with this resolution of moral law into natural law, the conception of Duty or Obligation is at once invalidated. Man's attitude to the " law " of his life becomes essentiallv the same as the attitude of oMier natural beings ; in him, as in all else — animal, plant, inorganic thing — nature must in- evitably achieve its own end. The only difference be- tween man and the other beings is that he can see further reaches of the road which he and they must in common travel. This inevitable logic of the theory is recognised by its modern disciples, and the attempt is made, in the true empirical spirit, to account for the illusion of Obligation by establishing its relative validity, and by exhibiting its genesis and function. Two classes of "sanctions" have been recognised — the external and the internal. Ben- tham recognises only the external sanctions — physical, political, moral or popular, and religious — four forces, ultimately resolvable into the single force of nature itself, which coerce man to act for the general happiness rather than selfishly to seek his own. Mill, Spencer, and Bain also lay much stress upon the external sanctions of morality — the coercion of public opinion, the law of the land, education, &c. They insist, however, that the ulti- mate sanction is an internal one. There is an authority other than that of mere force ; the element of coercion is ^ 'Principles of Morals and Legislation,' ch. i. sec. 1. not the ultimate factor in morality. There is an inner authority which comes from insight into the utility of our actions. The recognition of this inner authority brings with it emancipation from Obligation in the sense of coercion, and the substitution of spontaneity for con- straint. This emancipation, however, merely means, as Evolutionism explains it, that the laws of his environ- ment, physical and social, have become the laws of man's own life; that the outer has become an inner law; and that he does not feel the pressure any more, because the moulding of him into the form of his environment has been perfected. Thus the evolution of Morality falls within the evolution of Nature, and our fancied emanci- pation from the force of the " nature of things " is only a demonstration of the perfection of Nature's mastery over us. But, indeed, an ultimate vindication of Obligation is obviously impossible on the hedonistic theory. Feeling cannot be the source of this idea. Sensibility, being essentially subjective and variable, cannot yield the objectivity and universality of the ethical imperative. If the state of my sensibility be the sole criterion of good and evil activity, I cannot (theoretically at least) be obliged to do what offends my sensibility ; I must so act as to gratify it. But feeling is just that element in my nature and experience which I cannot universalise ; my sensibility is my intimate and exclusive individual prop- erty, and its word must be final for me. I cannot even be coerced to act against the dictates of my feeling ; if, in my own nature, I have no other guide, then the outward constraint must become the inward constraint of sensi- 128 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 129 bility, and this necessity of feeling is still the Must, or rather the Is, of nature, not the Ought - to - be of morality. But is not such a translation of Ought into Must or Is a violation once more of the healthy moral consciousness of mankind? The reality of moral obli- gation stands or falls with the reality of the distinc- tion between the ideal and the actual; moral obliga- tion is man's attitude towards the moral Ideal. If, therefore, we resolve the ideal into the actual, as "psychological hedonism" does, we make the attitude of duty impossible. This consequence is frankly accepted by the Evolu- tionary school. The sense of obligation is, they say, only temporary, existing during the earlier stages of the evolu- tion of morality, but destined to disappear with the com- pletion of the process. Moral life is, in its ideal, perfectly spontaneous, and is always tending to become more entirely so. "The feeling of obligation tends to dis- appear, as fast as moralisation progresses." But is not the conception of Duty or Obligation a central and essential element of the moral life, to be explained and vindicated in its permanent and absolute validity, rather than explained away as only temporarily and relatively valid? Moral progress, while in a sense it liberates us from the irksomeness of duty, also brings with it a larger sense of duty, and a more entire submission to it. The disappearance of the conception would mean either sinking to the level of the brutes or rising to the divine. As Kant contended, to act without a sense of obligation does not become our station in the moral It is this characteristic of the moral life that separates it for ever from the life of nature. The moral life cannot, as moral, become " spontaneous " or simply " natural." The goal of the physical evolution and that of the moral are not ipso facto the same. A perfectly comfortable life, that is, a life in which the discomfort of imperfect adaptation to the conditions of life should no longer be felt, would not be a perfect moral life. Thus, as from the non-moral a quasi-moiBlitj was evolved, so into the non-moral it would ultimately disappear. To " naturalise the moral man " would be to destroy morality. To make the sense of duty a coefficient of the real, by interpreting it as merely the transitional effect and manifestation of the imperfect adjustment of the in- dividual to his environment, may be a partial account, but is at any rate a very inadequate account of the moral situation. That situation is not fully understood until, in the consciousness of Law and Duty, is heard the eternal claim of the ideal upon the actual. 10. This leads us to remark that Hedonism, as an (e) Failure ethical theory, can never account for more than the con- bmty to tent or " raw material " of morality ; the form, or prin- principle ciple of arrangement, of this raw material must be found distrlbu-^^ universe. elsewhere. In other words, sensibility does not provide for its own organisation ; the unifying principle of its " mere manifold " must be found in a rational and not in a sensible principle. To adopt a Kantian phrase, we may say that if reason without feeling is empty, feeling without reason is blind. This is only to repeat what Plato and Aristotle, and even Socrates, said long ago — viz., that the ordering and guiding principle of human life is to be tion. 130 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 131 found in " right reason," and that it is the place of feeling to submit itself to that higher guidance and control. Feeling is capricious, peculiar to the individual, clamant, chaotic; its life, unchecked by the control of rational insight and foresight, would be a chameleon-like life, a thin- that owed its shape and colour to the moments as they'passed. If the life of sensibility is to be unified or organised, it cai^ only be through the presence and opera- tion in it of rational principle. This problem of the organisation of sensibility early forced itself upon the attention of hedonistic moralists. It was seen that the ordering of man's life is in his own hands, that the organisation of sensibility which is effected for the animal must be effected ly man ; and the question forced itself upon reflection, Whither must we look for cTuidance ? Is feeling self-sufhcient, or must the appeal be made from feeling to reason ? The history of Hedon- ism reveals, as we have seen, a growing place for reason in the life of feeling. The significance of this appeal to reason in an ethic of sensibility was not at first perceived, and we find the appeal made accordingly with all open- ness and confidence by the Epicurean school. A success- ful life of feeling, a life which shall attain the end of sentient existence, must be, as they maintain, a rationally conducted life, which plans and considers and is always master of itself. The supreme virtue is Prudence. Modern hedonists have been no less conscious of the necessity of solving the problem of the organisation of feeling. The utilitarians especially have widened the problem so as to include the organisation of the social as well as of the individual life. To the ancient virtue of Prudence they have added the modern virtue of Benevolence. The problem of organisation has thus become more clamant and more complex than ever. A rational solution of this problem, however, is seen to be inconsistent with Hedon- ism, and to involve a surrender of the case for the adequacy of that theory of life. The attempt has been made, accordingly, in different ways, to reduce this ap- parently rational control of sensibility to a mere control of feeling by feeling. Let us consider the success of these efforts, in the case (1) of the individual, and (2) of the social life. (1) One of the chief novelties of Mill's statement of the (i) Within hedonistic Ethics is his recognition of a qualitative, as well viduTi Ufe. as a quantitative, difference between feelings. Feelings are, he insists, higher and lower, as well as more or less intense, enduring, &c. ; they differ in rank, as well as in strength. A new element is thus added to the definition of Happiness. The pleasures of the mind are superior to those of the body, not merely because the former are en- during and fruitful in other pleasures, while the latter are evanescent and apt to carry with them painful conse- quences, but because the former are the pleasures of the higher, the latter those of the lower nature. Now, the plea for this distinction of quality stands or falls with the validity or invalidity of the reference to the source of the pleasures compared. But the invalidity of such a refer- ence, from the standpoint of Hedonism, is perfectly ob- vious. If pleasure is the only good, then pleasure itself IS the only consideration ; the source of the pleasure has no hedonistic significance, and ought not to enter into the hedonistic calculus. If Hedonism will be " psychological," 132 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 133 I! it must forego this distinction of source, and, with it, the distinction of quality in pleasures. Mill's appeal is, like Plato's, to those qualified, by their wide experience and their powers of introspection, to judge of the relative value of pleasures. The thinker knows the pleasures of thought as well as the pleasures, say, of sport, while the sportsman knows only the latter class of pleasures and not the fornjer ; the thinker's preference for the pleas- ures of thought has, therefore, the authority of experience. The preference of the higher nature covers the case of the lower, but not vice versd. But, on the hedonistic theory, this claim to authority must be disallowed. The prefer- ence of the higher nature covers only the case of the higher nature, the case of those on the same plane of sen- sibility as itself. Its preference (and the deliverance founded upon it) cannot be authoritative for a lower nature, for a being on a different plane of sensibility. A "lower" pleasure will be more intense to a "lower" nature ; and if pleasure be the only standard, I cannot be asked to give up a greater for a less pleasure, to sacrifice quantity to quality. Quality is an extra-hedonistic crite- rion ; the only hedonistic criterion is quantity — "the intensity of each kind, as experienced by those to whom it is most intense." Indeed, the so-called difference of quality will be found to resolve itself (so far as pleasure is concerned) into a difference of quantity for the higher nature. To the higher nature, the higher pleasure is also the more intense pleasure ; to the thinker, say, the pleas- ures of thought are more intense than the pleasures of the chase. This greater intensity is the only hedon- istic ground of the higher nature's preference for its own chosen pleasures. Upon the lower nature the lower pleas- ures have, qud pleasures, an equally rightful and irresist- ible claim ; and upon such a nature the higher pleasures will have no claim until for it too they have become more intense, or the means to a more intense pleasure. Only thus can they make good their superior claim at the bar of sensibility. If we press Mill to assign the ultimate ground of this preference, and of the corresponding difference in kind between pleasures, he refers us to the " sense of dignity " which is natural to man, and forms " an essential part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong." Socrates would rather be Socrates discontented than a contented fool ; he could not lower himself to the fool's status and the fool's satisfaction, without the keenest sense of dissatis- faction, and therefore of misery. But this " sense of dig- nity" cannot be resolved into desire of pleasure; and while it certainly regulates man's pleasures, and becomes a real element in his happiness, it is itself the constant testimony to the possibility and the imperativeness for man of a higher life than that of mere pleasure. It is the utterance of the rational self behind the self of sensibility, demanding a satisfaction worthy of it — the expression of its undying aspiration after a life which shall be the per- fect realisation of its unique possibilities, and of its eternal and " divine discontent " with any life that falls short of such realisation of itself. Not the attainment of pleasure as such, but the finding one's pleasure in activities which are worthy of this higher and rational nature, — such is the end set before us by our peculiar human " sense of dignity." This interpretation of the end does enable us 134 THE MORAL IDEAL. to understand the intrinsic difference of pleasures, but only at the expense of surrendering Hedonism as a suffi- cient ethical theory. For it is not as pleasures that the pleasures are *' higher " or " lower." The clue to the dis- tinction is found in their common relation to the one identical rational self ; according as it is more or less fully satisfied, by being more or less fully realised, is the pleas- ure " hif^her " or " lower." Otherwise, there is no such distinction. The " dignity " is the dignity of reason, not of feeling. So great is that dignity of reason that, in its presence, the claims of feeling may be hushed to utter silence ; that, before its higher claim, the question of pleas- ure and pain, in all their infinite degrees, may not be even heard. Are there not occasions at least when we must take this " heroic " view of life, and in our loyalty to an eternal principle of right, above all particular sentient selves and their pleasures and pains, be content to sacrifice all our capacity for pleasure, it may be utterly and for ever ? Such an action can only be described as faithful- ness to the true self, to the divine ideal of our manhood ; and the fact of the possibility of such an action and of other actions which, though on a more ordinary plane, would yet be impossible but for the inspiration of such a spirit, proves that, though man is an individual subject of feeling — of passion so intense that it may seem at times to constitute his very life — he is something more, and, in vir- tue of that " something more," is capable of rising above himself, above his own little life of clamant sensibility, and viewing himself and his present activity sub specie ceternitatis, in the clear light of eternal truth and right, as a member of a rational order of being, and subject to the HEDONISM. 135 law of that order. But for such an estimate of life He- donism, as the Ethics of Sensibility, cannot find a place. Other hedonistic writers, recognising the impossibility of reconciling Mill's doctrine of the intrinsic difference of pleasures with orthodox Hedonism, have attempted to find the clue to the organisation of sensibility outside, in the " external sanctions " already mentioned, in the pressure of society upon the individual. The seat of authority is, they hold, outside the individual, in the law of the land, in public opinion, &c. ; not within, in the individual con- science. The inner authority is only the reflection of the outer. No doubt there is a great deal of truth in this, as a representation of the normal course of moral education. Until a moral being has learned to control himself, he must be controlled from without ; until the moral order is developed within him, that order must be impressed upon him. But the progress of moral education brings us, sooner or later, to the stage at which the outer law, if it is to maintain its influence, must produce its "certificate of birth," or, in other words, must show that it is only the reflection of an inner order. The rationale of the outward order, the Why of the social forces, must inevitably become a question. This solution, therefore, only pushes the problem a step farther back. The Evolutionists see that the external controls — the physical, social, religious — are really " pre-moral controls within which the moral control evolves," — its scaffoldino^, to be taken down as soon as the structure is complete. The external pressure of environment must be superseded by an internal psychological pressure. This inner, and strictly moral, control is described by Spencer as the sub- 136 THE MORAL IDEAL. jection of the earlier-evolved, simpler, and presentative feelings to the later-evolved, more complex, and repre- sentative feelings. But why this subordination? Not simply because the one set of feelings occur earlier and the other occur later in the evolution, but because the one class of feelings are more efficient factors in the evo- lution of conduct than the other. But how are we to judge of the value of the Evolution itself ? What is the ideal or type of conduct which' it is desirable to evolve ? Our old question recurs once more, therefore, in the new form : What is the criterion of ethical value, by which we may define and determine moral evolution or progress ? Whither moves the ethical process ; what form of conduct do we judge to be worth evolving ? Are the " ethical process " and the " cosmical process " the same, or even coincident ? The fact that one of the greatest living representatives of scientific Evolutionism has found himself forced to deny both the identity and the coincidence, is striking proof that this is no capricious or imaginary question.^ The fact of a certain order, and the fact of its gradual genesis or development in time, furnish no answer to the question of the raison d'etre of the fact; here, as elsewhere, the answer to the Quid Facti is no answer to the Quid Juris. I think we can now see that it is the sheer stress of logic that has driven Professor Sidgwick to appeal from the bar of sensibility to that of reason for the lacking element of moral authority, for the organising principle of the moral life. Even within the sphere of individual experience, sensibility does not provide a principle which 1 Cf. Professor Huxley's Romanes Lecture on " Evolution and Ethics." HEDONISM. 137 shall determine its own distribution. How to compass the attainment of the " greatest happiness," not for the moment but " on the whole," is a problem which feeling alone is unable to solve. The content of the moral life may be furnished by sensibility, as the content of the intellectual life is furnished by sensation; but the form or principle of arrangement of this " raw material," the unifying and organising principle, is, in the one case as in the other, the birth of reason. (2) When we pass beyond the sphere of the individual life to that of society, we find the same impasse for Hedon- ism. If sensibility does not provide the principle of its own distribution within the individual life, still less does it provide the principle of its distribution between ourselves and others. If the life of Prudence cannot be reduced to terms of mere sensibility, still less can the life of Justice and Benevolence ; if the instruction of reason is necessary in the former case, it is even more obviously necessary in the latter. Yet the disciples of Hedonism have boldly thrown themselves into this forbidding breach, and in various ways have sought to demonstrate that, here again, what seems to be the product of reason is, in reality, the product of sensibility. In the first place. Mill has tried to extend his " psychological proof " of Hedonism in general to Altruistic Hedonism, or Utilitarianism. Since each desires his own happiness, it follows that the general happiness is desired by all. But the logical gap is so evident that it is difficult to believe that Mill himself was not aware of it. The aggregate happiness may be the end for the aggregate of individuals, and the happiness of each may be a unit in this aggregate end. But to con- (2) Be- tween tlie individual and soci- ety. 138 THE MORAL IDEAL. elude that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is therefore directly, and as such, an end for each individ- ual, is to commit the notorious fallacy of Division. In- directly and secondarily— that is, as the means to the attainment of his own happiness-the general happiness may become an end for the individual; and thus an altruism may be reached, which is merely a "trans- figured " or " mediate " egoism, and benevolence may be provisionally vindicated as only a subtler and more refined selfishness. This, however, is not the altruism of Mill and the Utilitarian school. Their aim is to establish benevolence as the direct and substantive law of the moral life, as the first, and not the second, commandment of a true moral code. They offer the greatest happiness of the greatest number as itself the End, not a means to one's own greatest happiness. Mill is conscious of the difficulty of the transition from egoism to altruism, and he looks to sensibility to fill the logical gap. We have ?i feeling for the happiness of others as^welllis for our own, as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson and Hume had already maintained; let us take- our ground upon this psychological fact-this " feeling of unity " with our fellows, a mighty emotional force which must break down any barriers of mere logic. To this disinterested sympathy we may confidently commit the task of the complete reconciliation of the general with the individual happiness. For we may expect an indefinite development of the feeling, as the pain which sympathy now carries with it is superseded by the pleasure of sympathy with more complete lives ; or, as Spencer states it in the lan- ouace of Evolution, as the pains of sympathy with the HEDONISM. 139 pains of mal-adjustment of individuals to their environ- ment are superseded by the pleasures of sympathy with the pleasures of more and more perfect adjustment to environment. Such a solution, however, confuses the practical with the theoretical problem. It does not follow that "con- duct so altruistic would be egoistically reasonable," and what we are in search of is such a rationale of altruism as shall reconcile it with egoism. Nor can the " feeling of unity " with our fellows, such love as casts out selfish- ness, such perfect sympathy as overcomes the dualism of virtue and prudence, of altruistic and egoistic conduct, and makes us " love our neighbour as ourselves," be found in all the universe of sensibility. Uninstructed feeling is incompetent for the discharge of such a splendid task; though, when instructed and illuminated by rational in- sight, feelino; alone can execute it. Like Mill's " sense of dignity," this " feeling of unity " has a higher certificate of birth to show than that of blind unilluminated feeling ; it, too, is the child of reason by sensibility. Only the niarriasje of these two can have such a noble issue. Sen- sibility alone might unite us with our fellows; but it might just as probably separate us from them. For if feeling is naturally sympathetic and altruistic, it is also naturally selfish and egoistic. The problem is to cor- relate and conciliate these two tendencies of human sen- sibility. Can we trust the correlation and conciliation to their own unguided operation ? May we expect a parallelogram of these two opposing forces? On the whole, must we not say that the tendency of mere sensibility is rather to separate and individualise, than 140 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 141 » to unite and socialise men? It is reason that unites us ; the sphere of the universal is the sphere of thought ; we' think in common. Sensibility separates us, shuts us up each in his own little, but all - important, world of subjectivity ; its sphere is the sphere of the particular ; we feel each for himself, and a stranger intermeddleth not with the business of the heart. At any rate, sensi- bility alone, inevitably and intensely subjective as it is, would never dictate that strict " impartiality " as between our neighbour's happiness and our own which, utilitarians agree, must be the principle of distribution of pleasures if the maximum general happiness is to be constituted. From the point of view of sensibility, I cannot be " strictly impartial " in my estimate of the relative value of my own happiness and that of others ; I cannot count myself, or even others, " each for one, and no one for more than one"; I cannot "love my neighbour as myself," any more than I can love all my neighbours alike. I cannot reduce the various pleasures that offer themselves in the field of possibility to a unit of value ; sensibility is not a unitary principle, it does not yield a common meas- ure. Ultimately, my own pleasure alone has significance for me as a sentient being. To detach myself from it, or it from myself, and to regard it from the standpoint of an '' impartial spectator," would be to destroy it. If all were thus " strictly impartial," there would be no gen- eral, because there would be no individual, happiness. Utilitarianism puts an impossible strain upon sensibility. The formula of Evolution has been brought to bear, as we have seen, upon the problem of the reconciliation of egoism with altruism. Mr Spencer finds that there is gradually establishing itself, in the history of evolving con- duct, not merely a compromise, but a conciliation of indi- vidual and social interests ; and he confidently constructs a Utopia in which the happiness of the individual and the interests of society will perfectly coincide. Mr Stephen, on the other hand, acknowledges a permanent conflict between the two. " The path of duty does not coincide with the path of happiness. ... By acting rightly, I admit, even the virtuous man will sometimes be making a sacrifice ; " it is " necessary for a man to acquire certain instincts, amongst them the altruistic instincts, which fit him for the general conditions of life, though, in particular cases, they may cause him to be more miserable than if he were without them." And even Mr Spencer acknow- ledges " a deep and involved "—though not a permanent — "derangement of the natural connections between pleasures and beneficial actions, and between pains and detrimental actions." But, it is contended, such a statement will not be " conclusive for the virtuous man. His own happiness is not his sole ultimate aim ; and the clearest proof that a given action will not contribute to it will, therefore, not deter him from the action." The individual, as a member of the social organism, forgets his own welfare or happiness in that of society. From the hedonistic point of view, however, we cannot thus merge the individual in society. We must not be misled by the metaphor of the " social organism," — for it is only a metaphor, and a metaphor, as Mr Stephen fears, " too vague to bear much argumentative stress." As Professor Sidgwick remarks, it is not the organism, but "the individual, after all, that feels pleasure and pain." 142 THE MORAL IDEAL. It is true that "the development of the society implies the development of certain moral instincts in the indi- vidual, or that the individual must be so constituted as to be capable of identifying himself with the society, and of finding his pleasure and pain in conduct which is socially beneficial or pernicious/' Yet the individual can never wholly identify himself with the society, simply because he remains, to the last, an individual. It is said that the antagonism of individual and social interests is incidental to the transition-stages of the evolution, and that, with the development of sympathy, and the perfect adaptation of the individual to his social environment, complete identity of interests will be brought about. But, so long as the interest is merely that of pleasure, perfect identity of interests is impossible. The metaphor of the "social organism " is here particularly misleading. As Professor Sorley remarks, "the feeling of pleasure is just the point where individualism is strongest, and in regard to which mankind, instead of being an organism in which each part but subserves the purposes of the whole, must rather be regarded as a collection of competing and co-operating units." 1 From the point of view of pleasure, society is not an organism, but an aggregate of individuals; and, if we speak of the "health" of the society, we cannot mean its happiness, but simply the general conditions of the happiness of its individual members. As Mr Stephen acknowledges, there seems to be a permanent dualism between the " prudential " and the " social " rules of life, " corresponding to the distinction of the qualities which are primarily useful to the individual and those which are 1 'Ethics of Naturalism,' 139, 140. HEDONISM. 143 primarily useful to the society." The former code has not yet been incorporated in the latter.^ Does not the "stress of logic once more force us to appeal, with Professor Sidgwick, from sensibility to reason ? The latter writer holds that though strict egoistic Hedonism cannot be transferred into universalistic Hedonism or Utilitarianism, yet "when the egoist offers . . . the proposition that his happiness or pleasure is good not only /or him, but absolutely, he gives the ground needed for such a proof. For we can then point out to him that his happiness cannot be a more important part of Good, taken universally, than the equal happiness of any other person. And thus, starting with his own principles, he must accept the wider notion of universal happiness or pleasure as representing the real end of Keason, the absolutely Good or Desirable." But such a hedonistic perspective is, as Mr Sidgwick sees, impossible for un- aided Sensibility; to the sentient individual his own pleasure is indefinitely " more important than the equal happiness of any other person." The Good of Sensi- bility is essentially a private and individual, not a common and objective Good. It is in the common sphere of reason that we meet, and, having met there, we recognise one another when we meet again in the sphere of sensibility. To the rational, if not to the sentient individual, we can " point out that his own pleasure is no more important," objectively and absolutely regarded, *'than the equal happiness of any other person;" and sensibility, thus illuminated by reason, may be trusted to effect that reconciliation of the individual with the social ^ On the permanence of this dualism, cf. Kidd, ' Social Evolution.' 144 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 145 welfare, which it never could have brought about alone. From this point of view, the problem at once loses its hopeless aspect. The true altruism, we can see, is not reached by the negation of egoism, or only by the negation of the lower egoism. There is a higher egoism which contains altruism in itself, and makes " transition " un- necessary. I have not indeed discovered my own true End, or my own true Self, until I find it to be not ex- elusive but inclusive of the Ends of other Selves. I am not called, therefore, to transcend egoism, and exchange it for altruism, but to discover and realise that true egoism which includes altruism in itself. Since each is an Ego, the others as well as I, to eliminate egoism would be to uproot the moral life itself. The entire problem is found vjithin the sphere of egoism, not beyond it; and it is solved for each individual by the discovery and realisation of his own true Ego. For, truly seen, the spheres of the different Egos are like concentric circles. The centre of the moral life must be found within the individual life, not outside it. The claim of society upon the individual is not to be explained even by such a figure as that of the " social organism." The moral Ego refuses to merge its proper personal life in that of society. The unity or solidarity of the individual and society must be so conceived as that the wider social life with which he identifies himself, so far from destroying the personal life of the individual, shall focus and realise itself in that life. But, if the social and the individual life are to be seen thus — as concentric circles — their common centre must be found ; and it can be found only in reason, not in sensibility. Lives guided by mere sensibility are eccen- tric, and may be antagonistic ; only lives guided by a sen- sibility which has itself been illuminated by reason are concentric and, necessarily, co-operative, because directed to a common rational End. 11. In coming to a final judgment as to the value of (/)The Hedonism as a theory of the Moral Ideal, we must be physical guided by metaphysical considerations with regard to tive™^' man's ultimate nature, and place in the universe. It has been truly said that a noble action or life is a grand practical speculation about life's real meaning and worth. Hedonism, like every ethical theory, is, in the last analysis, a metaphysical speculation of this kind. What are we to sav of its value ? ^. The hedonistic view is the empirical, "scientific," or naturalistic view of human life ; it is the expression of ethical realism, as distinguished from ethical idealism or transcendentalism. It derives the ideal from the actual, the Ought- to-be from the Is. To it the ideal is only the shadow which the actual casts before it. Its effort is " to base ethics on facts, to derive the rules of our attitude toward facts from experience, to shape our ideals not from the airy stuff of something beyond the ken of science, but in accordance with laws derived from reality." It is an attempt to " naturalise the moral man," by showing the fundamental identity of moral laws with the laws of nature. The moral order falls within the natural: " sociological laws are ... of a natural growth ; the evolution of the social affairs of mankind is deeply rooted in the conditions of things." This naturalism and empiricism of the hedonistic theory reach their K 146 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 147 culmination in the "scientific" ethics of the evolution- ary school. The metaphysical question is, more particularly, the question of the nature and worth of the human person. "Conduct will always be different," says M. Fouillee, " according to the value, more or less relative and fleet- ing, which one accords to the human person ; according to the worth, more or les§ incomparable, which we attri- bute to individuality." Is man an end-in-himself, the bearer of the Divine and Eternal, as no other creature is, capable of identifying himself with and forwarding the divine End of the universe by accepting that as his life's ideal, or of antagonising, and even, in a sense, of frus- trating it ? Is he a free spiritual being, with a sentient and animal nature, or is he only a " higher animal " ? In the words of the writer just quoted : " There are cir- cumstances in which the alternative which presents itself in consciousness is the following — Is it necessary to act as if my sensible and individual existence were all, or as if it were only a part of my true and universal existence ? " Hedonism rests upon what Mill has happily named the " psychological " theory of the Self. What Professor James calls the Me, the "stream" of consciousness, is regarded as the total and ultimate Self; man is a "bundle of states," and nothing more. It follows that his sole concern in life is with these passing states of feeling, which are not his but he. If we are merely sentient beings, subjects of sensibility, then the nature of that sensibility must be all in all to us. If the per- manence of a deeper rational self-hood is a mere illusion, and the changing sentient self-hood is alone real; then our concern is with the latter, not with the former, and Cyrenaicism is 'the true creed of life. At most. Virtue is identical with Prudence. But we cannot thus identify the Self with its experi- ence. Interpret our deeper self-hood how we may, we must acknowledge that tve are more than the "stream" of our feelings. Our very nature is to transcend the present, and to regard our life as having a permanent meaning and reality. These experiences are mine, part of my total and continuous experience, and I am more than they. It needs such an " I " to account for the " psycho- logical Me." The Self persists through all its changing " states," and its demand for satisfaction is the unceasinfr spring of the moral life. It is not a mere "sum" of feelings; it is their unity, that by reference to which alone they gain their ethical significance. In mere feel- ing there is no abiding quality, it is a thing of the moment. The devotee of pleasure is no richer at the close of life than the beggar or the martyr. His pleasures, like the latter's pains, have passed, as all mere feelings must. But lie remains, and all his life's experience, from first to last, has left its record in his character, in the permanent structure of the Self. "Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure." A theory of life which concerns itself only with the passing experience, and not with the permanent character of the Self, is fundamentally inadequate. y 1 o rn . 11 Tli6 merit iz. io sum up the merit and demerit of Hedonism, we andde- may say that it does well in emphasising the claims of Hedonism. 148 THE MORAL IDEAL. sensibility in human life ; but that it errs, either in assert- ing these to be the exclusive claims, or in subordinating to them the more fundamental claims of reason. To take the demerit first, the history of Hedonism is itself a demonstration of the impossibility of an Ethic of pure Sensibility. The gradual modification of the theory which we have traced is a gradual departure from strict hedon- istic orthodoxy, a gradual admission of reason to offices which at first were claimed for sensibility. Man's pleasure- seeking, being man's, cannot be unreflective, as the hedon- ists very early saw ; and, in the development of the theory, the reflective element is more and more emphasised. The successful life of pleasure is acknowledged to be essen- tially a calculating life, a life of thought. Mere feeling, it is found, is an insufficient principle of unity. It unifies neither the individual life itself, nor the individual and the social life. It does not supply a regulative prin- ciple, a principle of the distribution of pleasure. Sensi- bility, like sensation, is a " mere manifold " which has to be unified by the rational Self ; as the one is the content of the intellectual life, the other is the content of the moral life. But the form of knowledge and of morality alike is rational. Feeling does not provide for its own guidance ; if it is to be the guide of human life, the dark- ness of animal sensibility must receive the illumination of reason. Sooner or later. Hedonism finds itself com- pelled to appeal to reason for the form of morality ; and the history of the theory is the story of how this rational- ism which was implicit in it from the first has gradually become explicit. Yet sensibility is the content of morality, and if we HEDONISM. 149 would not have the mere empty form, we must recognise the momentous significance of the life of sensibility in- formed by rea-son. Feeling is an integral part of the moral life, which no ethical theory can afford to overlook ; and Hedonism has done well to emphasise its importance. A riurely rational life, excluding sensibility, is as impost sible for man as a life of mere sensibility without reason. The rational life is for him a life of sensibility rationalised or regulated by reason, and his total rational well-being must report itself in sensibility. This is the permanent truth in Hedonism. The ascetic ideal is a false and in- adequate one ; it means the dwarfing of our moral nature, the drawing away of the very sap of its life. The spring of the action, its origin, is in sensibility ; if the End or motive is a product of reason, the roots of its attractive power are in sensibility. And the way to the attainment of the End lies through pleasure and pain ; the state of feeling is not merely the index and concomitant of suc- cessful pursuit, it is a constant guide towards success ; and attainment itself brings with it a new pleasure, as failure brings with it a new pain. Pleasure is, as Aris- totle said, the very bloom of goodness, it is the very crown of virtue. The threads of which our life is woven are threads of feeling, if the texture of the web is reason's work. The hedonist unweaves the web of life into its threads, and having unwoven it, he cannot recover the lost design. I think we must go even farther, and admit that, while the mere distinctions of feeling, as pleasant or painful, are not, as such, moral distinctions, and do not always coincide with the latter, yet these distinctions are natu- 150 THE MORAL IDEAL. HEDONISM. 151 rally connected and coincident. If pleasure is not itself the Good, it is its natural and normal index and expression, as pain is the natural and normal index and expression of evil. Hence the problem always raised for man by the suffering of the good, the problem that fills the book of Job, and seems to have been deeply felt by Plato. In the first book of the * Eepublic,' we find an impressive picture of a life of perfect Justice (Plato's word for Eighteousness), misunderstood and misinterpreted, a life that is perfectly just, but seems to men who cannot understand it to be most unjust. " They will say that in such a situation the just man will be scourged, racked, fettered, will have his eyes burnt out, and at last, after suffering every kind of torture, will be crucified ; and thus learn that it is best (that is, pleasantest) not to he but to seem just." The " just man" generally has been misunderstood by his fellows; goodness always has meant suffering, its paths never have been altogether paths of pleasantness and peace. The Christian world has drawn its inspiration from a Life that has seemed to it the fulfilment of the Platonic and pro- phetic dream — a life of transcendent goodness, which was also a life of utmost suffering, of suffering even unto the death of the Cross. We must indeed believe that the goal of moral progress is the complete coincidence of good- ness with happiness. But at present it is not so, and the lesson of the best lives is that the way to that goal lies through suffering. Perhaps we cannot understand the full significance of pain in relation to goodness, but its presence in all noble lives tells of a higher End than pleasure, of an End in which pleasure may be taken up as an element, but which itself is infinitely more, of an End faithfulness to which must often mean indifference to pain, or, better even than indifference, a noble willingness to bear it for the sake of the higher Good which may not otherwise be reached, for the sake of that highest life which is not possible save through the death of all that is lower than itself. 152 CHAPTEE II. EIGORISM, OR THE ETHICS OF REASON. Rigorism : its rational and ideal- istic stand- point. 1. We have traced the implicit rationalism of the hedon- istic theory gradually becoming explicit as we passed from Cyrenaicism to Epicureanism, from Paley and Bentham to Mill and Professor Sidgwick. This appeal to reason became necessary, first, for the guidance of individual choice by reference to a criterion of the " higher " and " lower " in pleasure, and, secondly, as the only possible means of transition from Egoism to Altruism, from Self- ishness to Benevolence. But in both ancient and modern times the ethical rights of Pteason have been emphasised no less strongly, and often no less exclusively, than the ethical rights of Sensi- bility. This assertion of the claims of Pteason in the life of a rational being is at the basis of the common modern antithesis, or at any rate distinction, between Duty and Pleasure, between Virtue and Prudence, between the Eight and the Expedient. In ethical theory, too, " duty for duty's sake" has been proclaimed with no less em- phasis than "pleasure for pleasure's sake," as the last word of the moral life. The effort to idealise or spirit- RIGORISM. 153 ualise the moral man has been no less strenuously pursued than the effort to " naturalise " him. In Eeason, rather than in Sensibility, it has been maintained, is to be found the characteristic element of human nature, the quality which differentiates man from all lower beings, and makes him man. This is not so much an explicit theory of the End or Ideal, as a vindication of the absoluteness of moral Law or Obligation, of the category of Duty as the supreme ethical category. But it is, at any rate, a delineation of the ideal life, and therefore, implicitly or explicitly, of the Moral Ideal itself. The rational, like the hedonistic. Ethics takes two its two forms — an extreme and a moderate. The former is that treme^d the good life is a life of pure reason, from which all sensi- "^^'^^^^*^- bility has been eliminated. The latter is that it is a life which, though containing sensibility as an element, is fundamentally rational — a life of sensibility guided by reason. In either case, the entire emphasis is laid upon reason, and the theory may be called Eigorism, because the attitude to sensibility is that of rational superiority and stern control, where it is not that of rational intoler- ance and exclusiveness. Eeason claims the sovereignty, and sensibility is either outlawed, or degraded to the status of passive obedience. Whether in its extreme or in its moderate form, Eigor- ism is the expression of ethical Idealism, as Hedonism is the expression of ethical Eealism. The one is the charac- teristic temper of the modern Christian world, as the other is the characteristic temper of the ancient Classi- cal world. Our normal and dominant mood is that of " strenuous " enthusiasm, of dissatisfaction with the actual, 154 THE MORAL IDEAL. RIGORISM. 155 of aspiration after the ideal ; the supreme category of our life is Duty or Oughtness. The normal and dominant mood of the Greeks was just the reverse — the mood of sunny sensuous contentment with the present and the actual. That " discontent " which we account the evi- dence of our diviner destiny was foreign to their spirit. The ethics of Socrates is the philosophical expression of this characteristic Greek view of life ; moderation or self- control is the deepest principle he knows. For Aristotle^ too, the sum of all virtue is the '' middle way " between the two extremes of excess and defect. The master- virtue of the Greeks, in life and in theory, is a universal Tem- perance or o-co(f)poavv7]. Yet it is to the Greeks that we must trace back the rigoristic, no less than the hedonistic, view of life. For the Greek mind, though sensuous, is always clear and rational, always " lucid," always appreciative of form ; and the rational life has therefore always a peculiar charm for it. This appreciation of the rational life finds expression in the Socratic ideal of human life as a life worthy of a rational being, founded in rational insight and self-knowledge — a life that leaves the soul not demeaned and impoverished, but enriched and satis- fied, adorned with her own proper jewels of righteousness and truth. PJato and Aristotle follow out this Socratic clue of the identity of the good with the rational life. For both, the life of virtue is a life " accordincr to rio-ht reason," and the vicious life is the irrational life. Both, however, distinguish two degrees of rationality in what was, for Socrates, a single life of reason. First there is the reason-guided life of sensibility, or the life according cisni. to reason ; but beyond that lies the higher life of reason itself, — the intellectual, contemplative, or philosophic life. The chief source of this ethical Idealism in Greek phil- osophy, which was destined to receive such a remarkable development in the Stoic school, and, through the Stoics, in our modern life and thought, is to be found in Plato's separation of the ideal reality from the sensible appear- ance. If, however, we would learn the original expo- sition of Greek Eigorism, we must go back to the im- mediate disciples of Socrates, the notorious Cynic school. 2. The quality in the Socratic character which most (A) Ex- impressed the Cynics was its perfect self-control {iy orism. (a) Kpdreca), its sublime independence of circumstances, its (a)^Cyni- complete self-containedness and self-sufficiency. This became the ideal of the school. Happiness, they main- tained, is to be sought within, not without ; in virtue or excellence of character, not in pleasure {avrdpKT] rrjv dpeT7]v 7rpo9 evhaipiovLav). Wisdom and happiness are synonymous, and the life of the wise is the passionless life of reason. The life of pleasure is the life of folly, the wise man would rather be mad than pleased. For pleasure makes man the slave of Fortune, the servant of circumstance. Independence is to be purchased only by indiflerence to pleasure and pain, by insensibility (dirdOeLa), by the uprooting of the desires which bind us to outward things. There must be no rifts in the armour of the soul, through which the darts of fortune may strike : the man who has killed out all desire is alone impenetrable by evil. But the wise man is impenetrable. Not without, but within the soul, are the issues of life. 156 THE MORAL IDEAL. RIGORISM. 157 Desire binds us to that which is external, and foreign {^evLKov) to the soul. But " for each thing that only can be a good which belongs to it, and the only thing which belongs to man is mind or reason " {vov^, \6yo^). This, man's proper inner good, outward evil cannot touch ; as Socrates said, "]^o evil can happen to a good man." Without such virtue, nothing is good ; with it, there is no evil. This is the constant next of Cynic morality — the supremacy of the human spirit over circumstance, its mastery of its own fortunes, founded on the sovereignty of reason over passion. The sum of Cynic Wisdom is the sublime pride of the masterful rational self, which can acknowledge no other rule than its own, and which makes its possessor a king in a world of slaves. But these " counsels of perfection " are hard to follow. The life of wisdom is a veritable "choice of Hercules." The true riches of the soul are to be purchased only by selling all the deceitful riches of pleasure. The one path- way to heaven is the beggar-life. The emancipation from the outward is difficult, and the Cynic rule of life is one long course of self-denial. We must reduce our wants to a minimum, we must extirpate all artificial, luxurious, and conventional needs, and return to the simplicity of " nature." Better far to climb with staff and scrip the steep ascent of virtue, than, burdened with wealth and houses and lands, to remain in the City of Destruction. For the reward of such self-denial is a perfect peace of mind, which nothing can perturb. The man who has attained to the wisdom of life has penetrated all illusions, and conquered death itself ; for if none of the experiences of life are truly evil, since they cannot touch the soul that has steeled itself in an armour of indifference, least of all is that which is not an experience at all. This pride of reason led the Cynics into strange ex- travagance and fanaticism. Their return to "nature," their scorn for public opinion, their self-conscious affecta- tions, their lack of personal dignity, their contempt for their fellows, whom they regarded, like Carlyle, as " mostly fools," have become proverbial. Yet Cynicism is no mere irresponsible or unimportant vagary of the human mind. It is the first philosophical expression, among the Greeks, of that tendency with which we have become so familiar since, — the tendency to see in the life of reason the only life worthy of a rational being, and in all natural sensi- bility a trap laid for the soul of man, in which he will be snared if he avoids it not altogether; it is the first and the most extreme expression of the ascetic principle. That principle was reasserted later, by the Stoics, with such impressiveness and dignity that the importance and originality of its earlier statement have perhaps been under-estimated. The Greeks do not appear to have taken the Cynics (^) stoi- seriously ; much had to occur in their experience before they were ready to accept that lesson of self-discipline which had been the burden of the Cynic school. The course of the moral life ran very smooth in those pros- perous city-states ; it was not difficult to live a harmoni- ous, measured, rhythmic life in such conditions. And the Greek spirit always was aesthetic rather than ethical, the category of its life was the beautiful rather than the good. Not until the jar came from without, not till the fair civil order broke down, was the discord felt, or the 158 THE MORAL IDEAL. RIGORISM. 159 How it differs from Cynicism : (1) ideal- istic V. natural- istic. need for a more perfect and a diviner order, and salvation sought in conformity to its higher law. Then men re- membered the wistful note which had been struck by Plato, and by Aristotle too, — how both had spoken of another life than that of this world, and were willing to listen to the Stoics as they repeated the old Cynic doctrine. But Stoicism differed from Cynicism in several important particulars. (1) For the crude " naturalism " of the Cynics, the Stoics substitute an idealistic or transcendental view of life. The ideal life of Plato and Aristotle, the life of reason itself, they regard as the only worthy life for man. The old Cynic phrase, " life according to nature " {6/jLo\oyovfjL€vco(; rfj (j)va€i ^rjv), thus receives, for the Stoics, a new meaning. Por in nature ((f)vo-L .1 luteness. tive." Its unyielding "Thou shalt is the voice of the ideal to the actual man, and the ideal admits of no concession, no " give and take," no compromise with the actual. This demand of the rational and ideal Self is not to be misinterpreted, as if its absoluteness meant the annihilation of feeling or " nature." The demand is for such a perfect mastery of the impulsive and sentient, or "natural" self, that in it the true self, which is 224 THE MORAL IDEAL. fundamentally rational, may be realised; that it may be the rational or human, and not the merely sentient or animal self, that lives. What produces the constant contradiction between ideal and attainment is not the presence of feeling, as a surd that cannot be eliminated. It is that the harmony of a life in which feelmg is subdued to reason must become ever more perfect, the life of the true Self must become ever more complete, as moral progress continues. For the demand of the inner Self for realisation is an infinite demand. The Self never is fully realised, it remains always an ideal demanding realisation. Here, in the constant ethical antinomy,— the perpetual contra- diction between ideal and attainment,— is the source of the undying moral consciousness of Law or Obligation. Ever as we attain in any measure to it, the Ideal seems to grow and widen and deepen, so that it is still for us the unattained. One mountain-path ascended only reveals height after height in the great Beyond of the moral hfe. It i"s those that stay on the plane of a superficial and con- ventional morality who think they can see the summits of its hills. Those who climb know better. It is they who scale the mountain-tops of duty who know best what heights are yet to climb, and how far its high peaks penetrate into God's own heaven. It is the infinity of the ideal Self that makes it, in its totality, unrealisable, and the life of duty inexhaustible, by a finite being. No improvement in environment, physical or social, can effect the entire disappearance of the contradiction between the Ideal and its attainment. For the Ideal originates, not without but within ourselves, in " the abysmal deeps of EUD^MONISM. 225 personality," and the fountain of those deeps is never dried up. The Ideal is always heing realised, it is true, in fuller and richer measure. But " to have attained " or '' to be already perfect " would be to have finished the moral life. Such an absolute coincidence of the ideal and the actual is inconceivable, just because the Good is the Ideal, and not a mere projection of the actual. The latter interpretation of the Good would make it finite, and attainable enough by human weakness. But to limit the Ideal were to destroy it. The man inspired with a loyal devotion to the Good is willing to see the path of his life stretch ever forward and upward, to lift up his eyes unto the eternal hills of the divine Holiness itself. For he knows that he has laid the task upon himself, and that, if failure and disappointment come inevitably to him in the attempt to execute it, his is also the dignity of this "high calling," and his too a success which, but for the Ideal and the failure which faithfulness to it implies, had been for him impossible. He would not exchange this human life, with all its pain and weariness, with all its humiliation and disappoint- ment, for any lower. Better surely this noble human dissatisfaction than the most perfect measure of animal content. Is not such failure "only the other side of success ; " is not such " discontent " indeed " divine " ? To seek to rise above Duty or Law is, as Kant said, " moral Fanaticism." It is the peculiar category of human life, of the life of a being at once finite and infinite ; it is the expression of the dualism of Form and Matter, of Eeason and Sensibility. Certainly we shall not overcome the dualism by minimising it ; rather it must be pressed P II 226 THE MORAL IDEAL. until, it may be in another life or in prophetic glimpses in the religious life even now, it yields the higher unity and peace for which our spirits crave. Meantime, it is no ignoble bondage ; if the spirit is imprisoned, it is ever breaking through the bars of its prison-house. Man lays the law upon himself ; it is because he is a citizen of the higher world that he feels the obligation of its law, and thi bondage of the lower. And when he recognises the source of the law, it ceases, in a sense, to be a burden ; or it becomes one which he is willing and eager to bear, and which becomes lighter the longer and the more faith- fully it is borne. The yoke of such a service is indeed easy, and its burden light. , 14 It may help to the understanding as well as the vindication of the general position above described, to , , . »/, "lance at one or two of the most striking e.xpressions of [d) in r nil- o T 1 "1 osophy. Eud^monisni in philosophy and in hterature. in philo- sophy, I will select rather from the Greeks than from the moderns, partly because their contribution to ethical theory is less familiar, or at any rate less appreciated, and partly because the modern statements are in a great measure dependent upon the ancient, and can be fully understood only in the light of the latter. Among the moderns, we owe the most adequate expressions of Butler. Eud^monism to Butler and to Hegel. From the sketch already given of Butler's ethical theory, it will have been observed'' how much he owes to the Greeks. His leading conceptions of human nature as a civil constitution, of the authoritative rank of the rational or reflective principles, of the harmony which results from the just division of Expres- sions of Eudse- monism EUD^MONISM. 227 labour among the various elements of our nature, and the discord which comes from their mutual interference and the insurrection of the lower against the rule of the higher — all this we already find in Plato. And Aristotle had, like Butler, discovered the secret of human virtue in that reason which is the differentiating attribute of human nature. It is Hegel who, of all modern philosophers, has given Hegel, most adequate expression to the essential principle of the ethical life, alike on its negative and on its positive side. With Kant he recognises the full claim of reason, but he insists upon correlating with it the rightful claim of sensi- bility. In ethics as in metaphysics, Hegel finds the uni- versal in the particular, the rational in the sensible. In the evolution of the moral as of the intellectual life, he discovers the dialectical movement of affirmation through negation, of life through death ; in the one as in the other phase of human experience, " that is first which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual." The life of nat- ural sensibility is only the raw material of the moral life ; to be moralised, it must be rationalised. In the words of Dr Hutchison Stirling : ^ "To Hegel, then, even the body, nay, the mind itself, require to be taken posses- sion of, to become in actuality ours. Culture, education, is required for both. The body, in the immediacy of its existence, is inadequate to the soul, and must be made its ready organ and its animated tool. The mind, too, is at first, as it were, immersed in nature, and requires en- franchisement. This enfranchisement is in each subject the hai'd labour against mere subjectivity of action, and against the immediacy of appetite, as against the subjec- ^ 'Philosophy of Law,' 42. 228 THE MORAL IDEAL. tive variety of feeling and the arbitrariness or caprice of self-will. But through the labour it is that subjective will attains to objectivity, and becomes capable and worthy of being the actuality of the idea. For so particularity is wrought into universality, and through universality be- comes the concrete singular." Yet this " concrete singular " of the universalised par- ticular or the rationalised sensibility is not, for Hegel, the Person ; for him Personality is only a provisional category, not the ultimate category of the moral life. Hegel's Per- son is the legal person, subject of rights, not the moral person, strictly objective and rational. Hence the prin- ciple, " Be a person, and respect others as persons," is for him only a stage in the ethical life, to be transcended in its perfect development. It is of the essence of his pan- theistic metaphysic to sink the Personality of man in the universal Life of God, and to conceive human life as ulti- mately modal and impersonal rather than as substantive and personal. Yet Hegel does much for the conception of Personality both in the intellectual and in the moral reference, and, if we sit loose to his final metaphysical construction, we shall find in his philosophy as striking and adequate ethical statements as are to be found any- where. Take, e.g„ this statement of the distinction between the individual and the person : " In personality, indeed, it lies that I, as on all sides of me, in inward desire, need, greed, and appetite, and in direct outward existence, this perfectly limited and finite individual, am yet, as person, infinite, universal, and free, and know myself, even in my finitude, as such." But our indebtedness to Hegel and his school for the position we have reached is so large as to I EUDiEMONISM. 229 have necessarily forced itself upon the reader's attention, and to render superfluous any further illustrations from that quarter- at the present stage. Let us turn, then, to the Greeks, to whom Hegel would be the first to acknow- ledsje his own indebtedness. Whether one takes Plato's psychology or his ethics — Plato, and they are inseparable — one is equally surprised at the completeness of his apprehension of the euda^monistic interpretation of the moral life. He distinguishes three ele- ments in human nature — reason, spirit, and appetite (X6709, Ovfio^, TO einOvfiTjTLKov). Eeason is a unity, so also is spirit, but appetite is a manifold. Further, w^hile both spirit and appetite are impulsive in their nature, their relation to reason is not the same. Appetite is antagon- istic to reason, and is strictly irrational {to oXoyiaTifcov) ; spirit is reason's natural ally, — reason's watch-dog sent forth to curb the alien force of appetite, and again re- called and kept in check by its master reason. Here we find a recognition, first, of the dependence of reason upon sensibility for the execution of its own ends, and, secondly, of the seeds in the human soul alike of harmony and dis- cord with the ends of reason. The various elements have in them the possibility of harmony as well as of discord, and it is for reason, which possesses the key to the har- mony, to use the force provided to its hand in the impul- sive nature for the harmonising of these diverse elements. The figure of the Charioteer has the same lesson. The Charioteer is the rational Self, whose function it is to guide the journey of the soul. But the Charioteer were helpless without the steeds ; his is the guidance only, it is theirs to perform the journey. And, again, there are 230 THE MORAL IDEAL. two steeds ; and while the one is rebellious, like the horde of ungoverned appetites that would disturb the fair order of reason in the life of the soul, the other is, like the rationally minded spirit, apt to obey the rein of the wise Charioteer. " Let our figure be of a composite nature— a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the winged horses and the charioteer of the gods are all of them noble, and of noble breed, but our horses are mixed: moreover, our charioteer drives them in a pair ; and one of them is noble and of noble origin, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble origin ; and the driving, as might be expected, is no easy matter with us." That soul " which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the Charioteer into the outer world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds, and with difficulty beholding true being; while another rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see, by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also lonf^in^^ after the upper world, and they all follow, but not being strong enough they are carried round in the deep below, plunging, treading on one another, striving to be first ; and there is confusion and the extremity of effort, and many of them are lamed, or have their wings broken through the ill-driving of the charioteers." ^ But let the Charioteer only do his driving well, holding the rein tightly over the unruly steed of earthly passion, and it, too, will be guided into the upward path, and will at last become the other's fellow there. " For the food which is suited to the highest part of the soul comes out of that meadow, and the wing on which the soul soars is nourished with this." 1 'Phfcdrus,' 248 (Jowett's transl.) EUD^MONISM. 231 And, once more, the highest life of the soul, the life of philosophic contemplation, so far from being a passionless life of pure thought, is itself an intensely passionate life. For the supremely true and good is also the supremely beautiful, and the soul that is weaned from the beauties of the merely sensible world is rapt in the passion of that Beauty absolute and eternal, which is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. " He who, under the influence of true love, rising upwards from these, begins to see that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going or being led by another to the things of love, is to use the beauties of earth as steps along which he mounts upwards for the sake of that other beauty, going from one to two, and from tw^o to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. This ... is that life above all others which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute. . . . What if man had eyes to see the true beauty — the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mor- tality, and all the colours and vanities of human life — thither looking, and holding converse with the divine beauty, divine and simple ? Do you not see that in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue, to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may." And Socrates adds, that "in the attainment of 232 THE MORAL IDEAL. this end human nature will not easily find a better helper than love. And therefore, also, I say, that every man ouaht to honour hhn, as I myself honour him, and walk in his ways, and exhort others to do the same, and praise the power and spirit of love, according to the measure of my ability now and ever." ^ For the loves of earth are our schoolmasters to bring us at last, when all the tem- pest of the soul is laid, and all its passions purified and ennobled, unto the heavenly Love, the Love of God Himself. Plato's central ethical conception is cast in the mould of his psychology. It is that of a perfect harmony of all the elements of the soul. The good life is for him the musical life ; the life of a soul perfectly attuned to reason cannot but " make music." His favourite figure is that of the State ; the soul, like the true State, ought to act as a unit, the sovereign will of the whole being accepted by each of the parts. The sovereign element in the soul is, of course, reason, whose insight into the Good of the whole fits it to plan for the whole and to compose the symphony of its common life. But if there is to be sovereignty, there must also be subjection and sub- mission; and the subject-class is the brood of " appetites," _ the artisans and labourers of the city of the soul, to be "kept under" and controlled, for they have no self- control. The " spirit " fulfils the military and executive office, enforcing the behests of reason in the sphere of sensibility. Thus the harmony has two sides— a negative and a positive ; it is at once Temperance or self-control and Justice or self-realisation. If the order of reason is 1 'Symposium,' 210-212 (Jowett's transl.) EUD.^MONISM. 233 to be maintained, the disorder of sensibility must be put down ; if the good of the whole is to be attained, the in- surrection of .the parts against the whole must be quelled. Temperance, or the non-interference of any part with the proper work of another part, is no less essential than Justice, or the doing of its own work by each part of the soul. The essential evil in this spiritual city is the claim of the part to be the whole — the evil of dis- integration. The unjust life is the intemperate or re- bellious, the discordant life. Justice is " the health and beauty and well-being of the soul," the integrity of the nature ; injustice is the " disease and deformity " which come from the uprising of the part against the whole, of the inferior against the superior principle. The life of righteousness is the life of the integrated and harmonised nature, which has reduced itself from a " mere manifold " of sensibility to the unity of rational system [eva lXov yevo/xevov eavT(p). But we have seen that there are in human nature the seeds of discord as well as of har- mony, of war as well as of peace, of disease as well as of health ; and its true welfare must be reached through stern discipline and hard struggle. This struggle is the fight of clear reason against blind irrational impulse ; and victory comes with the opening of the eyes of impulse to see that larsjer rational sfood which includes its own. Aristotle's term for the Good is evSac/jLovLa, and the Aristotle. entire spirit of his ethics is eud^emonistic. I will here signalise only one or two of his fundamental ethical ideas, and suggest their interpretation in the line of the theory here called by his own name, Eudaemonism. 234 THE MORAL IDEAL. In the first place, Aristotle recognises the difference between the moral and the natural development or self- realisation, between the ethical and the physical process. In both cases we have the actualisation of the potential, but the manner of the actualisation is different in the two cases. In nature the potentiality is a single and necessary one,— the acorn can only become the oak, the boy the man. In morality there is always a double or alternative poten- tiality, — a man may become either virtuous or vicious. It is, moreover, by doing the same things, only in a different way, that either of the alternative potentialities is actual- ised. As it is by playing on the harp that men become either good or bad harpers,— by playing well that they be- come good, by playing ill that they become bad musicians, —so is it with all the activities of life ; in the same activi- ties are the beginnings of both good and evil habits, of both the virtues and the vices. Whether a man shall be- come virtuous or vicious, depends on the manner of these activities. Whether, however, he becomes virtuous or vicious, he has only actualised the character which already existed in him potentially. The seeds of the particular vice or virtue which reveals itself in his character lay in his original nature and the circumstances of his lot. For it is not in the choice of the absolute Mean, but of the Mean relative to the individual, that virtue lies. Virtue is universal and not of private interpretation, for it is always " according to right reason " ; but it is also particular, and constituted by individual temperament and concrete circumstances (the latter being called by Aristotle " furniture of fortune "), or " as a prudent man would decide." Virtue and vice are EUDiEMONISM. 235 the correlates of the individuality and its opportunities of actualisation ; nor does Aristotle hold that these elements of idiosyncrasy can be eliminated, or the concrete life of man contained within the limits of an exact mathematical formula. If his moral Ideal is, in a sense, universal and absolute — an Ideal of reason, — it is also, in a sense, par- ticular and relative — an Ideal of sensibility. The doctrine of the Mean is itself most significant of its author's regard for the life of sensibility as well as for that of reason. Vice consists in excess or defect of that which, in itself and in its appropriate measure, is ofood. And if in reason he finds the " common measure " of sensibility, he yet admits, as we have just seen, that this rational measure must be modified by a fresh refer- ence to sensibility itself ; that, in a way, sensibility also is a measure. In his psychology Aristotle may be said to anticipate the distinction between the individual and the person in his distinction between the irrational (or non-rational), passive, nutritive and animal soul, on the one hand, and the rational, active, creative soul, on the other, as well as in his interpretation of the latter as the true being and perfect actualisation of the former. But the real psycho- loi]jical basis of Aristotle's ethical Eudsemonism is to be found in his conception of the relation of the soul to the body. The soul is for him the Entelechy of the body, its perfect fulfilment and actualisation, its final Form, its very Essence, Truth, and Being. This conception necessitates a revision, and a new interpretation, of Aristotle's own division of human nature into " rational " and ''irrational" elements. From this standpoint there 236 THE MORAL IDEAL. can be no finally " irrational " element in man, any more than in the universe. For, in man as in the universe, all *' matter " is quick with " form " ; the one is the poten- tiality, the other the actuality of Form. Everywhere we have the promise and potency of reason : the " irrational " is but reason in the making, in the slow process of its increasing manifestation. Nothing is irrational, since in all things are the seeds of reason ; everything is irrational, in so far as it is yet unactualised potentiality, or mere "matter" not yet formed. The Soul or the Self is, then, the Logos of the body, the articulate expression of the body's total Meaning, its End and its true Being (to tl rjv elvai). The soul's true life must, therefore, be the summation of all the possibilities of the body, such an activity as shall be the perfect expression of every element and the evolution of that nature in its totality,— the final and perfect Form which is " without matter" because it has taken up into itself all the "matter," and expressed it, leaving nothing out. The only evil, the only " irrational " life, would be that in which the process of the victorious reason was arrested, and in which that was accounted as Form which was not yet the final form, but, to him who had seen its form, only " matter " after all. The essence of evil would be to act as if we had already attained or were already perfect, instead of pressing to- ward the mark of our nature's perfection. Filled with this aspiration, the virtuous man is unwilling to stereotype any of virtue's forms, however fair, knowing that to stay the process of the life of reason is to kill that life. 15. Let us look, in closing, at one or two of the most EUD^MONISM. 237 striking and comprehensive literary expressions of the (&) in Lit- ethical dualism and of the process by which, in the ethical life, it is overcome. Take first the Faust story — one of the most remarkable of these expressions — in Goethe's treat- ment of it. The temptation of Faust is to sacrifice the life of thought, the fruits, won by hard labour, of the scholar's life, for a career of merely sensuous satisfaction. Why " scorn delights and live laborious days " ? Why miss the pulse-beats of life's keenest joys ? Both lives he cannot live ; he must make his choice between them, and, once made, the choice shall be irrevocable. The problem comes to Faust as the representative of the conflict be- tween the spirit of the elder and the newer time. His has been the life of the mediaeval scholar, a life of thought apart from the world of real present interests and events, and, in the keen realisation of the emptiness of such a life, he longs for contact with reality, with nature, with human passion, with life in all its forms. The revolt of his eager unsatisfied spirit sends him forth into the un- tried world of common human experience, to seek there the satisfaction which has eluded him in his scholar-life of seclusion and stern thought. The new way is easy enough ; it is the broad smooth path of sensuous delight, and crowded with the multitude. If Faust can deliber- ately choose this life of carnal pleasure, if in it he can find the perfect satisfaction of his being and accept it as his portion, it will be the definitive choice of evil, the critical surrender of the higher to the lower nature. For if such sensuousness of life as that which Faust is now to put to the proof leads inevitably to sensuality and what is commonly called " vice," the evil lies in the 238 THE MORAL IDEAL. EOD^MONISM. 239 sensuousness itself, of which the sensuality is but the full-blown flower. That a being capable of, and there- fore called to, a life of rational and strenuous activity, because of the pain and toil and disappointment implied in such a life, should choose the immediate and effortless delights of sensibility, 'Mierein is sin." But for Faust there is no satisfaction in the new life of which he is represented as making trial. When, first as a black poodle, and then as Mephistopheles himself, the spirit of evil appears, we feel that it is only the manifestation and externalisation of the lower, undisciplined, irrational nature which, in Faust as in every man, is struggling for the mastery with the rational and higher Self :— " Zwei Seelen wohnen, acli ! in meiner Brust, Die eine will sich von der andern trennen ; Die eine halt, in derber Liebeslust, Sich an die Welt, niit klammernden Organen ; Die andre hebt gewaltsam sicli voni Dust Zu den Gefilden holier Almen." But though all the glory of the world is spread out be- fore Faust, and he tastes of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life, the moment never comes when he can say of it: — " Verweile doch I du bist so sclion ! '"' And deeply though he falls, we feel that, even at the lowest, he has fallen only to rise again, and, learning the deeper dissatisfaction of this new life, to choose at last, with a new decision wrought by the strong hand of a bitter experience, the higher way of the victorious spirit. The lesson of the legend, or, at any rate, of the drama, surely is, that if a virtue cloistered and untried is no virtue at all, yet all virtue contains self-sacrifice at its heart, and the only true and complete self-fulfilment is mediated and made possible by self-renunciation. " Und so lang du das nicht hast, Dieses ; stirb und werde ! Bist du nur ein triiber Gast Auf der dunklen Erde." The imperfection of the Faust representation is that the choice is pictured as one between the life of knowledge and the life of sensuous pleasure, though the idea of effort or labour as implied in the former type of life is strongly emphasised. In Wagner's music-drama of Tannhauser, we have, in this respect, a more adequate portrayal of the actual moral conflict. Here, again, the choice is between activity and the delights of sensibility. As in the old Homeric story, the Siren-music of the sensuous life sounds in the hero's ears, and he is lulled to sleep and forgetful- ness of duty in the arms of earthly love. The escape is made with bitterest anguish and regret ; again and again, as the magic song of the Venus-berg sounds in his ears, and its voluptuous strains silence the solemn music of the pilgrim-choir, must the conflict be waged anew, until at last the decisive victory is won, and the hard steep way of the pilgrims of the Cross becomes the final choice. And from the first this has been the lesson of the pro- phets and didactic moralists to their fellows. The lesson of Ecclesiastes as well as of Carlyle is the lesson of Work, the lesson that in activity, in deeds, in the chastening of natural impulse to the obedience of a rational purpose, lies man's only Good. The ethical necessity of self-dis- cipline has always been recognised. The Greeks, though 240 THE MORAL IDEAL. EUD^MONISM. 241 they did not feel the bitterness of the struggle as we do, yet recognised it in their central conception of Temperance or Self-control, of the essentially rational character of the virtuous life, of the " limifc " which the gods have set to the career of man. In the popular reflection of the classical world, we find the same thought naively ex- pressed in the myths of Fauns and Satyrs,— strange half- brute, half -human creatures, non-moral, and yet, through their external resemblance to humanity, shedding a grim ironical light over human life. We have an impres- sive recognition of the same fundamental necessity in the ancient Hebrew story of Esau, who, stung by animal appetite, sells his birthright for a mess of pottage, and finds no place of repentance, though he seeks it carefully with tears. The Christian conception of temptation, which finds such abundant expression in modern literature, is one grand illustration of it. The character of Tito in George Eliot's ' Komola,'— the story of the evolution of a life that has surrendered itself to momentary impulse and desire, of Markheim in Mr K. L. Stevenson's little sketch, and many another '' psychological study " in the fiction of our own and of previous times, might be mentioned in drama- tic illustration of the possibilities (and the certainties) of evil that lie in an " undisciplined " nature. Shakespeare has given us a unique and classical picture of such a being. The character of Caliban in the " Tempest " seems to me to be a kind of redudio ad ahsurdum of the life of untrained impulse. Caliban is an impersonation of a human anwutl, such a monster as the ancient myths por- trayed, half man, half beast ; only, his deformity is rather moral than physical. He is a " thing " rather than a man, a " thing of darkness," " as strange a thing as e'er I look'd on." " He is as disproportionate in his manners as in his shape " ; an . " Abhorred slave, "WTiich any print of goodness will not take, Being capable of all ill." He is " A devil, a born devil, on whose nature Nurture can never stick. . . . And as, with age, his body uglier grows, So his mind cankers." Prospero has taught him language : " You taught me language, and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse." So savage, rank, and repulsive, so full of all manner of darkness and evil, is undisciplined " nature " — not beautiful and richly luxurious as physical nature is, when left untended and untrained. An untrained man — Shakespeare would seem to teach us — is a " monster " of humanity, not worthy of the name, something between man and beast rather than a man. If sometimes we dis- parage the effects of civilisation and education, and long for " a touch of nature " in its simplicity and untrained directness, let us remember that human nature, left to itself, in its native spontaneity, is a barren wilderness that yields but tares and thorns, and cannot be made to bring forth better fruits, but with the sweat of our brow, and the hard labour of the spirit ; " That life is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And hatter'd with the shocks of doom' Q ^ 242 THE MORAL IDEAL. EUD^MONISM. 243 To shape and use. Arise and fly The reeling Faun, the sensual feast ; Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die." ^ Or, as another of " our own poets " has finely expressed the contrast between Nature's life and man's :— "With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone ; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 't^vere done. Not till the hours of light return. All we have built do w^e discern. Then, when the clouds are off the soul, When thou dost bask in Nature's eye, Ask, how she viewed thy self-control. Thy struggling, task'd morality- Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air. Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair. And she, whose censure thou dost dread. Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek, See, on her face a glow is spread, A strong emotion on her cheek ! * Ah, child !' she cries, that strife divine. Whence was it, for it is not mine ? " - Yet " Nature " has her rights ; the moral Person is to the end an individual or subject of sensibility. Nature is to be disciplined, not annihilated. And if nature has to be moralised, it is not in itself immoral ; it does not even necessarily conflict with morality. It is only because it is part of a higher " nature " in us that it is not itself the guide. The lower nature is really the " footstool of 1 Tennyson, 'In Memoriam,' 118. 2 Matthew Arnold, ' Poems ' : " Morality." the higher." It is in its rebellion against the law of the higher nature that evil consists; evil is, as Plato taught, a rebellion or insurrection of the lower and subject element against the higher and sovereign part of the soul. It is when the citadel of our nature capitu- lates to the enemy within the city of Mansoul that evil is done ; it is when reason becomes the slave of passion that we lose our crown, and sell our birthright. The Eomanticists, the Eealists, the Sentimentalists of litera- ture have, as George Meredith says,i got hold of a half- truth, " the melodists upon life and the world " who " set a sensual world in motion " and " ' fiddle harmonics on the strings of sensualism,' to the delight of a world gaping for marvels of musical execution rather than for music." As some one has said of M. Zola, he "sees in humanity la Ute Immaine. He sees the beast in all its transforma- tions, but he sees only the beast." For the music and deep harmony of human life has its keynote in reason, and, like all other harmonies, is reached through discord. " Our world is all but a sensational world at present, in maternal travail of a soberer, a braver, a brighter-eyed. Peruse your Eealists — really your castigators for not having yet embraced philosophy. As she grows in the flesh, when discreetly tended, Nature is unimpeachable, flower-like, yet not too decoratively a flower; you must have her with the stem, the thorns, the roots, and the fat bedding of roses." The secret of true human living, the heart of ethical Truth, lies in " the right use of the Senses, Eeality's infinite sweetness. There is in every one of us a Caliban nature, an unfailing aboriginal democratic old ^ Introduction to ' Diana of the Crossways. ' M i 244 THE MORAL IDEAL. monster, that waits to pull us down ; certainly the branch, possibly the tree ; and for the welfare of Life we fall ... You must turn on yourself, resolutely track and seize that burrower, and scrub and cleanse him." Civilisation contributes to the cleansing process; it at least keeps the " monster " well out of sight. But Nature must be moralised, and the process of moralisation is one of sore pain and travail. It may mean the cuttmg off ot a ricTht hand and the plucking out of a right eye, that so we may enter, even halt and maimed, into the kingdom of the Good. It means the passing through the fiery furnace, by which Nature is purified of dross and "hard- ened into the pure ore." It means, as Plato already said, " conversion," or " the turning round of the eye ot the soul, and with it the whole soul, to the Good." Man s life is like that of the Phcenix, that rises out of its own ashes ; if he would live the true human life, he must be " born acrain from above." Into every element of natural impulse^and desire must be breathed the new life of the rational spirit. " The petals of to-day, To-morrow fallen away, Shall something leave instead, To live when they are dead ; When you, ye vague desires, Have vanished ; A something to survive, Of you though it derive Apparent earthly birth, But of far other worth Than you, ye vague desires, Than you." ^ 1 A. H. Clough. EUD^MONISM. 245 The same lesson, that " from flesh unto spirit man grows," is finely enforced by Matthew Arnold : " Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more. And in that more lie all his hopes of good. Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends ; Nature and man can never be fast friends. Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave ! " l^erhaps one of the completest descriptions of the ethical life, at least in English literature, is that which Browning has given us in his famous " Eabbi Ben Ezra." In this poem, it will be remembered, age is represented as taking account of the total gain and loss of life, reckon- ing up its final significance under the illumination of " The last of life, for which the first was made." And the element of value is found just in that doubt and strife, that failure and pain, which had been such mysteries to youth with its eager thirst for pleasure and the satisfaction of the moment : — " Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without. Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. Poor vaunt of life indeed. Were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast ; Such feasting ended, then As sure an end to men ; Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast 1 Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids not sit nor stand but go ! Be our joys three-fourths pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe ! " 246 THE MORAL IDEAL. And as, in the quiet evening light, he meditates upon the meaning of that life whose day is now far spent, its real worth breaks in clear and definite outline upon his vision :- " He fixed thee 'mid this dance Of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldest fain arrest : Machinery just meant To give thy soul its bent, Try thee, and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed." PART 11. THE MORAL LIFE THE MORAL LIFE. The chief forms into which the good life differentiates itself are called by the ancients the cardinal virtues, by the moderns the table of duties. These two terms, Virtue and Duty, are two modes of describing the same thing ; the former emphasises the inner character and its funda- mental excellences, the latter the expression of character in conduct and the primary forms of that expression. Whether we look at the moral life from the standpoint of character or of conduct, we find it necessary to inter- pret it as an indissoluble unity. One cannot have any of the virtues without possessing in that measure all the others, one cannot fulfil any duty without fulfil- ling in that measure all the other duties. The several virtues and duties are simply the several aspects of the good life, the various colours into which the perfect spec- trum of character or conduct can be analysed ; or, at the most, they are the several stages in the development of character and conduct, and each leads inevitably be- yond itself to the next as the goal of its own perfection. Two main aspects of the moral life may be emphasised — the individual and the social ; but the unity of these is Introduc- tory. Vir- tues and Duties. The Unity of the Moral Life. 250 THE MORAL LIFE. apparent when we remember that both may be subsumed under the common term " personal." The individual can- not be true to his own personality without being true to the personality of all whom his conduct in any way affects. To stand in the right relation to oneself is to stand in the right relation to one's fellows ; to realise one's own true self is to help all others to the same self-realisation. Again, we may divide the virtues and the corresponding duties' into negative and positive groups. From the stand- point of the individual, the moral life may be regarded as a life at once of Self-discipline and of Self-development, resulting in the virtues of Temperance and of Culture. But the^'perfectly temperate or self-disciplined man would be also the man of perfect culture or self-development. Similarly, from the standpoint of society, we may distin- guish the negative aspect of morality from the positive,— the duty of Freedom or non-interference with the self- realisation of others, with the corresponding virtue of Justice, from the duty of Fraternity or the positive helping of others in their efforts after their own perfec- tion, with the corresponding virtue of Benevolence. Here again it is obvious that we have only two aspects of a sFngle life, that Justice imperceptibly glides into Be- nevolence, Freedom into Fraternity ; that the one is the seed, the other the full-blown flower of the same ethical quality Without Justice there can be no true Benevo- lence, and Justice made perfect is already Benevolence in «]ferm. 251 CHAPTEE I. THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. I. — Temperance or Self -discipline. 1. This is the first necessity of the moral life ; it is its funda- mental im- essential to the constitution of Virtue. The very essence portance. of morality is, we have seen, the establishment of the order of reason in the chaos of natural impulse; and the reign of reason means the subjection and obedience of sensibility. Character is " nature " disciplined. The mastery of natural impulse by reason, in such wise that this original " stream of tendency " may become the dynamic of rational purpose ; the conversion of the original irrational energy into an energy of reason itself ; " the organisation of impulse into character," — this may be said to be the essential business of the moral life from first to last. Out of our natural individuality we have each to form a moral personality. The original or natural self is non-moral, and must be moralised. To be moralised, it must be disciplined, regulated, subdued ; for only so can it be organised into the structure of a rational life. If the sphere of sensibility is to be finally annexed by reason, it must first be conquered, and this conquest of the self i \ 252 THE MORAL LIFE. of natural sensibility by the rational self is Temperance. For the heedless, partial, natural self is apt to rebel against the regulation of reason, it wants to rule ; and the " right " of reason has to become the "might" of a rationalised sensibility. The interest of the total Self, which reason alone can discover, has to be asserted and maintained against the interest of the partial, fleeting, but clamant self of sensibility. This general Purpose or End, chosen deliberately and reflectively, must be resolutely main- tained against the particular, momentary or habitual, im- pulsive tendencies which would swamp it in the flood- tide of their power, and, if unchecked, would make us act as if that Purpose did not exist, and had not been chosen. Intemperance is disintegration, or disorganisa- tion ; it is the rule of unorganised or disorganised sensi- bility. Its watchword is self-gratification or self-indul- gence. The temperate life, on the contrary, is a whole in its every part ; if you take a " section " of it at any point, you discover in it the structure of the whole, the partial expression and realisation of its total purpose. All its energies are controlled from a common centre, they are the different manifestations of one great energy of goodness. Such a life is consistent and harmonious with itself; it has the calm strength of a resolute and even Purpose. But this harmony and strength are the reward of a resolute self-denial and self-sacrifice. No natural impulse is in itself evil, no element of sensibility is, as such, immoral. Evil or immorality arises only when the government of conduct is given to un-moralised sensibility. Sensibility needs the edu- cation of reason, before it is capable of government; it THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 253 must itself be governed, before it is fitted to govern. Not that there may not be a certain system in a life controlled by uneducated sensibility. The life of the miser or of the man who is ambitious for mere power is, so far, a systematic and coherent life, though it is under the dominion of a single uncontrolled passion. But its system, we recognise at once, is not the true system; even the man himself would hardly acknowledge it as the system of his life, and his deeper and better nature will probably assert itself occasionally, and break up the little system of his short-sighted purpose. In such a life the part has claimed to be the whole ; and the result is necessarily partial, " abstract," contradictory. The true whole is the unity of all the parts; and that it may be constituted, every selfish impulse must submit to the control of the rational Self, which alone can estimate the relative and permanent value of each. Most commonly, the absence of such true system and completeness is revealed in the obviously and painfully self-contradictory, fragmentary, and inconsistent character of the intem- perate life, in its too evident want of unity. The main stream of its Purpose is drained off into side currents and eddies, and many a time is checked and turned by an undercurrent running in the opposite direction. 2. The virtue of Temperance or the duty of Self-disci- its nega- tive aspect. pline has two aspects — a negative and a positive. J^irst, negatively, it is the subjection of all impulse to the rule of rational choice, the not being brought under the power of any tendency of our nature, the setting to each its measure and limit by making it an element in a coherent 254 THE MORAL LIFE. and systematic rational life. In general, however, one particular impulse or set of impulses represents the prin- ciple of disintegration in the individual ; the forces of the rebel nature are concentrated at some one point or at a few points. That impulse represents evil for the man ; at that point the battle must be fought, there it must be lost or won. The struggle is not with evil in general, or with nature in the abstract ; it is with this particular form of evil, it is with our own nature, or " besetting sin." The drunkard's struggle is with the appetite for drink; he must master that appetite, or it will master him. The miser's struggle is with cupidity, the lazy and luxurious nature's is with its love of ease. In other words, the task is always one of self-conquest, and as the natural self of each is different from that of his neighbour, the moral task is always quite concrete and individual. What is temperance for one is intemperance for another; the j\Iean for one is for another excess ; where one walks in perfect safety, another may not trust himself to walk at all. Here we see the truth of Asceticism. Self-discipline is, for each, self-denial or self-sacrifice. The individuality must be subdued to the rational personality, and the per- fect subjection of individuality may, and often does, mean the absolute denial, at some point, of its right to live. If a natural impulse claims us as exclusively its own, en- slaves us, and its indulgence at all means for us its im- moderate indulgence— if , unless it is kept below its normal level it will inevitably rise above it,— the necessity is laid upon us to deny that impulse, to starve it, and, it may be, even to kill it outright. Better to enter into the moral life halt and maimed, if we cannot enter whole and sound, THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 255 than not to enter at all ; it may be profitable for us that one of our members perish, that some particular passion or appetite be denied indulgence altogether, because mod- erate indulgence of it is for us impossible. Thus, while Temperance is moderation, not abstinence, abstinence may be to the individual the only means to moderation ; and the ascetic principle of " keeping the body under," lest it rebel aojainst the rule of reason, is a safe ethical maxim for the avera^je man. The concrete and individual character of self-discipline illustrates the importance, and even the necessity, of self- knowledge. A man is his own worst enemy. None can do him such dire injury as that which he can inflict upon himself. If he would discover the enemy in his ambush, therefore, he must carefully explore and spy out the secret places of his own nature. He must discover his peculiar bias, and watch keenly its growing or decreasing strength. He must often "recollect himself," and reckon up the gain and loss, the victory and defeat, in this inner com- bat with himself. And he must act in the light of this knowledge, with all the prudence of a general who cal- culates nicely the forces of the enemy and compares their numbers with his own. 3. This negative side of self-discipline, this work of Relation of mere subjection of natural sensibility, is, we all know, a positive as- much larger part of some lives than of others. In some the sensibility seems so to lend itself from the first to the wise control of reason that there is little consciousness of struggle or control at all. Such a moral career seems a pretty even tenor of goodness ; its fair Elysian fields are 'I 256 THE MORAL LIFE. never stained with the blood of battle, its quiet peace is hardly broken with the noise of tumult or rebellion. Such well-tempered natures have the more energy to spare for the task of positive virtue ; and to whom much is given, of them is much required. Others wage a bitter and life- long struggle against some natural tendency which, with their utmost efforts, they can only keep in subjection; these have little energy left for positive virtue. For them, however, to whom so little is given, a little of positive accomplishment may be much ; for moral accomplishment is achieved in the sphere of character, and its significance is necessarily relative and individual. Kor is it to be forgotten that positive and self- forgetting activity, the devotion of one's entire energy to some disinterested end, is one of the best means of deliverance from the slavery of individual impulse. The true self - discipline is inevitably positive as well as negative. The most perfect mastery of impulse comes with the guidance of all its energy into the path of our positive life-purpose. Temperance is not mere negation or annihilation of impulse, it is its co-ordination and control: and the characteristic im- pulsive energy of the individual ought to be utilised in the interest of the total purpose of the life. The only final subjugation of sensibility comes with its transmutation into the enthusiasm of some great end. Sensibility has then become organic to reason, it is then the dynamic of the rational life, and the danger of insurrection has almost disappeared. It is from idle impulse that there is danger ; impulse which has its work assigned it by reason soon becomes reason's willing servant. The strongest natures THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 257 are always natures of strong impulse, mastered and sub- dued to the unity of a purpose which has possessed their entire being. The individuality has all passed into the personality ; the fire of a consuming purpose has purified the dull ore of all their natural sensibilities. The search for truth is the passion of a Socrates and a N'ewton ; all the energy of a Luther's nature goes into the task of reformation. Not till the depths of the moral being are thus stirred, and all the energy of its native passion captivated by rational purpose, is the work of self-dis- cipline made perfect. 4. Thus we have reached the second and positive aspect its positive of Temperance — viz., concentration or unity of purpose, ^^^^^ * self -limitation. Our natural impulsive energy must be guided along a single path ; the original tendency to diffusion must be checked. Diffusion means waste, economy of power implies limitation and definiteness of direction. The strong and effective man is always the man of one idea, of one book, the specialist, whether in the intellectual or in other activities, the man who has one consuming interest in life — a master-interest and en- thusiasm which has subdued all others to itself. Unity, simplicity, singleness of purpose — the correlation and in- tegration of all the tendencies of the individual nature — this is the mark of a perfectly temperate, a thoroughly disciphned life. The forces of the nature are not merely checked and conquered ; they are engaged in the service of an end which can utilise them all, and whose service is perfect freedom from the bondage of mere unregulated impulse. Here again we see the need of self-knowledge ; B Mi I i 258 THE MORAL LIFE. Its funda- mental im- portance. we need to know the positive, as well as the negative, significance of our individuality. And such a knowledge of^what we can do is at the same time a knowledge of what we cannot do : a knowledge of our individual capacity is at the same lime a knowledge of our individual limitation. II. — Culture or Self -development, 5. The fundamental " importance of a man to himself " has been made the corner-stone of their theory of life by all the great moralists, as it has been made the recurring note in the preaching of all the great moral teachers. Socrates insists hardly less strenuously than Jesus upon the supreme value of the individual soul and the prime duty of caring for it. It was Christianity, however, that first brought home to the general consciousness of man- kind the idea of the salvation of the Self, not from punish- ment, but from sin ; the conviction that the true Good is to be found in inner excellence of character ; the thought of the treasure which is laid up " where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt," in the inner chambers of the spiritual being. What a hold this idea took of the Middle Age, and how it produced the monastic life, with its preoccupation with the anatomy of spiritual states, its morbid self-con- scious pietism, we all know. We are also familiar with the narrower and more superficial self-consciousness of the man of " culture " and the aesthete, as well as with the equally foolish self-concern of the pedant who would fain be a scholar. These are instances of the obvious over-development of self-consciousness and self-concern. Better far to forget oneself than to be thus ever mind- THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 259 ful ; better to be caught nodding, like Jove himself, than to be always thus painfully on the alert. There is an unconscious -self-development which is often the best. But these are only exaggerations of the essential and fundamental virtue, the common root of all' the rest. We must never really forget, in all the various "busi- ness" of life, that man's "proper business" is with himself, that his grand concern is the culture of his own nature, the development of his best and total Self. And since all so-called " business " is, in this sense, more or less distracting, we have need of leisure from its care and trouble for self-recollection, leisure to be with ourselves, to he ourselves. For we are not to perfect ourselves merely as instruments for the production of results, however good. A man's true "work" is that "activity of the soul" (ivipyeLa -^fx^?), which is its own sufficient end, the actualisation and development of the man's true " soul " or self. The " utilitarian " estimate of education is essen- tially superficial ; it is the estimate of the Philistine who asks always for the "practical" value of culture, and thereby shows that he does not know what culture is. The true " practice " of a human being is not that in which he discharges best a task which has no essential relation to himself ; it is that which calls forth and develops all his human powers, the ma^i in the man. 6. I have said that it is the total Self that is to be de- Meaning of veloped, the intellectual, the emotional, and the active or ^'^^''''' volitional elements, each in its perfection, and all in the harmony of a complete and single life. Culture means not merely the cultivation of the several capacities, but 260 THE MORAL LIFE. the symmetrical development of all. As in the physical organism the health of each member depends upon the health of the organism as a whole, so the true development of any part of our nature implies the concurrent develop- ment of all the other parts. The defective character of the " intellectual " man, whose emotional nature is atrophied and whose undue reflection has wellnigh incapacitated him for practical activity ; of the " man of feeling," who has forgotten how to think or to act ; of the " practical " man, who has no time for thought, and to whom, perhaps, the emotional life seems a weakness or a luxury which he can- not afford himself— is matter of common observation. It is perhaps not so commonly realised that true intellectual cul- ture itself implies the culture of the emotions, if not also of the will, that true cTsthetic culture implies the culture both of will and intellect, and, above all, that the best activity is the outcome of the largest thought and the deepest and warmest sensibility. In all spheres, the key- note of true culture is symmetrical self -development. Tiie place 7. The relation of physical to ethical well-being is apt cuituS!'"^ to be misconceived. It is that of means to end ; physical well-being is not an integral part of the ethical End, though it is perhaps the most important means towards the realisation of that End. Health is the basis of the moral life, it is no part of that life itself. The body is only the instrument or organ of a life which is, in its essence, spiritual. It becomes a duty to care for the body, but this care is only part of our care for the soul or the spiritual Self. My body is mine, it is not /. To make physical well-being an end-in-itself^js to forget that animal THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 261 perfection is no worthy end for a rational being. It is the ends for which the human mind can use the body that give the human body its peculiar dignity; and if man makes the mind the minister of the body's perfection, he is reversing their true ethical relation. Matthew Arnold has wisely and well criticised the popular estimate of physical health as an end-in-itself ; ^ it is that for the 77iere animal, but it cannot properly be that for man. " Physical culture " is not an integral part of " ethical culture." As a means towards the attainment of the ethical End, as the basis of the moral life, the importance of physical well-being can hardly be exaggerated. Self-preservation and self-development are, in this sense, always primarily the preservation and development of the physical life. I must live, in order to live well ; and my power of realis- ing my moral purposes will be largely determined by my physical health. The ethical value of life, both in its length and in its breadth, in the duration and in the richness of its activities, is to a considerable extent within our own power, being determined by our care or neglect of the body. To despise the body, or to seek to escape from it, as the ascetic does, is as wrong as it is futile. The body is the main condition of the moral life, its very element and atmosphere ; and the athletic exaggeration of the importance of the body, like the estimate of " clean- liness" as not even ''next to godliness," is probably, in the main, a not unnatural reaction from the ascetic ex- treme of contempt and neglect fostered by Puritan tra- dition. Above all, it is obvious that if care for the body is an important although an indirect duty, the destruction ^ See ' Culture and Anarchy,' 21. 262 THE MORAL LIFE. |i of the physical life, or suicide, is an exceeding great sin. Our moral life being physically conditioned, the destruc- tion of the body is an indirect attack upon that life itself. Suicide, being self-destruction (so far as that is possible to us), must always contradict the fundamental ethical principle of self-development. Health is only part of that individual good which is, as such, subordinate to the personal good, and has only an instrumental value. Like money and position, social or official, it is part of our moral " opportunity." But we have seen that the prudential life, whose concern is with the opportunity rather than with the exercise of virtue, does not coexist alongside the life of virtue, but is organic to that life. It would perhaps be helpful to ckar ethical thinking to make the term Prudence cover the instrumental or the " occasional"— those aspects of human life which, like physical health, pecuniary affairs, worldly position, or office, have in themselves no moral significance, but acquire such a significance through their being the physical basis of the virtuous life. The indi. 8. We have seen that self - development means the Ssd"f- development of individuality into personality, that the develop- ^^^g^^ ^g always an individual. It is essential to true self - development, therefore, that the individuality be conserved, not destroyed. Many factors of our modern civilisation tend to substitute monotonous and dead uni- formity for the living and interesting diversity of indi- vidual nature. Specialisation is apt to dwarf the individ- uality ; political and other forms of social organisation tend in the same direction. We are much more apt than THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 263 our forefathers to imitate others, and to be unwilling to be ourselves. Yet it is clear that vocation is determined chiefly by individual aptitude, though modified by the pressure of circumstances. The true " career " for a man is that which shall most fully realise his individuality. Fortunate indeed is he to whom a thorou^jh understanding of his own nature and an appropriate course of circum- stances open up the path of such a career. To too many their so-called career is a mere routine, a " business " for their hands which leaves their deeper nature idle and unoccupied, longing for a life more satisfying than is offered by the activities which consume its weary days, finding something of that true life it may be elsewhere, in some pursuit which has no relation to the daily avoca- tion. There is a pathos in some men's " hobbies " ; they indicate that the " soul " is not dead, but sleeping, and needs but the touch of an understanding sympathy to rouse it from its sleep. For the only true " life " is ivepyeca yjrvxrj^, activity of the Soul or Self. Happiest is he who can put his whole soul, all the energies of his spirit, into each day's work. His work, even as work, as sheer pro- duct, will have a different value. It will be honest work, the best work. It seems as if brute matter itself took the impress of the soul that moulds it ; we feel, for ex- ample, that Carlyle's appreciation of his father's masonry is essentially a true appreciation.^ And as the means of ^ " Nothing that he undertook but he did it faithfully, and like a true man. I shall look on the houses he built with a certain proud interest. They stand firm and sound to the heart all over this little district. Not one that comes after him will ever say, Here was the finger of a hollow eye-servant. They are little texts for me of the gospel of man's free will." — 'Reminiscences,' 5, 6. i 264 THE MORAL LIFE. spiritual expression and expansion, the difference between nominal and real "work" is incalculable. How many imprisoned, unexpressed, unfulfilled souls behind the bleared, indifferent faces of the world's workers ! For in every man there is a soul, a self, unique and interesting, waiting for its development; and sometimes, even from the deadest man, in the home among his own who under- stand him, or touched to life by some sign of brotherly interest in another, the soul that had slept so long will suddenly leap forth and surprise you. The true doinf/ is that doing which is also a 'bei7ig, and the medium of better and fuller being, of a higher self- development. But such doing is as unique as such being ; the measure of it is found in the individuality of the worker. Each man, like each planet, has his " appointed course," appointed him by his nature; "so starts the young life when it has come to self-discovery, and found out what it is to do by finding out what it isJ' Here positively, for self-development, as already negatively for self-discipline, we see the need for self-knowledge. Hav- ing found the end or purpose of our life, the course of our self - development, and holding to this course steadily through all the storm and stress of passion and of cir- cumstance, through the fiery time of youth and the deadening effect of years, we cannot fail of the complete- ness, fulness, and symmetry of our appointed life. Such a care for our own true culture or self-develop- ment in all our work is the true " self-love," and at the opposite pole from selfishness. AVe ought not to be always trying to " do good " ; the first requisite for doing good is to be good. Philanthropy or benevolence will grow out THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 265 of this self -development, as its flower and fruit. But self- culture is fundamental, and the unconscious and indirect philanthropy, of faithfulness to ourselves is often the best and farthest-reaching. Such self-culture fits us for service to others ; when the time comes, the man is ready. More- over, we must first live the true life ourselves, if we would help others to live it too ; it is thus we get the needed understanding. "We must he, ourselves, before we can help others to be. It is because God is all that we would be, that we say and feel, " Thou wilt help us to be." So it is that, though we are separate from one another, separate by the very fact of Personality, each " rounded to a separ- ate whole," and though each man's single life, each man's " own vineyard," needs constant and exclusive care, yet the good man feels no cleft, as there is none, between the egois- tic and the altruistic sides of his life. Egoism, in the sense explained, is fundamental, but it is the presupposition of an enlightened and genuine altruism. No narrowness is possible for him who cares for and develops his own true life ; in himself he finds the moral microcosm. The best ambition a man could cherish, both for himself and for his fellows, is that he and they alike may, each in himself, and each in his own way, so reflect the moral universe that none may have cause to travel beyond himself to find the fellowship of a common life and a common Good. 9. Yet it is necessary to transcend our individuality ; Necessity personality is essentially universal. " Whatever truly de- scending serves to be held up as a worthy object of man's striving uaiity. and working, whether it be the service of humanity, of J^^ ^^^^^ one's country, of science, of art, not to speak of the service 266 THE MORAL LIFE. of God, is far beyond the sphere of individual enjoyment." It is this inherent universality that gives life its note of nobility. The personal life is never merely particular and individual; its atmosphere is always the objective and universal, whether it be the intellectual pursuit of the true, the artistic pursuit of the beautiful, or the rehgious pursuit of the good. All these pursuits lift the indWidual out of the sphere of the particular and transi- tory into that of the universal and the abiding, out of the « finite " into the '' infinite relations." This is the touch that transfigures human life, and lends to it a divine and absolute significance. For a full self-development it is need- ful that we thus escape from the " Cave " of the particular, above all, from the Cave of our own individuality, into the freer atmosphere of the infinite and ideal, and let its winds blow about the soul ; they are the very breath of its higher life. This is equally true of all three sides of our naUire,— the intellectual, the aesthetic, and the volitional. How the horizon of the mind lifts with the apprehen- sion of Truth, how the pursuit of it takes a man out of himself, how faithfulness to it delivers him from self- seeking and narrow aims, how the scientific and the philosophic life are essentially disinterested, and how educative of the Personality is such a course of pure in- tellectual activity, — on all this there is little need to insist in a scientific age like the present, which has been accused of the " deification of Truth." It was with no little moral insight, as well as with Greek partiality for the things of the mind, that Plato and Aristotle de- scribed the highest life of man as a purely intellectual activity, as the speculative life. That the contemplation of THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 267 the Beautiful in nature and in human life, the apprehen- sion of " the light that never was on sea or land," is also uplifting and enlarging to the soul ; that the companion- ship of the graceful and harmonious makes the soul itself harmonious and graceful, the Greeks at least knew well. To them the true education was " musical." The man who has seen the beautiful is easily recognised, his face shines with the light of that divine vision, his footsteps move to noble numbers, he is delicate and tender, and about him there is a gentleness and grace which you miss in the hard practical man, and even in the mere intellectualist. The beauty of the world has "passed into his face." Least of all can we be ignorant of the influence of the contemplation of the ideal Good. The soul that believes in, and lives in communion with. Goodness absolute, is touched to goodness as a soul that sees only the poverty of the actual cannot be. The moral value of an ethical Eeligion is an undoubted fact, acknowledged by every one. Nor is the essence of Eeligion mere constraint, its sanction of goodness mere fear of punishment or hope of rew^ard. Far more powerful, though more subtly exer- cised, is the purifying influence of the divine Vision itself. The Hebrews felt this so deeply that they were afraid of that vision which we have learned to call "beatific." " No man can see God's face and live." Evil cannot live in the presence of utter Holiness. Even among men, we know how stern to the impure is the silent rebuke of purity, how humiliating to the worldly and selfish soul the contact with unselfishness and generosity; and we can understand something of the meaning of the words. (( Our God is a consuming fire." 268 THE MORAL LIFE. Dangers of moral Idealism. Therefore it is well and healthful for the soul that each should breathe at times the pure atmosphere of the in- finite and ideal, should lift up his eyes unto the hills from whence cometh his aid, should retire into Plato's " ideal world," and gaze upon the archetypal Truth and Beauty and Goodness of which the actual shows us but the faint reflection. Some must, and by natural vocation will, con- secrate themselves to the more direct and immediate service of these ideals. The man of science and the phil- osopher, the artist— poet, painter, sculptor, musician— the priest or minister of religion,— these are, in a peculiar sense, the servants of the ideal. But they are only the representatives of our common humanity in that supreme service and consecration. And if these live habitually " within the veil," in the inner sanctuary of the Infinite, it is needful that they whose preoccupation with the world's business detains them in the outer courts of the finite world, if they would preserve their manhood and draw strength for life's casual duties, should sometimes enter too. 10. Yet we must never, in our devotion to the ideal and infinite, neglect the paramount claims of the actual finite world. We must always return— even the ministers of the ideal in art, in science, and in religion, must return— to the secular life, to the finite world and its relations. Nor must the \dsion of the infinite and ideal ever be allowed to distort our vision of the finite and actual. Emancipa- tion from the " Cave " of the finite brings with it its own new danger, it tends to unfit man for the life of the Cave. Those who have lived in the upper air, and have seen the THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 269 absolute Eeality, are apt to be blinded by the darkness of the Cave in which their fellows spend their lives, and, knowing how. shadowy and illusory are all its concerns, to lose their interest in them. They are apt, as Plato said, to be awkward and easily outwitted, for their souls sit loose to this world and dwell apart. The peculiar temptation of genius, moral, aesthetic, or intellectual, the peculiar tempta- tion of those whose lives are spent habitually in the in- finite relations, is to minimise the finite, and fail to see the Infinite shining through it. Gazing at the stars, they are in danger of falling into the well. So it is that " respect- ability " is often on a higher ethical plane than " genius " and "saintship." Even Plato said that we must bring the travellers back to the Cave, and force them to take their part in its life. Idealist and transcendentalist though he was, he saw that most men must live in the Cave. For, as a contemporary wTiter has well said, " to finite beings recognition of the finite — occupation with, or even absorp- tion in it — is quite as necessary as is the recognition of what transcends it."^ No service of the ideal will atone for unfaithfulness in the actual. "He that is unfaith- ful in that which is least is unfaithful also in much." The individual's duty is determined and defined by his "station," or his place in the actual finite relations, and even his cultivation of the ideal must be regulated by the imperious claims of this moral " station." We know how inexorably severe were Carlyle's judgments of self-con- demnation for his failure in the little services of domestic piety, how, if these judgments were even in a measure true, his " spectral " view of life, his preoccupation with ^ Professor Knight, ' Aspects of Theism,' 205. 270 THE MORAL LIFE. " immensities and eternities," shut out from his field of vision the duty that lay next him. Carlyle's uncorrupted moral insight finds in his " genius " (which was perhaps as much moral as intellectual in its quality) no excuse for shortcoming in the " minor moralities" of life. Nor does the " world's " keen moral judgment find in the peculiar religious attainments of " professing Christians " any ex- cuse for such obvious moral defects as malice and ill- temper. In such cases the severity of our judgment is apt to be intensified by the very height of the ideal to which the life professes its devotion. The highest and completest — the sanest — natures recognise most fully this claim of the actual, and most willingly surrender themselves to the burden of its fulfilment. In this meekness and lowliness of spirit Wordsworth sees the crown of Milton's virtue: — " Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart ; . . . Pure as the heavens, majestic, free. So didst tliou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay." And Tennyson, in the " Idylls of the King," sings in a like strain of the ideal life : — " And some among you held that if the King Had seen the sight, he would have sworn the vow ; Not easily, seeing that the King must guard That which he rules, and is but as the hind To whom a space of land is given to plough, Who may not wander from the allotted field Before his work be done." So must each man be content, king or subject, genius or day-labourer, to go forth unto his labour until the evening; THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 271 for in this world each has his appointed task, and if he do it not, it will be left undone. Even if our duty be to consecrate ourselves in Science, in Art, or in Keligion, to the peculiar service of the ideal — the noblest service that life offers, and that which calls for the highest aptitudes — we still must not forget that, in respect of our duties in the actual, we stand on the common level. The priest, the artist, and the philosopher are also " ordinary men," and have no exemption from the common domestic, social, and civil duties. Such exemption would unfit them for their own great task — the discovery of life's ideal mean- ing and its interpretation to their fellows. Nor must any man allow his excursions into the ideal world to dull the edge of his interest in the ordinary business of life. It is true that we all have need of leisure from the very finite occupations of life, for such communion with the Infinite ; for in that communion the soul's best life is rooted, and it will wither if not well tended. The world of Knowledge, of Art, of Eeligion, does claim us for itself, and our visits to it ought to be all the more frequent be- cause our actual world is apt to be so meagre and con- fined. But our acquaintance with the splendours of its " many mansions " must never breed in our souls contempt for the narrowness and the mean appointments of the house of our earthly pilgrimage. It is a danger and temptation neither unreal nor unfamiliar. Let us take two illustrations of it. The artistic temper is apt to be impatient of the commonplaceness of its daily life ; we are wont, indeed, to attribute to it a kind of practical irresponsibility. Led by visions of the beautiful into the romantic country of 272 THE MORAL LIFE. the imagination, the spirit is loath to return^ to the prosaic fields of ordinary daily duty. Its emotions are ideal and find no issue in action on the earthly plane ; and more and more it is felt that there is no scope for such emotions in the actual world. That other xvorld- the world of the imagination-is so much more interest- in- and exciting, that, by comparison with it, the actual world of daily life, where duties lie, seems " stale, flat and unprofitable." It is the Quixotic temper that we all know in childhood. Nothing will satisfy us but knight- errantry, slaying giants, and rescuing fair ladies. The life of tiie Middle Ages would have suited us much better than that of the Nineteenth Century. It was so much more picturesque, there was so much more colour, the lic^hts were brighter and the shadows deeper; life was "romantic" then. But, in reality, life is always the same- it presents always the same moral opportunities. The elementary realities do not change, tlie Alphabet of human life is the same from age to age. The imag- ination is always apt to picture the Golden Age of hfe's oreat opportunities of action either in the Past or m the Future, while really, if we had eyes to see them, they are always in the Present. The pattern of man's life may be very different in different ages, its colours may be brighter or more sombre; but its warp and woof, its inner texture, is always the same, and is wrought of the threads of good and evil, virtue and vice, faith- fulness and unfaithfulness to present duty. Or take the "Saint" who, with his eye fixed on the Beyond, abstracts himself from this earthly life, either physically as in medii^val Monasticism, or actually and THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 273 in the inner temple of the heart, like many a modern Protestant, mingling with his fellows as if he were not of them, not in hypocrisy or pride, but in real rapt abstrac- tion of spirit, afraid lest he soil his hands with the world's business and render them unfit for the uses of the heavenly commerce. Such a life not only misses the influence it might have exerted on the world, but proves itself un- worthy of, and unfit for, the higher just in the measure that it fails in the lower duties. The peculiar human way to the ideal is through utter faithfulness to the actual ; and the reason why we need to leave the actual at all is just that we may get the inspiration which will enable us to see the ideal in it. It requires an eye that has seen the ideal shining in its own proper strength, to detect it in the disappointing surroundings of the actual. In activity, not in passive contemplation, lies man's salvation. " This is Christianity, as distinguished from Buddhism;" it is also modern, as distinguished from mediaeval, Christianity. The ideal must be found, after all, in the actual, the things unseen and eternal in the things which are seen and temporal ; the infinitely true and beautiful and good in the finite relations of daily life. It is the function of the chosen servants of the ideal to open the eyes of their fellows that they may see life even on "this bank and shoal of time," suh specie ceternitatis ; and thus to make the secular for them henceforth sacred, the commonplace infinitely interesting and significant. 11. But the supreme category of the moral life is the Ethical r^i J. IT •• ' • M> ^ supremacy (jrood, not as excluding, but as containing m itself, the of the Beautiful and the True. To make either the True or the Heal. S r>Y4 THE MORAL LIFE. T of ie ordn ry sensibilities. For Plato's art.st.c play of the ordmarj ^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ nature, aga-. - - * ^^^ ^^f, ^.^er the form of the always .-as to n.en^ ^^^^^^^^_ ^^^ ^^^^^ .^^^^ Beautiful, and, as Mr raie concentric sciousness. But Plato, poet individual a nervous apprehension of the dangers 1 ^1. Q^^^if^ that lie in ^stheticism. He nas no pi^i. and the State that lie m ^^.^^ ^^^^^ for the poets in his ideal State. ±iis qud THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 275 it is to be noted, is a characteristic Greek one ; the poets are condemned in the interests of Truth, rather than of Goodness. Where truth and beauty do not coincide, Plato would seem to say, truth must be preferred to beauty. Art — the poetic art at least — being in its essence imitative, substitutes fiction for reality, and its fiction is apt to be a misrepresentation of the real. Therefore, though none has a higher appreciation of literary art than Plato, though none finds a more honourable place for " music " in the education of the ideal man and citizen, he finds himself compelled, in loyalty to the higher interests of Truth, to banish the poets lest they corrupt the State by making its citizens believe a lie. It is an impressive instance of the war of ideals, and of faithfulness to the highest knowledge. And if for us the war has ceased to exist, and the circles of our life's interests have become concentric, it is not so much perhaps because we have reached a truer appreciation of the function of Art than Plato knew, as because we have learned to include both the aesthetic and the intellectual life as elements in the undivided life of Goodness. Let us separate any one of these three ideals from the others, and all alike are in that measure impaired and misunderstood. We can see that even the Greek devotion to the True is not the highest or completest devotion of human life ; our devo- tion to the True, as well as to the Beautiful, must, if we are to be " perfect," be part of our supreme devotion to the Good. Hence the supreme value of the religious life, as compared with the other avenues to the universal and the Infinite. Our deepest thought of God is Eighteousness, Culture and Phil- anthropy 276 THE MOKAL LIFE. and by reason of this, its ethical basis, the religious ideal not only includes the others, but also comes nearest to actual life, touching the otherwise commonplace and trivial duties of the finite relations and transfiguring them, shedding over the actual the light of the ideal life. 12. Hence also it is in the service of our fellows that we find the continual emancipation from the prison-house of our individual self-hood, in philanthropy that we find the surest and most effective method of our self -develop- ment. The lower and selfish self, because it is selfish, cannot serve ; the very life of the true and higher Self consists in ministry. Xor is there danger, in such a life, of Quixotic knight-errantry or abstract moral Idealism, of our failing, through our devotion to the ideal, in our duty to the actual. The most commonplace service, '* the cup of cold water," any deed done for another, takes us quite out of ourselves, idealises our life, breaks down its limita- tions. For a true ministry to any human need implies a perfect sympathy and identification of ourselves with the needy one, and we know the enlargement of the spirit's life that comes from such a sympathy. It opens up other worlds of experience — the world of poverty, of sickness, of sorrow, of doubt, of temptation, of sin ; it unlocks the secret chambers of the human heart. How much the man misses who, with miserly greed, hoards up his little selfish life and will not share it with his fellows, how miserably poor and valueless even to himself his life becomes, Butler has described in his stronc^ clear didactic manner in his ' Sermons,' and George THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 277 Meredith has pictured in his powerful story ' The Egoist.' Such a picture George Eliot has given us in ' Silas Marner,' adding, with consummate skill, the companion- picture of the deliverance that came with the first out- goings of the poor shrunken heart towards its fellows, and how there was born in the spirit of Silas Marner, through the love of a little child, a new and larger life. The specialist in science, the business man, the profes- sional man, all alike need the expansion that comes from such a contact with the universal human heart and its universal needs. The least apparently significant duty to our fellows, to be adequately done, calls forth the whole man, intellectual, emotional, active ; and it is most wholesome for the " specialist " — and more and more we all, in some sense, are specialists — to be distracted from a too entire preoccupation with his peculiar calling by the common everyday duties of our human life. Many illus- trations might be offered of how truly the service of others is a service of our own best selves. What a force, for example, in self-development is the faithful and adequate discharge of any office or responsibility; men grow to the dignity of their calling, and duties which at first almost overpowered them become in the end no burden at all. The expectation of others, silent it may be and undefined, is an incalculable force in steadying and ele /ating a nature which might otherwise have been unstable and even have become ignoble. To feel that we stand to another in any measure for the ideal, as the parent stands to the child, the teacher to the pupil, the preacher to his people, and friend to friend, is a tremendous spur to 278 THE MORAL LIFE. US to live up to and justify, not disappoint, these expecta- tions. Is not this one of the secrets of greatness? To stand, like the prophet and reformer, to a whole people in this relation, must be an immeasurable stimulus to faithfulness to the responsibility thus created. Chris- tianity has done much to bring home to the human mind the essential dignity and the high privilege of service, and to teach us how, in serving our fellows and in bearing one another's burdens, we may find the path of a perfect self-realisation. Here we find the bridge from the indi- vidual to the social virtues, the essential identity of altruism with the higher egoism. In this also lies the Christian idea of moral greatness, the greatness of humil- ity and self-sacrifice, as opposed to the greatness of pride and self-assertion, the Pagan vanity and pomp of indi- viduality. If we wish to feel the contrast of the Pagan and the Christian ideals of greatness, we have only to compare the Aristotelian picture of the fieyaXo'ylrvxo^, the proud aristocrat who lives to prove his independence and superiority, with that other picture of a Life that poured itself out in the service of others, that came not to be ministered unto but to minister, that was willing, for the sake of such a ministry, even to be misunderstood. This picture has touched the heart of the world as the other never could have touched it. For it is a revelation of the blessedness that lies in escape from the prison-house of the " private " and selfish life, and feels throbbing within it the universal life of humanity itself. 13. Yet it is never to be forgotten that the moral life THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 279 remains always a personal, and even an individual life ; Seif-rever- it never becomes impersonal or " self-less." The unselfish dignity life is not self -less or impersonal ; rather, as we have just tude^of * seen, the life of Self is enlarged and enriched in direct pro- fn[y°"' portion to the unselfishness of that life. Even the indi- viduality is not, in such self-development any more than in self-discipline, negated or annihilated; it is taken up into, and interpreted by, this larger social Good. Nor must we forget that the fundamental and essential attitude of a man towards himself is one of self-respect, — what Milton calls " the inward reverence of a man towards his own person," reverence for the humanity which he represents. This is the true " greatness of soul " which is perfectly consistent with the utmost humility as to our actual achievements and individual desert, with remorse and shame and bitter self-condemnation. For such self- reverence is reverence for the ideal and potential manhood in oneself, and means the chastisement of the actual by comparison. This noble self-consciousness should enable a man to preserve his dignity in all the affairs of life, and make him, in the true sense, sufficient unto himself, his own judge and his own approver. We are told that Goetlie had no patience with " over-sensitive people," with those " histrionic natures," who " seem to imagine that they are always in an amphitheatre, with the assembled world as spectators ; whereas, all the while, they are play- ing to empty benches." Doubtless, if we filled the benches with the great and good of all ages, as with a " great cloud of witnesses," and brought our actions to the penetrating gaze of their clear judgment, such a consciousness would 280 THE MORAL LIFE. be most beneficial and worthy. But we are far too apt to be play-acting instead of living, contented if only we suc- ceed in playing a certain role, and appearing to be what we are not. Such a " histrionic " life is the very antithesis of the good life ; and, when detected, it is rightly named " hypocrisy." But oftener it passes undetected, and gains the applause for which it has striven. And even those who are not consciously masquerading, for whom life is real and earnest, are too apt to be dependent upon the judgment of others, and to forget that a man is called upon to be his own judge, and in all things to live worthily of himself. The general level of moral opinion subtly insin- uates itself into our judgments of ourselves, we lose our independence, and sink below our own true level. All strong natures are self-contained; it is the secret of moral peace and calm, the mark of the wise and good of every age. " Such a man feels that to fail in any act of kindness and helpfulness would be foreign to his nature. It would be beneath him. His sense of honour forbids him to stoop to anything selfish, petty, or mean." The " opulent or royal soul that has felt itself to be one with the great human life about it, would feel itself narrowed, and thus dishonoured, by any act through which it should cut itself off from these larger rela- tions." ^ It would feel like a prince deposed. " In this sense it is that we may speak of stooping to a selfish act, or may say that such an act is not only foreign to the nature, but is unworthy of it and beneath it." - So sub- limely independent, so nobly self-contained, is the life of 1 C. C. Everett, ' Poetry, Comedy, and Duty,' 245. - Ibid., 246. THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 281 personality. The good man is at home with himself, and his real life is an inner rather than an outer life. " The world is too mucli with us ; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." The moral weakling lives always, or for the most part, abroad, and never retires within himself, to find behind the veil of his own inner being that vision of the perfect life for which the spirit yearns. For the lowly and con- trite heart is His temple who dwelleth not in temples made with hands, and the pure and upright soul is his continual abode. But this truly " sacred place " must be kept sacred, and it cannot be, if it is opened to all the riot and confusion of the market-place. " Solitude is to character what space is to the tree." The loneliness of personality is never to be forgotten ; " the heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not there- with." In a deep sense, we are separate from one another, and each man must bear his own burden. The walls of personality shut us in, each within the chamber of his own being and his own destiny. It is therefore good and most necessary for a man to be alone with himself. It was one of the most genial and social-hearted of men who said : " If the question was eternal company, without the power of retiring within yourself, I should say, ' Turnkey, lock the cell.' " ^ But, happily, that is not the alternative. In the solitary places of the human heart, in the deep quiet valleys and on the high mountain-tops of our moral being, is to be found the " goodly fellowship " of the great ^ Scott, Journal. 282 THE MORAL LIFE. and noble of all the ages of man's long history — nay, the fellowship of the Universal Spirit, the meeting-place of man with God. We must cherish the solitude, even as we would cherish that fellowship.^ ^ Archbishop Trench has given fine expression to this feeling Rowing sonnet : — 283 in the followin "A Avretched thing it were, to have our heart Like a thronged highway or a populous street ; Wliere every idle thought has leave to meet, Pause, or pass on, as in an open mart ; Or like some roadside pool, which no nice art Has guarded that the cattle may not beat And foul it with a umltitude of feet, Till of the heavens it can give back no part. But keep thou thine a holy solitude, For he who would walk there, would walk alone ; He who would drink there, must be tirst endued With single right to call that stream his own ; Keep thou thine heart, close-fastened, unrevealed, A fenced garden, and a fountain sealed." CHAPTEE 11. THE SOCIAL LIFE. I,— The Social Virtices: Justice and Benevolence. 1. Max has social or other-regarding, as well as individual ^hereia^^ or self-ref^arding, impulses and instincts. By nature, and social to even in his unmoralised condition, he is a social bemg ; viduai life, but this sympathetic or altruistic nature must, equally with the selfish and egoistic, be formed and moulded into the virtuous character. The primary feeling for others, like the primary feeling for self, is only the raw material of the moral life. And the law of the process of moralisa- tion is the same in both cases ; the virtuous attitude to- wards others is essentially the same as the virtuous • atti- tude towards oneself. For in others, as in ourselves, we are called upon to recognise the attribute of Personality. They, too, are ends in themselves ; their life, like our own, is one of self-realisation, of self-development through self- discipline. We must treat them, therefore, as we treat ourselves, as Persons. The law of the individual life is also the law of the social life, though in a different and a wider application. Virtue is fundamentally and always personal; and when we have discovered the law of the 284 THE MORAL LIFE. individual life, we have already discovered that of the social life. Since men are not mere individuals, but the bearers of a common personality, the development in the individual of his true self -hood means his emancipation from the limitations of individuality, and the path to self- realisation is through the service of others. Not that we serve others, the better to serve ourselves : we may not regard another person as the instrument even of our own best self-development. They, too, are ends-in-themselves : to them is set the self-same task as to ourselves, the task of self-realisation. The Law of the moral life, the Law of Personality, covers the sphere of social as well as of in- dividual duty ; the Law is : " So act as to treat humanity, vslicther in thine own pci^son or in that of another, always as an end, never as a means to an end." We may nse neither ourselves nor others. Truly to serve humanity, therefore, is to realise oneself, and at the same time to aid others in the same task of self-realisation. In serving others, we are serving ourselves ; in serving ourselves, we are serving others. For, in both cases, we serve that Humanity which must ever be served, and which may never serve. The life of virtue, even on its social side, is still a per- sonal, not an impersonal life. This is apt to be over- looked, owing to the illusion of the term " social " and the antithesis, so commonly emphasised, between the indi- vidual and the social life. The individual and the social are in reality two aspects of the one undivided life of virtue, and their unity is discovered with their reduction to the common principle of Personality. The social life is, equally with the individual life, personal ; and the per- sonal life is necessarily at once individual and social. We THE SOCIAL LIFE. 285 must not be misled by the phrase "social life," as if society had a life of its own apart from its individual members ; society is the organisation of individuals, and it is theij who live, not it. Apart from its individual members, society would be a mere abstraction; but we are too apt, here as elsewhere, to hypostatise abstractions. In reality, society is not an " organism," but the ethical oro-anisation of individuals. Obviously, we must not isolate the organisation or the relation from the bemgs organised or related; this would be a new case of the old Scholastic Eealism, or substantiation of the universal. Moral reality, like all finite reality, is, in the last analysis, individual. But while the life of virtue is always indi- vidual, it is not merely individual : to be personal, it must be social. If in one sense each lives a separate life, yet in another sense " no man liveth unto himself." A common personality is to be realised in each, and in infinite ways the life of each is bound up with that of all. Only, the individual may never lose himself in the life of others. As a person, he is an end in himself, and has an infinite worth. He has a destiny, to be wrought out for himself ; the destiny of society is the destiny of its individual mem- bers. The " progress of the race " is, after all, the progress of the individual. The ethical End is personal, first and last. As the individual apart from society is an unreal abstraction, so is society apart from the individual. The ethical unit is the person. Thus we can see that there is no necessary antagonism between Individualism, truly understood, and Socialism, truly understood. Nay, the true Socialism is the true Individualism, the discovery and the development of the 286 THE MORAL LIFE. person in the individual. Society exists for the indi- vidual, it is the mechanism of his personal life. All social progress consists in the perfecting of this mechan- ism, to the end that the ethical individual may have more justice and freer play in the working out of his own individual destiny. The Individualism of the mere individual means moral chaos and is suicidal ; such a life is, as Hobbes described it, " poor, nasty, dull, brutish, and short." But the Individualism of the person is, in its idea at least, synonymous with the true Socialism. For social progress does not mean so much the massing of individuals as the individualising of the social " mass " ; the discovery, in the " masses," of that same humanity, in- dividual and personal, which had formerly been discerned only in the " classes." The " socialistic " ideal is to make possible for the " many " — nay, for all, or better for each — that full and total life of personality which, to so large an extent, is even still the exclusive possession of the few. Social organisation is never an end in itself, it is always a means to the attainment of individual perfection. Social vir- 2. We have seen that social or altruistic impulse, like nature and individual or egoistic, is only the raw material of virtue. Its limit, p^^^ ^£ ^-^^^ u nature " which has to be moralised into " character." Mere " good-will " or " sociality " is not the virtue of Benevolence; the natural inclination to help others needs guidance, and may have to be re- strained. So true is Kant's contention that mere un- guided impulse or inclination has, as such, no ethical value. We have also seen that the law, in the one case as in the other, is found in personality. Each man, being THE SOCIAL LIFE. 287 an Ego or Person, has the right to the life of a Person. The true ethical attitude of other persons to him, there- fore, is the same as his attitude towards himself; and accordingly social, like individual, virtue has two sides, a negative and a positive. The attitude of the virtuous man towards his fellows is first, negatively, the mak- ing room for or not hindering their personal life, and secondly, the positive helping of them to such a life, the removing of obstacles from their way, and the bringing about of favourable conditions for their personal develop- ment. Here, with the conditions of the moral life in our fellows, we must stop ; no man can perform the moral task for another, there is no vicariousness in the moral life. ^N'ot even God can TiiaJce a man good. Goodness, by its very nature, must be the achievement of the individual ; each must work out his own salvation. The individual must fight his own battles, and win his own victories, and if he is defeated, he must suffer and strive through suffering to his final perfection. The moral life is essen- tially a personal life; in this sense all morality is "private." Life lies for each in " the realisation of self by self " ; that is our peculiar human dignity and privilege and high responsibility, and it is not allowed that any man come between us and our " proper business." But every- thing short of this moral interference and impertinence, we may do for our fellows. " Environment " counts for much, especially the social environment, and we can im- prove the moral environment of those whom we wish to aid. The will can be stimulated by suggestions from another, though no amount of pressure can coerce it. Ideals are potent, and, once accepted, seem to realise 288 THE MORAL LIFE. themselves ; and we can suggest, especially by our own practice and example, true moral ideals to others. In such ways, society can stimulate in the individual, and in- dividuals can stimulate in their fellows, the life of virtue. Only, we cannot take the moral task out of the hands of the individual, we cannot even strictly " co-operate " with him in the execution of that task. Such is the solitariness of the moral life. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 289 Its two aspects, negative and posi- tive : Jus- tice and Benev- olence. Their mu- tual rela- tions and respective spheres. 3. Social virtue, on its negative side, we may call Jus- tice, with its corresponding duty of Freedom or Equality ; on its positive side, we may call the virtue Benevolence, and the duty Fraternity or Brotherliness. I use these terms, of course, very generally, to cover much more than civic excellence in the one case, and than what is ordin- arily called " philanthropy " in the other. Whenever I do not repress another personality, but allow it room to develop, I am Just to it; whenever, in any of the senses above suggested, I help another in the fulfilment of his moral task, I exercise towards him the virtue of Benevolence. There is the same kind of relation between Justice and Benevolence in the social life as between Temper- ance and Culture in the individual. As self-discipline is the presupposition of a true self-development, so is Justice the presupposition of a true Benevolence. This logical priority is also a practical priority. We must be just before we can be generous. We earn the higher power by our faithful exercise of the lower. This is obvious enough in the case of political action ; the phil- anthropy of the State must be founded in Justice, the interests of Security form the basis of the interests of Well-being. Indeed, the Benevolence of the State is really a higher Justice. But the principle is not less true of the relations of individuals to one another ; here, too. Benevolence is only Justice made perfect. When the parent, out of a full heart and without a thought of self-interest, does his best for his child, when friend acts thus by friend, or teacher by scholar, what is each doing but striving to mete out to the other the full measure of a perfect Justice ? More or higher than that, no man can ask from another and no man can give to his fellow. The distinction, though so convenient, is artificial; it is one of those division-lines which, since they do not exist in reality, disappear with a deeper insight into the nature of things. Most pernicious have been the effects of the neglect of the true relation of priority in which Justice stands to Benevolence. The Christian morality, as actually preached and practised, has been largely chargeable with this misinterpretation. " Charity " has been magnified as the grand social virtue, and has been interpreted as a " giving of alms " to the poor, a doing for them of that which they are unable to do for themselves, an allevia- tion, more or less temporary, of the evils that result from the misery of their worldly circumstances. But this "charity" has coexisted with the utmost injustice to those who have been its objects. Instead of attacking the stronghold of the enemy— the poverty itself, the shameful inequality of conditions— the Church as a social institution, and individuals in their private capacity or in other forms of association, have apparently accepted the evil as per- manent and inevitable, or have even welcomed it as the great T 290 THE MORAL LIFE. opportunity of the moral life. It has been assumed that we must always have the poor with us, and their poverty has been regarded as a splendid field for the exercise of the virtue of benevolence. Yet a moment's reflection will convince us that this virtue cannot find its exercise in the field of injustice : the only field for its development is one which has been prepared for it by the sharp ploughshare of a thoroughgoing justice. Injustice and Benevolence cannot dwell together; and when justice has done its perfect work, there will be little left for the elder " phil- anthropy " to do, and " charity " will be apt to find its occupation gone. When the causes of distress have been removed, the distress itself will not have to be relieved, and benevolence will find its hands free for other and better work. When all have justice, those who now need help will be independent of it, and men will learn at last that the best help one can give to another is " to help him to help himself." It is because we have really given our fellows less than justice that we have seemed to give them more. For what is Justice ? Is it not to recognise in one's fellow-man an Alter Ego, and to love one's neighbour as oneself ? Is it not the principle of moral equality— that each shall " count for one, and no one for more than one" ? And when we remember that the reckoning is to be made not merely in terms of physical life or of material well- being, but in terms of personality; that we are called upon to treat our fellow-man as literally another " self," and to take towards him, as far as may be, his own atti- tude towards himself,— do we not find that such Equality is synonymous with Fraternity, that others are in very THE SOCIAL LIFE. 291 truth our '' fellows " and our " brothers " in the moral life ? Might it not be less misleading to speak only of Justice in -the social relations — of negative and positive Justice — than of Justice and Benevolence ? The fact of the essential identity of Justice and Benev- olence suggests that they have a common sphere. That sphere is the social, and more particularly the political life. Yet here also there is a distinction within the identity. While both virtues may be exercised in the political sphere, it is of the genius of Justice to spend itself upon the community, of Benevolence to single out the individual. The peculiar sphere of Benevolence or the highest justice is that of private and domestic life, and of the non-political association of individuals. The characteristically individual nature of this aspect of virtue was recognised by the Greeks, whose name for it was " Friendship." So far is the conception carried that Aristotle is led to question whether one can have more than one true " friend," whether it is possible to stand in this relation of perfect fellowship to more than one individual ; for hardly shall we find more than one alter ego, happy indeed are we if we find even one. The modern conception is that of universal Love or " Human- ity." But the essence of the virtue is the same in both cases, — " brotherliness " or " fellowship." This conception signalises that intimateness of the relation which converts Justice into Benevolence or imperfect into perfect Justice. Where Justice insists upon the "equality" of men in virtue of their common personality, Benevolence seizes the individuality in each. Benevolence is more just than Justice, because it is enlightened by the insight into that 292 THE MORAL LIFE. Benev- olence. " inequality " and uniqueness of individuals, which is no less real than the "equality" of persons. 4. It is in the case of Benevolence especially that we realise the necessity of the regulation or moralisation of the original natural impulse or affection. Whether we take the promptings of the parent, of the friend, of the patriot, or of the philanthropist, we see that altruistic impulse is originally as blind as egoistic, and needs, no less than the latter, the illumination of reason. We need the wisdom of rational insight into the Good of another, if we are to aid him in any measure in the attainment of it, and all our benevolent activity must be informed and directed by this insight. Without such guidance, we can- not be really " kind " to another. Unwise kindness is oiot kindness,— that, for example, of the " indulgent " parent, teacher or friend, of blind philanthropy, of indiscriminate charity. The vice of such conduct is that it destroys the self-reliance and self-dependence of the individual so blindly "loved." The only true benevolence is that which helps another to help himself,— which, by the very aid it gives, inspires in the recipient a new sense of his own responsibility, and stirs him to a better life. It is amazing how potent for good is such a true benevo- lence. It seems to touch the very springs of the moral life. By this intimate apprehension of a brother's nature and a brother's task, it may be given to us to stir within him the dying embers of a faith and hope blighted by failure after failure, and to reawaken in him the old high purpose and ideal of his life. The fact that some one else has a real and unwavering confidence in him, sees still THE SOCIAL LIFE. 293 in him the lineaments of a complete and noble manhood, will inspire such a man with new strength, born of a new hope. There was once a Purpose in his life, but it has long ago escaped his grasp, and seems for ever frustrated ; what once was possible seems possible no longer, his life is broken and can never again be whole. But one comes who reminds him of that former and truer Self, and reawakens in him the old ideal. The way back may be long and difficult, but the sight of the goal, even at such a distance and up such steeps, will give the traveller strength for the journey. What does he not owe to him who shows him the open path ? Zaccheus, the " publican and sinner," owed his " salvation " — so far as this caii be a debt — to him who reminded him that, in his deepest nature and best possibility, he was still a " son of Abra- ham " ; and others who had fallen lowest, when they heard from the same wise and tender lips, instead of the scath- ing condemnation they had feared, the words of a deeper insight and a larger hope, — " Neither do I condemn thee," — were filled with a new strength to obey the authoritative command: "Go, and sin no more." It must have been this grand insight, this hand of brotherly sympathy and sublime human hope, stretched out to raise a fallen humanity to his own ideal of it, that made tolerable that Teacher's scathing exposure of every hidden evil. And even in the ordinary course and less grave occa- sions of human life, we must acknowledge the power for good that lies in a sympathetic appreciation of another's task, and of his capabilities for its discharge. The parent may thus discover in the child possibilities which had else remained undiscovered and unrealised. The teacher may 294 THE MORAL LIFE. thus discover in the pupil the potential thinker, scholar, artist, and awaken in him the hope and ambition which shall be a lifelong inspiration. Here is the moral value of optimism and enthusiasm as contrasted with pessimism and cynicism. If we would help another, in this high sense of helpfulness, we must believe deeply, and hope strenuously, and bear courageously the disappointment of our expectations and desires. The gloomy severity of condemnation, unlit by any ray of hope of better things, which marks the Puritanical temper, will crush a life which might otherwise have been lifted up to a higher plane. AYhat many a struggling soul needs most of all is a little more self-reliance and buoyancy of hope, and the know- ledge that another had confidence in him would breed a new confidence in himself. Why leave unspoken the word of encouragement or praise which might mean so much of good to him, out of the fooHsh fear of nourishing in him that quality of self-conceit which may be entirely ab- sent from his character ? Aristotle's observation was that most men suffered from the opposite fault of " mean-spirit- edness," and a deficient appreciation of their own powers. This true benevolence means getting very near to our fellow-man, becoming indeed his fellow, identifying our- selves with him. It means the power of sympathy. We are apt to be so external to one another, and " charity " is so easily given: we must give ourselves. We must put ourselves alongside our fellow, enter into his life and make it our own, if we would understand it. For such understanding of another's life, such a right appreciation of another's task, is not easy. It is apt to seem a gift of moral genius rather than a thing which may be learned. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 295 The perfection of it is found in love and in true friend- ship, where a man finds an alter ego in another, and perhaps, as Aristotle says, it is only possible to have one such friend. But there is a great call for the quality, in some measure of it, in all the relations of life ; without it no true benevolence is possible. 5. Such benevolence implies self-sacrifice ; we cannot Benevo- thus serve others, and at the same time always serve our- Culture, selves. The altruistic principle of life does sometimes con- flict with the egoistic, even in its highest form. The ques- tion, therefore, inevitably arises. How far ought self-sacrifice to go ? How far ought devotion to the interests of others to supersede the individual's devotion to his own highest interest ? This is a peculiarly modern difficulty, and arises from the new spirit of altruism which Christianity has brought into our ethical life and thought. To the Greeks the question did not arise at all. They did not contemplate the possibility of any real conflict between the individual and the social Good ; for them it w^as an axiom of the moral life that the individual received back with interest that which he gave to the State. In the Hellenic State, of course, many gave without receiving; but they were not regarded as citizens, nor did their life enter into the ethical problem. The many existed for the few, but the few existed for themselves. A life of complete self- culture was the Greek ideal, and one could never be called upon to sacrifice any part of this life for the sake of "doing good" to his fellow-men. But Christianity, with its watchwords of " service " and " philanthropy," has forced us to realise with a new intensity and rigour of 296 THE MORAL LIFE. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 297 conviction the claim of others upon our life, and has left no part of our life exempt from the claim. Self- sacrifice, rather than self-realisation, has become the prin- ciple of life, and the relation of the one principle to the other has become the most baffting problem of ethical thought. How far shall self-sacrifice be carried, and how far does a loyal and thorough-going self-sacrifice interfere with a true and faithful self-realisation ? In the case of devotion to the State, w^e must say that, while the life of true citizenship may mean for the indi- vidual a willingness to die for his country's good, and while the rightful service of the citizen must always far transcend the limits of a virtue which calculates returns, yet the State can never legitimately demand of the indi- vidual a moral sacrifice, or ask him to be false to his own ideals of life. The State, being an ethical institution, can- not, without contradicting its own nature, contradict the ethical nature of the individual. And what is true of the State is true of all other institutions, as the Family and the Church. In the case of all institutional life, however, the same question arises as in the individual relations — viz.. How far is the individual called upon to sink his own well-being in that of others ? That all may have the opportunity of true self-culture, many an opportunity of self-culture must be sacrificed by the few. The very possi- bility of social progress implies such sacrifice on the part of the existing society for the sake of the generations to come. And often friend must be willing to make this sacrifice for friend, and parent for child, and teacher for scholar, and neif^hbour for nei^^hbour. Whether the sacrifice shall ulti- mately be compensated in a richer and completer life for the individual who has made it, is a question which proba- bly must remain unanswered ; but the willingness to make the sacrifice, without the certainty or even the likelihood of compensation, would seem to be of the very essence of the highest goodness we know. That the dualism be- tween the good of others and of self must remain per- manently unsolved, we can hardly think. In part, indeed, we have already seen that the best service to others is the true service of ourselves, that the most effective method of doing good is to he good, that the truest care for others is to keep carefully the vineyard of our own nature. We must also recognise that since service implies the " gift " to serve, and there is an endless " diversity of gifts," he who finds his peculiar work and mission for others finds that into which he can put himself, — the channel for the expression of his individual capacities, the sphere of his self-realisation. And when we remember that the Good of the moral life is not a merely individual and exclusive Good, but universal and identical in all, the postulate of an ultimate harmony between the life of Benevolence and the life of Culture becomes a datum of our faith in the reason- ableness of things. 11,— The Social Organisation of Life : the Ethical Basis and Functions of the State. 6 The moral life, on its social side, organises itself in The social certain external forms generally described as the ethical tion of life: 1 rxi 1 r\yx. t^i^ ethical institutions— e.^., the Family, the State, the Church. Ihe lustitu- total social organisation may be called Society, and the ciety'and most important of its special forms— that which in a sense 298 THE MORAL LIFE. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 299 P includes all the others — is the political organisation, or the State. Since man is by nature and in his ethical life a social being, he is inevitably also a " political " being (^coov ttoXltlkov). The question is thus raised, What is the true form of social organisation ? and, more particularly, What is the ethical basis and function of the State ? How far should society become political ? The classical world, we may say, had no idea of a non- political society ; to it Society and the State were synony- mous terms, the social life was a life of citizenship. The distinction between Society and the State is a modern one. The Greek State was an adequate and satisfying social sphere for the individual ; he wanted no other life than that of citizenship, and could conceive no perfect life for him- self in any narrower social world than that of the State. So perfect was the harmony between the individual and the State that any dissociation of the one from the other contradicted the individual's conception of ethical com- pleteness. It is to this sense of perfect harmony, this deep and satisfying conviction that the State is the true and sufficient ethical environment of the individual, that we owe the Greek conception of the grand significance of the State. Our modern antithesis of the individual and the State is unknown ; the individual apart from the State is to the Greek an unethical abstraction. The ethical individual is, as such, a citizen ; and the measure of his ethical perfection is found in the perfection of the State of which he is a citizen, and in the perfection of his citizenship. W^e find this characteristic Greek conception carried to its consummation in the ' Eepublic ' of Plato. This is at once a treatise on politics and on ethics, on the State and on Justice. Plato's problem is to find the ideal State, or the perfect sphere of the perfect life. The good man shall be the good citizen of the good State, and with- out the outer or political excellence the inner or ethical excellence is of little avail. The just man is not an iso- lated product, he is not even " self-made " ; he grows up in the perfect State, and unconsciously takes on the colour of its laws ; he is its scholar, and even in the inmost centres of his life he feels its beneficent control. To separate him- self from it in any particular were ethical suicide ; to seek to have a " private life," or to call anything " his own," were to destroy the very medium of his moral being, to seek to play his part without a stage on which to play it. That is to say, social organisation is necessary to the perfection of the individual life, and the only perfect social organisa- tion is the communistic State, which directly and immedi- ately controls the individual, and recognises no rights, individual or social, but its own. But the growing complexity of the ethical problem, the growing perception of the significance of personality, and the growing dissatisfaction with the State as the ethical sphere of the individual, led even the Greeks themselves to a revision of their view of the relation of the individual to the State. Greek ethics close with the cry of individualism and cosmopolitanism. The State proved its ethical insufficiency, as the individual discovered his ethical self-sufficiency ; the outward failure co-operated with the deeper inward reflection, to effect the transition from the ancient to the modern standpoint. Christianity, with its universal philanthropy, its obliter- ation of national distinctions, its insistence upon the 300 THE MORAL LIFE. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 301 »i absolute value of the individual, its deeper and intenser appreciation of personality, added its new strength to the forces already in operation. The political societies of the ancient world were gradually supplanted by a Cath- olic ecclesiastical society. The Church to a large extent displaced the State, and reasserted on its own behalf the State's exclusive claim upon the life of the individual. Controversy was thus inevitably aroused as to the respec- tive jurisdictions of Church and State. The Family, too, acquired a new importance and a new independence. The break-down of Feudalism — the political order of the Middle Age — was followed by the break-down of its ecclesiastical order also, and the individual at last stood forth in all the importance of his newly acquired inde- pendence. Our modern history has been the story of the gradual emancipation of the individual from the control of the State, and its product has been an individualism in theory and in practice which represents the opposite extreme from the political socialism of the classical world. The principle of individual liberty has taken the place of the ancient principle of citizenship. We have become very jealous for the rights of the individual, very slow to recognise the rights of the State. Its legitimate activity has been reduced to a minimum, it has been assigned a merely regulative or " police " function, and has been regarded onlv as a kind of balance-wheel of the social machine. Not that the individual has emancipated him- self from society. That is only part of the historical fact ; it is no less true that the various extra-political forms of social orcjanisation have assumed functions formerly discharged by the State. But the result is the same in either case — viz., the narrowing of the sphere of the State's legitimate activity. Various forces have conspired to bring about a revision of this modern theory of the State in its relation to the individual and to the other forms of social organisation. The interests of security have been threatened by the development of the principle of individual liberty to its extreme logical consequences in Anarchism and Nihilism, the very life, as well as the property, of the individual is seen to be endangered by the gradual disintegration of the State, and the strong arm of the civil power has come to seem a welcome defence from the misery of subjection to the incalculable caprice of "mob-rule." Individualism has almost reached its recludio ad ahsurdum ; the prin- ciple of the mere particular has, here as elsewhere, proved itself to be a principle of disintegration. That each shall be allowed to live for himself alone is seen to be an impossible and contradictory conception. Experience has taught us that the State is the friend of the individual, securing for him that sacred sphere of individual liberty which, if not thus secured, would soon enough be entered and profaned by other individuals. The evils of a non- political or anti- political condition of "atomic" individ- ualism have been brought home to us by stern experi- ences and by the threatenings of experiences even sterner and more disastrous. The complications which have resulted from industrial competition, the new difficulties of labour and capital which have come in the train of Laissez fcdre, have lent their strength to emphasise the conviction that the State, instead of being the worst enemy, is the true friend of the 302 THE MORAL LIFE. individual. The doctrine of the non-interference by the State with the industrial life of the individual has pretty nearly reached its reduction to absurdity. The evils of unlimited and unregulated competition have thrown into clear relief the advantages of co-operation ; the superior- ity of organised to unorganised activity has become mani- fest. And what more perfect form, it is said, can the organisation of industry take than the political? Only through the nationalisation of industry, it is felt in many quarters, can we secure that liberty and equality which capitalism has destroyed ; only by making the State the common guardian, can we hope for an emancipation from that industrial slavery which now degrades and im- poverishes the lives of the masses of our citizens. Capitalism has given us a plutocracy which is as bane- ful as any political despotism the world has seen; we have escaped from the serfdom of the feudal State only to fall into the new serfdom of an unregulated industrialism. The evils of leaving everything to " private enterprise " force themselves upon attention, especially in the case of what are generally called " public interests " — those branches of activity which obviously affect all alike, such as the means of communication, railways, roads, and tele- graphs. A more careful reflection, however, discovers a certain " public " value in all forms of industry, even in those which are apparently most " private." That mutual industrial dependence of each on all and all on each, in which Plato found the basis of the State, has once more come to constitute a powerful plea for the necessity of political organisation, and we have a new State-Socialism THE SOCIAL LIFE. 303 which maintains that the equal interests of each can be conserved only by the sacrifice of all private interests to the public interest, that only by disallowing the distinc- tion between mmm and tmim, and identifying the interest, of each with that of all, can we hope to establish the reign of justice among men. One other force has contributed to the change of stand- point which we are considering — namely, the changed conception of tlie State itself. The progress towards indi- vidual freedom has at the same time been a progress towards the true form of the State; and as the oligar- chical and despotic have yielded to the democratic type of government, it has been recognised that the State is not an alien force imposed upon the individual from without, but that, in their true being, the State and the individual are identical. Upon the ruins of the feudal State the individual has at length built for himself a new State, a form of government to which he can yield a willing obedi- ence, because it is the creation of his own will, and, in obeying it, he is really obeying himself. L'dtat cest moL Such causes as these have led to the return, in our own time, to the classical conception of the State and its func- tions, and to the substitution of the question of the rights of the State for the question of the rights of the indi- vidual. The tendency of contemporary thought and effort is, on the whole, to extend the political organisation of society, to socialise the State or to nationalise Society. What, then, we are forced to ask, is the ethical basis of the State? What, in its principle and idea, is it? If we can answer this question of the ethical basis of the State, we shall not find much difficulty in determining, 304 THE MORAL LIFE. Is the State an End-iu- itself? on general lines, its ethical functions, whether negative or positive, whether in the sphere of Justice or in that of Benevolence. • 7. From an ethical standpoint the State must be re- garded as a means, not as in itself an end. The State exists for the sake of the person, not the person for the sake of the State. The ethical unit is the person ; and the mission of the State is not to supersede the person, but to aid him in the development of his personality — to give him room and opportunity. It exists for him, not he for it ; it is his sphere, the medium of his ethical life. Here there is no real difference between the ancient and the modern views of the State ; in principle they are at one. For Plato and Aristotle, as for ourselves, the State is the sphere of the ethical life, the true State is the com- plement of the true individual,^-his proper milieu. The Greek State, it is true, as it actually existed and even as Plato idealised it, contradicts, in some measure, our conception of personality ; but it did not contradict the Greek conception of personality. From our modern stand- point, we find it inadequate for two reasons. It exists only for the few, the many exist for it ; the Greek State is, in our view, an exclusive aristocracy, from the privi- leges of whose citizenship the majority are excluded. Yet, in the last analysis, we find that the end for which the State exists is the person ; those who exist merely for the State are not regarded as persons. If the Greeks could have conceived the modern extension of personality, it is safe to say that they would have entirely agreed with the modern interpretation of the relation of the THE SOCIAL LIFE. 305 State to the individual. Then, in the second place, it is to be noted that, with all their intellectual and aesthetic appreciation, the Greeks had not yet so fully discovered the riches of the ethical life. With our profounder appre- ciation of the significance of personality, the merely in- strumental value of the State is more clearly perceived. But to those who did reflect upon its essential nature, the Greek State also was a creation of the ethical spirit, — the great ethical institution. The ancient, as well as the modern State, based its right to the loyal service of its citizens upon the plea that, in serving it, the individual was really serving himself ; that, in giving up even his all to it and counting nothing " his own," he would receive from it a return of full and joyous life out of all proportion to what he gave. It is only when we reflect, however, that we discover this instrumental nature of the State. In our ordinary unreflective thought we are the victims of the association of ideas, and in this, as in so many other cases, we confuse the means with the end. It is a case of the familiar " miser's consciousness." As the miser comes to think of money, because of its supreme instrumental importance, as an end in itself, and to regard the real ends of life as only means to this fictitious end, so does the citizen come to regard the State, because of its supreme importance as the medium of the ethical life, as itself the end, and him- self as but its instrument. Yet it is the function of a medium to mediate and fulfil, not to negate and destroy, that which it mediates ; and w^henever we reflect we see that the true function of the State is to mediate and fulfil the personal life of the citizen. This theoretic insight is, U 306 THE MORAL LIFE. of course, not necessary to the life of citizenship ; we may most truly use the State for this highest end, when we act under the impulse of an unreflecting and uncalculating loyalty to the State itself. But the very fact that we can thus serve the State without disloyalty to our highest Self implies that we are not serving two masters, that the only master of our loyal service is the ethical and personal Ideal. The ultimate sanction and measure of political obedience is found in the ethical value of the State as the vehicle of the personal life of its citizens. The true relation of the State to the individual has been obscured in modern discussion by the constant an- tithesis of " State-action " and " Individualism." The an- tithesis is inevitable so long as we regard the individual as a mere individual. So regarded, he is like an atom that resists the intrusion of every other atom into its place ; the mere individual is anti-social and anti-political, and to " socialise " or " nationalise " him is to negate and destroy him. His life is one of "go-as-you-please," of absolute laissez /aire. But the ethical unit is not such a mere atomic individual, but the person who is social and political as well as individual, and whose life is forwarded and fulfilled, rather than negated, by the political and other forms of social organisation. To cut him off from others, to isolate him, would be to maim and stunt his life. That the State has seemed to encroach upon the life of the ethical person, is largely due to the constant use of the term "State-interference." In so far as the State may be said to " interfere," it is only with the individual, not with the person ; and the purpose of its " interference " always is to save the person from the interference of other THE SOCIAL LIFE. 307 individuals. Neither the State nor the individual is the ultimate ethical end and unit, but the person. " The State at best is the work of man's feeble hands, working with unsteady purpose ; the person, with all his claims, is the work of God." ^ What is called " State-interference " is in reality the maintenance of this ethical possibility, the making room for the life of the person. If all individuals were left to themselves, they would not leave each other to themselves ; but individual would encroach upon individual, and none would have the full opportunity of ethical self-realisation. 8. Just here lies the ethical problem of the basis of the The ethical State. The essence of the State is Sovereignty, and the the state. maintenance of the Sovereign Power through control or coercion. In order that each may have freedom of self- development, each must be restrained in certain ways. Is not the process ethically suicidal ? Is not the personality destroyed in the very act of allowing it freedom of self- development ? Does not State - control supplant Self- control, the sovereignty of the State the sovereignty of Personality ? Does not the political negate the ethical life, and the State constrain the person to act impersonally ? Two extreme answers are offered to this question. The first is the answer of Anarchism, the refusal of the self to acknowledge any control from without. This is the answer of pure Individualism, and confuses liberty with licence. The individual who refuses to acknowledge any obligations to other individuals, and denies the right of society to control his life, will not control himself. The ^ Professor Laurie, ' Ethica,' 69 (second ed.) 308 THE MOEAL LIFE. life of individuals who refuse to become " political," will be a " state of war," if not so absolute as Hobbes has pictured it, yet deplorable enough to teach its possessors the distinction between liberty and licence, and to awaken in them the demand for that deliverance from the evils of unrestrained individualism which comes only with the strong arm of law and government. The other answer is that of Despotism, which allows no freedom to the individ- ual. This would obviously de -personalise man, and, de- priving him of his ethical prerogative of self-government, would make him the mere instrument or organ of the Sovereign Power. Do these alternative extremes exhaust the possibilities of the case? Is Despotism the only escape from Anarchy; can we not have liberty without licence ? It seems at first as if there were no third possibility, as if the very existence of the State, of Law, of Government, carried with it a derogation from the personal life of the citizen. So far as its dominion extends, the State seems to take the management of his life out of the individual's hands, and to manage it for him. Another Will seems to impose its behests upon the individual Will or Person, and he becomes its creature and servant ; losing his self- mastery, he is controlled and mastered by another Will. " It is the specific function of Government to impose upon the individual, in apparent violation of his claim to free self-determination, an alien Will, an alien Law. . . . Preach- ers and teachers try to instruct us as to what course our own highest reason approves, and to persuade us to follow that course. When they have failed, Government steps in and says : ' Such and such are the true principles of justice. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 309 I command you to obey them. If you do not, I will punish you.'"^ Autonomy is of the essence of the moral life, it is essentially a personal life. But the very existence of the State seems to imply Heteronomy, or an impersonal life in the citizens. The difficulty does not arise, it is to be observed, from the artificiality of the State, or from the natural egoism of human nature. Let us admit that the State itself is the product and creation of the human spirit, that man is by nature a political being, i.e., a being whose life naturally tends to the political form. The question is whether the human spirit is not imprisoned in its own creation, w^hether the ethical life is not lost in the political, autonomy in heteronomy. The first thing to be noted is, that the imposition of the Will of another upon the individual does not destroy the individual Will. We are apt to think of the divine Will as so imposed, of certain restrictions as laid by the very nature of things upon the life of the individual ; yet we do not find in this any infraction of human Personality or Will. All that is imposed is a certain form of outward activity, the inward movement of the Will is not necessarily touched. Thus, all that is enforced by the political Will or the Sovereign Power is outward obedience, not the inward obedience of the Will itself. It is for the individual to say whether he will complete the outward surrender by the inward self -surrender. He may render either an out- ward conformity or an inward conformity, the act re- quired may be performed either willingly or unwillingly. The appeal is to the Will or Personality, but it is for the Will to respond or not to the appeal. What is coerced is 1 Taylor, ' The Right of the State to Be,' 44. 310 THE MORAL LIFE. the expression of the individuality in outward act ; the citizen is not allowed to act (outwardly) as the creature of ungoverned impulse. Not that the task of self-control is taken out of his hands, or his individuality mastered by another will or personality rather than by his own. The mastery of the State extends only to the expression of individual impulse in the corresponding outward activ- ities. He may still cherish those impulsive tendencies the expression of which on the field of overt activity has been re- strained, as the criminal so often does cherish his criminal instincts and habits, notwithstanding the outward repres- The criminal may remain a criminal, though the sion. State prevents his commission of further crime. He can- not be mastered by another, but only by himself; it is for liimself alone, by an act of voluntary choice, to say whether he will remain a criminal or not. By its punishments, the State not merely restrains the outward activity of its citizens; it further, by touching the individual sensibility, appeals to the person to exer- cise that self-restraint which is alone permanently effec- tive. It is for the person to say whether he will or will not exercise such self - restraint. Just in so far as he re-enacts the verdict of the State upon his life, or recog- nises the justice of its punishment, just in so far as he identifies his will with the will tliat expresses itself in the punishment, and what was the will of another becomes his own will, is the result of such treatment permanently, and thoroughly, and in the highest sense successful. "When the person has thus taken the reins of the government of sensibility into his own hands, political coercion ceases to be necessary. The will now expresses itself in the act. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 311 the dualism of inward disposition and outward deed has disappeared, and the life is, even in these particulars, a personal life. • Thus interpreted, the coercion of the State is seen to be an extension of the coercion of Nature. Nature itself disallows certain lines of activity, does not permit us to follow every impulse. The organisation of life in political society implies a farther restraint upon individual ten- dencies to activity, a certain farther organisation or co- ordination of the outward activities. But the organisation and co-ordination of the impiUsive tendencies to activity, — this is in the hands not of the State but of the individual will. The right of the State to coerce the individual, in the sense indicated, is grounded in the fact that it exists for the sake of the interests of personality. As these interests are superior in right to the interests of mere individual caprice, so are the laws of the State superior to the instincts and impulses of the individual. The State restrains the expression of the individuality that it may vindicate the sacred rights of personality in each individual. Its order is an improvement upon the order of nature; it is more discriminating, more just, more encouraging to virtue, more discouraging to vice. The civil order foreshadows the moral order itself; it is a " version," the best available for the time and place and circumstances, of that order. And althoucrh the action of the State seems at first sight to be merely coercive, and its will the will of an- other, a closer analysis reveals the fundamental identity of the State, in its idea at least, with the ethical Person. The sovereign will represents the individual will, or II s I 312 THE MORAL LIFE. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 313 rather the " general will," of the individual citizens. Here, in the general will of the people, in the common per- sonality of the citizens, is the true seat of sovereignty. The actual and visible sovereign or government is rep- resentative of this invisible sovereign. The supreme power in the State, whatever be the form of government, is therefore, truly regarded, the " public person," and, in obeying it, the citizens are really obeying their common personality. The Sovereign Power is " the public person vested with the power of the law, and so is to be con- sidered as the image, phantom, or representative of the commonwealth ; " " and thus he has no will, no power, but that of the law." ^ Obedience to the State is obedience to the citizen's own better self, and, like Socrates, we ought not to " disobey a better." The apparent heteronomy is really autonomy in disguise ; I am, after all, sovereign as well as subject, subject of my own legislation. The right of the State is, therefore, supreme, being the right of person- ality itself. For the individual to assert his will against the will of the State is ethically suicidal. Socrates went willingly to death, because he could not live and obey the State rather than God ; he accepted " the will of the people " that he should die. Death was for him the only path of obedience to both the outward and the inward " better." The individual may criticise the political order, as an inadequate version of the moral order. He may try to improve upon and " reform " it. He may even " obey God rather than man," and refuse the inner obedience of the will. But, where the State keeps within its proper function, he may not openly violate its order. 1 Locke, ' Treatise of Civil Government,' Bk. ii. ch. 13. 9. If the State should step beyond its proper function, and The limit T T 0^ State invade instead of protecting the sphere of personality ; it action. the actual State should not merely fall short of but con- tradict the ideal, — then the right of rebellion belongs to the subject. If a revolution has become necessary, and if such revolution can be accomplished only by rebellion, rebellion takes the place of obedience as the duty of the citizen. Even in his rebellion he is still a citizen, loyal to the law and constitution of the ideal State which he seeks by his action to realise. This contradiction may occur in either of two ways. In the first place, the Sovereign Power may not be repre- sentative or " public," but may act as a private person or body of persons. As Locke again says : " When he quits this public representation, this public will, and acts by his own private will, he degrades himself, and is but a single private person without power, and without will that has any right to obedience — the members owing no obedience but to the public will of the society." The true sovereign must count nothing his own, must have no private in- terests in his public acts ; his interests must be those of the people, and their will his. If he acts otherwise, as- serting his own private will, and subordinating the good of the citizens to his own individual good, he thereby uncrowns himself, and abnegates his sovereignty. Then comes the time for the exercise of the " supreme power that remains still in the people." The necessity of the English and the French Eevolution, for example, lay in the fact that the actual State contradicted the ideal, seek- ing to destroy those rights of personality of which it ought to have been the custodian, and to which it was called to 1 1 11 314 THE MORAL LIFE. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 315 give an account of its stewardship. At such a time the common Personality, in whose interest the State exists, must step forth, assert itself against the so-called " State," and, condemning the actual, give birth to one that shall be true to its own idea, that shall help and not hinde:: its citizens in their life of self-realisation. The power re- turns to its source, the " general will," which is thus forced to find for itself a new and more adequate expression. This brings us to the second form of the contradiction between the actual and the ideal State. When the present formulation of the general will has become inadequate, it must be re-formulated ; and this re-formulation of its will by the people may also mean revolution as well as reform- ation. The actual sovereign or government is the steward of that power whose real seat is in the will of the people, and mav be called before that bar to o^ive an account of its stew^ardship. Such a criticism and modification of the State is indeed always going on, " public opinion " is always more or less active, and more or less articulate, and it is the function of the Statesman to interpret, as well as to guide and form, this " public opinion." As long as there is harmony between the " general will " and the will of the government, as long as the govern- ment is truly " representative " of the governed, so long the State exists and prospers. As soon as there is discord, and the government ceases to "represent" the general will, so soon does a new delegation of sovereignty become necessary. "Emperors, kings, councils, and parliaments, or any combinations of them, are only the temporary representatives of something that is greater than they." ^ ^ D. G. Ritchie, ' Principles of State Interference,' 69. " The acts of the government in every country which is not on the verge of a revolution are not the acts of a minority of individuals, but the acts of the uncrowned and in- visible sovereign, the spirit of the nation itself." ^ In the very indeterminateness of the general w^ill, — in the fact that no one of its determinations or definitions of itself is final, that no actualisation of it exhausts its potentiality or fixes it in a rigid and unchanging form ; that, like an organ- ism, it grows and in its growth is capable of adapting . itself always to its new conditions; that, like the indi- vidual will, it learns by experience and allows its past to determine its present, — lies the undying strength and vitality of that invisible State which persists through all the changing forms of its visible manifestation. 10. The State, being the medium of the ethical life of The ethical "■ -, . , « . --. \ 1 1- functions the individual, has two ethical functions : (1) the negative of the State • function of securing to the individual the opportunity of («) justice, self-realisation, by protecting him from the encroachments of other individuals or of non-political forms of society —the function of Justice ; (2) the positive improvement of the conditions of the ethical life for each of its citi- zens — the function of Benevolence. In the exercise of the former function, the State cares for the interests of " being," in the exercise of the latter it cares for the in- terests of " well-being " ; and as the interests of " being " or " security " precede in imperativeness those of " well- being," so is the political duty of Justice prior to that of Benevolence. In the case of the State, as in that of the in- dividual, however, the one duty passes imperceptibly into 1 * Principles of State Interference,' 74. 316 THE MORAL LIFE. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 317 the other, and Benevolence is seen to be only the higher Justice. This relation of the positive to the negative function suggests, what a closer consideration makes very plain, that there is no logical basis for the limitation of State-action to Justice, and that those who would thus limit it are seeking artificially to arrest the life of the State at the stage of what we may call the lower Justice. Even at this stage the activity of the State is, in its essence, the same as it is at the higher stages of that activity. Even here the function is not a mere " police " one ; even here the State " interferes " with the individual. To protect the individual from the aggression of other individuals and of society, the State must "interfere" with the individual, and be in some considerable measure "aggressive." Already the imagined "sphere" of sheer independent and private individuality has been penetrated, and the right of the State to act within that "sphere" established. While it is true that the preservation of the integrity of the individual life implies a large measure of freedom from government control, it is also true that the only way to secure such freedom for the individual is by a large measure of such control. If other individuals and non-political society are not to encroach upon the individual and destroy his freedom, the State must be allowed to encroach and set up its rule within the life of the individual. The tyranny of the individual and the tyranny of unofficial " public opinion " are not to be com- pared in evil with what some are pleased to call the " tyranny " of the State. The justification of " State-in- terference " in all its forms is, as we have seen, that it is exercised in the interest of individual freedom. The fundamental limitation, as well as the fundamental vindication, of State-action is found in its ethical basis. Since the Stat.e exists as the medium of personal life, the limit of its action is reached at the point where it begins to encroach upon and negate the strictly personal life of the citizen. The State must maintain the life of the individual, not simply annex and take possession of it for itself; it must not abolish but establish the life of the in- dividual. If the individual apart from the State is " as cood as nothim?," a State in which the individual is lost is no true State. The best State is that in whose citizen- ship the individual most fully lives his own individual life, that which includes, and integrates in a higher and richer unity, the greatest number of individual elements, and, like an organism, incorporates in its own total life the lives of its several members. The sim'plest State is likely to be the worst rather than the best, since in the best there must be room for indefinite differentiation without the loss of the State's integrity. The true unity is, here as elsewhere, unity in difference. The true political identity is that which, like the identity of the organism, conceals itself in endless differentiation of structure and function. If the idea of the State is not to be contradicted, room must be found in it for the ethical individual in all the wealth of his individual possibilities. Does not the State exist to provide the true sphere for the actualisation of these possibilities ? Take, for example, the question of the attitude of the State to individual " property." From of old the spell of the simple or communistic State has fascinated the im- agination of political speculators. It has seemed self- m 318 THE MORAL LIFE. evident that community of interest implies community of property, that, in the ideal State, the citizens shall have all things in common and none shall call anvthinc: his own. For must not private property create private interests, and must not private interests undermine the public in- terest ? What guarantee, then, for unity and identity of interest but the abolition of private interests ? Yet since these private interests have their roots in the very being of the individual, they cannot be eradicated, and must always cause disaffection to spring up towards the State which seeks to uproot them. The true function of the State surely is to act as the custodian and interpreter of this, as of all other aspects of the individual life. The interests of property are part of the interests of " security." The State must secure to the individual not merely the oppor- tunity of exercising his powers of activity ; it must also secure to him the fruits of such activity, and the larger opportunity which comes with the possession of these fruits. In other words, the State is the custodian not only of the " personal," but also of the " real," rights of the individual. For these " real " rights or rights of prop- erty are properly, as Hegel shows, personal rights, rights of the person ; property is the expression of personality. My will sets its stamp upon the thing or the animal, and makes it mine, makes it, as it were, part of me. Owner- ship is founded deep in the nature of man as an ethical being, and the only absolute limit to it is the ethical limit of personality itself. A person cannot strictly own another person ; he may buy his services, but not himself. The essence of slavery is the assertion of this impossible and suicidal right to ownership of the man in his entire per- THE SOCIAL LIFE. 319 sonality, in the whole range of his activities ; which is to de-personalise the man, and treat him as if he were only an animal or. a thing. But whatever it be upon which I have put the stamp of my will, into which I have put myself, that is mine. Eights of property are essentially, like all rights, personal— the creation and expression of personality. The State is the custodian and interpreter of these rights; it does not create, and cannot destroy them. Its function is to recognise, establish, and formulate them in law ; its law is only a " version " of moral law. It is for the State to define the rights of property, to formulate them ; and the appeal, in cases of dispute, is to the State through its courts of Justice. But the State, through its courts, seeks to dispense that moral Justice to which the legal is only an approximation. It recognises rights in equity, as well as in justice, and has its courts to dispense them. And while the power of the State is here also, by its very nature, sovereign, yet the seat of sovereignty is really in the general will of the citizens; and as soon as the general will has definitely decided that the civil version of the moral law of property is inadequate, and that an improved version is possible, the amendment will be made. Pdghts of property, again, give rise to rights of contract. Contract is not the source of property, still less the source of the State itself; but the State and property having been created, contract, with its new rights (which are but extensions of the old) ensues. I have control of my property : it is mine, it is part of myself. My freedom has entered into it, and characterises it. The disposition 320 THE MORAL LIFE. ') 'ii of it is in my own hands ; I have the right of use and ex- change, as well as of possession. This right also the State must establish and interpret, not destroy. Yet it is often argued that, as the State ought to be the sole owner, so it ought to be the sole disposer of property ; that here again the individual life, instead of beinor maintained and res- ulated, should be simply absorbed by the State. It is to be noted that, in thus limiting the functions of the State, we are not maintaining individualism in the ordinary sense of that term. The individual for whose sake the State exists is the ethical individual or the person, and his "security" from the encroachment of other individuals implies a large measure of State con- trol or " interference." The State must not only establish the right of the individual to " his own " and to the dis- position of " his own " ; it must also correct the abuses which are apt to occur in these spheres of the individual life. For it is as true in the life of ownership as in other spheres that " no man liveth to himself." The individual cannot isolate himself, even in these particulars of his conduct; in them also his life has a public, as well as a private side. And if great possession, instead of being used as a great ethical opportunity, becomes an instru- ment of moral evil to other citizens, it is for the State to intervene and, it may be, to interdict. The rule is the constant one of guarding the security of personal rights. Xo criterion of amount can be laid down a priori, cer- tainly no rule of abstract "equality." But, when the individual owner abuses his rights as a proprietor, that is, where he so uses them as to injure the free and fruit- ful self-development of others, the State may step in. It THE SOCIAL LIFE. 321 is a case of punishment, and does not amount to a viola- tion of the rights of personality. It is the freaks of the man's individuality — his greed, his laziness, his selfish indifference, that are punished (and the life of ownership is liable to such freaks like any other life), not the essen- tial and inviolable life of the person. The State may even generalise from its experience of the actual working of private ownership in the case of particular commodities and industries, of land, or of public services, and decide to nationalise them. The sphere of private ownership may thus be limited by the State, on the principle that the free and equal self-development of all its citizens is the treasure in its keeping. In comparison with this, the selfish satisfaction of the individual is of no account, and must be sacrificed. But the theory of Communism or State-Socialism, — that the State shall be the sole pro- prietor, is suicidal, destroying as it does those very rights of personality which are the basis of the rights of pro- perty, and in the absence or annihilation of which the State itself, as an ethical institution, would have no ex- istence, or at least no raison d'itre, A further limitation is set to the action of the State by the principle of the existence and freedom of other social institutions within it. The completely commun- istic or socialistic State would absorb into itself, along with the individual, all extra-political forms of associ- ation, and would identify Society with the State. Now, it is obvious that no form of social organisation can be, in an absolute sense, " extra-political," inasmuch as these minor societies must all alike be contained within the larger society which we call the State. They, like the X *J m^ mA THE MORAL LIFE. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 323 individual, depend upon the State for their very existence. Yet each of these minor societies has a sphere of its own, which the State preserves from invasion by any of the others, and which the State itself must not invade. Each must be allowed to exercise its own peculiar functions, with due regard to the functions, equally rightful, of the others. Even the State must not usurp the functions of any other ethical institution. It has its genius, they have theirs ; and as they recognise its rights, it must recognise theirs also. The most important of these institutions wdthin the State are the Family and the Church. The function of the State is not paternal, it does not stand in loco 2)cirejitis to the citizen ; nor is its function ecclesiasti- cal, Church and State are not to be identified. The State is the guardian of these institutions ; but the very notion of such guardianship is that that which is guarded shall be maintained in its integrity, and allowed to fulfil its own proper work and mission for mankind. In the exercise of this guardianship, the State may be called upon to act vicariouslv for the institutions under its care : but its further duty must always be, so to improve the conditions of institutional life, that that life shall pursue its own true course without interference or assistance from without. Institutions, like individuals, must be "helped to help themselves." Eor example, the State may be called upon not merely to superintend the institution of the Family, but to discharge duties which, in an ideal condition of things, would be performed by the parent. The State may also not merely recognise the right of ecclesiastical association, but even establish and endow an ecclesiastical society. All that is ethically imperative is that, within the Church I i and within the Family, freedom of initiation and self- development be allowed ; that each institution be permitted to work out its own career, and to realise its own peculiar genius. On the other hand, neither the Family nor the Church must be allowed to encroach upon the proper functions of the State ; here the State must defend its own prerogative. In general, the political, the domestic, and the ecclesiastical functions must be kept separate, since, however closely they may intertwine, each deals with a distinct aspect of human life. The final principle of limitation — that which in a sense underlies the others mentioned — is the principle of indi- vidual freedom. The State may not use the individual as its mere instrument or organ. In a sense, and up to a certain point, it may and must do so ; only it must not appropriate, or altogether nationalise him. The industrial State, e.g., of many Socialists, would reduce the individual to a mere crank in the social or political machine. But if we thus destroy the proper life of the individual for himself, we undo the very work we are trying to do. Ultimately the State exists for the individual, and it is only because the individual — some individual — gets back wdth the interest of an added fulness and joy in life what the individual has given to the State in loyal service, that the service is ethically justified. The State has a tre- mendous and indefinite claim upon the citizen, but that claim is only the reflection of the individual's claim upon the State. The Socialism which neglects the individual side of this claim is no less unsound than the Anarchism which neglects its social side. The measure of the service which the State can demand of the individual is foimd in 324 THE MORAL LIFE. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 325 (h) Benev- olence. his manhood. If the individual is not an independent unit, neither is he a mere instrument for the production of national wealth. The true wealth or well-being of the nation lies in the well-being of its individual citizens ; and if this universal well-being can be reached only through that partial sacrifice of individual well-being which is im- plied in the discharge by the individual of the functions demanded by the State as a whole, the limit to such a demand is found in the right of the individual to the enjoyment of a return for his service in a higher and fuller capacity of life. In the language of political economy, the individual is a consumer as well as a producer, and even if in his latter capacity he were " exploited " by the State, he would still in the former have claims as an individual. It is probably because the emphasis is placed on the pro- duction, and the consumption is so largely ignored, that the communistic State proves so fascinating to many. But, in truth, regard must be had to the individual life in both these aspects, if it is not to suffer in both. The State, in short, must not demand the entire man ; to do so is to destroy its own idea. The most perfect State will be that in which there is least repression, and most en- couragement and development, of the free life of a full individuality in the citizens. 11. Within these ethical limits the State may do any- thing, and need count nothing human foreign to its province. The State has positive as well as negative functions; it may set itself to effect the higher as well as the lower, the spiritual as well as the material, welfare of its citizens. There is, of course, no special virtue in the fact that a thing is done by the State rather than by some other agency. The reason for the exercise of the higher functions by the State is the practical one, that the action of the State is most effective and on the largest scale. The State, e.g., can care for the education of its citizens, as no individual or group of individuals can. We must remember also that the action of the State may be indirect as well as direct, local as well as central. What functions the State shall take upon itself in any particular country, how far it shall go in their discharge, and how long it shall continue to discharge them, — these are ques- tions of practical politics, to be answered by the States- man, and not by the political philosopher. All that Ethics, in particular, can do is to formulate the ethical principles of State-action in general. How the negative function of the State passes into the positive, its activities of Justice into those of Benevolence, may be indicated in one or two of its chief aspects. The protection of the individual (or rather of the community of individuals) from the evils of ignorance implies, especi- ally in a democracy, the education of the citizens. Com- pulsory, and even under certain conditions free, education thus become necessities of political well-being ; and once the process of education has been undertaken by the State, it is difficult to say where it shall be abandoned. For the higher education, even though limited directly to the few, penetrates, perhaps no less effectively than the lower, the mass of the citizens and affects the common weal. Every loyal citizen may well, with John Knox, thank God for "another scholar in the land." Again, the permanent and thorough-going prevention of crime implies a concern 326 THE MORAL LIFE. for the positive ethical well-being of the criminal. Pun- ishment, in the older sense, is now seen to be a very inadequate method of social protection. The only way in which the State can permanently deter the criminal from crime is by undertaking his education as a moral being, and providing for him, as far as may be, the stimulus to goodness. Only in so far as punishment is reformative and educative, is it truly deterrent. Further than this, and still in the interests of " security," as well as those of well-being, the State must remove as far as possible the stimulus to crime that comes from extreme poverty; it must so far equalise the conditions of industrial life, as to secure to each citizen the opportunity of earning an honest livelihood. And, if it would prevent the general loss which comes from the existence of a pauper class, the State must take measures to secure the individual against the risk of becoming a burden to society ; by taking upon itself the burden of providing him with the opportunity of self-maintenance, it will save itself from the later and heavier burden of maintaining him. Since, also, the pro- gress of society must often mean a temporary injustice to the individual, the State must, again in its own per- manent interest, provide some remedy for this injustice. Social progress " costs " much, and it is for the State to reckon up these costs of progress, and, as far as possible, to make them good to its citizens.^ The State must seek to maintain the equilibrium which progress seems always temporarily to disturb. 1 Cf. Professor H. C. Adams's suggestive article, entitled, " An Inter- pretation of the Social Movements of our Time," ' International Journal of Ethics,' October 1891. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 327 When, however, we realise the fuller meaning of the State as an ethical institution, nay, as the all-containing ethical institution, we see that it must go further than that indirect or secondary Benevolence which is implied in the lower or ordinary Justice. The sphere of the higher Justice or that of true Benevolence is part of the sphere of the State's legitimate activity. This higher justice means that all be provided with the opportunity of the ethical life which is so apt, even in our own civilisation, to be open only to the few. It is for the State to emancipate from the slavery of social condi- tions the toiling masses of society, to endow those who are citizens only in name with a real ethical citizen- ship, to make those who have neither part nor lot in the true life of humanity heirs of its wealth and partakers in its conquests. The development of our modern industrial system has given us back the essential evils of ancient slavery and of feudal serfdom in a new and, in many ways, an aggravated form. To the " working class," to the " hands," into which machinery and free competition have transformed the masses of our modern population — to these the State must give not merely the political fran- chise, but the ethical franchise of a complete and worthy human life. As the custodian of the ethical interests, and not merely of the material interests of its citizens, the State must see that the former are not sacrificed to the latter. The political sphere, being the ethical sphere, in- cludes the industrial as it includes all others ; and while the industrial life ought to be allowed to follow its own economic laws in so far as such independence is consistent with ethical well-being, it is for the State to co-ordinate 328 THE MORAL LIFE. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 329 the industrial with the ethical life. Industry is an ethical activity, and must be regulated by ethical as well as by economic law ; there must be no schism in the body- politic. If men were mere brute agents, their lives as producers and consumers of wealth would, no doubt, be subject to economic law as undeviating as the law of nature ; but the fact that, as men, they are in all their activity moral beings, implies that even the economic world must come under the higher regulation of moral law. The State alone can enforce this higher regulation, and the advance from the theory of absolutely " free com- petition " or laissez faire to that of industrial co-operation and organisation is bringing us to the recognition of the ethical function of the State in the economic sphere. It is for the State to substitute for the " mob-rule " of un- ethical economic forces the steady rational control of ethical insight. In the words of Professor Adams, in the article already quoted : " Unless some way be discovered by which the deep ethical purpose of society can be brought to bear upon industrial questions, our magnificent material civilisation will crumble to ashes in our hands. ... A peace born of justice can never be realised by balancing brute force against brute force. . . . The ethical sense of society must be brought to bear in settling business affairs. . . . Above the interest of the contending parties stands the interest of the public, of which the State is the natural guardian, and one way to realise the ethical purpose of society in business affairs is, by means of legislation, to bring the ethical sense of society to bear on business affairs." This means, of course, " State- interference " with the industrial life of society ; but " by such interference society is not deprived of the advantages of competition, but the plane of competition is adjusted to the moral. sense of the community."^ This maintenance by the State of the true relation of economic to ethical good, of material to spiritual well- being, may take many forms. The ultimate measure of well-being having been found in the perfection of the development of the total nature of the individual, his instrumental value as a producer of wealth will be sub- ordinated to his essential and independent worth as a moral being; regard to the external and industrial cri- terion will be checked by regard to the internal and ethical. In this ultimate regard, all men will be seen to be equal ; here, in the ethical sphere, will be found the true democracy. Class -interests do not exist here, the capitalist and the " day-labourer " stand here on the same level, and the true State will regard the interests of each alike. And if, even here, the highest well-being of all implies a certain sacrifice of well-being on the part of the individual, the State will see that such sacrifice does not go too far, that no citizen loses the reality of citizen- ship and sinks to the status of a slave or of a mere in- strument in the industrial machine, but that for each there is reserved a sufficient sphere of complete ethical living. If the preservation and development of the highest manhood of its citizens is the supreme duty of the State — its ultimate raison d'itre—2i\\ obvious case of this duty is the securing of a certain amount of leisure for all its citizens. The lowest classes— those which are technically 1 * International Journal of Ethics,' October 1891. Andrews's * Wealth and Moral Law.' Cf. President 330 THE MORAL LIFE. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 331 called the " working " classes— need this leisure far more clamantly than the middle and higher classes. Their " work " is a far harder tyrant than the work of the latter, since it calls forth so much less of their true manhood ; they are " dominated " far more largely " by the needs of others than by their own." Yet they too have needs of their own not less real and not less urgent than their " betters " ; they too have a manhood to develop, a moral inheritance to appropriate. How much more need have they of leisure to be with themselves, and to attend to their '' proper business " ? Such a shortening of the hours of labour, such an extension of the area of the free indi- vidual life, as shall secure for them also their peculiar ethical opportunity— this surely is the duty of the State as the custodian of the higher justice. The case of the regulation of the industrial life of the community offers perhaps the best example of the via media in which the true view of the ethical function of the State is to be found. The socialistic extreme would place all industrial activities in the hands of the State, and would thus endanger, if not destroy, the proper life of the individual by negating the principle of free competition. The individualistic extreme, on the other hand, would exclude the State from the industrial sphere, and leave economic law to operate unguided and unchecked by any ethical considerations— a course equally fatal to the moral life of the community. The true view would seem to be that while the industrial sphere is to be recognised as having a nature of its own, and economic law is not to be confused with ethical, yet the ethical sphere includes the industrial as it includes all others, and its law must therefore operate through the law of the latter. The State, accordingly, as the all-inclusive social unity, must guard and foster the ethical life of its citizens in the industrial as in the other spheres of that life. As regards the distribution of material wealth, the State has also a function assigned to it by its ethical constitu- tion. In order that the struggle for mere "bread and butter " may not consume all the energies of the masses of its citizens, but that each individual in these " masses " may have scope for the development of his higher ethical capacities, for his proper Self-development, the State must see that the " furniture of fortune " is not so unequally distributed that, in any individual, the activities of the moral life are rendered impossible, or so narrowly limited as to be practically frustrated. For though it may be true that the ethical Good is in its essence spiritual, and that " a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth," it is also true that the moral life, as we know it, has a physical basis, and that, without a cer- tain measure of material well-being, the " good will " can find but little expression and realisation in activity. The potential manhood in each can be actualised only by an act of individual choice : yet, without certain conditions, such actualisation is impossible. It is for the State so to improve the conditions or " environment " of those against whom " fortune " — it may be in the shape of economic law — has discriminated, as to make a full ethical life for them also possible. 12. In such ways as these the State may serve the ethi- The Per- cal End. The question may finally be raised, whether the 332 THE MOHAL LIFE. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 333 of the State. State is itself a permanent ethical institution, or destined, after discharging a temporary function, to give place to some higher form of social organisation. Is the final form of society non-political rather than political ? As the in- dividual emancipates himself from political control by assuming the control of himself, may not society ultimately emancipate itself from the control of the State ? And may not the narrower virtue of Patriotism, or devo- tion to our country, give place to the larger virtue of a universal Philanthropy and Cosmopolitanism ? This is, of course, a question on which we can only speculate, but our practical attitude towards the State will be to some extent affected by our disposition to answer it in the one way or the other. It seems to me that while the form of the State may continue to change, the State itself must remain as the great institution of the ethical life, unless that life undergoes a fundamental change. Peace may permanently supplant war, and harmony antagonism, in the relation of State to State. But the permanence of the State itself seems consistent with the highest development of the ethical life. The concentration of Patriotism is not necessarily identical with narrowness and limitation. " It is just the narrower ties that divide the allegiance which most surely foster the wider affections." ^ On the other hand, Cosmopolitanism has proved a failure when sub- jected to the test of history. The Stoics were Cosmopoli- tans ; so also were the Cynics before them. But, in both cases, Cosmopolitanism proved itself a negative rather than a positive principle ; it resulted in individualism and social disintegration. We best serve humanity when we serve ^ MacCunn, 'Ethics of Citizenship,' 46. our country best, as our best service to our country is our service to our immediate community, and our best service to our community is the service of our family and friends and neighbours. For here, once more, we must be on our guard against the fallacy of the abstract universal. " Humanity " is only a vague abstraction until we particu- larise it in the nation, as the latter itself is also until we still further particularise and individualise it. The true universal is the concrete universal, or the universal in the particular ; and we can well believe that in the life of domestic piety, of true neighbourliness, and of good citizenship, our best duty to humanity is abundantly ful- filled. The true philanthropy must always "begin at home"; and, as far as we can see, nationalism is as permanent a principle of the ethical life as individualism. NOTE. The Theory of Punishment.^ A GROWING number of ethical thinkers, as well as of practical philanthropists, maintain the necessity of a radical change in our view of punishment. We must substitute, they contend, for the older or retributive theory the "deterrent" and "reformative" theories. The new " science of criminology " is founded upon the theory that crime is a "pathological phenomenon," a "disease," a "form of insanity," an "inherited or acquired degeneracy." 2 It 1 The greater part of this note appeared as a " discussion " in the ' Inter- national Journal of Ethics,' Jan. 1892. 2 Cf. Donaldson, " Ethics as applied to Criminology " (' Journal of Mental Science,' Jan. 1891). 334 THE MORAL LIFE. follows that the proper treatment of the criminal is that which seeks his cure rather than his punishment. Prisons must be superseded by hospitals, asylums, and reformatories. An advance in human feeling, as well as in intelligence, is to be seen in this movement, both in its theoretical and in its practical aspects ; an advance from the hard, blind desire for justice and the imrelenting and unreasonable spirit of vindictiveness to a gentler and wiser humanity. And society is now so securely organised that it can afford to be not only just, but generous as well. The ques- tion, however, is, whether the newer and the older views of pun- ishment are mutually exclusive, and, if not, what is their relation to one another ; whether the substitution of the deterrent and re- formative for the retributive view is ethically sound, or whether, in our recoil from the older view, we are not in danger of going to the opposite extreme and losing the element of truth contained in the retributive theory. We must acknowledge, to begin with, that the new theory can point to many facts for its basis. The general principle of heredity is operative in the sphere of crime and vice no less than in that of virtue. We might almost say that the criminal "is born, not made,"' or, rather, that he is more born than made. Crime seems to be almost as " instinctive " in some natures as goodness is in others. This instinctive tendency to evil, developed by favourable circum- stances or " environment," blooms in the criminal act and in the life of crime. There is a criminal class, a kind of caste, which propagates itself. Crime is a profession, with a "code of honour" and an etiquette of its own, almost a vocation, calling for a special apti- tude, moral and intellectual. Have we not here a great " pathologi- cal phenomenon," a " disease " to be cured, not punished ? But we cannot carry out the " pathological " idea. It is only an analogy or metaphor after all, and, like all metaphors, may easily prove misleading, if taken as a literal description of the facts. We distinguish cases of " criminal insanity " from cases of " crime " proper. In the former, the man is treated as a patient, is confined or restrained, is " managed " by others. But he is, by acknowledgment, so much the less a man because he may be treated in this way ; he is excused for that which, in another, would be punished as a crime ; he is not held accountable for his actions. The kleptomaniac, for example, is not punished, but excused. Are we to say that the differ- THE SOCIAL LIFE. 335 ence between these actions and crimes proper is only one of degree, and that the criminal is always a pathological or abnormal specimen of humanity ? Do all criminals " border close on insanity " ? Even if so, we must recognise, among bad as well as among good men, a border-line between the sane and the insane ; to resolve all badness into insanity does not conduce to clear thinking. A point may in- deed be reached in the life of crime, as in the life of vice generally, after which a man ceases to "be himself," and may therefore be treated as a " thing " rather than as a " person " ; a point after which, self-control being lost, external control must take its place. But normal crime, if it has anything to do with insanity, is rather its cause than its result. To reduce crime to a " pathological phenomenon " is to sap the very foundations of our moral judgments ; merit as well as demerit^ reward as well as punishment, are thereby undermined. Such a view may be scientific ; it is not ethical, for it refuses to recognise the commonest moral distinctions. After all these explanations have been given, there is always an unexplained residuum, the man himself. A man knows himself from the inside, as it were ; and a man does not excuse himself on such grounds. Nor would the majority of men, however criminal, be willing to have their crimes put down to the account of " insanity " ; most men would resent such a rehabilitation of their morals at the expense of their " in- tellects." This leads us to remark a second impossibility in the theory — viz., that the ordinary criminal, whether he is a pathological speci- men or not, will not submit to be treated as a " patient " or a case. For he, like yourself, is a person, and insists on being respected as such ; he is not a thing to be passively moulded by society accord- inf' to its ideas, either of its own convenience or of his good. Even the criminal man will not give up his self-control, or put himself in your hands and let you cure him. His will is his own, and he alone can reform himself. He will not become the patient of society, to be operated upon by it. The appeal, in all attempts at reformation, must be to the man himself ; his sanction must be obtained, and his co-operation secured, before reformation can begin. He is not an automaton, to be regulated from without. The State cannot annex the individual ; be he criminal or saint, his life is his own, and its springs are deep within. It is a truism, but it has to be repeated 334 THE MORAL LIFE. follows that the proper treatment of the criminal is that which seeks his cure rather than his punishment. Prisons must be superseded by hospitals, asylums, and reformatories. An advance in human feeling, as well as in intelligence, is to be seen in this movement, both in its theoretical and in its practical aspects ; an advance from the hard, blind desire for justice and the unrelenting and unreasonable spirit of vindictiveness to a gentler and wiser humanity. And society is now so securely organised that it can afford to be not only just, but generous as well. The ques- tion, however, is, w^hether the newer and the older views of pun- ishment are mutually exclusive, and, if not, what is their relation to one another ; whether the substitution of the deterrent and re- formative for the retributive view is ethically sound, or whether, in our recoil from the older view, we are not in danger of going to the opposite extreme and losing the element of truth contained in the retributive theory. We must acknowledge, to begin with, that the new theory can point to many facts for its basis. The general principle of heredity is operative in the sphere of crime and vice no less than in that of virtue. We might almost say that the criminal " is born, not made,'' or, rather, that he is more born than made. Crime seems to be almost as " instinctive " in some natures as goodness is in others. This instinctive tendency to evil, developed by favourable circum- stances or " environment," blooms in the criminal act and in the life of crime. There is a criminal class, a kind of caste, which propagates itself. Crime is a profession, with a "code of honour" and an etiquette of its own, almost a vocation, calling for a special apti- tude, moral and intellectual. Have we not here a great " pathologi- cal phenomenon," a " disease " to be cured, not punished ] But we cannot carry out the " pathological " idea. It is only an analogy or metaphor after all, and, like all metaphors, may easily prove misleading, if taken as a literal description of the facts. "We distinguish cases of " criminal insanity " from cases of " crime " proper. In the former, the man is treated as a patient, is confined or restrained, is " managed " by others. But he is, by acknowledgment, so much the less a man because he may be treated in this way ; he is excused for that which, in another, w^ould be punished as a crime ; he is not held accountable for his actions. The kleptomaniac, for example, is not punished, but excused. Are we to say that the differ- THE SOCIAL LIFE. 335 ence between these actions and crimes proper is only one of degree, and that the criminal is always a pathological or abnormal specimen of humanity ? Do all criminals " border close on insanity " ? Even if so, we must recognise, among bad as well as among good men, a border-line between the sane and the insane ; to resolve all badness into insanity does not conduce to clear thinking. A point may in- deed be reached in the life of crime, as in the life of vice generally, after which a man ceases to " be himself," and may therefore be treated as a " thing " rather than as a " person " ; a point after which, self-control being lost, external control must take its place. But normal crime, if it has anything to do with insanity, is rather it& cause than its result. To reduce crime to a " pathological phenomenon " is to sap the very foundations of our moral judgments ; merit as w^ell as demerit^ reward as well as punishment, are thereby undermined. Such a view may be scientific ; it is not ethical, for it refuses to recognise the commonest moral distinctions. After all these explanations have been given, there is alw^ays an unexplained residuum, the man himself. A man knows himself from the inside, as it were ; and a man does not excuse himself on such grounds. Nor would the majority of men, however criminal, be willing to have their crimes put down to the account of " insanity " ; most men would resent such a rehabilitation of their morals at the expense of their '' in- tellects." This leads us to remark a second impossibility in the theory— viz., that the ordinary criminal, whether he is a pathological speci- men or not, will not submit to be treated as a "patient" or a case. For he, like yourself, is a person, and insists on being respected as such ; he is not a thing to be passively moulded by society accord- ing to its ideas, either of its own convenience or of his good. Even the criminal man w ill not give up his self-control, or put himself in your hands and let you cure him. His will is his own, and he alone can reform himself. He will not become the patient of society, to be operated upon by it. The appeal, in all attempts at reformation, must be to the man himself ; his sanction must be obtained, and his co-operation secured, before reformation can begin. He is not an automaton, to be regulated from without. The State cannot annex the individual ; be he criminal or saint, his life is his own, and its springs are deep within. It is a truism, but it has to be repeated 336 THE MORAL LIFE. THE SOCIAL LIFE. 337 in the present connection, that all moral control is ultimately self- control. In virtue of his manhood or personality, then, the criminal must be convinced of the righteousness of the punishment. Possessing, as he does, the universal human right of private judgment, the right to question and criticise according to his own inner light, he must be made to see that the act of society is a punishment, and to accept it as such ; he must see the righteousness of the punishment before it can work out in him its peaceable /rza^s of righteousness. Here, in the force of this inner appeal, in such an awakening of the man's slumbering conscience, lies the ethical value of punishment. With- out this element, you have only a superficial view of it as an ex- ternal force operating upon the man. Such a violent procedure may be necessary, especially in the earlier measures of society for its own protection. But it is not to be taken as the type of penal procedure, nor is it effective beyond a very narrow range. A man may be re- strained in this way from a particular act of crime on a particular occasion ; but the criminal nature in him is not touched, the crim- inal instincts are not extirpated,— they will bloom again in some other deed of crime. The deepest warrant for the effectiveness of punishment as a deterrent and reformative agent is found in its ethical basis as an act of retribution. True reformation comes only with the acceptance of the punishment, by mind and heart, as the inevitable fruit of the act. For punishment thus becomes a kind of revelation to the man of the true significance of his character and life. A man may thus be shocked into a better life. For *' acci- dental " calamity, or for suffering which he has not brought upon himself, a man does not condemn himself. Such self-condemnation comes only with insight into the retributive nature of the calamity. It is just this element of retribution that converts " calamity " or *' misfortune" into "punishment." The judgment of society upon the man must become the judgment of the man upon himself, if it is to be effective as an agent in his reformation. This private re-enactment of the social judgment comes with the perception of retribution or desert. Punishment is, in its essence, a rectification of the moral order of which crime is the notorious breach. Yet it is not a mere barren vindication of that order; it has an "effect on character," and moulds that to order. Christianity has so brought home to us this brighter side of punishment, this beneficent possibility in all suffer- ing, that it seems artificial to separate the retributive from the reformative purpose of punishment. The question is not " whether, apart from its effects, there would be any moral propriety in the mere infliction of pain for pain's sake." ^ Why separate the act from its "effects" in this way? In reality they are inseparable. The punishment need not be " for the sake of punishment, and for no other reason ; " it need not be " modified for utilitarian reasons." The total conception of punishment may contain various elements indissolubly united. The question is, Which is the fundamental ; out of which do the others grow ? Nor do I see that such a theory of punishment is open to the charge of " syncretism." I should rather call it synthetic and concrete, as taking account of all the elements and exhibiting their correlation. Might we not sum up these elements in the word " discipline," meaning thereby that the end of punishment is to bring home to a man such a sense of guilt as shall work in him a deep repentance for the evil past, and a new obedience for the time to come ? Whether, or how far, such a conception of punishment can be real- ised by the State, is another question. Its realisation would mean that the State should stand to the individual, in some measure, in loco parentis^ — that the State is a great moral educator. Such a " pater- nal " function is, at any rate, no less practicable for the State than the curative function assigned to it by the theory we have been con- sidering ; for the latter function to be effectively discharged would imply an exhaustive " diagnosis " of each criminal " case.'* And we have seen that the State has a moral end, that its function is not the merely negative or "police" one of protection of individual from individual, but the moral education and development of the individual himself. It is, indeed, mainly to the external and in- adequate modern conception of the State that we must trace the external and, I have sought to show, inadequate view of punishment as primarily deterrent, and (even when reformative) undertaken for the protection of society from the individual rather than in the interests of the individual himself. Civil punishment is, or ought to be, undertaken in the interests of the moral individual ; it is one of the arrangements of the State, which is the individual's moral ^ H. Rashdall, 'International Journal of Ethics,' October 1891. Y 338 THE MORAL LIFE. "sphere." But even if we refuse to go beyond the protective or deterrent point of view, we have seen that this standpoint coincides with both the reformative and the retributive. In proceeding from the one to the other of these views of punishment we are only pro- ceeding from an external to an internal view of the same thing. To be permanently deterrent, punishment must be educative or re- formative as well ; there must be an inner as well as an outer reformation. To the social prevention must be added self-prevention, and this conies only with inner reformation. Such a reformation, again, implies the acceptance, by the criminal, of the punishment as just, his recognition in it of the ethical completion of his own act ; and this is the element of retribution or desert, which is thus seen to be the basis of the other elements in punishment. PART III. METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MORALITY METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MOEALITY. We have sought to base our ethical theory upon psy- Tiie three . problems choloiiY; since, as philosophy always rests upon science, of the „ , . 1 ^1 T_ • Metaphy- the scientific account of man s nature must be the basis sic of Eth- of the ethical theory of his life. But when we try to ,^,,,[^^1 re- think out the life of man, and to discover its total and ^^^''''''• perfect meaning, we are inevitably thrown back upon the ultimate metaphysical questions which, here as elsewhere, lurk behind the questions of science, and to which there- fore science, as such, provides no answer. Indeed, it must have been felt that the most important posi- tions taken in the course of the preceding discussion — whether critical or constructive — rest upon some deeper basis than that of the introductory psychological analysis. It seemed well, however, to reserve the direct investiga- tion of this metaphysical basis till the end. For while in strict logical order the Metaphysic of Ethics ought to precede Ethics itself, yet the order " for us " is rather the converse ; we proceed from the circumference to the centre of knowledge, rather than from the centre to the circumference. Now, however, we must try to discover the metaphysical centre of our circle of ethical theory; 342 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. INTRODUCTORY. 343 only if we can describe the circle from that centre, shall we have verified the philosophical character of the ethical theory itself. The central or metaphysical principle of morality— the ultimate presupposition of ethical theory— assumes differ- ent aspects when we examine it from different standpoints or in different moral lights. The single problem pre- sents itself for solution in three different forms, as Kant says the metaphysical problem necessarily does. When we try to discover the ultimate warrant for our ethical interpretation of human life, we find (1) that it must be a certain interpretation of man's nature,— of his essential being, as either a product of nature, sharing nature's life, and without an end essentially different from that of the animal and the thing, or a being apart from nature, with a being and a life in which nature cannot share! standing in a different relation to the course of things! and possessed of a unique power to order his own life and to attain his own end, a unique capacity of failure or success in the attainment of his life's possibility. In other words, the world-old problem of human Freedom, and the comparative merits of the two rival solutions— Libertarianism and Determinism-inevitably present them- selves and claim our consideration. (2) We cannot help asking the question whether Nature, the physical cosmos, is a sufficient sphere and environment for man as a moral be- ing, or whether it is necessary to postulate a higher and super-mtmal sphere, a moral order other than the physical order, a moral Being or God other than Nature. This IS only another aspect of the first question. For if, on one hand, we can naturalise the moral man, or resolve man (and with him his morality) into Nature, then there will be no call for an order higher than the order of Nature, or for. a God other than Nature itself. If, on the other hand, such a naturalistic theory of man is im- possible, we shall be forced to postulate a universal ethical Principle or Being, answering to the ethical being of man. Even then the relation of man to this universal Principle or Being will have to be determined, — a problem which will be found to be only the problem of Freedom in another aspect. (3) Last of all, there is the problem of the destiny of man as a moral being, and this again is only a new form of the old problem. If, on the one hand, man is a merely natural being, his destiny must be that of Nature ; only a unique being with a unique life can claim a unique destiny. If, on the other hand, it is found impossible to resolve man into Nature, and necessary to postulate for him a being and a life different in kind from Nature's, and an ethical universe as the sphere of that life, it would seem to be necessary to the fulfilment of his being and the completion (instead of negation) of his task, that he should have an immortal destiny. Here, again, however, the solution of the problem would depend upon our inter- pretation not only of man's relation to Nature, but also of his relation to God ; and both these interpretations throw us back once more upon the question of the essential and ultimate nature of man himself. It is maintained by some, as we have seen,i that such a Metaphysic of Ethics is both superfluous and futile — that a Science of Ethics is all that is needful and pos- sible. Such a position is characteristic of the " agnostic '* ^ Introduction, 21 ff. 344 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 345 or « positive " temper of contemporary thought ; it is also of the essence of an empirical Evolutionism to disallow any non-naturalistic, or specifically spiritual, principle of explanation. Transcendental explanations are at a dis- count, and men are in love with empirical or '' scientific " views. But the establishment of the superior claims of such an explanation is itself a metaphysical undertaking, and demands, for its successful accomplishment, a con^- parison with the rival " transcendental " or " metaphysi- cal " view. We must, in any case, test the metaphysical possibilities of the case, before we have any right to pro- nounce against Metaphysics, here or elsewhere. I need hardly add that I do not attempt, in what follows, to give an exhaustive answer to the metaphysical questions,'but merely to indicate the kind of answer which, in an ethical reference, these questions seem to me to demand. CHAPTEK I. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 1. After what has been said in general about the neces- statement sity of raising the metaphysical question in an ethical probienu reference, we need not further attempt to vindicate the propriety of discussing the problem of Freedom. That problem is, like the other metaphysical problems, very old, but not therefore, as some would say, antiquated. It is not " a problem which arose under certain conditions, and has disappeared with the disappearance of these con- ditions, a problem which exists only for a theological or scholastic philosophy." ^ The conditions of the problem are always with us, and the problem, therefore, can never become obsolete. It is one of the central questions of metaphysics— or rather, it is one aspect of the central metaphysical question ; and though its form may change, the question itself remains, to be dealt with by each suc- ceeding age in its own way. For us, as for Kant, the question of freedom takes the form of a deep-seated antithesis between the interests of the scientific or intellectual consciousness on the one 1 Paulsen, ' Ethik,' i. 351. 346 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. hand, and the moral and religious convictions of mankind on the other. From the scientific or theoretical point of view, man must regard himself as part of a totality of things, animals, and persons. In the eyes of science, " human nature " is' a part of the universal " nature of things " ; man's life is a part of the wider life of the iiniverse itself. The uni- versal order can admit of no real exceptions ; what seems exceptional must cease to be so in the light of advancing knowledge. This, its fundamental postulate, science is constantly verifying. Accordingly, when science-psycho- logical and physiological, as well as physical— attacks the problem of human life, it immediately proceeds to break down man's imagined independence of nature, and seeks to demonstrate his entire dependence. The scientific doctrine now prefers, indeed, to call itself by the " fairer name " of Determinism ; but if it has the courage of its convictions, it will acknowledge the older and truer name of Necessity. For though the forces which bind man are primarily the inner forces of motive and disposition and established character, yet between these inner forces and the outer forces of Nature there can be no real break. The force, outer and inner, is ultimately one ; " human nature " is part of the " nature of things." The original source of man's activity lies therefore without rather dian within himself ; for the outer force is the larger and the stronger, and includes the inner. I get my " nature " by heredity from " Nature " herself, and, once got, it is further formed by force of circumstances and education. All that I do is to react— as any animal or plant or even stone does also in its measure— on the influences which act upon me. .-.'jj^. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. O 47 Such action and reaction, together, yield the whole series of occurrences which constitute my life. I, therefore, am not free (as determinists are apt to insist that I am, though my will is determined) ; " motives " are, after all, external forces operating upon my " nature," which re- sponds to them, and over neither " motive " nor " nature " have I any control. I am constrained by the necessity of Nature — its law is mine ; and thus Determinism really means Constraint. The necessity that entwines my life is conceived, it is true, rather as an inner than as an outer necessity; but the outer and the inner necessity are seen, in their ultimate analysis, to be one and the same. The necessity that governs our life is " a magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network subtler than our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world." ^ The distinction between the new Determinism and the old Necessitarianism has been finally invalidated, so far as science is concerned, by the scientific conception of Evolution. Science now insists upon regarding man, like all else, as an evolved product ; and the evolution must ultimately be regarded as, in its very nature, one and con- tinuous. The scientific or modern fashion of speaking of a man's life as the result of certain " forces," into which it is the business of the biographer and historian to resolve him, is no mere fashion of speech. In literal truth, the individual is, in the view of science, the child of his age and circumstances, and impotent as a child in their hands. The scientific explanation of human life ^ Mr Pater, iu * The Renaissance. ' 348 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIOXS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 349 and character is the exhibition of them as taking their place among the other products of cosmical evolution. In our day, accordingly, it is no longer scientific to recognise such a break as Mill, following Edwards' hint, insisted upon, between outward " constraint " and inward " determination." All the interests of the scientific ambi- tion are bound up with the denial of Freedom in any and every sense of the word ; its admission means embarrass- ment to the scientific consciousness, and the surrender of the claim of science to finality in its view of human life. With the assertion of Freedom, on the other hand, are as undeniably bound up all the interests of the moral and religious consciousness; Kant's saying still holds, that freedom is the postulate of morality. The moral con- sciousness dissolves at the touch of such scientific " ex- planation " as I have just referred to. The determinist may try to prop it up, and to construct a pseudo-morality on the basis of necessity ; but the attempt is doomed to failure. The living throbbing experience of the moral man,— remorse and retribution, approbation and reward, all the grief and humiliation of his life, all its joy and ex- altation, imply a deep and ineradicable conviction that his destiny, if partly shaped for him by a Power beyond him- self, is yet, in its grand outline, in his own hands, to make it or to mar it, as he will. As man cannot, without ceas- ing to be man, escape the imperative of duty, so he cannot surrender his freedom and become a child of nature. All the passion of his moral experience gathers itself up in the conviction of his infinite and eternal superiority to Nature : she " cannot do otherwise," he can. Engulfed in the necessity of Nature, he could still conceive himself as living the life of Nature, or a merely animal life, but no longer as living the proper and characteristic life of man. That is a life xooted in the conviction of its freedom ; for it is not a life, like Nature's, " according to law," but a life " according to the representation of law," or in free obedi- ence to a consciously conceived ideal. The grand characteristic of the moral life of man, which forbids its resolution into the life either of Nature or of God, is Eesponsibility or Obligation. This is more than expectation of " punishment," to which Mill would reduce it. It is rather punishability, desert of punishment or of reward. The element of " retribution " or desert, instead of being accidental, is essential to the conception. In the common human experience of remorse there is implied the conviction that different possibilities of action were open, and therefore that the agent is accountable for what he did— accountable not necessarily inforo ca;^erno, human or divine, but primarily and inevitably to himself, to^ the inner tribunal of his own nature in its varied possibilities. And retribution comes, if not from without, yet with sure and certain foot from within. Our moral nature, in its high possibilities, is inexorable in its demands and relent- less in its penalties for failure to satisfy them. To say that the actual and the possible in human life are, in the last analysis, identical, to resolve the " ought to be " into the " is," would be to falsify the healthy moral conscious- ness of mankind. On the other hand, the admission of the full claim of that consciousness may mean the surrender of metaphysi- cal completeness in our scheme of the universe. For it means the recognition of a spiritual " force," different in 'ii 350 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 351 The "moral method." kind from the natural or mechanical, and therefore the surrender of a materialistic Monism or a " scientific " syn- thesis. It means also the recognition of a plurality of spiritual " forces," and therefore the surrender of a spiritual or idealistic Monism which would exclude such plurality. It may even mean, as Professor James insists that it does, the entire abandonment of the monistic point of view, or of the conception of a " block-universe." The admission of free personality may cleave the universe asunder, and leave us with a seemingly helpless " pluralism " in place of the various " monisms " of metaphysical theory. Such an admission means further the recognition of evil, real and positive, alongside of good in the universe. It may therefore mean the surrender of optimism, philosophical and religious, or at any rate force us to pass to it through the "strait gate" of pessimism. All this darkness and difficulty may result to metaphysics from the recognition and candid concession of the demands of the moral con- sciousness. Nor will this seem strange when we remember that the moral problem of Freedom is just the problem of Personality itself, which cannot but prove a stone of stum- bling to every metaphysical system — " Dark is the world to thee ; thyself art the reason why ; For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel ' I am I ' ? " 2. Eecognising these difficulties, and regarding them as insuperable, we may still accept freedom as the ethical postulate, as the hypothesis, itself inexplicable, upon which alone morality becomes intelligible. This is the " moral method," which some living thinkers share with Kant. The method or standpoint has received a brilliant exposition and defence from Professor William James, in a lecture on "The Dilemma of Determinism." ^ "I for one," says the latter writer, " feel as free to try the con- ception of moral as of mechanical or of logical reality. ... If a certain formula for expressing the nature of the world violates my moral demand, I shall feel as free to throw it overboard, or at least to doubt it, as if it dis- appointed my demand for uniformity of sequence, for example." Insisting upon the " integrity of our moral " as well as of our intellectual judgments, and especially upon that of the "judgment of regret," and upon the equal legitimacy of the " postulate of moral " with that of "physicll coherence," Professor James thus states his conclusion : " While I freely admit that the pluralism and restlessness [of a universe with freedom in it] are repugnant and irrational in a certain way, I find that the alternative to them is irrational in a deeper way. The in- determinism offends only the native absolutism of my in- tellect—an absolutism which, after all, perhaps deserves to be snubbed and kept in check. But the determinism . .^ . violates my sense of moral reality through and through." Now, such a solution of the problem of freedom is, to say the'very least, a plausible one ; but let us note exactly what it means. It recognises and gives a new emphasis to the Kantian antithesis between the intellectual or scientific consciousness on the one hand, and the moral and religious on the other ; and the solution offered con- sists in an assertion of the rights of the latter along with, and even in precedence of, those of the former. The decision in favour of Freedom is thus a kind of " moral 1 Published in the 'Unitarian Review,' September 1884 (Boston, U.S.A.) 352 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. wager," as M. Eenouvier has well called it ; the odds seem to be on the side of morality, and therefore the odds are taken. And probably the question is generally answered on some such grounds, though not so explicitly formulated. The philosopher is the man, after all; and the stress is laid on the one side of the question or the other, according to the temper of the individual. One man feels more keenly the disappointment of his moral expectation, another feels more keenly the disappointment of his in- tellectual or scientific ambition. For the ethical and the scientific temper are not generally found in equal propor- tions in the same man. As men are born Platonists or Aristotelians, so are they born moralists or intellectualists, men of practice or men of theory ; and this original bent of nature will generally determine a man's attitude to such an ultimate question. While the " intellectualists " will, with Spinoza, ruthlessly sacrifice freedom to com- pleteness and finality of speculative view, the " moralists " will be content, with Kant and Lotze, to " recognise this theoretically indemonstrable freedom as 'a postulate of the practical reason.'" The latter position, if it con- fessedly falls short of knowledge, is at any rate entitled to the name which it claims for itself, that of a "rational faith"; it is a faith grounded in the moral or practical reason. Since man must livc^ whether he can ever know hovj he lives or not, freedom may well be accepted as the postulate or axiom of human life. If moral experience implies freedom, or even the idea of freedom, as its condi- tion ; if man is so constituted that he can act only under the idea of freedom, or as if he were free, then the onus jprdbandi surely lies with the determinist. It is for him THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 353 to make good his libel upon human nature, that it is the constant dupe of such deep delusion; as it is for the agnostic to make good that other libel of the mere rela- tivity of human knowledge. But, while fully recognising the merits of this " moral method," and, above all, the intellectual candour which it expresses, must we not seek to establish freedom upon some higher and yet more stable ground? Kant's an- tithesis still remains. Can it not be overcome ? Is it not possible to exhibit the unity of the intellectual and moral judgments, and thus to eliminate the subjective element which seems to cling to the solution just referred to? We, and our life, moral as well as intellectual and phys- ical, are after all part of one reality ; moral reality and physical reality are elements of a real universe. The moral consciousness is the consciousness or expression — one among other expressions, conscious and unconscious — of the universe itself.^ It is objective as well as subjec- tive ; you cannot detach the moral subject and his con- sciousness from the universe in which he finds his place and life. The conception of Duty or Oughtness, with its implicate of Freedom, is not an artificial product, a foreign importation into the universe ; it is a genuine and authen- tic exponent of the universe itself, and therefore we must interpret the universe in its light. Whatever the difficul- ties which the moral consciousness may raise for the metaphysical intellect, it is of right, and not of favour or of choice, that its utterance is heard. It, too, is the voice of reason— the voice of the universal Eeality or " nature of things"; and the determinism that would choke its 1 Cf. Fouill^e, 'L'Avenirde la M^aphysique,' 262 ff. 354 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 355 (( re- The conciling project." utterance or treat it as illusion and "pious fraud," is a libel not only upon human nature, but upon the universe itself. The breach between our intellectual and our moral judgments can be only apparent, not real or permanent. Must we not then continue the effort to achieve their re- conciliation, and to understand Freedom in its relation to so-called Necessity ? Let us revise both conceptions once more, to discover whether such a reconciliation is still possible. 3. It has always been an ambition with the determin- ists to show that there is no real controversy in the case, that all the difficulty has arisen from a misunderstandin<^ of the terms employed on either side, and that Necessity, rightly understood, does not exclude Freedom, rightly understood. This " reconciling project " is as old as Ed- wards, with his distinction of the free man and the deter- mined luill; but its greatest advocate is Hume.i One of its latest and not least persuasive advocates is Mr Shad- worth Hodgson, who insists ^ that " the true and proper meaning of Freedom is freedom as opposed to compulsion ; and the true and proper meaning of Necessity is necessity as opposed to contingency. Thus, freedom being opposed to compulsion, and necessity to contingency, there is no antithetical opposition between freedom and necessity." Determinism maintains the uniformity of nature, or necessity, as opposed to contingency, not to freedom ; and therefore " a determinist is perfectly at liberty to main- tain the freedom of the will." Accordingly, while " inde- ^ 'Enquiry concerning Human Understanding,' sect. viii. 2 'Mind,' vi. 111. terminism imagines a freedom apart from necessity . . . necessity is the inseparable condition, or rather let us say co-element, of freedom. And without that co-element, freedom is as incapable of being construed to thought, is something as impossible as walking without ground to tread on, or flying without air to beat." ^ This, Mr Hodg- son further maintains, is the only freedom that interests the ordinary man. " By freedom, whether of the will or anything else, men at large mean freedom from compul- sion. What know they, or care they, about uniformity of nature, or predestination, or reign of law ? " The ordinary man holds both ideas together— the idea of Freedom ( = non-compulsion) and the idea of Necessity ( = unifor- mity) of actions ; he realises no contradiction, as in reality there is none, between them. The debate is between the philosophers themselves, and has its source in the am- biguity of the term " necessity." This has been conceived dynamically, or as a force,— a misunderstanding which has arisen from carrying over the metaphorical idea of "law" into scientific and philosophical thought. In reality, whether applied to human activity or to the phe- nomena of nature, "law" means simply "uniformity." But while "law" is thus the merest "abstraction, and incapable of operating as an entity," it has been hyposta- tised not merely as the agent in the occurrences of nature, but also as the agent in the process of human activity. In such argumentation one can hardly help suspecting a certain sleight of hand; one can hardly believe that a debate of this kind is altogether a war of words. And one cannot but note that such an evaporation of the 1 ' Mind,' V. 252. 356 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 357 debate into the thin air of pure verbiage is always equiv- alent to its settlement in favour of determinism. The interpretation of "necessity," suggested in the sentences just quoted from Mr Hodgson, is interesting and signifi- cant. It indicates that the complexion of the question has changed considerably since the classical presentation of it by Edwards. Determinism no Ioniser takes the " hi^^h priori " road of the older Necessitarians ; it is now content to follow the humbler path of " scientific method." Hume has, once for all, emptied the conception of Necessity, for the scientific mind, and for the mind of the empiricist in philosophy, of all suggestion of mystery and force ; and it would seem that the mere " uniformity " which is left is a very innocent affair, and quite consistent with freedom. Yet I cannot think that this is the case. " Non-compul- sion " is certainly one element in the notion of freedom, but it is not the whole notion. If it were, man could be called free only in a sense in which Nature is also free. For, as we have just seen, Necessity has no dynamical content even in the sphere of natural occurrences; the "laws of nature" are simply the uniformities which characterise the behaviour of bodies. But there is, as Professor James insists, an additional and no less essen- tial element in the notion of Freedom— viz., the element of "contingency" or "chance." Absolute uniformity would be, no less than compulsion, the negation of freedom. At the same time, this paring down of Necessity to mere Uniformity is a certain contribution to the solu- tion of our problem. While the advocates of freedom, instead of giving up the element of contingency, must continue to contend for a power of free and incalculable initiation in the Self, we can yet see how the life of freedom may be realised in the midst of mechanical uniformity ; how it may, so to speak, annex the latter, and use it in its own interests. In a narrower sense Necessity, in- terpreted as Uniformity, may be called " the co-element of Freedom." As Lotze says : " Freedom itself, in order that it may even be thought of as being what it aims at being, postulates a very widely extended, although not an exclusive, prevalence of the law of causation." But, if Freedom is to be saved, the causal Uniformity must not be all-inclusive ; it must not include the moral Self. Uni- formity or mechanism may be instrumental, an organic element in the life of the self ; but the supreme category of that life is Freedom. 4 The Dreceding considerations make necessary a re- Definition ^' r o IP • 1 • of moral vision of the conception of Freedom itself, with a view Freedom: , 1 T -J. 4-* its limit- to its more exact definition, and, it may be, limitation, ations. Freedom means, we have just seen, contingency ; but it does not therefore mean mere and absolute indefiniteness or caprice. Certain lines are laid down for each man, in his inner " nature " and outward circumstances, along which to develop a "character." A man has not the universal field of possibilities to himself; each has his own moral " sphere." This is determined for him, it is the "given" element in his life. Two factors, an in- ternal and an external, contribute to such determination. The internal factor is the "nature," "disposition," or "temperament," psychological and physiological, which constitutes his initial equipment for the moral life. The f 358 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 359 external factor consists in the " force of circumstance," the places and opportunities of his life, what is ofteii called his " environment/' physical and social. So far there is determination ; so far the field of his activity is defined for each man. But unless out of these two factors, the external and the internal, you can construct the moral man, room is still left for freedom. Its '* sphere" may be determined ; the specific form and complexion of the moral task may be different for each, and determined for each. But the moral alternative lies within this sphere. All that is necessary to constitute it is the pos- sibility for the man of good or evil, not of any or every particular form of good and evil. They may take any form, and what form they shall take is determined for the individual, not ly him. But the choice between the alternatives is essentially the same in all cases ; it is a choice between good and evil, and that choice must be shown to belong to the individual. Inner " nature " and outward circumstances are, as it were, a raw material out of which he has to create a character— a plastic material which, like the sculptor, he has to subdue to his own formative idea. The grand moral limitation is individuality. It is just because we are individuals that the Moral Ideal takes a different complexion for each of us, and that no man's moral task is exactly like his brother's. Yet, amid all the variety of detail, the grand outlines of the task remain the same for all. In its very nature, that task is universal ; and though it must be realised in a variety of concrete particulars, it may be realised in any particulars, without losing its universal significance. For each man there is an Ideal, an Ought-to-be ; for each man there is the same choice, with the same momentous meaning, between good and evil. To each there is set fundamentally the same task — out of nature and circumstance — the equipment wen and the occasion offered, to create a character. For character is, in its essence, a creation, as the statue is ; though, like the statue, it implies certain given materials. What, in detail, character shall be, in what way good and in what way evil, depends upon the given elements of nature and circumstance ; whether it shall be good or evil must depend upon the man himself. Out of the plastic material to create a character, formed after the pattern of the heavenly beauty, that is the peculiar human task. Is not the material of the moral life essentially plastic ? Out of the most unpromising material have we not often seen surprising moral creations ? Just when the task seemed hardest, and came nearest to being impossible, have we not sometimes seen the highest fulfilments of it ? And with the most promising material do we not often see conspicuous moral failure? Must we not admit that success or failure here is determined ultimately not by the material, but by the free play of the energy of the Self ? 5. It is the task of philosophy to resolve this antithesis, The result- to heal the apparent breach between the scientific and the physical ^^ 1 • • 1 problem. moral consciousness, to mediate between their seemingly rival claims and interests. Various philosophical solu- tions are possible. It may be that the scientific (which is here the psychological) view is the only available "ex- planation" of human life. Should that be so, freedom 360 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 361 would be lost so far as knowledge is concerned. We might still, of course, adopt the agnostic attitude, and say that the ultimate or noumenal reality is here, as elsewhere, unknowable. But to insist upon the finality and adequacy of the scientific or psychological view is to pass beyond science, and to take up a philosophical or metaphysical position. The philosophical proof of freedom, therefore, must be the demonstration of the inadequacy of the categories of science : its philosophical disproof must be the demonstration of the adequacy of such scientific cate- gories. In the words of Mr Shadworth Hodgson, " Either liberty is true, and then the categories are insufficient ; or the categories are sufficient, and then liberty is a delusion." Such a determination of the sufficiency or insufficiency of scientific categories is the business of philosophy as universal " critic." A negative as well as a positive vindication of freedom, therefore, is possible— the former by the condemnation of the categories of science as insufficient, the latter by the provision of higher and sufficient categories for its explanation. Even if such higher categories should not be forthcoming, and we should find ourselves unable to formulate a theory of Freedom, or to categorise the moral life, we might still vindicate its possibility. That the question of Freedom is ultimately a metaphys- ical one, is indicated by the fact that all deterministic theories base themselves, either explicitly or implicitly, upon a definite metaphysic. The denial of individual freedom is, for instance, the obvious corollary of such a pantheistic metaphysic as Spinoza's. Human personality being resolved into the all-comprehending Divine Nature, from the necessity of which all things, without exception, follow, man's conception of his freedom and of his result- ing importance as an imperium in im;perio is explained away as'an illusion of his ignorance, destined to disappear in an *' adequate " knowledge of the universe. The consequence is strictly logical. If I am not a person, but merely an " aspect " or " expression " of the universe or God, I can- not be free. The life of the universe is mine also : free- dom is predicated, in such a system, of God alone, and even of him in no moral sense. Materialism, again, carries with it the same ethical consequence. If matter is everything, and spirit merely its last and most com- plex manifestation, once more freedom is an illusion. Freedom means spiritual independence; and if spirit is the mere product of matter, its life cannot in the end escape the bondage of material law. The evolutional metaphysic, whether of the biological or of the mechan- ical type, also obviously binds its adherents to the denial of freedom. Moral life is interpreted either as a series of adjustments of the individual to his environment, or as a series of balancings of equilibrium. In neither case is room left for freedom, or a " new beginning." In such cases as those just indicated, the connection of the interpretation of human life with the general meta- physical theory is obvious enough. The connection, though not less obvious, has not been so generally remarked, in the case of the " psychological " theory of determinism. This theory has been chiefly studied in the form given to it by Mill, and in that form the parallel between the metaphysical sensationalism and the ethical determinism is easily detected. The theory was originally stated, how- The prob- lem of Freedom is the prob- lem of Per- sonality. The alter- native sol- utions — the empirical and the transcen- dental. 360 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 361 would be lost so far as knowledge is concerned. We might still, of course, adopt the agnostic attitude, and say that the ultimate or noumenal reality is here, as elsewhere, unknowable. But to insist upon the finality and adequacy of the scientific or psychological view is to pass beyond science, and to take up a philosophical or metaphysical position. The philosophical proof of freedom, therefore, must be the demonstration of the inadequacy of the categories of science : its philosophical disproof must be the demonstration of the adequacy of such scientific cate- gories. In the words of Mr Shadworth Hodgson, " Either liberty is true, and then the categories are insufficient ; or the categories are sufficient, and then liberty is a delusion." Such a determination of the sufficiency or insufficiency of scientific categories is the business of philosophy as universal " critic." A negative as well as a positive vindication of freedom, therefore, is possible — the former by the condemnation of the categories of science as insufficient, the latter by the provision of higher and sufficient categories for its explanation. Even if such higher categories should not be forthcoming, and we should find ourselves unable to formulate a theory of Freedom, or to categorise the moral life, we might still vindicate its possibility. That the question of Freedom is ultimately a metaphys- ical one, is indicated by the fact that all deterministic theories base themselves, either explicitly or implicitly, upon a definite metaphysic. The denial of individual freedom is, for instance, the obvious corollary of such a pantheistic metaphysic as Spinoza's. Human personality being resolved into the all-comprehending Divine Nature, from the necessity of which all things, without exception, follow, man's conception of his freedom and of his result- ing importance as an imperium in imjperio is explained away as\n illusion of his ignorance, destined to disappear in an «' adequate " knowledge of the universe. The consequence is strictly logical. If I am not a person, but merely an " aspect " or " expression " of the universe or God, I can- not be free. The life of the universe is mine also : free- dom is predicated, in such a system, of God alone, and even of him in no moral sense. Materialism, again, carries with it the same ethical consequence. If matter is everything, and spirit merely its last and most com- plex manifestation, once more freedom is an illusion. Freedom means spiritual independence; and if spirit is the mere product of matter, its life cannot in the end escape the bondage of material law. The evolutional metaphysic, whether of the biological or of the mechan- ical type, also obviously binds its adherents to the denial of freedom. Moral life is interpreted either as a series of adjustments of the individual to his environment, or as a series of balancings of equilibrium. In neither case is room left for freedom, or a " new beginning." In such cases as those just indicated, the connection of the interpretation of human life with the general meta- physical theory is obvious enough. The connection, though not less obvious, has not been so generally remarked, in the case of the " psychological " theory of determinism. This theory has been chiefly studied in the form given to it by Mill, and in that form the parallel between the metaphysical sensationalism and the ethical determinism is easily detected. The theory was originally stated, how- The prob- lem of Freedom is the prob- lem of Per- sonality. The alter- native sol- utions — the empirical and the transcen- dental. 362 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 363 ever, by Hume, and its logical dependence upon his philo- sophical empiricism or sensationalism is no less evident. If "I" am resolvable into the series of my conscious states ; if " I " am merely the bundle or mass of sensations and appetites, desires, affections, and passions which con- stitute my "experience"; if, in short, my existence is entirely phenomenal, — then the phenomena which are " me " can be accounted for, or refunded into their ante- cedents, like any other phenomena which are " animals " or " things." Here, then, emerges the sole possibility of a metaphysi- cal vindication of Freedom— namely, in another than the Humian, empirical, or "psychological" account of the moral Person or Self. The nature of the Self is a meta- physical question, and must be investigated as such ; it is not to be taken for granted on the empirical or sensation- alist side. There is another alternative account, the tran- scendental or idealistic— viz., that the Self, so far from being equivalent to the sum of its particular experiences or " feelings," is their permanent subject and presupposi- tion. Thus the central problem of morality is seen to be, like the central problem of knowledge, the nature and function of the Self. We have to choose between an empirical and a transcendental solution of both problems. If, on the one hand, the Self is resolvable into its pheno- menal states, if these exhaust its nature, the case for free- dom is lost: these states determine and are determined by one another in the unbroken nexus of antecedent and consequent. If, on the other hand, such a resolution of the Self into its successive experiences is impossible, if moral experience presupposes at each stage the presence and operation of a permanent Self, the case for freedom is made good. 6 That the latter, and not the former, is the true state- ^e tran-^ ment of the case, has, I think, been finally proved by the solution, transcendental analysis of experience. It is still possible of course, to rest in the scientific or psychological view of moral activity ; one may not be prepared to adopt the transcendental standpoint, and may fall back upon the psychological or empirical view, as more in accordance ^yith "common-sense." Moral, like intellectual scepti- cism, and even agnosticism, are still, even after Kant and He"el, intelligible attitudes of thought. But unless it is shown that the scientific or psychological is the final and adequate or metaphysical view ; unless, that is, the whole Self is resolved into its several states or its " experience, -freedom is not disproved. Now, such an empirical resolution of the self is as impossible in the moral as in the intellectual sphere; the phenomenal or empirical view when offered as a mctaphysic, is at once seen to be abstract and inadequate. To understand or think out the moral, equally with the intellectual life, we must regard the former as, like the latter, the product of the activity of the Self. That activity is the heart and centre of the process, from which alone its real nature is recog- nised. Neither the moral nor the intellectual man can be resolved into his " experience." It implies him ; for, qxid^^ " experience," it is not a mere series or sum of "states," but the gathering up of these in the continuous and single life of an identical Self. In order to the establishment of determinism, all the elements of the action must be known 364 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. and observed as its phenomenal factors ; but the source of the action cannot be thus phenomenalised. Determinism gives a mere dissection or anatomy of the action. Under its analysis, the living whole of the action itself is dissolved into its dead elements ; the constitutive synthetic principle of the ethical life is absent. That principle is the Self, or moral Personality, to which the action must be referred if we would see it as a whole and from within. Motive, circumstance, temperament, character— the several stoneJ of the determinist structure— all imply such an activity of the Self, if they are to enter as living factors into the moral situation. And the Self which is shown to be the source of this original and formative activity is thereby proved to be free. The Self cannot be snared, any more than the spider, in the web of its own weaving. The transcendental proof is essentially the same in the case of the moral and the intellectual life. It is the necessary complement, in either case, of the empirical or psychological view. For the "previous question" of metaphysics or " first philosophy " is : How is experience Itself possible ? Experience, not being self-explanatory, requires to be explained. The empirical or psychological Self is not ultimate, but only " phenomenal " : we must therefore ask. What is the Self which manifests itself in these phenomena or " states," and what is the rationale of Its self -manifestation? The transcendental answer is, that the entire process of experience is a process of Self- activity. The psychologist is concerned only with the empirical process ; his business is to establish the true causal connections between the antecedent and conse- quent phenomena. But if, in an intellectual reference, THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 365 it can be shown that the presupposition of knowledge is a constant activity on the part of the Self in the synthesis of the presensational data, that without a unifying Self the ordered unity of experience would be impossible, it is no less evident that without a similar synthetic activity on the part of a single central rational Self the unity of moral experience would also be impossible.^ The Self weaves the web of its own experience, intellectual and moral. Out of " wants," out of animal promptings, out of the provocations of sensibility, the Self, by an activity of appropriation, constitutes " motives " or " ends " of its own activity. The entire process of motivation takes place within the circle of its being, and is conducted by itself. To press the psychological or empirical view, and to insist that the scientific interpretation of the moral life is the ultimate and sufficient interpretation of it, is to rest in a superficial view when a deeper view is possible and neces- sary. The empirical or phenomenal Self may be regarded as the mere subject of " motive-forces," of tendencies and counter-tendencies, whose " resultant " describes its life. But when we ask what a " motive " is, we find that it is nothing apart from the Ego; it is mine, I have made it. I am not merely the subject of tendencies, or the permanent deposit of tendency. I am the theatre of the entire pro- cess ; it goes on within me. Hence the well-marked limits of psychological explana- tion. The life of man, which is in its essence a personal life, is regarded by psychology as an impersonal " stream 1 The parallel between the intellectual and the moral activity of the Self is strikingly enforced by Green, 'Prolegomena to Ethics,' bk. ii., and by Professor Laurie, in his companion volumes ' Metaphysica ' and ' Ethica. 366 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 367 Difficulties of the transcen- dental sol- ution : (a) psycholog- ical diffi. culty offer- ed by the "presenta- tional " theory of Will. of thought," a series of phenomenal " states of conscious- ness." But metaphysics must correct the abstractness of psychology, as it corrects the abstractness of science generally, and must re-view the moral life from its per- sonal centre,— from the standpoint of that Self-hood which, as unifying principle, is not to be phenomenalised, because without its constant operation there would be no phe- nomenal process at all ; which cannot itself be accounted for or explained by psychology, because it is presupposed in every psychological explanation. In particular, we have found that the ethical view of life is the personal view of it. Personal " behaviour " has ethical significance : impersonal behaviour has none. The psychological or impersonal view even of morality is quite legitimate, and valuable so far as it goes. But the final explanation of morality demands that we view it from the ethical standpoint of Personality, which we have just seen to be also the inevitable standpoint of meta- physical explanation in general. Here is the centre of the circle whose circumference psychology has so care- fully and laboriously described. 7. But our metaphysics of the Self must be based upon our psychology of the Self, and serious difficulty is offered to the transcendental theory by a leading tendency of current psychology— the tendency, namely, to adopt what Dr Ward has called a " presentational " view of the Self. This is the view of those who hold that we can have a "psychology without a soul." It is insisted that we must not predicate the existence of a hyper-phenomenal reality in the mental any more than in the physical world ; the Dirtg-an-sich is equally unreal in both cases. The real is the phenomenal or empirical, that which can be observed and classified ; and what we do observe and classify is not " the soul " or any " pure Ego," but simply " mental phenomena " or the " psychological Me." There are mental "events," as there are physical events; and we can trace, in either case, the relations of antecedents to consequents in the series, as well as the relation of the one series to the other. Psychology, as a " natural science," must limit itself to the " phenomena," and its success in accounting for all the phenomena without the hypothesis of a mind or Ego as their "' place " or cause, suggests very forcibly, if it does not prove, the superfluity— even for metaphysics — of such a hypothesis. " Entia non sunt multiplicanda prieter necessitatem," and it seems as if scientific psychology had taken away the occupation of the metaphysical Self. In the first place, it is maintained that we cannot know the pure Ego, the identical Soul, or " I," because it is never " presented," it never becomes part of the " content " of con- sciousness. All that is presented, and can be known, is consciousness itself ,— conscious " states " or " phenomena," the empirical, changing, transient Ego, or the " Me." What cannot be phenomenalised cannot be known, and, ex vi ter- mini the pure Ego or transcendental Self, as the condition of all phenomena, is itself the unphenomenal or non-pre- sentable. This is, of course, no discovery of the " new " psychology. It is the familiar doctrine of sensationalism and empiricism, and is as old as the Sophists. The sole ascertainable reality, the latter held, is the momentary sensation, the ;perci;pere and the jpercipi. Neither subject 368 ■H METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 369 nor object has any identical or independent existence, the psychological moment is all that we can be sure of. The Lockian school also found in the " idea " or sensation the only certain fact. Berkeley saw, hardly less clearly than Hume, that we can never " know " the Self ; our know- ledge, he holds, is confined to our " ideas " ( = sensations or presentations), and we can never have an idea or sensation of the Self, the Subject of all " ideas." And Hume reported that he " never caught himself without a perception " ; the only self he caught was a sensational self, the only psy- chical reality was the sensation of the moment. When, therefore, " psychology as a natural science " insists upon objectifying or sensationalising the Self, and refuses to acknowledge the psychological value of a Self which can- not be " presented " or phenomenalised, it is only carrying out the tradition of the older empirical metaphysics. But, further, it is maintained that we can account for the only Self there is,— for the empirical Ego, or the psycho- logical " Me," without invoking the hypothesis of a tran- scendental and pure Ego or " I." The " Me " is self-explan- atory, and calls for no reference to an " I " beyond itself. Here one cannot help remarking how much the theory has gained in plausibility through the advance of scientific psychology. This has revealed, first, that the presenta- tional series is a continuum, a fluid " stream " rather than a rigid " chain " of sensations. The individual presenta- tion is not an isolated point, self-contained and self-exclu- sive : it points beyond itself for the apprehension of its own reality ; its character, both qualitative and quantita- tive, is determined by its place in the series of presenta- tions or the " fringe " of consciousness, by its context or " setting." The mental life, as empirically manifested, is not discrete and " atomic," does not consist of isolated sensations or "simple ideas," but is in its very nature continuous. The problem of " synthesis " accordingly, it is claimed, is in large measure solved without any appeal to a transcendental Ego ; with the surrender of the " ato- mic " theory of consciousness, and the acceptance of a " stream of thought," the problem of synthesis ceases to be a problem. Secondly, for the old meagre synthetic prin- ciple of simple Association contemporary psychology sub- stitutes the much more adequate and scientific principle of Apperception (in the Herbartian sense) or " Systematic Association." This principle provides for a much more in- timate connection between the parts of the mental life than that of mere simple Association. For the mechanical unity of the latter it substitutes an organic unity, and where association yielded aggregates, apperception yields wholes or " systems." Apperception is " the process by which a mental system incorporates, or tends to incor- porate, a new element;" it is the process of mental assimilation (emotional and volitional as well as intel- lectual) by which the new is not merely added to the old, but each is so adjusted to the other that the new becomes old and the old becomes new. Thus, once more, the unity and continuity of the mental life seem to be explained, consistently with its never-ceasing change alike in form and content. The genesis of the only Self we know seems to have been fully accounted for on purely empirical principles. Yet I do not see that psychology has shown cause for discarding the transcendental or metaphysical Self. On 2a 370 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 371 the contrary, such a hypothesis, truly understood, seems to me to be the necessary implication of psychological science, required to account for that empirical Ego which is its subject-matter. Without the " I " we could not have the " Me." For what is the basal fact, the psychological unit ? What is any and every mental " phenomenon," as such ? It is certainly not a pure Ego or a " self with- out a sensation," but no more is it a sensation or a com- plex of sensations without a Self or mind. The one abstraction is no less unreal and impossible than the other ; we can no more separate the sensations from the Self, than the Self from the sensations. Or, to use Pro- fessor James's terminology, we can no more have a "stream of thought" without a thinker than a thinker without thought. If, as Hume puts it, "they are the successive perceptions only that constitute the mind" which we can know, it is because in each of these percep- tions the "mind" is already from the first contained. The fundamental and elementary psychological fact is not "consciousness," but "conscious mind," or mind in a particular " state of consciousness." Consciousness refuses to be made objective, it ceases to be consciousness so soon as it is divorced from the conscious subject. The psychological unit is not "percipere" or "percipi," "it feels " or " it is felt," but " percipio," "/ feel." This sub- jective or personal reference constitutes the very " form of consciousness." It is only by hypostatising or substan- tiating "experience" or "consciousness," by making the phenomenal unphenomenal, that the case for a " psycho- logy without a soul" seems plausible at all. Hamlet without the Prince would be nothing to the drama of the mental life without a mind. In this drama there is only one player, but he is a player equal to every part, and he is never off the stage. We have only, to consider the meaning of a psychological "phenomenon," to see the necessity of this subjective reference. We speak of " conscious states " or " states of consciousness," but the "state" is not consciousness of itself ; it is a state of my consciousness. Abolish me, and it ceases to exist ; to separate it from the individual mind is to contradict its very nature, and to destroy it. We speak of " mental phenomena," and reduce them to their elements of " presentation." But what is a phenomenon that appears to no mind ? what is a " presentation " that is presented to no Self ? The metaphysical demand for a subject as well as for an object of consciousness becomes irresistible as soon as we realise the meaning of our terms. To phenomenalise the Self, to objectify the Subject, to reduce the Ego to a complex of presentations, is impos- sible, for the simple reason that an unphenomenal Self is necessary to the existence of " phenomena," a subject which cannot become its own object is necessary to the existence of objects, and an unpresented Ego to the existence of presentations. " Since the psychical standpoint — the stand- point, that is to say, that the psychologist studies — is the real, if not the logical presupposition of the physical, to resolve it into the latter is tantamount to saying that there are phenomena that appear to no one, objects that are over against nothing, presentations that are never presented." ^ The impersonal or " objective " view of the mental life is thus seen to be self-contradictory and 1 Ward, art. " ' Modern ' Psychology : a Reflexion " (' Mind,' N.S. ii. 54). 372 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 373 suicidal. The very elements to which it would reduce the Self are seen to imply the Self; the empirical or phenomenal reality stands or falls with the reality of the transcendental Self. The psychologist's refusal to accept the reality of the Self rests, like the phenomenalist's refusal to accept the reality of God, on the ground that the Self, like God, "does nothing." The answer is the same in both cases. It is because the Self in the subjec- tive world, like God in the objective, in reality does every- thing that it seems here, as He seems there, to do nothing. If the Self did not do everything, if it were not present in every presentation, it could never " emerge " as the pro- duct of their aggregation. To say that it could, is to adopt a theory as unthinkable as the theory of " mind- stuff," to beg the question as baldly as those do who '* account for " the mind by endowing the elements, out of which they profess to manufacture it, with the properties of mind itself. No combination of zeros will produce a number. When we pass from the individual presentation or state of consciousness to the unity and system which character- ise the mental life, when we pass from the problem of the individual mental state to the problem of the organisation of the several states, we find a new function for the uni- tary Self. It now becomes the " principle of unity," and only a unitary principle can unify. The reason which explains alike the continuity of the states and their systematic association or apperceptive unity, is the same reason which explains their existence at all — viz., that they are the states of a single identical Self. Only, the Self which we have as yet regarded as the passive specta- tor or mere subject of the presentational states, must now be regarded as the agent that attends to and selects from among the competing presentations, and thus organises them into their apperceptive wholes. Without this activity, we cannot explain the organisation of the mental life; and we cannot have the activity without an agent. The states do not associate or organise themselves : without a permanent organic centre of unity, organisation is impos- sible. Apperception, like the old simple association, im- plies a Mind or Self to discharge such a function. Psy- chology may, of course, confine itself to a statement of the " law," or modus operandi, of the Mind ; but an ultimate or metaphysical explanation must take account of the Mind itself, as the source of that activity. And behind apperception there is attention. Without the movement of attention, apperception would be a very inadequate principle of explanation. The "systematic" character of apperceptive association is ultimately due to attention, which is therefore the " power behind the throne," the principle which explains the apperceptive system itself. For it is the movement of selective attention which alone explains the fact of the superior " interest " of certain points as compared with other points in the " stream of thought"; without it, indifi'erence would reign, and there would be no centres in the mental life. " We must assume that the unique salience and dominance of the presentations which successively occupy the focus of con- sciousness is due to a specific process. This process must be called attention."^ The tendency towards " mono- 1 G. F. Stout, "Apperception and the Movement of Attention" ('Mind,' xvi. 28). '1 i if f| ill 374 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 375 ideism" seems to reside in the ideas themselves, only because the ideas are inseparable from the mind, and it is the very nature of mind to attend, and, by attending, to select. The relation of apperception to attention has been very clearly described by Mr Stout : " Every presentation which is attended to is also apperceived. . . . The effect of attention is to a great extent dependent on the apper- ception which accompanies it. Those aspects of the pre- sentation attended to, which are congruent with the apper- cipient system, acquire special distinctness. Others pass unnoticed. The physician will at a glance detect in a patient symptoms which have escaped the anxious scrutiny of friends and relatives. The reason for this does not lie in his superior power of concentrating attention. He is able to note what they fail to note, because in his mind an apperceptive system has been organised, which they do not possess."! Thus may the Self delegate to the care of mechanism that which it has originally performed by an effort of attention. But the work must originally be done by the Self, it continues to be superintended by the Self, and at any moment the Self can intervene and modify the apperceptive system. But the Self does more than watch and connect, it is more than the active subject of presentations. It com- pares and " comments " ; the vov^ is, as Plato said, the " critic " of sensation. Can we conceive of the genesis of such a " commenting intelligence " out of the presentations themselves ? How, on the theory that " all is sensation, can there be an element not co-ordinate with sensation " ? Can we explain how the " particular sensation can acquire 1 Ibid., 30. a wholly new kind of independence, and come to measure the worth of other sensations, or constitute the attitude in which they are ' apprehended ' ? " ^ When we pass from the intellectual to the emotional and volitional life, the reality of the subject, and the impossibility of phenomenalising it or reducing it to the object, become still more obvious. It is indeed to the limitation of attention to the cognitional or intellectual life that the plausibility of a " psychology without a soul " is largely due. Wundt has rightly charged contemporary psychology with a one-sided " intellectualism." And Dr Ward has persuasively shown that while, in the intellec- tual life, the subject is content to spend its entire activity in equipping us for the mastery of the object, in such wise that its own existence is almost inevitably lost in the vision of the world which without it had been impossible, yet in the other two phases of its undivided life, a no less exclusive stress is laid by the subject upon itself. It is in the emotional and conative life that the Ego may be said with unmistakable emphasis, and in the only way possible, to " posit itself." It is chiefly because " feeling and activity" are " elements irreducible to cognition, and yet part of the facts," that we find " the antithesis of subject and object to be the very essence of the science" of psychology. Feeling and activity are " always subjective, and sensations always objective." Hence " the duality of consciousness or the antithesis of subject and object is fundamental." Only the extreme desire to make psychology a " natural " or " objective " science will account for the thoroughly un- iWard, art. "'Modern' Psychology: a Reflexion" ('Mind,' N.S. ii. 77). ;i Hi i\\ I f. If V ! t il 376 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 3V7 (b) Meta- physical difficulty of Trans- cendental- ism itself. scientific simplification of the mental life which is accom- plished by the reduction of feeling? and volition to coo-- nitional elements. Yet this is what the " presentational " theory attempts to do. The fundamental unity of the mental life is to be found not in the object, but in the subject,— in the unitary Self the elements of whose com- mon life are not to be reduced to one another, and without it would have no organic unity. And if in the cognitional life the " I " seems to be lost in the " Me," in feeling and in activity the " I " becomes the prime reality. The presentational theory of the Self is followed out to its further consequences in the " automaton " or " parallel- ism " view of the mind and its relation to the body. If we give up " presentationism " and maintain the essential activity of the Self, we must abandon, with it, the inter- pretation of the mind as the passiye " spectator " of " con- comitant " physical phenomena. 8. We must now turn from the consideration of the difficulties offered by psychology to the transcendental theory of Freedom, to those offered by metaphysics, and inherent in the transcendental theory itself as that theory is generally stated. Transcendentalism, as well as em- piricism, has its own peculiar snares. These are of two opposite kinds, illustrated by the Kantian and Hegelian forms of the theory respectively. Kant, by making abso- lute the distinction between the noumenal or rational and the empirical or sensible Self, by insisting that the true Self, of which alone freedom can be predicated, is a Self that entirely transcends experience, — gives us only an empty and unreal freedom. Hegelianism, on the other hand, by identifying the noumenal and phenomenal, the transcendental and empirical Selves, leaves no place for freedom, and offers for our acceptance a new determinism. This it does in two ways, by identifying the Self first with the " character " or " experience," and secondly with God. Let us examine in turn the Kantian and the Hegelian form of the transcendental theory. (1) Kant sees no escape from determinism except by (i)lnKant. \ / ^ lanism, removing the ethical Self out of the empirical or psycho- an empty loc^ical sphere. Within the latter sphere there is only real Free- • dom necessity, and here, as everywhere, Kant tries to save spiritual reality by disproving the real validity of our knowledge. Since our knowledge is only of the phe- nomenal and not of the noumenal or essential, it can never solve such an ultimate problem as that of freedom. That, so far as we know it, our life is one of necessity, does not prove that, as it is in itself, it is not free. And the " practical reason " compels us to " think " or postu- late that freedom which the "speculative reason" can never "know." The "thou shalt" of the moral law which, no less truly than the law of causation itself, issues from the depths of reason, implies, in the subject of it, "thou canst." It is necessary, therefore, without invalidating the scientific or empirical interpretation of our life, as made from the phenomenal standpoint of science, to advance to this other and ethical interpre- tation of it, — an interpretation no less valid from the noumenal standpoint of Ethics. As a moral being, man is free from the " heteronomy " of nature and sensibility ; as a rational being, he comes under reason's " autonomy," and is free. His peculiar ethical task is to emancipate If WCtJ lit I lln i n If] 114 Itf if ! »%i 378 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PEOBLEM OF FREEDOM. 379 himself from the necessity of the life of sensibility, and to appropriate that freedom which belongs to him of right as a member of the kingdom of pure reason. Thus that idea of freedom which speculatively is but "regu- lative " and ideal becomes practically " constitutive " and real. Now it is obvious that this theory does not vindicate actual freedom. Here, as elsewhere, Kant so presses the distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal as to make the distinction absolute. In my noumenal nature, or in myself, I am free ; in my empirical or phenomenal states, I am not free, but under the necessity of nature. This is hardly better, as M. Fouillee has remarked,^ than to tell a prisoner that outside his prison there is freedom, and that he has only to think himself outside, to realise that he is free. We are confined within the prison-house of desire and passion, of sensibility and motive force, and the only life we know is that of prisoners. What matters it to us that there is freedom if we cannot make it our own ? But escape we cannot, without ceasing to be men ; our very manhood is our prison-house. But, it may be urged, the Kantian freedom is the true freedom after all, inasmuch as, though not actual, it is yet the ideal or goal towards which the moral man is always approximating. But even regarded as an ideal, it is but a one-sided freedom, as the life of duty which realises it is but a one-sided life. For, according to Kant's view, man is free only in so far as he acts rationally or without impulse of sensibility : in so far as he acts from impulse or even with impulse, he acts irrationally, and is not free. ^ ' L'Evolutiounisme des Idees-Forces,' Introd. 76. But freedom, if it is to have any moral significance, must mean freedom in choosing the evil equally with the good ; only such a double freedom can be regarded as the basis of responsibility or obligation. Freedom is that which makes evil evii, as it is that which makes good good. If freedom is to be of real moral significance, it must be realised in the concrete life of motived activity, in the apparent necessity of nature, which is thereby converted into the mechanism of freedom; not apart from this actual life of man, in a life of sheer passionless reason, which is not human life as we know it. By withdrawing it from the sphere of nature and mechanism, of feeling and impulse, and constituting for it a purely rational sphere of its own, Kant has reduced freedom to a mere abstraction. What is left is the form of the moral life without its content. The content of human freedom can only be that life of nature and mechanism, of feeling and impulse, which Kant excludes as irrational. The Self in whose freedom we feel an interest because it is our Self, is the Self that rejoices and suffers, that is tempted and falls, that agonises also and overcomes, this actual human Self and not another— a Self of pure reason, which, if in- deed it is the ideal Self, must remain for man, as we know him, a mere ideal. 9 The Het^elian interpretation of Freedom seems to (2) lu He- *^ ^ gelian- me to be defective in two points, and, in consequence of ism, a new deteriiiin- these defects, to give us, instead of a real freedom, a new ism. (i) Determinism. In recoil from the absolute dualism of the the char- Kantian theory, Hegelianism maintains, first, the entire immanence of the Self in the process of its experience, or -•I 380 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 381 the identity of the Self with the character ; and, secondly, the entire immanence of God in the process of the uni- verse, and therefore in that of human life. Both positions seem to me to negate our moral Freedom. (i) As regards the identification of the Self with its character, we have the following, among other, explicit statements of the late Professor Green. " The action is as necessarily related to the character and circumstances as any event to the sum of its conditions." ^ " What a man now is and does is the result (to speak pleonastically, the necessary result) of what he has been and has done ; " ^ " he, being what he is, and the circumstances being what they are at any particular conjuncture, the deter- mination of the will is already given, just as an effect is given in the sum of its conditions. The determination of the will might be different, but only through the man's being different." ^ Thus the identification of the Self with the character results in a new version of determinism no less absolute than that of the empiricists themselves. The " I " is once more identified with the " me " ; the refusal to acknowledge any extra - empirical reality means the denial of freedom. The only way to save that freedom would seem to be by maintaining the distinction between the Self and the character, not in the absolute or Kantian sense, but in the sense that while the Self is what in its character it appears to be, it yet is always more than any such empirical mani- festation of it; that, while it is immanent in its expe- rience, it also for ever transcends that experience. The alternative is not, as Green states it, between a Self which is identical with its character and a Self which stands out of all relation to its character, so that " a man's action" does not " represent his character, but an arbitrary freak of some unaccountable power of unmotived willing," ^ and that " I could be something to-day irrespectively of what I was yesterday, or something to-morrow irrespectively of what I am to-day." ^ We may regard the Self as, throu-h its character, standing in the most intimate re- lation to its experience, and yet as being always more than that experience, and in this more containing the secret of its moral life. Dr Martineau has happily expressed this view by calling the character a " predicate " of the Self ; the moral life might be described as a process of Self- predication. The predicates are meaningless without a Self of which they may be predicated— nay, without a Self to predicate them of itself. As Professor Upton has well put it • " While our character determines the nature of our temptations, we are, I believe, clearly conscious that it is not the character, but the Self loUch has the character, to which the ultimate moral decision is due. In every moral crisis of a man's life he rises in the act of moral choice above his own character, envisages it, and passes moral judgment on the springs of action or desire which he feels present within him ; and it is because a man's true Self can thus transcend and judge his own character, that genuine moral freedom and moral respon- sibility become possible and actual." ^ The freedom of the moral life lies in the fact that it is the original energy ' * Prolegomena to Ethics,' 112. 3 'Works,' ii. 318. 2 Ibid., 113. 1 ' Prolegomena to Ethics,' 113. 3 ' New World,' i. 152. 2 Ibid., 115. j|;i *9 II i 382 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 383 (ii) The Self =God. of a Self the measure of whose activity is never to be found in the history of its past achievements. The Hegelian identification of the Self with the char- acter leads us back to determinism, because, by a kind of irony of fate, it leads us back to empiricism of the most unmistakable kind. The Self is once more lost in its experience, resolved into its states. At most, the Self is conceived as the " principle of unity " of its states, as the " form " of its experience ; and even then the unity is rather a cognitional than an ethical unity, the essentially dynam- ical character of the moral life is ignored, the volitional is once more resolved into the intellectual. What has been said above in answer to the psychological view of the Self need not be repeated here in answer to the transcen- dental denial of its reality and activity. (ii) The Hegelian doctrine of the immanence of God in man leads to the same result. History, like the course of things, is a logical process, the process of the universal Eeason ; in the one case as the other, " the real is the rational," and " all things follow from the necessity of the divine nature." As to the Self, it is accounted for by being referred to the Absolute Eeality of which it is the passing manifestation. If the biological and mechanical evolutionists, refusing to regard the individual self as ulti- mate and self-explaining, trace it to a past beyond itself, and see in it the highly complex resultant of vast cosmic forces, the Absolute Idealist, seeing in the universe the evolution of divine Reason, finds in the life of the Self the manifestation or reproduction in time of the eternal Self- consciousness of God. There is only one Self — the uni- versal or divine; this all-embracing Subject manifests itself alike in the object and in the subject of human con- sciousness, in Nature and in man. Both are God, though they ap:pear to be somewhat on their own account. Obviously, if we are thus to interpret man as only, like Nature, an aspect of God, we must de-personalise him ; it is his Personality that separates, like a " middle wall of partition," between man and God. Nor is this conclusion shunned. Personality is explained to be mere " appear- ance " ; the Eeality is impersonal. This is Mr Bradley's view. " But then the soul, I must repeat, is itself not ultimate fact. It is appearance, and any description of it must contain inconsistency." The moral life is governed by two " incompatible ideals," that of self-assertion and that of self-sacrifice. "To reduce the raw material of one's nature to the highest degree of system, and to use every element from whatever source as a subordinate means to this object, is certainly one genuine view of good- ness. On the other hand, to widen as far as possible the end to be pursued, and to realise this through the distrac- tion or the dissipation of one's individuality, is certainly also good. An individual system, aimed at in one's self, and again the subordination of one's own development to a wide-embracing end, are each an aspect of the moral principle. . . . And, however much these must diverge, each is morally good ; and, taken in the abstract, you can- not say that one is better than the other." ^ " Now that this divergence ceases, and is brought together in the end, is most certain. For nothing is outside the Absolute, and in the Absolute there is nothing imperfect. ... In the Absolute everything finite attains the perfection which it 1 ' Appearance and Reality,' 414, 415. 11 384 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PKOBLEM OF FREEDOM. 385 seeks ; but, upon the other hand, it cannot gain perfection precisely as it seeks it. For . . . the finite is more or less transmuted, and, as such, disappears in being accom- plished. This common destiny is assuredly the end of the Good. The ends sought by self-assertion and self-sacrifice are, each alike, unattainable. The individual never can in himself become an harmonious system. And in the wider ideal to which he devotes himself, no matter how thoroughly, he never can find complete self-realisation. . . . And, in the complete gift and dissipation of his per- sonality he, as such, must vanish ; and, with that, the good is, as such, transcended and submerged." ^ After such a frank statement of the full meaning of the Hegelian metaphysic of the Self, it is hardly necessary to argue that it sacrifices, with the freedom of man, the reality of his moral life. If I am but the vehicle of the divine Self-manifestation, if my personality is not real but only seeming— the mask that hides the sole activity of God—my freedom and my moral life dissolve together. It is true that God reveals himself in me in another way than he does in the world ; but my life is, after all, only his in a fuller manifestation, a higher stage, really as necessary as any of the lower, in the realisation of the divme nature. Such a view may conserve the freedom of God ; it inevitably invalidates that of man. If man can be said to be free at all, it is only in so far as he is iden- tical with God. If it be contended that just here is found our true Self-hood, and with it our real freedom, I submit that this view of the Self means the loss of Self -hood in any true sense of the term, since it means the resolution ^ 'Appearance and Reality,' 419. of man and his freedom as elements into the life of God, the single so-called " Self." Thus freedom is ultimately resolved by the Transcendentalists into a higher necessity, as it is resolved by the Naturalists into a lower necessity : by the former it is resolved into the necessity of God, as by the latter it is resolved into the necessity of Nature. Hegelianism, like Spinozism, has no place for the Person- ality of man, and his proper life as man. Equally with Naturalism, such an Absolute Idealism makes of man a mere term in 'the necessary evolution of the universe, a term which, though higher, is no less necessary in its sequence than the lower terms of the evolution. It may be that the doctrine is true, and that "necessity is the true freedom." But let us understand that the freedom belongs to God, the necessity to man ; the freedom to the Whole, the necessity to the parts. Such a Transcendentalism, equally with Naturalism, also and at the same time invalidates the distinction be- tween good and evil, resolving apparent evil into real good, and seeing things as, in their ultimate "reality," " all very good." Or rather, both good and evil are resolved into a Tertiuiii Quid. " Goodness [and, of course, badness too] is an appearance, it is phenomenal, and therefore self- contradictory." 1 " Goodness is a subordinate and, there- fore, a self-contradictory aspect of the universe." ^ Such distinctions are fictions of our own abstraction, mere " entia imaginationis," as Spinoza called them, the results of a partial knowledge, and destined, therefore, to disap- pear from the standpoint of the Whole. But man, as an ethical being, is part of the universe, 1 Bradley, 'Appearance and Reality,' 419. 2 i^jd., 420. 2b i i P- 386 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. I. and as a part, he must be explained, not explained away. To interpret his moral life as mere " appearance," to de- personalise and thus to de-moralise him, is to explain away his characteristic being. This pantheistic resolu- tion of man into God is too rapid an explanation ; the unity thus reached cannot be the true unity, since it negates, instead of explaining, the facts in question. Such an unethical unification might conceivably be a sufficient interpretation of Nature, and of man in so far as he is a natural being, and even in so far as he is an intellectual being; it is not a sufficient interpretation of man as man, or in his moral being. The reality of the moral life is bound up with the reality of human freedom, and the reality of freedom with the integrity of the moral personality. If I am a person, an " Ego on my own account," I am free ; if I am not such a person or Ego, I am not free. Resulting conception of Free- dom. 10. It would seem, then, that the only possible vindi- cation of Freedom is to take our stand on the moral Self or Personality, as itself the heart and centre of the ethical life, the key to the moral situation. The integrity of moral Personality may be tampered with, as we have found, in two ways. Man may be de-personalised either into Nature or into God. And although the Naturalistic resolution may be the favourite course of contemporary determinism, the greater danger lies perhaps in the other direction ; it was here that the older determinists like Edwards waged the keenest warfare. The relation of man as a free moral personality to God is even more difficult to conceive than his relation to Nature; theology has THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 387 more perils for human freedom than cosmology. To think of God as all in all, and yet to retain our hold on human freedom or personality,— that is the real meta- physical difficulty. To see in our own personality a mere appearance behind which is God, is to destroy the reality of the moral life; yet when we try to think of that life from the divine standpoint, the difficulty is to understand its reality. But, even though the ultimate reconciliation of divine and human Personality may be still beyond us, I do not see how either conception can be given up, whether for a religious Mysticism or for an absolute philosophical Idealism. The Mystic has always striven to reach the God-consciousness throuijh the ne^^a- tion of Self-consciousness; it must rather be reached through the deepening and enriching, the infinite ex- pansion, of Self-consciousness. Even for metaphysics, Personality or Self-consciousness would seem to be the ultimate category. For, after all, the chief guarantee of a worthy view of God is a worthy view of man. To maintain the reality of the moral life must give us in the end a higher view of God, as well as enable us to conceive the possibility of a higher union with Him— the union and communion not only of thought with Thought, but of will with Will. It is through the conviction of his own superiority to Nature, of his own essential dignity and independence as a moral person, that man reaches the conception of One infinitely greater than himself. To resolve the integrity of his personality even into that of God, would be to negate the divine greatness itself, by invalidating the conception through which it was jeached We must, indeed, think of our life and I.I 388 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. k m destiny, as like the course and destiny of the worlds, ultimately in God's hands, and not in our own. If man is an " imperium," he is only an " imperium in imperio." If God has, in a sense, "vacated" the sphere of human activity, he still rules man's destiny, and can turn his evil into good. The classical concep- tion of Fate and the Christian thouoht of a divine Provi- o dence have high metaphysical warrant. All human ex- perience *' Should teach us There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will." Yet man cannot rec^ard himself as a mere instrument in the divine hands, a passive vehicle of the energy of God. Activity (ivepyeLo) is the category of his life as man, and his highest conception of his relation to God is that of Co-operation (avvepyLo). He must regard himself as a fellow-worker even with God. This is his hidi human birthright, which he may not sell. 389 CHAPTEE II. ii^ THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 1. The demand that we shall be " positive," " scientific," or un-metaphysical in our thinking, reaches its climax when we approach the problem of the divine government of the world. If a scientific theory of morals is not based upon the doctrine of moral Freedom, still less does it rest, we are told, upon a doctrine of God ; if a rational psychology is illegitimate, still more obviously so is a rational theol- ogy : if metaphysics in general is ruled out as unscientific, then theology, which is metaphysics run wild, is a forti- ori condemned. The command, "Be un-metaphysical" is— more closely interpreted — the command " Be un-theo- logical." The entire argument of contemporary Agnos- ticism and Positivism is to the effect that God is either the unknown and unknowable, or the most unreal of all abstractions, the merest fiction of the human imagination. The phenomenal alone is real and intelligible. The noume- nal is either unreal, or, if real, unintelligible. Let us be content, then, with the relative and phenomenal, the " positive " reality of experience, whether that experience be intellectual or moral. Wliy continue to weary our- The neces- sity of the theological question. 390 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 391 selves with beating our wings against the cage? Why seek to burst the bars of our intellectual prison-house? There is abundant room and breathing-space within the prison- walls which so inexorably shut us in. Outside the w^alls of experience there is nothing, or, at least, nothing for us; within is contained all the treasure which we had vainly sought without. Yet we cannot think of the moral life in this way. The foundation of this human experience lies deep in the unphenomenal — the unphenomenal Self and the unphenomenal God. Either to refuse us any access to the unphenomenal, or to deny its existence, is to lose the true significance of the phenomenal, to misunderstand that moral experience which we are seeking to interpret. Xay, we cannot be unmetaphysical and untheological, merely " positive " or scientific. Even the man of science does not limit himself to " the facts," to " what he sees," to mere occurrences or happenings. Science, not less than philosophy, is " the thinking view of things " ; what the man of science seeks to apprehend is the meaning of the facts. And the philosopher is ambitious to gather from the hints of science the total meaning of the facts. The metaphysician is, therefore, no more unscientific than the man of science is unmetaphysical. Where science seeks to think the facts, philosophy seeks to think them out. Metaphysics, we are told, is " a leap in the dark." But even the man of science makes his " leap in the dark," his leap from the light of the known to the darkness of the unknown. It is only by such venturesomeness that the licrht of knowledore is let into the darkness of the unknown (but not unknowable). Why should a limit be put to this speculative courage, which is at the root of all intellectual progress ? Why should not the metaphysician be allowed to make his bolder leap into the deeper darkness ? The darkness is thick indeed, but not therefore impenetrable. At any rate, " it is vain," as Kant says, " to profess in- difference to those questions to which the mind of man can never really be indifferent." Of these " not indiffer- ent " questions, the supreme is the question of God, of his relation to the. world and to our human life and destiny. The agnostics invite us to follow with them the well- trodden paths of moral and religious faith, of practical or ethical belief. Indeed the deepest motive of modern ac^nosticism, as it originated in Kant, was the preserva- tion of such moral faith, the defence of ethical and re- ligious Eeality, as unknowable, from rationalistic dissolu- tion. The agnostic is not generally content, with Spencer, to celebrate the ''Unknown and Unknowable," or, with Hamilton and Mansel, to proclaim the inspiration that comes of " mystery," to glory in the " imbecility " of the human mind and the " relativity " of all its knowledge. He is apt to insist, with Locke and Kant— nay, with Hamilton and Spencer themselves— on the rights of the ethical and religious spirit, and its independence of the intellectual or scientific understanding. The interest of the former, he contends, is practical, not theoretical ; its sphere is not thought, but life. Its instrument is the creative imagination; its atmosphere is not the "dry light " of the intellect, but the warmth and glow of the emotional nature, and the moving energy of the will. It is with the appreciation of true culture and of delicate moral and religious susceptibility, that this acknowledg- 392 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. ment is made. It is made in slightly different ways by Lange and Tyndall, no less fully than by Huxley and Spencer. To speak of such writers as "atheistic" or " irreligious " is most unfair and most misleading. It is not the heart, but the head, that is at fault. Their view of human nature is both broad and deep ; what it wants is losjical clearness and coherence. That there is a moral, as well as an intellectual reality, and that the moral life, as such, is independent of any theoretical understanding of it, is surely true and im- portant. But that this independence is absolute and ultimate we cannot believe. Unless we are sceptics, and have only Hume's blind " belief " of custom, we cannot say that. The Kantian agnostic is right when he recognises a spiritual element in man, and concedes its claim to an appropriate life. Man is an ethical, as w^ell as an in- tellectual being ; the will and emotions demand a sphere of their own. But if the world of man's moral and religious life is the mere projection of the emotional imagination, it is a world in which that life cannot continue to live. ''If there is no God, we must make one ; " but a God of our own making is no God. If the moral and religious ideal is a mere ideal, the shadow cast by the actual in the sunshine of the human imagin- ation ; if the ideal is not also in very truth the real ; if the good is not also the true, — the reality of man's spiritual life is destroyed, and its foundations are sapped. Man cannot permanently live on fictions; the insight that his deepest life is founded on "the baseless fabric of a vision" must bring with it, sooner or later, the downfall of the life thus undermined. Agnosticism, if it THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 393 is true, must carry with it the ultimate disappearance of religion, and, with religion, of all morality higher than utility. For we cannot permanently separate the ethical and intellectual man. His nature and life are one, single, indissolubly bound together; and ultimately he must demand an intellectual justification of his ethical and religious life, a theory of it as well as of the world of nature. The "need of ethical harmony" must make itself felt; a moral being demands a moral "environ- ment " or " sphere." The attempt to divorce emotion and activity from knowledge is a psychological error of a glaring kind. Our life is one, as our nature is one. We cannot live in sections, or in faculties. Temporarily and in the individual, an approximation to such a divorce may be possible, but not permanently or in the race. The practical life is connected, in a rational being, with the theoretical ; we cannot be permanently illogical, either in morality or religion. The postulate of man's spiritual life is the harmony of Nature and spirit, or the spiritual constitution of the universe. 2. If we ask, then. Where is the source of ethical a^os-^^^ enthusiasm to be found ? the answer of the " scientific " Positivism, or unmetaphysical philosopher is. Either in the Unknow- able Absolute, or in that phenomenal moral reality which we know,— in the ethical life of Humanity. The former is the answer of Agnosticism, the latter is that of Positivism. The first answer is purely negative and does not carry as far. If it has any positive meaning, it is simply that the real is not the phenomenal, that "phenomena" or " facts " are but " shows " of a deeper Keality. It is indeed i.**: 394 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. a most important truth, that the universe is not a mere " flux " or process, a " stream of tendency " which tends no whither, but that it has an abiding meaning. But no more is the universe a sphinx, on whose dead expres- sionless face we must for ever gaze without a suggestion of a solution of the riddle of the earth. If the mean- ing of things is one which we can never hope in any measure to decipher, then for us there might as well be no meaning at all. And as for the needed moral inspira- tion, an unhiovM quantity can hardly be the source of inspiration. One can hardly wonder at Mr Harrison's travesty of the agnostic's prayer to his Unknown God: " ojnth love us, help us, make us one with thee ! " If the Agnostic sends us to an Unknown and Unknow- able Absolute for the inspiration of our moral life, the Positivist bids us see in that never-ceasing human proces- sion of which we ourselves form such a humble part the object of reverent adoration, and draw from the sight the moral inspiration which we need. Comte and his followers would have us, in this the day of our race's intellectual majority, dethrone the usurper Gods of our theological and metaphysical "minority," and place on the throne the true and only rightful God— the Grand tltre of Humanity itself. In our weakness, we may cast ourselves upon its greater strength; in our foolishness, upon its deeper wisdom ; in our sin and error, upon its less erring righteousness. Nay, we can pray to this " mighty mother " of our being ; we are her children, and she is able to sustain us. Nor need we stop short of worship, for the Grand Mre is infinitely greater than we, and contains all our greatness in itself. And if we THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 395 ask for a "moral dynamic," for an energy of goodness which shall make the good life, otherwise so hard or even impossible, a possibility and a joy to us, where shall we find such an abiding and abundant source of moral inspiration as in the " enthusiasm of Humanity " ? ^ Tlurc is a motive-force strong enough to carry us steadily for- ward in all good living, deep enough to touch the very springs of conduct, enduring enough to outlast all human strivings and activities. It would be ungrateful to deny or to minimise the importance of this truth— to deny or to belittle the fact of the solidarity of the race, and the capital importance of that fact for human conduct. That we are not separate from our brethren, but members one of another, that in our deepest interests and best endeavours we are one with our fellows, and that in the realisation of that fellowship there is a deep moral inspiration— all this is true and most important. But in order that we may find in humanity all the inspiration that we need— in order that it may become to us a Grand ttre, which shall claim our un- wavering trust and reverence— we must abstract from the concrete and actual humanity of our experience, from the real men and women whom we know, and know to be imperfect, to have failings as well as virtues and excel- lences of character, whom we love even in their weakness, and perhaps even because of it, but whom we cannot wor- ship, or regard as the complete embodiment of the moral ideal. Not nun, but man, then, must be the object of our worship and the source of our ethical enthusiasm ; not the members of the race, but the race itself, must be our Grand ^tre. What is this but to set up, on the throne vacated 396 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. by the fictitious deity of metaphysical abstraction, a new fiction, the latest product of " hypostatisation," the last relic of scholastic " realism," a " great being," which de- rives its greatness and worshipfulness from the elimination of those characteristics which alone make it real and actual ? The race consists of men and women, of moral individuals; and the moral individual is never quite worshipful. " Humanity " is only a collective or generic term; it describes the common nature of its individual members, it does not denote a separate being, or the existence of that common nature, apart from the individ- uals who share it. A touch of logic, or, at any rate, of that " metaphysic " which we are supposed to have out- grown, but which we cannot afford to outgrow, is enough to reveal the unreality and ghostliness of the positivist Grand Eire. The Positivist Eeligion of Humanity is, it seems to me, a misstatement of an all-important truth — viz., that God is to be found in man in a sense in which he is not to be found in Mature, that he is to be found in man as man, as an ethical and non-natural being. But this very differ- entiation of man from Mature, on which the Eeligion of Humanity rests, must be vindicated, and its vindication must be metaphysical. Such an interpretation of human life implies an idealisation of man, the discovery in his phenomenal life of an ideal meaning which gives it the unique value attributed to it. Man is divine, let us admit ; but it is this divinity of man that has chiefly to be accounted for. What is the Fountain of these welling springs of divinity in man ? Unless behind your fellow and yourself, and in both, you see God, you will not catch THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 397 the "enthusiasm of Humanity." The true Enthusiasm for Humanity is an enthusiasm for God. When in the good man we see the " image of God," when behind all the shortcomings of actual goodness we see the infinite divine potentiality of Good, we can mingle reverence with our human love, and hope with our pity and regret. But the roots of our reverence and our hope are deep in the Absolute Goodness that we see reflected in the human as in n mirror. If this human goodness is the original, and reflects not a higher and more perfect than itself, its power to stimulate the good life is incalculably diminished. 3. I have devoted so much attention to Agnosticism and Natural- Positivism, because these are the contemporary equivalents of that anti-theological spirit which, till quite recently, called itself Materialism or Atheism. The general atti- tude of mind common to the earlier and the later form of thought might be described as Naturalism or Phenom- enalism, as opposed to Supernaturalism or Noumenalism. It adopts a mechanical or materialistic explanation, rather than a teleological or idealistic. But the absolute or ontological materialism of former times has been sup- planted by the relative or " scientific " materialism of the Agnostics. The Agnostic denies the possibility of meta- physical knowledge in general, and of a "metaphysic of ethics " in particular. All knowledge being " positive " or scientific, and the ultimate positive reality being physical energy, it follows that all " explanation," even of psychi- cal and ethical phenomena, is in terms of this energy, in mechanical and material terms. In spite of his pro- Liil 398 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 399 fessed impartiality between matter and mind, Spencer does not hesitate to offer such a materialistic or natural- istic interpretation of the moral life. And even when the attempt is not made to explain the moral life in terms of mechanism, the possibility of any other explanation is denied, and we are asked to be simply "agnostic" or " positive " in our attitude to it. This is the position of Professor Huxley in his notable Romanes Lecture on * Evolution and Ethics,' a brilliant statement of the con- sistent and characteristic Ethics of Agnosticism. What, then, are we offered in the name of scientific explanation, and as a substitute for metaphysical specula- tion ? A naturalistic scheme of morality, the correlation of the ethical with the physical process, the incorporation of man, his virtue and his vice, his defects and his failures, his ideals and attainments, as a term in the process of cosmical evolution. We are offered, in short, a new version of the " Ethics of Naturalism " far superior to the old Utilitarian version, superior because so much more scientific. Man, like all other animals, like all other beings, is the creature of his conditions ; his life is pro- gressively defined by adjustment to them ; his goodness is simply that which has given or gives him the advan- tage in the universal struggle for existence, and has enabled him to survive. The ethical category is one with the physical ; the " best " is only the " fittest." The ideal is the shadow of the actual, and the distinction arises from the very nature of evolution as a process, as the becoming of that which is not yet but shall be. Thus would the Evolutionist in Ethics "naturalise the moral man," account for him and even for his ideals by reference to that Nature of which he forms a part, and make the " ethical process " only a later stage of the '' cosmical process." Thus for God we are asked to sub- stitute Nature, and in " the ways of the (physical) cosmos to find a sufficient sanction for morality." Where is the need of God, whether for moral authority or for moral government, when Nature is so profoundly ethical, so scrupulously discriminating in her consideration for the good, and in her condemnation of the evil ; when goodness itself is but the ripe fruit of Nature's processes, and evil, truly interpreted, only goodness misunderstood, or good- ness in the making ? But, as we have learned to know Nature better, better to understand the ways of the physical cosmos, we have found that these ways are by no means ways of righteousness. The doctrine of Evolution has itself made it infin- itely more difficult for us than it was for the Stoics to unify the ethical and the " cosmic process." It is one of the keenest living students of Nature, as well as one of the keenest thinkers of our time. Professor Hux- ley, who has stated this difficulty in the most emphatic terms, who has confessed in the fullest way the failure of the scientific effort " to make existence intelligible and to bring the order of things into harmony with the moral sense of man," ^ and who speaks of " the unfathomable injustice of the nature of things." ^ He has reminded us how ancient the problem is, and how ancient the confession of man's inability to solve it, how "by the Tiber, as by the Ganges, ethical man admits that the cosmos is too strong for him," how the roots of pessimism 1 ' Evolution and Ethics,' 8. - Ibid., 12. i '1 H 400 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 401 are to be sought for in this contradiction, how " social pro- gress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step, and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process, the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which exist, but of those who are ethically the best;"i how "the prac- tice of that which is ethically the best— what we call aoodness or virtue — involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success m the cosmic struggle for existence ; " how the history of civilisation is the record of " the steps by which men have succeeded in building up an artificial world within the cosmos ; " and how Nature's " moral indifference " culmi- nates in her undoing of that moral creation which had seemed her fairest work ; how she, for whom there is no " best " and " worst," and for whom the " fittest " is only the "ablest," will yet undo her own work, and man's resistance to her mighty power will avail him nothing to " arrest the procession of the great year." Perhaps Professor Huxley goes too far when he says that " the cosmic process bears no sort of relation to the ethical," but he has at any rate stated clearly the issue at stake— viz., the question of the legitimacy of the identifi- cation of the ethical process with the process of the physi- cal cosmos, the identification of " the power that makes for righteousness " with the necessity of natural evolution. If, as I have contended, a Naturalistic explanation of the moral Ideal is impossible, if that Ideal has another and hic^her certificate of birth to show, then we need not o 1 ' Evolution and Ethics,' 33. wonder that Nature should prove an insufficient sphere for the moral life, and that we should fail to harmonise the order of nature with the order of morality. If man is not part of nature, but disparate from nature, then his life and nature's may well conflict in the lines of their development. If we acknowledge such a conflict, we may either be candidly agnostic, and, regarding physical ex- planation as the only explanation, may say that moral- ity, just because it is undeniably different from nature, is inexplicable ; or we may seek for another explanation of it, and try to answer Mr Spencer's question : " If the ethical man is not a product of the cosmic process, what is he a product of ? " ^ Does not the very insufficiency of Naturalism necessitate — unless we are to remain agnostic — a supernatural or transcendental view of morality ? Does not the non-moral character of Nature necessitate a moral government of man's life higher than the govern- ment of Nature, — a discipline, retribution, and reward that shall excel hers in justice, insight, and discrimination ? Mr Huxley's lecture, with its emphatic, almost passionate, assertion of the dualism of nature and morality, with its absolute refusal to merge the latter in the former, is itself a fine demonstration of the impossibility of metaphysical indifference ; the profound ethical faith which it expresses is the best evidence of the author's superiority to his creed, the best proof that agnosticism cannot be, for such a mind, a final resting-place. For the mere assertion of the dualism and opposition of the ethical and the cosmical process is not the whole case. That dualism and opposi- tion raise the further question of the possibility of their ^ 'Athenoeum,' August 5, 1893. 2c MSl Man and Nature. 402 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. reconciliation. As one of Professor Huxley's reviewers said • " The crux of the theory lies in the answer to the question whether the ethical process, if in reality opposed alto-ether to the cosmical process, is or is not a part ot the^cosmical process; and if not, what account can be aiven of its origin. In what way is it possible, in what way is it conceivable, that that should arise within the cosmical process which, in Mr Huxley's comprehensive phrase, ' is in all respects opposed ' to its working ? 4 The dualism of Nature and morality raises for us the question whether we must not postulate for man as a moral being another, and a higher, environment or sphere than Nature. The fact that the physical scheme is ,wt the ethical scheme, renders necessary, for the justification and fulfilment of morality, a moral theology, a scheme of moral cvovernment which shall right the wrongs of the physical government of the universe. The fact of opposi- tion between nature and spirit, the fact that man's true life has to be lived in a foreign element, that the power which works in the physical cosmos is not a " power which makes for righteousness " or a power which cares for righteousness,-the fact of " these hindrances and antip- athies of the actual," the indubitable and baffling fact of this errand antinomy, forces us beyond the actual physical universe and its order, to seek in a higher world and a different order the explanation and fulfilment of our moral life. Intellectually, we might find ourselves at home in Nature, for her order seems the reflection of our own intelligence. But morally, she answers not to the 1 'Athenaeum,' July 22, 1893. THE PKOBLEM OF GOD. 403 human spirit's questionings and cravings; rather, she seems to contradict and despise them. She knows her own children, and answers their cry. But man she knows not, and disclaims : for, in his deepest being, he is no child of hers. As his certificate of birth is higher, so is his true life and citizenship found in a higher world. Thus there comes inevitably to the human spirit the demand for God, to untie the knot of human fate, to superintend the issues of the moral life, to right the wrongs of the natural order, to watch the spiritual fortunes of his children, to be himself the Home of their spirits. Nature is morally blind, indifferent, capricious. Force is unethical. Hence the call for a supreme Power akin to the spirit of man, conscious of his struggle, sympathetic with his life, guid- ing it to a perfect issue — the call for a supremely right- eous Will. This belief in a moral order is necessary if we are to be delivered from Pessimism. Mere Agnosticism means ethical Pessimism: the only escape is to "see God." Without such a vision the mystery of our human life and destiny is entirely dark, the " riddle of the pain- ful earth " is absolutely inexplicable. Unless our human nature and life are, in Professor Huxley's phrase, " akin to that which pervades the universe," unless God is for us, and we are in a real sense not alone but co-workers with him, our life is, as Hume described it, "a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery." The problem raised for human thought by this dual- ism of Nature and morality is as old as human thought itself. It is the problem of Fate or Fortune, — ^a Power blind but omnipotent, that sets its inexorable limit to the life of man, that closes at its own set time, and in its own 404 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. appointed way, all his strivings, and blots out alike Ws goodness and his sin ; a Power which the Greeks quamtlj thouc^ht of as superior even to the gods themselves, and which to the modern mind seems to mean that there is no divinity in the world, that the " nature of things is non- n>oral. That which so baffles our thought is "the recog- nition that the Cosmos has no place for man"; that lie feels himself, when confronted with Nature's might and apparent indifference, an anomaly, an accident, a for- eilner in the world, a " stranger from afar." The stream of%ood and evil seems to lose itself in the mazes of the course of things ; the threads of moral distinctions seem to get hopelessly intertwined in the tangled skein of Nature's processes. " Streams will not curb their pride The just man not to entomb, Kor lightnings go aside To five his virtues room : Kor is that .vind less rough which blows a good man's harge. " Nature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play : ^ Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away ; Allows the proudly riding and the foundering bark."i I have said that it is a world-old problem, this of the ultimate issues of the moral life. And it has seemed as it the only escape from total pessimism lay m a calm and uncomplaining surrender of that which most of all m life we prize. Let us cease to make our futile demand of the nature of things ; ceasing to expect, we shall also cease 1 Matthew Arnold, "Empedocles on Etna." THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 405 from disappointment and vexation of spirit. Be it ours to conform with the best grace we can to Nature's ways, since she will not conform to ours. Let us meet Nature's " moral indifference " with the proud indifference to Nature of the moral man. A stranger in the world, with his true citizen- ship in the ethical and ideal sphere, let man withdraw within himself, and escape the shock of outward circum- stance by cutting off the tendrils of sensibility which would take hold on the course of the world and make him its slave. " Because thou must not dream, thou needst not then despair ! " But neither the philosopher nor the poet, no, nor even the " ordinary man," will consent to forego his dreams and hopes, nor will humanity pass from its bitter plaint against the evil course of things and the trade wreck of human lives. Such a dualism and contra- diction between man and his world presses for its solution in some deeper unity that shall embrace and explain them both. The Stoics themselves, the great preachers of Eesig- nation, had their own solution of the problem. The ways of the cosmos were not for them dark or unintelligible ; the "nature of things" was, like human nature, in its essence altogether reasonable. The question raised by the impossibility of correlating man and Nature by " natural- ising the moral man " is, whether we cannot reduce both man and nature to a deeper unity: whether, though " human nature " is for ever distinct from physical nature, and the world of morality " an artificial world within the cosmos," both are not expressions or exponents of a deeper " nature of things." Such a question the unifying instinct of man cannot help raising. Even Professor Huxley admits that "the ethical process must bear some sort of relation to 406 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 407 the cosmic." Nor need this relation be that of levelling down, of reducing man to Nature. Why should we not level up ? Why should not Nature, if in one sense the eternal enemy of man, to be subdued under his feet if he is to Ic man, yet also be the minister and instrument of man's moral life, charged with a moral mission even in its moral " enmity " or " indifference " ? If the ethical pro- cess is not part of the cosmic process, may not the cosmic be part of the ethical ? or better, may not both be parts of the Divine process of the universe ? Smce man has to live the ethical life in a natural world, in a world which is in a sense the enemy of that life, and in a sense indifferent to it, may not the ethical process be " more reasonably described as an agency which directs and controls rather than entirely opposes the cosmical process '. . To the question whether we can thus correlate the ethical with the cosmical process, man and Nature, by seeing God in both, in such wise that Nature shall become the instrument and servant of the ethical spirit ; or whether Nature must remain for man an alien and opposing force which, by its moral indifference, is always liable, if not to defeat, to embarrass and endanger, moral ends,— to this question I do not see that we can give more than a tentative answer. Our answer must be rather a specula- tive guess, a philosophic faith, than a reasoned certainty. "Natare" in ourselves we may annex, our natural dis- positions, instincts, impulses, we may subdue to moral ends ; this raw material we may work entirely into the texture of the ethical life. But what of the "Nature" 1 ' Athenoeum; July 22, 1893. which is without ourselves ? What of that " furniture of fortune" of which Aristotle speaks, which seems to come to us and to be taken away from us without any reference, oftentimes, to our ethical deservings ? What of that " fate " in which our life is involved, whose issues are unto life and unto death, which disappoints and blights our spiritual hopes, whose capricious favours no merit can secure, w^hose gifts and calamities descend, without discrimination, upon the evil and the good ? Call it what we will — "fortune," "circumstance," "fate" — does there not remain an insoluble and baffling quantity — an X which we can never eliminate, and whose presence destroys all our calculations ? Yet the ground of moral confidence is the conviction, inseparable from the moral life, of the supremacy and ultimate masterfulness of the moral order. Professor Huxley himself expresses a sober and measured confidence of this kind. "It may seem an audacious proposal thus to pit the microcosm against the macrocosm, and to set man to subdue Nature to his higher ends ; but I venture to think that the great intellectual difference between the ancient times . . . and our day lies in the solid foundation we have acquired for the hope that such an enterprise may meet with a certain meas- ure of success." Man has learned, with the advance of science, his own power over Nature, the power, which increasing knowledge brings, to subdue Nature to his own ends, and his confidence inevitably grows that he is Nature's master, not her slave. But whether he can ever entirely subdue her, whether the natural order will ever be ^0 filled with the moral order as to be the perfect ex- pression and vehicle of the latter ; or whether the natural 408 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. order must always remain the imperfect expression of the moral, and some new and perfect expression be framed for it we cannot tell. Only this we can say, that since each is' an order, since Nature itself is a cosmos, not a chaos and since they issue from a common source, Nature and morality must ultimately be harmonised. T„e mod- 5. This, in itself unchanging, problem assumes two Z?fme different aspects as it appears in ancient and in modern P™^''"'- speculation It is in the latter of these aspects that we are naturally most familiar with it, and in this form perhaps its most characteristic statement is that of Kant. The ultimate issue of goodness, he contends, must be happiness ; the external and the internal fortunes of the soul must in the end coincide. This is the Kantian arc^ument for the existence of God, as moral Governor of thi universe, distributor of rewards and punishments m accordance with individual desert. For though the very essence of virtue is its disinterestedness, yet the final equation of virtue and happiness is, for Kant, the pos- tulate of morality. We have seen that the hedonists, who reduce virtue to prudence and the right to the expedient, find themselves forced, in order to the vindica- tion of altruistic conduct, or of that part of virtue which refuses to be resolved into prudence, to make the same postulate in another form. Either the appeal is made to the future course of the evolutionary process, which, it is arc'ued, cannot stop short of the identification of virtue and prudence, individual goodness and individual hap- piness • or it is maintained, as by Professor Sidgwick, that the gap in ethical theory must be filled in by a THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 409 theological hypothesis of the Kantian sort. The Socratic conviction is reasserted, that " if the Eulers of the universe do not prefer the just man to the unjust, it is better to die than to live." Nor is such a demand the expression of mere self-interest. " When a man passionately refuses to believe that the ' wages of virtue ' can ' be dust,' it is often less from any private reckoning about his own wages than from a disinterested aversion to a universe SO fundamentally irrational that ' God for the Individual ' is not ultimately identified with ' Universal Good.' " ^ The assumption of such a moral order, maintained by a moral Governor, is accordingly accepted as " an hypo- thesis logically necessary to avoid a fundamental contra- diction in one chief department of our thought." ^ Even in this aspect, the problem is not exclusively modern. The coincidence of outward prosperity with righteousness, individual and national, was the axiom of Hebrew thought — an axiom whose verification in national and individual experience cost the Hebrews much painful thouorht, and often seemed to be threatened with final disappointment. Even the lesson, learned by bitter experience, that man must be content to "serve God for nought," never carried with it for them the defini- tive divorce of righteousness and prosperity. Their in- tense moral earnestness persisted in its demand for an ultimate harmony of external fortune with inward merit ; sin and suffering, goodness and happiness, must, they felt, ultimately coincide. And, like our modern Kantians and Evolutionists, they were compelled to adjourn to 1 Sidgwick, 'Methods of Ethics,' 504 (3d ed.) 2 Ibid., 505. 410 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 411 the future, now of the community, now of the indi- vidual, the solution of a problem which their present experience always left unsolved. Yet one cannot help feeling that this is not the most adequate or the worthiest statement of the problem. There is a feeling of externality about such a moral universe as that of the Hebrews, of Kant, or of Professor Sidgwick ; such a God is a kind of deus ex machina, after all,— an agent introduced from outside into a scheme of things which had seemed already complete, to re-adjust an order already adjusted. Especially in Kant we feel that, in spite of all his skilful pleading, there is a fall from the elevated and consistent Stoicism of his ethics to the quasi -Hedonism of his moral theology; the old keynote sounds no longer. Nor is his God much better than " a chief-of-police of the moral universe." It seems to me that the ancient Greek statement of the problem was much more adequate than the characteristic modern version of it, and that the Greek solution is also more suggestive of the true direction in which the solution must be sought. Its ancient statement. 6. The Greek problem was that of an adequate sjphere for the exercise of virtue. In general this sphere was found in the State, and Plato held that there was no contradiction more tragic than that of a great nature condemned to live in a mean State ; great virtue needs a great sphere for its due exercise. And the Greek State, at its best, did provide a splendid, and to the Greeks a satis- fying, sphere for the exercise of human virtue. It en- larged and ennobled, without annulling, the life of the individual citizen. For Aristotle, though the State is still the ideal sphere of virtuous activity, and Ethics itself " a sort of political inquiry," the problem has already changed its aspect, and become more directly a problem of the individual life. To him the question is that of the opportunity for the actualisation of the virtue or excel- lence which exists potentially in every man. The actual- isation (ii/epyeca) of virtue is for him of supreme im- portance ; and whether any man's potential virtue shall be actualised or not, is determined not by the man him- self, but by his circumstances, — his initial and acquired equipment, his " furniture of fortune," wealth, friends, honour, personal advantage, &c. These things constitute the man's moral opportunity, and determine the scale of his ethical achievement. A good, or passively virtuous, man might " sleep all his life," — might never have a fit opportunity of realising his goodness, never find a suffi- cient stage for the demonstration of his powers in act, or never find his part in the drama of human history. The tide of fortune might never for him come to the flood, and as it ebbed away from him he might well feel that it carried with it all his hopes of high enterprise and achievement. Here Aristotle seems to find a baffling, inexplicable surd in human life — a " given " element which, in a moment, may wreck our lives, and which must fill some men from the first with despair, or at best must imprison their lives within the narrowest horizon. Eor, so, we are not masters even of our own characters ; character is the result of exercise, — it is not the strong, but they who run, that receive the crown of virtue. But we may never be allowed on the course, or we may not I ■t ill II' 412 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. have the strength that is needed for the race. The ethical End cannot be compassed-at least it cannot be fully compassed— without the external aid of Fortune ; and Fortune, Aristotle seems to feel almost as irresistibly as Professor Huxley feels about Nature, is ethically in- different. The most a man can do is, he says, to make the best use of the gifts of Fortune, such as they are, "just as a good general uses the forces at his command to the best advantage in war, and a good cobbler makes the best shoe with the leather that is given him." ' But oftentimes the forces available are all too scant for any deed of greatness, and the leather is such that only a very indifferent shoe can be made out of it. So that, after all, it is rather in the noble bearing of the chances of life than in any certainty of actual achievement, that we ought to place our estimate of true nobility of soul. Even In the most untoward circumstances, — in those calamities which mar and mutilate the felicity of life by causing pains and hindrances to its various activities, —nobility may shine out when a person bears the weight of accumulated misfortunes with calmness, not from in- sensibility, but from innate dignity and greatness of soul. In this attitude of Aristotle we are already very near the position of the Stoics. The problem of Fortune, which Aristotle never completely solved, became the chief problem of his successors; and the Stoics and Epicureans found in part the same solution of it. The only salvation from the evil chances of life is to be found, they agree, in a self-contained life which is inde- 1 Eth., I. xi. THE PKOBLEM OF GOD. 413 pendent of outward change and circumstance. The life of the wise man is a closed sphere, with its centre within the man himself; his mind to him a kingdom is, he is his own suJSicient sphere. For the outward sphere has become manifestly inadequate; the splendid life of the Greek States has disappeared in narrow provincialism; Fortune Jias played havoc with man's life, and shattered the fabric of his brave endeavours. The lesson is that man must find his good, if he is to find it at all, entirely within himself, and must place no confidence in the course of outward things. And has he not the secret of happiness in his own bosom? Is it not for him to dictate the terms of his own true welfare ? Can he not shield himself from Fortune's darts in a complete armour of indifference and " impassibility " ? Yet this is not the final resting-place, either for Aris- totle or for the Stoics. The problem of Fortune, it is quite manifest, is not yet solved, nor can the attempt to solve it be abandoned. There is a very real kinship and community, it is felt, between man's "nature" and the " nature of things." The latter is not the sphere of blind chance, after all ; its essence is, like man's, rational. " Live according to nature " means, for the Stoic, " Live according to the common reason, obey that rational order which embraces thy life and nature's too." Nothing happens by chance, everything befalls as is most fit ; and man's true salvation is to discover the fitness of each thing that befalls him, and in all things to order his behaviour in accordance with the eternal fitness of the divine order. Fortune is in reality the Providence of God ; no evil can happen to a good man ; his affairs are i\ ;i i I I :,-5 ■fi»M"*— =«9^-" 414 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. not indifferent to God. The universe is itself divine,-the perfect expression of the divine Eeason, and therefore the home of the rational spirit of man. Nor is man, after all alone or his life a solitary and exclusive one, contained within the narrow bounds of his individual selfhood. Without ever straying beyond himself, he can become a citizen of a fairer and greater City than any Greek or earthly State,-a Civitas De% the " goodly fellowship " of humanity, yea, of the universe itself, for his life and the life of the universe are in their essence one. This splen- did and spacious Home it was that the Stoics built for themselves out of the wreck of worldly empire and the shattering of their earlier hopes; such sweet uses hath adversity for the human spirit. Aristotle's problem seems pretty near its solution. Aristotle had himself suggested this Stoic solution, and had even, in his own bold metaphysic, transcended it. He could not stop short of a perfect unification of man's life with the life of Nature, and of both with the divme universal Life. The universe has, for him, one End, and one perfect Fulfilment. The Form of aH things, and the Form, if we may say so, of human life, are the same ; the Form of the universe is Eeason. And the apparent unreason, the " matter " of the world and of morality, is only reason in the making or " becoming." It is " the promise and the potency " of reason, and will in due time demonstrate its rationality by a perfect fulfilment and actualisation. The process of Nature and the process of human hfe are really only stages in the one entirely rational process of the divine life. To God all things turn, after his per- fection they all aspire, in him they live and move and THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 415 have their being. And if we ask, What, then, of " man's place in nature " ? we have Aristotle's answer in his doctrine of the human yjrvxv- It is the Form of the body, its perfect actualisation or ivTeXex^ia. Nay, the true soul of man, the soul of his soul, is that same Active and Creative Eeason, that pure activity of thought, which is the Alpha and the Omega of Being. In fulfilling the End of his own nature, therefore, man is a '* co-worker with God" in the fulfilment of the universal End. 'For the End of the universe is the same as the End of human life. Man can, in virtue of his higher endowment of reason, accomplish with intelligence and insight that which the lower creation accomplishes in its own blind but unerring way. So that ultimately man cannot fail of his End, any more than Nature can fail of hers ; let him link his for- tunes with those of the universe itself, and he cannot fail. The " cosmic process " is not indifferent to man, who is its product and fulfilment, and also, in a sense, its master and its end. Aristotle does not bring together his ethical doctrine of Fortune as an external and in- different power which may as readily check as forward the fulfilment of man's moral nature and his attainment of his true end, and his metaphysical doctrine of the unity of the divine or universal End with the end of human life, — a unity which would imply that there cannot be, in man any more than in Nature, such a thing as permanently unfulfilled capacity, or potentiality that is not perfectly actualised. But the profound meaning of his total thought about the universe would seem to be that man must share in the fruition of the great con- summation, that without his participation it would be no f v\ ij! ! ! w • ■ N til ill 416 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. The Chris- tian sol- ution. consummation at all, and that into that diviner Order the lower order (or disorder) of outward accident in which his life had seemed to be confined and thwarted of its fulfilment, must ultimately disappear. Thus in- terpreted, the thought of Aristotle would at once antici- pate and transcend the Stoic philosophy of man and Mature, in the measure that the Aristotelian theology anticipates and transcends the theology of the Porch. 7. Christianity offers its own bold solution of the problem we are considering. It knows no ultimate dis- tinction between the course of the world and the course of the moral life, but sees " all things working together for good," and discerns in each event of human history a manifestation of the divine Providence. The natural order is incorporated in the moral ; and even where, to the Greek mind, and to the pagan mind always, the latter seemed to thwart and retard the former, it is felt most surely to pro- mote and help it on. Misfortune and calamity, instead of being obstacles to the development of goodness, are the very'soil of its best life,-the atmosphere it needs to brmg it to perfection. Not the wealthy, but the poor ; not the prosperous, but the persecuted ; not the high-minded, but the lowly, the weary, and the heavy-laden, are called blessed. A new office is found for suffering and calamity in the life of goodness ; man is " made perfect through suffering " And while Aristotle thought that length of days was needed for a complete life, Christianity has taught us that — " In short measures life may perfect be." THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 417 Nor is salvation found any longer in a mere Stoical in- difference or apathy to misfortune ; such a " bearing " is no real hearing of calamity, but rather a cowardly retreat • from it. It is in the actual suffering of evil that Chris- tianity finds the " soul of good " in it. Its office is discip- linary and purifying, and "though no suffering for the present seemeth joyous but rather grievous, yet afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness in those that are exercised thereby." Instead of negating the exer- cise of virtue (as Aristotle thought), calamity provides the very opportunity of its best and highest exercise, and therefore must be regarded as the most perfect instrument in the development of goodness.^ 8. If philosophy finds itself precluded from going the The ideal whole length of the Christian doctrine of divine Provi- Rell!^^ dence, yet it seems to me that Christianity puts into the hands of philosophy a clue which it would do well to follow up, especially since the conception is not altogether new, but is the complement and development of the Aris- totelian and Stoic theology which I have just sketched. All that I am concerned at this point to maintain is the speculative legitimacy and necessity of the demand for a Moral Order somehow pervading and using (in however 1 Addison has given quaint expression to this Christian estimate of so- called "Misfortune" in his fine allegory of "The Golden Scales." "I observed one particular weight lettered on both sides, and upon applying myself to the reading of it, I found on one side written, ' In the dialect of men,' and underneath it, ' Calamities ' : on the other side was written, 'In the language of the gods,' and underneath 'Blessings.' I found the intrinsic value of this weight to be much greater than I imagined, for it overpowered health, wealth, good-fortune, and many other weights, which were much more ponderous in my hand than the other." 2d n • ( 418 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. strance and unexpected wise) the order of Nature, and thus makin" possible for the moral being the fulfilment of his moral task, the perfect realisation of all his moral capaci- ties That the universe is not foreign to the ethical spirit of man, or indifferent to it, but its sphere and atmosphere, the soil of its life, the breath of its being ; that " the soul of the ^yorld is just," that "might" is ultimately "right," and the divine and universal Power " a power that makes for righteousness"; that so far from the nature of things being° antagonistic to morality, "morality is the nature of things "—this at least, it seems to me, is the metaphysical implication of morality as we know it. A moral universe, an absolute moral Being, is the indispensable Environment of the ethical life, without which it cannot attain its perfect "rowth. A " first Actuality," of goodness as of in- telligence, is the presupposition of, and the only sufficient security for, the perfect actualisation of moral as of in- tellectual capacity. Philosophy must acknowledge the rioht of a moral being to self-realisation and complete- ness of ethical life, and substantiate his claim upon the universe whose child he is, that it .shall be the medium, and not the obstacle and negation, of his proper life ? This ultimate and inalienable human right is not a " right to bliss," "to welfare and repose," but a right to self- fulfilment and realisation. To deny this right, to invali- date this claim, is either to naturalise, i.e., to de-moralise man or to convict the universe of failure to perfect its own' work, to say that, in the end, the part contradicts the whole. Our reasons for dissenting from the former alternative have been already given, and belong to our entire ethical theory ; to assent to the latter would be to '"*Si*t..= ..y ^m&»K' "■"?!'5s*saj*' ;,«», «- ..,«^mi&^i^s^^ ^«^a!^sa«^s8W)as^fl**.-«8!»'@*'» 428 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. sophy can never rest in a universe of mere " Becoming," it must explain the Becoming by its " Being " rather than conversely. Heraclitus, as a philosophical evolutionist, recognised this in his assertion of the Law or path (o^o,) of the process ; and Aristotle saw still more clearly that the process of evolution is not self-explanatory, that Be- coming rests on Being, that the ri iarcv of the actual pre- supposes the o^ala or ri ^v ehac of the essential and ideal. In other words, we understand the Becoming only when we refer it to the Being that is becoming. The very con- ception of Evolution is teleological. Evolution is not mere change or indefinite movement ; it is progress, movement in a certain direction, towards a definite goal. " The pro- cess of evolution is itself the working out of a mighty teleolo-y, of which our finite understandings can fathom but the scantiest rudiments." ' It has been truly said that " Evolution spells Purpose." The philosophic lesson of Evolutionism is the constant lesson of science itself, that the universe is a universe, a Many which is also a One, a Whole through all its parts. And while it is the business of the scientific Evolutionist to analyse this Whole into its component parts, it is for philosophy to make the synthesis of the parts in the Whole. To discover this total meaning of the evolutionary process, this End which is at the same time the Be- cinnina of the entire movement, philosophy must reverse t\e evolutionary method, as understood by science, and explain the lower in terms of the higher, rather than the hi-her in terms of the lower ; the earlier m terms of the later, rather than the later in terms of the earlier ; the 1 Fiske, * Cosmic PhUosopby,' ii. 406. THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 429 simpler by the more complex, rather than the more com- plex by the simpler. For it is in the higher and later and more complex that we see the unfolding of the essential nature of the lower and earlier and simpler forms of being. In the latter we discover what the former had it in them to become, what the former in promise and potency already vjere. The oak explains the acorn, even more truly than the acorn explains the oak. Now, the highest and latest and most complex form of being that we know is man, and thus teleology becomes inevita- bly anthropomorphism. The superiority of the anthropo- centric view to the cosmo-centric receives a new vindi- cation when we see that man includes nature. " That which the pre-Copernican astronomy naively thought to do by placing the home of man in the centre of the physical universe, the Darwinian biology profoundly accomplishes by exhibiting man as the terminal fact in that stupendous process of evolution whereby things have come to be what they are. In the deepest sense it is as true as ever it was held to be, that the world was made for man, and that the bringing forth in him of those qualities which we call highest and holiest is the final cause of creation." ^ For in man we now see, with a new distinctness, the microcosm ; he sums up in himself, repeats and transcends, the entire process of the world. Anthropomorphism is more adequate than Naturalism, because in man we are nearer the Whole, and nearer the Centre, than in nature. Evolutionism sends us, for the explanation of nature, from nature to man. The con- tinuity of the process of evolution in nature and in man 1 Fiske, 'Idea of God,' Pref. 21. ;«»» ■■ -iK»r«»--"" - •*!«*■■• *-. -'ag»