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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12492 ***
+
+RECENT TENDENCIES IN ETHICS
+
+Three Lectures to Clergy Given at Cambridge
+
+BY
+
+W. R. SORLEY, M.A. HON. LL.D. EDIN.
+
+Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy
+
+MCMIV
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+These lectures were given to a summer meeting of clergy, held at
+Cambridge in the month of July last. Some passages have been added as
+they were written out for the press, and the crudities of the spoken
+word have, I hope, been pruned away; but, in other respects, the
+original plan of the lectures has been retained. They are now
+published in the hope that they may prove of interest to those who
+heard them, and to others who may desire an account, in short compass
+and in popular form, of some leading features of the ethical thought
+of the present day.
+
+It is inevitable for such an account to be controversial: otherwise it
+could not give a true picture of contemporary opinion. Intellectual
+and social causes have conspired to accentuate traditional differences
+in ethics, and to make the questions in dispute penetrate to the very
+heart of morality. It has been my aim to trace the new influences
+which are at work, and to estimate the value of the ethical doctrines
+to which they have seemed to lead. The estimate has taken the form of
+a criticism, but the criticism is in the interests of construction.
+
+W.R. SORLEY.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, 7th March, 1904.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+  I. CHARACTERISTICS
+ II. ETHICS AND EVOLUTION
+III. ETHICS AND IDEALISM
+
+INDEX
+
+
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+CHARACTERISTICS.
+
+
+A survey of ethical thought, especially English ethical thought,
+during the last century would have to lay stress upon one
+characteristic feature. It was limited in range,--limited, one may
+say, by its regard for the importance of the facts with which it
+had to deal. The thought of the period was certainly not without
+controversy; it was indeed controversial almost to a fault. But
+the controversies of the time centred almost exclusively round two
+questions: the question of the origin of moral ideas, and the question
+of the criterion of moral value. These questions were of course
+traditional in the schools of philosophy; and for more than a century
+English moralists were mainly occupied with inherited topics of
+debate. They gave precision to the questions under discussion; and
+their controversies defined the traditional opposition of ethical
+opinion, and separated moralists into two hostile schools known as
+Utilitarian and Intuitionist.
+
+As regards the former question--that of the origin of moral ideas--the
+Utilitarian School held that they could be traced to experience; and
+by 'experience' they meant in the last resort sense-perceptions
+and the feelings of pleasure and of pain which accompany or follow
+sense-perception. All the facts of our moral consciousness,
+therefore,--the knowledge of right and wrong, the judgments of
+conscience, the recognition of duty and responsibility, the feelings
+of reverence, remorse, and moral indignation,--all these could be
+traced, they thought, to an origin in experience, to an origin which
+in the last resort was sensuous, that is, due to the perceptions of
+the senses and the feelings of pleasure and pain which accompany or
+follow them.
+
+With regard to the criterion or standard of morality,--the second
+question to which I have to call attention,--they held that the
+distinction between right and wrong depended upon the consequences of
+an action in the way of pleasure and pain. That action was right which
+on the whole and in the long run would bring pleasure or happiness to
+those whom it affected: that action was wrong which on the whole and
+in the long run would bring pain rather than pleasure to those whom it
+affected.
+
+From their view as to the origin of moral ideas, the school might more
+properly be called the Empirical School. It is from their views on the
+question of the standard of value, or the criterion of morality, that
+it claimed, and that it received, the name Utilitarian[1]. On both
+these points the Utilitarian School was opposed by an energetic but
+less compact body of writers, known as Intuitionists.
+
+[Footnote 1: It seems to have been through J.S. Mill's influence
+that the term obtained currency. It was used by him as the name of a
+"little society to be composed of young men agreeing in fundamental
+principles" which he formed in the winter of 1822-23. He "did not
+invent the word, but found in one of Galt's novels, the 'Annals of the
+Parish.'" "With a boy's fondness for a name and a banner I seized
+on the word, and for some years called myself and others by it as
+a sectarian appellation" ('Autobiography,' pp. 79, 80; cf.
+'Utilitarianism,' p. 9 n.) A couple of sentences from Galt may be
+quoted: "As there was at the time a bruit and a sound about universal
+benevolence, philanthropy, utility, and all the other disguises with
+which an infidel philosophy appropriated to itself the charity,
+brotherly love, and well-doing inculcated by our holy religion, I set
+myself to task upon these heads.... With well-doing, however, I went
+more roundly to work. I told my people that I thought they had more
+sense than to secede from Christianity to become Utilitarians, for
+that it would be a confession of ignorance of the faith they deserted,
+seeing that it was the main duty inculcated by our religion to do all
+in morals and manners to which the new-fangled doctrine of utility
+pretended." Mill is wrong in supposing that his use of the term "was
+the first time that any one had taken the title of Utilitarian"; and
+Galt, who represents his annalist as writing of the year 1794,
+is historically justified. Writing in 1781 Bentham uses the word
+'utilitarian,' and again in 1802 he definitely asserts that it is the
+only name of his creed ('Works,' x. 92, 392). M. Halévy ('L'évolution
+de la doctrine utilitaire,' p. 300) draws attention to the presence of
+the word in Jane Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility,' published in 1811.]
+
+The Intuitionists maintained--to put the matter briefly--that the
+moral consciousness of man could not be entirely accounted for by
+experiences of the kind laid stress on by the Utilitarians. They
+maintained that moral ideas were in their origin spiritual, although
+they might be called into definite consciousness by the experience of
+the facts to which they could be applied. Experience might call them
+forth into the light of day; but it was held that they belonged, in
+nature and origin, to the constitution of man's mind. On this ground,
+therefore, the school was properly called Intuitional: they held that
+moral ideas were received by direct vision or intuition, as it were,
+not by a process of induction from particular facts.
+
+And, in the second place, with regard to the criterion of morality,
+that also (they held) was not dependent on the consequences in the
+way of happiness and misery which the Utilitarians emphasised. On the
+contrary, moral ideas themselves had an independent validity; they had
+a worth and authority for conduct which could not be accounted for by
+any consequences in which action resulted: belonging as they did to
+the essence of the human spirit, they also had authority over the
+conduct of man's life.
+
+Now the ethical controversies of last century were almost entirely
+about these two points and between these two opposed schools. No doubt
+the two questions thus discussed did go very near to the root of the
+whole matter. They pointed to the consideration of the question of
+man's place in the universe and his spiritual nature as determining
+the part which it was his to play in the world. They suggested, if
+they did not always raise, the question whether man is entirely a
+product of nature or whether he has a spiritual essence to which
+nature may be subdued. But the larger issues suggested were not
+followed out. Common consent seemed to limit the discussion to the two
+questions described; and this limitation of the controversy tended to
+a precision and clearness in method, which is often wanting in the
+ethical thought of the present day, disturbed as it is by new and more
+far-reaching problems.
+
+This limitation of scope, which I venture to select as the leading
+characteristic of last century's ethical enquiries, may be further
+seen in the large amount of agreement between the two schools
+regarding the content of morality. The Utilitarians no more than
+the Intuitionists were opponents of the traditional--as we may call
+it--the Christian morality of modern civilisation. They both adopted
+and defended the well-recognised virtues of truth and justice, of
+temperance and benevolence, which have been accepted by the common
+tradition of ages as the expression of man's moral consciousness. The
+Intuitionists no doubt were sometimes regarded--they may indeed have
+sometimes regarded themselves--as in a peculiar way the guardians of
+the traditional morality, and as interested more than their opponents
+in defending a view in harmony with man's spiritual essence and
+inheritance. But we do not find any attack upon the main content
+of morality by the Utilitarian writers. On the contrary, they were
+interested in vindicating their own full acceptance of the traditional
+morality. This is, in particular, the case with John Stuart Mill, the
+high-minded representative of the Utilitarian philosophy in the middle
+of last century. "In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth," he says,
+"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."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Utilitarianism, 9th ed., pp. 24, 25.]
+
+No doubt Mill was a practical reformer as well as a philosophical
+thinker, and he wished on certain special points to revise the
+accepted code. He says that "the received code of ethics is by no
+means of divine right, that mankind has still much to learn as to the
+effects of actions on the general happiness."[1] He would even take
+this point--the modifiability of the ordinary moral code--as a sort
+of test question distinguishing his own system from that of the
+intuitional moralists; and in one place he says that "the contest
+between the morality which appeals to an external standard, and
+that which grounds itself on internal conviction, is the contest
+of progressive morality against stationary--of reason and argument
+against the deification of mere opinion and habit. The doctrine that
+the existing order of things is the natural order, and that, being
+natural, all innovation upon it is criminal, is as vicious in morals
+as it is now at last admitted to be in physics and in society and
+government."[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 35.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Dissertations, ii. 472.]
+
+A passage such as this leads us to ask, What exactly is the extent of
+the modifications which Mill seeks to make in the ordinary scale of
+values? Does he, for instance, wish to invert any ordinary moral
+rules? Would he do away with, or in any important respect modify, the
+duties of truth or justice, temperance or benevolence? Far from it He
+only suggests, as many moralists of both parties have suggested, that
+in the application of moral law to the details of experience certain
+modifications are required. How far he goes in this direction may be
+seen from his own instance, that of truth. He would admit certain
+exceptions to the law of truth; he would give the less rigorous
+answers to the time-honoured questions as to whether one should tell
+the truth to an invalid in a dangerous illness or to a would-be
+criminal. But Mill always asserts the sanctity of the general
+principle; and, on this account, he holds that "in order that the
+exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have the
+least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought
+to be recognised and, if possible, its limits defined; and if the
+principle of utility is good for anything, it must be good for
+weighing these conflicting utilities against one another, and marking
+out the region within which one or the other preponderates[1]." He
+holds that there are such limits to veracity. He even thinks--though
+here he is not quite correct--that such limits have been acknowledged
+by all moralists[2]. He would have been correct if he had said that
+they had been acknowledged by moralists of all schools: the admission
+of these limits is not peculiar to Utilitarians. But he vigorously
+defends the validity of the general rule, and maintains that, in
+considering any possible exception, we have to take account not merely
+of the present utility of the falsehood, but of its effect upon the
+sanctity of the general principle in the minds of men. The Utilitarian
+doctrine is expressly used by him to confirm the ordinary general laws
+of the moral consciousness. Nay, these rules--such as the duties of
+being temperate and just and benevolent--were, according to Mill,
+themselves the result of experiences of utility on the part of our
+predecessors, and from them handed down to us by the tradition of the
+race. No doubt in this Mill is applying a theoretical view too easily
+to a question of history. It is one thing to maintain, as he does,
+that utility is the correct test of morality; it is another thing
+altogether to say that our ordinary moral rules are the records or
+expressions of earlier judgments of utility. The former statement
+is made as a controversial statement which is admitted to be so
+far doubtful that most men need to be convinced of it. The latter
+statement could only be true if nobody had ever doubted the former--if
+everybody in past ages had accepted utility as the standard of
+morality. But, for our present purpose, his attitude to this question
+is of interest only as bringing out the point that the different
+schools of ethical thought during last century had a large basis of
+common agreement, and that this basis of common agreement was their
+acknowledgment of the validity of the moral rules recognised by the
+ordinary conscience.
+
+[Footnote 1: Utilitarianism, p. 34.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 33.]
+
+The Utilitarians no more than the Intuitionists sought to make
+any fundamental change in the content of right and of wrong as
+acknowledged by modern society. Their controversies were almost
+entirely of what may be called an academic kind, and, however decided,
+would have little effect upon a man's practical attitude. But it would
+not be possible to make any such confident assertion regarding the
+ethical controversies of the present day. We have no longer the same
+common basis of agreement to rely upon that our predecessors had a
+generation ago. There are many indications in recent literature that
+the suggestion is now made more readily than it was twenty or thirty
+years ago that the scale of moral values may have to be revised; and
+it seems to me that the ethical controversies of the coming generation
+will not be restricted to academic opponents whose disputes concern
+nothing more than the origin of moral ideas and their ultimate
+criterion. Modern controversy will involve these questions, but it
+will go deeper and it will spread its results wider: it appears as
+if it would not hesitate to call in question the received code of
+morality, and to revise our standard of right and wrong. One school at
+any rate has already made a claim of this sort, and the extravagance
+of its teaching has not prevented it from attracting adherents.
+
+It is on this ground, therefore,--because I believe that the ethical
+question is no longer so purely an academic question as it was some
+years ago, because it affects not only the philosophic thinker but the
+practical man who is concerned with the problems of his day,--that I
+have selected the topic for these lectures. It is not merely that many
+modern writers assert some general doctrine as to the relativity of
+right and wrong. So much was implied, though it was not much laid
+stress upon, in the utilitarian doctrine. For the utilitarian conduct
+is right according to the amount of happiness it produces: goodness
+is relative to its tendency to produce happiness. But a much greater
+importance may attach to the assertion of the relativity of morals
+when one couples that doctrine with the idea now prevalent of the
+indefinitely great changes which the progress of the race brings
+about, not only in the social order but also in the structure and
+faculties of man himself.
+
+Hence it is not surprising to find that there are at the present day
+some writers who ask for nothing less than a revision of the whole
+traditional morality, and in whose minds that demand is connected with
+the dominant doctrine of progress as it is expressed in the theory of
+evolution.
+
+Perhaps we might trace the beginnings of this controversy as to the
+content of what is right and what is wrong to an older opposition
+in ethical thought, an opposition which especially affects the
+utilitarian doctrine--the controversy of Egoism and Altruism. If
+we look at these two conceptions of egoism and altruism as the
+Utilitarians did, if we regard the conception of egoism as having
+to do with one's own personal happiness, and that of altruism as
+describing the general happiness, the happiness of others rather than
+of oneself, then obviously the questions arise whether the conduct
+which produces the greatest happiness of others will or will not also
+produce the greatest happiness of the individual agent, and which
+should be chosen in the event of their disagreement. Is my happiness
+and that which will tend to it always to be got on the same lines of
+conduct as those which will bring about the greatest happiness of the
+greatest number?
+
+The Utilitarian writers of last century were of course conscious of
+this problem, conscious that there was a possible discrepancy between
+egoistic conduct and altruistic conduct; but they agreed to lay stress
+upon altruistic results as determining moral quality. Their tendency
+was to minimise the difference between the egoistic and the altruistic
+effects of action, and in so far as a difference had to be allowed to
+emphasise the importance of the claims of the community at large, that
+is, roughly speaking, to take the altruistic standpoint. Recent and
+more careful investigators have brought out more exactly the extent
+and significance of the divergence. In particular this was done with
+perfect clearness and precision by the late Professor Sidgwick.
+He showed that the difference--although it might be easily
+exaggerated--was yet real and important, that the two systems did not
+mean the same thing, that we could not rely upon altruistic conduct
+always being for individual benefit, that there was no 'natural
+identity' between egoism and altruism. He held that morality, to
+save it from an unsolved dualism, required a principle capable of
+reconciling the discrepancy between the conduct in accordance with the
+axiom of Benevolence and the conduct in accordance with the equally
+rational axiom of Self-love.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Professor Sidgwick's last words on the question are as
+follows: "If then the reconciliation of duty and self-interest is to
+be regarded as a hypothesis logically necessary to avoid a fundamental
+contradiction in one chief department of our thought, it remains
+to ask how far this necessity constitutes a sufficient reason for
+accepting this hypothesis.... Those who hold that the edifice of
+physical science is really constructed of conclusions logically
+inferred from self-evident premises, may reasonably demand that any
+practical judgments claiming philosophic certainty should be based on
+an equally firm foundation. If, on the other hand, we find that in our
+supposed knowledge of the world of nature propositions are commonly
+taken to be universally true, which yet seem to rest on no other
+grounds than that we have a strong disposition to accept them, and
+that they are indispensable to the systematic coherence of our
+beliefs,--it will be more difficult to reject a similarly supported
+assumption in ethics, without opening the door to universal
+scepticism" ('Methods of Ethics,' 6th ed., pp. 506, 507).]
+
+But while this question of egoism and altruism has thus been
+recognised as a possible source of perplexity, affecting the ethical
+standard itself, both egoists and orthodox utilitarians have commonly
+agreed--though for different reasons--to insist that morality means
+the same for them both, and to hold with Epicurus that "we cannot lead
+a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honour, and
+justice." It is only in quite recent days that a thoroughgoing attempt
+has been made to revalue all the old standards of morality. And
+the attempt is made from a point of view which is certainly not
+altruistic. The Utilitarian writers of last generation, if they
+admitted the conflict of egoism and altruism, weighted every
+consideration on the side of altruism. They emphasised therefore the
+agreement between their own utilitarian doctrine and the Christian
+morality in which altruism is fundamental. On the other hand, the more
+recent tendency to which I refer emphasises and exalts the egoistic
+side, and thus accentuates the difference between the new moral
+code--if we may call it moral--and the Christian morality.
+
+The boldest and most brilliant exponent of this tendency is Friedrich
+Nietzsche[1], already the object of a cult in Germany, and an author
+to be reckoned with as one of the new forces in European thought. It
+is true that some of the most characteristic products of his genius
+are closely akin to the insanity which clouded his later years. Yet it
+is impossible to read his writings without recognising his penetrating
+insight as well as his abundance of virile passion. Besides, in
+spite of all his extravagances--or, perhaps, because of them--he is
+symptomatic of certain tendencies of the age. Nietzsche's demand
+is for nothing less than a revision of the whole moral code and a
+reversal of its most characteristic provisions. And he has the rare
+distinction of being a writer on morality who disclaims the title of
+'moralist.'
+
+[Footnote 1: Friedrich Nietzsche, the son of a clergyman, was born in
+Saxony in 1844. In 1869 he became Professor of Classical Philology
+in Basel, and held this post for ten years, though his work was
+interrupted by ill-health for a long period. His first book was
+published in 1871; the preface to the last was dated "on the 30th of
+September 1888, the day on which the first book of the Transvaluation
+of all Values was completed." He became hopelessly insane in 1889, and
+died in 1900. The reader will find a luminous estimate of his work
+in the essay on "The Life and Opinions of Friedrich Nietzsche" in
+Pringle-Pattison's 'Man's Place in the Cosmos,' 2nd ed., 1902.]
+
+The ideas which Nietzsche expresses go to the root of the matter. In
+the first place, he drew a distinction between what he regarded as two
+different types of morality. One of these he called the morality of
+masters or nobles, and he called the other the morality of slaves.
+Self-reliance and courage may be cited as the qualities typical of the
+noble morality, for they are the qualities which tend to make the man
+who possesses them a master over others, to give him a prominent and
+powerful place in the world, and to help him to subjugate to his will
+both nature and his fellow-men. On the other hand, there are the
+qualities which form the characteristic features of Christian
+morality--such as benevolence or love of one's neighbour, the
+fundamental precept of the Gospels, and the humility and obedience
+which have been perhaps unduly emphasised in ecclesiastical ethics.
+These are the qualities which he means when he speaks of the morality
+of the slave.
+
+In the second place, therefore, what is distinctive of Nietzsche is
+this: that he explicitly rejects the Christian morality, in particular
+the virtues of benevolence, of obedience, of humility: these are
+regarded by him as belonging to a type of morality which is to be
+overcome and which he calls the servile morality. He deliberately sets
+in antithesis to one another what he calls Christian and what he calls
+noble virtues: meaning by the latter the qualities allied to courage,
+force of will, and strength of arm, such as were manifested in certain
+Pagan races, but above all in the heroes of the Roman Republic. He
+would, therefore, deliberately prefer the older Pagan valuation of
+conduct to the Christian valuation.
+
+In the third place, he attempts what he calls a transvaluation of
+all values. Every moral idea needs revision, every moral idea, every
+suggestion of value or worth in conduct, must be tried and tested
+afresh, and a new morality substituted for the old. And with this
+claim for revision is connected his idea that the egoistic principle
+which underlies the Pagan virtues preferred to the Christian, and the
+higher development of the self-capacities to which it will lead, will
+evolve a superior kind of men--"Over-men" or "Uebermenschen"--to whom,
+therefore, we may look as setting the tone and giving the rule for
+subsequent conduct.
+
+Nietzsche is an unsystematic writer, though none the less powerful on
+that account. He is apt to be perplexing to the reader who looks for
+system or a definite and reasoned statement of doctrine; but his
+aphorisms are all the more fitted to impress readers who are not
+inclined to criticism, and might shirk an elaborate argument. It is
+difficult, accordingly, to select from him a series of propositions
+that would give a general idea of the complete transmutation of
+morality which he demands. So far as I can make out, there is only one
+point in which he still agrees with the old traditional morality, and
+that point seems to cause him no little difficulty. No thinker can
+afford to question the binding nature of the law of Truth, least of
+all a thinker so obviously in earnest about his own prophetic message
+as Nietzsche was. All his investigations presuppose the validity of
+this law for his own thought; all his utterances imply an appeal to
+it; and his influence depends on the confidence which others have in
+his veracity. And on this one point only Nietzsche has to confess
+himself a child of the older morality. "This book," he says in the
+preface to one of the least paradoxical of his works, 'Dawn of Day,'
+"This book ... implies a contradiction and is not afraid of it: in it
+we break with the faith in morals--why? In obedience to morality! Or
+what name shall we give to that which passes therein? We should prefer
+more modest names. But it is past all doubt that even to us a 'thou
+shalt' is still speaking, even we still obey a stern law above us--and
+this is the last moral precept which impresses itself even upon
+us, which even we obey: in this respect, if in any, we are still
+conscientious people--viz., we do not wish to return to that which we
+consider outlived and decayed, to something 'not worthy of belief,' be
+it called God, virtue, truth, justice, charity; we do not approve of
+any deceptive bridges to old ideals, we are radically hostile to all
+that wants to mediate and to amalgamate with us; hostile to any actual
+religion and Christianity; hostile to all the vague, romantic, and
+patriotic feelings; hostile also to the love of pleasure and want of
+principle of the artists who would fain persuade us to worship when we
+no longer believe--for we are artists; hostile, in short, to the whole
+European Femininism (or Idealism, if you prefer this name), which
+is ever 'elevating' and consequently 'degrading.' Yet, as such
+conscientious people, we immoralists and atheists of this day still
+feel subject to the German honesty and piety of thousands of years'
+standing, though as their most doubtful and last descendants; nay, in
+a certain sense, as their heirs, as executors of their inmost will, a
+pessimist will, as aforesaid, which is not afraid of denying itself,
+because it delights in taking a negative position. We ourselves
+are--suppose you want a formula--the consummate self-dissolution of
+morals." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Nietzsche, 'Werke,' iv. pp. 8, 9 (1899). The translation
+is taken (with corrections) from the English version by Johanna Volz
+(1903). Nietzsche has so shocked and confused the English printer that
+when the author writes himself an 'immoralist' the compositor has
+made him call himself an 'immortalist.' And errors of the sort do not
+affect the printer only. Nietzsche's sneer at 'Femininism' is deftly
+turned aside by Miss Volz, by the simple device of substituting for
+it the word Pessimism. And Dr Tille, the translator of his best-known
+work, 'Thus spake Zarathustra' (1896, p. xix), has been bemused in
+an even more wonderful manner. He enumerates "the best known
+representatives" of Anarchic tendencies in political thought as
+"Humboldt, Dunoyer, Stirner, Bakounine, and Auberon Spencer"! The
+vision of Mr Auberon Herbert and Mr Herbert Spencer doubled up into a
+single individual is 'a thing imagination boggles at.' Perhaps it is
+the translator's idea of the _Uebermensch_.]
+
+Perhaps it is impossible to understand Nietzsche unless one admits
+that his writings show traces of the disease which very soon prevented
+his writing at all. But at the same time, while that is true, there is
+much more in his work than the ravings of a distempered mind. There
+may have been little method, but there was a great deal of genius, in
+his madness. While he always overstates his case,--his colossal egoism
+leads him to exaggerate any doctrine,--and while I do not think that
+the actual doctrines of Nietzsche in the way he puts them will ever
+gain any general acceptance, while his system of morality may not have
+any chance of being the moral code of the next generation or even of
+being regarded as the serious alternative to Christian morality, yet
+it is not too much to say that he is symptomatic of a new tendency in
+ethical thought, a tendency of which he is the greatest, if also the
+most extravagant exponent, but which has its roots in certain new
+influences which have come to this generation with the ideas and the
+triumphs, scientific and material, of the preceding generation.
+
+There are two quite different kinds of influence to which the
+formation of an ethical doctrine may be due. In the first place, there
+are the moral sentiments and opinions of the community and of the
+moralist himself; and, in the second place, there are the scientific
+and philosophical doctrines accepted by the writer or inspiring what
+is loosely called the spirit of the time. In most ethical movements
+the two kinds of influence will be found co-operating, though the
+latter is almost entirely absent in some cases. The incoherence of
+popular opinions about morality is a potent stimulus to reflexion, and
+may of itself give rise to systematic ethical enquiry. This is more
+particularly the case when a change of social conditions, or contact
+with alien modes of life, force into light the inadequacy of the
+conventional morality. In such a case the new ethical reflexion may
+have a disintegrating effect upon the traditional code, and give
+to the movement the character and importance of a revolution. The
+reflective activity of the Sophists in ancient Greece--a movement of
+the deepest ethical significance--was in the main of this nature.
+It consisted in a radical sifting and criticism of current moral
+standards, and was due almost entirely to the first class of
+influences, being affected only in the slightest degree by scientific
+or philosophical ideas.
+
+Influences of the same kind combine with science and philosophy in
+moulding the ethical thought of the present day. Contemporary ethical
+speculation is by no means exclusively due to the thinkers who attempt
+to arrive at a consistent interpretation of the nature of reality; and
+it has features which constantly remind us how closely moral reflexion
+is connected with the order and changes of social conditions.
+
+Every age is no doubt apt to exaggerate its own claims to mark an
+epoch. But, after a century of achievements in applied science, there
+seems little risk of error in asserting that the world is now becoming
+conscious as it never was before of the vast power given by material
+resources when under the control of a cool intelligence. And in the
+competition of nations it is not surprising that there should be an
+imperious demand for the most alert and well-trained minds to utilise
+these resources in war and in industry. It is not surprising; nor
+would it be a fit subject for regret, did not the concentration of the
+outlook upon material success tend to the neglect of 'things which
+are more excellent.' Writing many years ago J.S. Mill remarked that
+"hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made
+have lightened the day's toil of any human being." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Political Economy, Book iv. chap. vi. § 2.]
+
+There is a further question which ought to be asked of every new
+advance in material civilisation, Does it foster, or at least does
+it leave unimpeded, the development of man's spiritual inheritance?
+Certainly, the control of nature by mind is not necessarily hostile
+to the ideals which give dignity to the arts and sciences and to man
+himself. And yet it does not always favour their presence. The weak
+nations of the world in arms and commerce have contributed their full
+share to the higher life of the race; and the triumphs of a country on
+the battlefield or in business give no security for the presence among
+its people of the ideals which illumine or of the righteousness which
+exalts. The history of Germany herself might point the moral. A
+century ago, when she lay crushed beneath the heel of Napoleon, her
+poets and philosophers were the prophets of ideals which helped to
+bind her scattered states into a powerful nation, and which enriched
+the mind of man. To-day we are forced to ask whether military and
+industrial success have changed the national bent: for poetry seems
+to have deserted her, and her philosophy betrays the dominance of
+material interests.
+
+Material success and the struggle for it are apt to monopolise the
+attention; and perhaps the greatest danger of the new social order
+is the growing materialisation of the mental outlook. It would
+be needless to point to the evidence, amongst all classes in the
+mercantile nations, of the feverish haste to be rich and to enjoy. For
+to point to this has been common with the moralists of all ages. This
+age like others--perhaps more than most--is strewn with the victims of
+the struggle. But it can also boast a product largely its own--the new
+race of victors who have emerged triumphant, with wealth beyond the
+dreams of avarice of the past generation. Their interests make them
+cosmopolitan; they are unrestrained by the traditional obligations of
+ancient lineage; and the world seems to lie before them as something
+to be bought and sold. Neither they nor others have quite realised as
+yet the power which colossal wealth gives in modern conditions. And it
+remains to be seen whether the multimillionaire will claim to figure
+as Nietzsche's 'over-man,' spurning ordinary moral conventions, and
+will play the _rôle_, in future moral discourses, which the ethical
+dialogues of Plato assign to the 'tyrant,'
+
+General literature, even in its highest forms, seems to reflect a
+corresponding change of view as to what is of most worth in life.
+Already the strong hold on duty and the spiritual world which Tennyson
+unfalteringly displayed, even the deeper insight into motive and the
+faith in goodness which are shown by Browning, are read by us as
+utterances of a past age. We have grown used to a presentment of human
+life such as Ibsen's in which the customary morality is regarded as
+a thin veneer of convention which hardly covers the selfishness in
+grain, or to the description of life as a tangled mass of animal
+passions,--a description which, in spite of the genius of Zola, does
+not fail to weary and disgust,--or perhaps as only a spectacle in
+which what men call good and evil are the light and shade of a picture
+which may serve to produce some artistic emotion. An attitude akin
+to these becomes an ethical point of view in Nietzsche, the _enfant
+terrible_ of modern thought, who maintains that man's life must be
+interpreted physiologically only and not spiritually, and who would
+replace philanthropy by a boundless egoism.
+
+Influences of the second kind are usually more prominent than the
+preceding in the case of the philosophical moralist, and they are
+not always avoided by the moralist who boasts his independence of
+philosophy. The former influences are more constantly at work: they
+supply the facts for all ethical reflexion. Ethical thought is not
+so uniformly influenced by the conceptions arrived at in science
+or philosophy. But there are certain periods of history in which
+conceptions regarding the truth of things--whether arrived at by
+scientific methods or not--have had a profound influence upon men's
+views of good and evil. At the beginning of our era, for instance, the
+view of God and man introduced by Christianity, resulted in a deepened
+and, to some extent, in a distinctive morality. Again, at the time of
+the Renaissance, the new knowledge and new interests combined with the
+weakening of the Church's and of the Empire's authority to bring about
+the demand for a revision of the ecclesiastical morality, and led to
+some not very successful attempts to find a firmer basis for conduct.
+
+At the present day also it is the case that philosophers of different
+schools are for the most part agreed in claiming ethical importance
+for their conceptions about reality. In particular, the scientific
+thought of the last generation has been reformed under the, influence
+of the group of ideas which constitute the theory of evolution. There
+is hardly a department of thought which this new doctrine has not
+touched; and upon morality its influence may seem to be peculiarly
+important and direct. The theory of evolution, as put forward by
+Darwin, has established certain positions which have been regarded as
+of special significance for ethics.
+
+In the first place, it is an assertion of the unity of life. And we
+must not limit the generality of this proposition. It is not merely
+a denial of the fixity of species, an assertion that there are no
+natural kinds so inseparable from one another that each must be the
+result of a distinct creative act. It is also an assertion that human
+life must be treated as a part in the larger whole of organic being,
+that the mind of man is continuous with animal perception, that moral
+activity is continuous with non-moral impulse. And the assertion of
+the unity of life is at the same time an assertion of the progress of
+life. What we call the higher forms are in all cases developments from
+simpler and lower forms.
+
+Further, the method of this progress has been described. Herein indeed
+lay Darwin's most important achievement. He detected and demonstrated
+the operation of a factor hitherto unsuspected. This new factor to
+which he drew attention as the chief agent in organic development was
+called by him 'natural selection,' The name has a positive sound and
+suggests a process of active choice. But Darwin was fully aware that
+the process to which he gave this name was a negative and not a
+positive operation; and as such it was clearly recognised by him. The
+name was, no doubt, chosen simply to bring out the fact that the
+same kind of results as those which man produces by conscious and
+artificial selection may be arrived at without conscious purpose by
+the operation of merely natural forces. Instead of the 'fit' being
+directly chosen or encouraged, what happens is simply that the 'unfit'
+die out or are exterminated, so that room to live and means of life
+are left for the survivors.
+
+What may be meant by this idea of 'fitness'--which meets us in the
+famous phrase that the 'survival of the fittest' in the struggle for
+life is the goal of evolution--is a question which brings us at once
+to the consideration of the ethical significance of the theory. For
+it seems to lay claim to give both an explanation of progress and an
+interpretation of what constitutes worth in conduct.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+ETHICS AND EVOLUTION.
+
+
+There are two things which are not always kept distinct,--what may be
+called the 'evolution of ethics' and the 'ethics of evolution,' The
+former might more correctly be called the evolution of morality,--the
+account of the way in which moral customs, moral institutions, and
+moral ideas have been developed and have come to take their place in
+the life of mankind. Clearly these are all features of human life;
+and, if the theory of evolution applies to human life, we must expect
+it also to have some contribution to make to this portion of man's
+development,--to the growth of the customs, institutions, and ideas
+which enter into and make up his morality.
+
+But by the 'ethics of evolution' is meant something more than the
+'evolution of ethics' or development of morality. It signifies a
+theory which turns the facts of evolution to account in determining
+the value for man of different kinds of conduct and feeling and idea.
+When one speaks of the ethics of evolution one must be understood to
+mean that the evolution theory does something more than trace the
+history of things, that it gives us somehow or other a standard or
+criterion of moral worth or value. This additional point may be
+expressed by the technical distinction between origin and validity.
+Clearly there is a very great difference between showing how something
+has come to be what it is and assigning to it worth or validity for
+the guidance of life or thought It may be that the former enquiry has
+some bearing upon the latter; but only confusion will result if the
+two problems are not clearly distinguished at the outset,--as they
+very seldom are distinguished by writers on the theory of evolution in
+its application to ethics.
+
+It may be said that the evolutionist writers on ethics seek to base an
+ethics of evolution upon the evolution of ethics, but that they are
+not always aware of the real nature and difficulties of their task.
+Sometimes they seem to think that in tracing the evolution of ethics
+they are also and at the same time determining and establishing a
+theory of the ethics of evolution. We must avoid this error, and keep
+the two problems distinct in our minds. Yet from the nature of the
+case it holds true that it is only through the facts which the theory
+of evolution establishes or can establish as to the development of
+morality that it is able to make any contribution to the solution of
+the further question as to the criterion of morality--the question,
+that is to say, of moral worth or value.
+
+We cannot, therefore, avoid dealing with the evolution of ethics. But
+in what follows I am not considering it for its own sake--though it
+is an interesting and important question. In order to simplify
+the argument, we may allow what is claimed for it, and give the
+evolutionist credit for even greater success on the field of
+historical investigation--which is his own field--than he would, if
+fair-minded, claim for himself. The problem I have in view lies beyond
+this historical question. It is the problem how far the known facts
+and probable theories regarding the development of morality can make
+any contribution towards determining the standard of worth for our
+ideas, our sentiments, and our conduct. Now if we read the accredited
+exponents of the doctrine of evolution we shall find amongst them a
+considerable variety of view regarding the bearing of the theory of
+evolution upon this properly ethical problem--the problem of the
+criterion or standard of goodness.
+
+In the first place, it is desirable to characterise briefly Darwin's
+own contribution to this matter. The suggestion made by him deals
+almost entirely with what I have called the development of morality,
+not with the ethics of evolution; and perhaps it may seem to us now
+a rather obvious suggestion. But he was the first to make this
+suggestion; and it comes from him as a direct application of the
+theory he had established with regard to animal development. His
+suggestion is simply this--that moral qualities are selected in the
+struggle for existence in much the same way as purely physical or
+animal excellences are selected, that is, by their contributing to the
+continued and more efficient life of the organism. But Darwin saw very
+clearly that the qualities which are recognised as moral are not
+by any means in all cases contributory to individual success and
+efficiency. They are not all of them qualities that contribute to the
+success of one individual in his struggle with other individuals
+for the means of subsistence. We may say that courage, prudence,
+self-reliance, will have that effect, and that consequently in the
+struggle for life the individuals who show such qualities will have
+a better chance of survival than those without them. But what about
+qualities such as sympathy, willingness to help another, obedience,
+and faithfulness to a community or to a cause? Clearly, these are not
+qualities which are of special assistance to the individual. But they
+are qualities which are or may be of very great importance to the
+tribe or community of individuals. Supposing such qualities of mutual
+help, of willingness even to sacrifice oneself for others--the
+qualities which are commonly grouped as expressions of the social
+instinct,--supposing these to have been somehow developed in the
+members of a tribe, that tribe would, other things being equal, have
+an advantage in a struggle with another tribe whose members did not
+possess these qualities. Now the advantage thus gained in the struggle
+would be a case of the operation of natural selection: it would
+exterminate or weaken the tribe without these social qualities, and it
+would thus give opportunity for the growing efficiency of the tribe
+that possessed them.
+
+Put in the briefest way, this is the explanation which Darwin gave
+of the growth of the social qualities in mankind; and the social
+qualities make up, to a large extent at any rate, what we call moral
+qualities. Darwin, however, saw further than this: he saw that, while
+this might account for the development of what we may call savage and
+barbarian virtues, there was in civilised mankind a development of
+sympathy which went far beyond this, and which one could not with good
+reason account for by asserting that it rendered assistance to the
+community in its struggle for existence with other communities.
+
+Thus, with regard to the former question, he says: "A tribe including
+many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of
+patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always
+ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common
+good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be
+natural selection[1]."
+
+[Footnote 1: Descent of Man, Part I. chap. v. p. 203 (new ed., 1901).]
+
+But when he comes to the case of civilised men he finds a difficulty.
+"With savages," he says, "the weak in body or mind are soon
+eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state
+of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check
+the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the
+maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men
+exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last
+moment.... The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is
+mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was
+originally acquired as part of the social instincts.... Nor could
+we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without
+deterioration in the noblest part of our nature[1]." This sympathy,
+which natural selection cannot preserve or vindicate even in the
+struggle of communities, is nevertheless recognised by Darwin as
+having a moral value outside of and above natural selection and the
+struggle for existence,--a value of which these have no right to
+judge. He thinks that if we followed hard reason--and by 'hard reason'
+he obviously means an imitation on our part of the action of natural
+selection--we should be led to sweep away all those institutions by
+which civilised mankind guards its weaker members. But this, he says,
+would be only to deteriorate the "noblest part of our nature." What is
+noblest in our nature, then, is not that which natural selection has
+favoured or maintained. There is, therefore, implied in his view a
+limitation of the ethical significance of the principle of natural
+selection. For, when we come to this crucial question of conduct,
+it is not allowed to give any criterion of moral validity. More
+comprehensive attempts on the same lines as Darwin's have been made
+subsequently; and various writers have tried to show how the moral
+criterion may be resolved into social efficiency, or how it may be
+derived from a problematic future state of the human race on this
+earth when the need for struggle has disappeared and all things
+go smoothly. The former view may be found in Sir Leslie Stephen's
+'Science of Ethics'; the latter is the peculiar property of Mr Herbert
+Spencer. Somewhat unwillingly I must for the present leave these
+special views without consideration,[2] because I wish to bring out
+still more plainly the various attitudes of the evolutionists to
+morality, and especially to draw attention to a view very different
+from those just mentioned, though not altogether without support in
+Darwin, which, as put forward some years ago by the late Professor
+Huxley[3], produced no little flutter in scientific dovecots.
+
+[Footnote 1: Descent of Man, pp. 205, 206.]
+
+[Footnote 2: For a discussion of these views I may be allowed to
+refer to my' Ethics of Naturalism,' chap. viii. (chap. ix. in the new
+edition). The same volume contains a more exhaustive examination than
+is possible in this lecture of the whole subject of evolutionist
+ethics.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The Romanes Lecture, 1893, "Evolution and Ethics." In
+1894 this was republished, with prolegomena, in vol. ix. of 'Collected
+Essays,' with the title, "Evolution and Ethics, and other Essays."]
+
+Professor Huxley reviewed what he called the cosmic process as it was
+guided by the law of evolution. He showed how at each step of that
+process new results were only attained by enormous waste and pain on
+the part of those living creatures which were thrust aside as unfit
+for their surroundings, and he held consequently that the whole cosmic
+process is of an entirely different character from what we must mean
+when we use the term 'moral.' According to him morality is opposed
+to the method of evolution, and cannot be based upon the theory of
+evolution. It is of independent worth; but Professor Huxley, perhaps
+wisely, refrained from investigating its justification, while
+enforcing "the apparent paradox that ethical nature, while born of
+cosmic nature, is necessarily at enmity with its parent"
+
+"The practice of that which is ethically best--what we call goodness
+or virtue--involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is
+opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle
+for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands
+self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all
+competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect,
+but shall help, his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to
+the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible
+to survive. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence....
+Let us understand once for all that the ethical progress of society
+depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running
+away from it, but in combating it."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Evolution and Ethics, pp. 81-83.]
+
+Here, then, is a view very different from the easy optimism of Mr
+Herbert Spencer. The cosmic order has nothing to say to the moral
+order, except that, somehow or other, it has given it birth; the
+moral order has nothing to say to the cosmic order, except that it
+is certainly bad. Morality is occupied in opposing the methods of
+evolution.
+
+Still another view is possible. It may be held that the morality of
+self-restraint and self-sacrifice are opposed--as Huxley says they are
+opposed--to the methods of cosmic evolution; and yet the "gladiatorial
+theory of existence" may not be repudiated; but morality may be
+modified to suit the claims of evolution. This is the position adopted
+by the philosopher Nietzsche, whose whole thought is permeated by the
+idea of evolution. Like Professor Huxley, Nietzsche might say that
+morality is opposed to the cosmic process. But by morality he would
+mean something that is not to be encouraged, but that is to be shed
+from human life, or at least fundamentally transformed, just because
+it is in opposition to the laws of cosmic progress. On the other hand,
+the morality--if we may use the term--which the cosmic process teaches
+us will be a development of the conceptions of self-assertion and
+self-reliance, qualities which, according to ordinary morality--the
+morality, for instance, of Professor Huxley--require to be permeated
+and even superseded by self-restraint and possibly self-sacrifice in
+order that the moral law may be satisfied. Not obedience, not mutual
+help, not benevolence, but the will to rule or desire of power, is
+with Nietzsche fundamental, the primary impulse in the history of the
+whole progress of the world, and still of first importance for the
+further development of mankind.
+
+This view is at the opposite extreme from Huxley's, for it overlooks
+the advantages mankind has gained by means of the social instinct and
+the social solidarity which it secures. But there is a further
+point in Nietzsche's reflexions which is suggested by the theory
+of development. Natural selection is not the sole agent in the
+development of organic life: it cannot be too often enforced that
+natural selection produces nothing, that its operation is purely
+negative. It does not properly select at all, it only excludes. What
+it does is to cut off the unfit specimens of living beings which
+nature supplies. It would have no field of operation were it not
+for the variety of nature. While individuals tend to repeat the
+characteristics of their parents, they do not repeat them without
+change: the principle of heredity is counterbalanced by a principle
+of variety equally hard to explain. All organic life exhibits this
+tendency to variation; and one variation proves better adapted than
+another to the environment. It is this which makes possible the
+operation of 'natural selection.' Unfit varieties are exterminated by
+natural selection, and room is thus left for varieties which are fit
+to perpetuate themselves and to increase in efficiency.
+
+Now, if we apply this conception to human conduct, should we not
+encourage all varieties to carry on their experiments in living and
+in morality so that we may see whether success will justify them? An
+affirmative answer to this question is sometimes vaguely hinted at; by
+Nietzsche it is proclaimed from the housetops.
+
+"There is no monopoly of morals, and every morality which exclusively
+asserts itself destroys too much good strength, and is too dearly
+bought by mankind. The straying ones, who so often are the inventive
+and productive ones, shall no longer be sacrificed; it shall not even
+be deemed a disgrace to stray from morals either in deeds or thoughts;
+numerous new experiments shall be made in matters of life and society;
+an enormous incubus of bad conscience shall be removed from the
+world--these are the general aims which ought to be recognised and
+furthered by all honest and truth-seeking people."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Nietzsche, Werke, iv. 161, 162; Dawn of Day, § 164.]
+
+Reflecting for a moment on what precedes, we may observe that, from
+the mouths of the evolutionists themselves, we have encountered three
+different views regarding the ethical significance of evolution. In
+the first place, there is the view of Darwin that natural selection is
+a criterion of moral fitness only up to a certain stage, and that the
+noblest part of man's morality is independent of this test; in the
+second place, there is the view of Huxley that morality is entirely
+opposed to the cosmic process as ruled by natural selection; and, in
+the third place, there is the view of Nietzsche that the principles
+of biological development (variation, that is to say, and natural
+selection) should be allowed free play so that, in the future as
+in the past, successful variations may be struck out by triumphant
+egoism. Neither these views, nor the still more elaborate treatment of
+Spencer, do I propose to examine in detail. But I wish to offer some
+reflexions upon the fundamental conception underlying them all,
+accounting in this way, perhaps, for the differences of opinion
+between Darwin and Spencer, Huxley and Nietzsche. The conception of
+natural selection and of evolution by natural selection is applied by
+men of science and by philosophers in three very different spheres, to
+three very different kinds of struggle or competition. There may be
+many different kinds of competition: it will be sufficient here to
+consider the three following:--
+
+First, there is the competition between individuals for individual
+life and success. Now, so far as we are dealing with this competition,
+the only qualities which natural selection will favour are of course
+the qualities which lead to the continuance and efficiency of the
+individual organism. The qualities 'selected' in this process are
+therefore only the self-assertive qualities,--the qualities of
+strength, of courage, of prudence, and also of temperance.
+
+But in the second place there is also, as I have already indicated and
+as was seen by Darwin (though he did not draw this distinction), a
+second kind of competition, the competition between groups. Now the
+group competition has as its end the continuance and efficiency of
+the group, be it horde or tribe or nation, or be it one of those
+subsidiary groups which enter into national life. In this competition
+between groups it is clear that those qualities will be favoured by
+natural selection which contribute to the efficiency of the group; and
+the qualities which contribute to the efficiency of the group are not
+those only which contribute to the efficiency of the individual, but
+also qualities implying self-restraint and even self-sacrifice on the
+part of one member of the group for the sake of other members of the
+group or of the group as a whole. The habit of obedience, for example,
+obedience to the authority of the group or its representative, may be
+of fundamental importance in maintaining the existence of the group
+as a group, although that habit of obedience has no place at all in
+promoting the interests of the individual when he is competing with
+other individuals.
+
+Thirdly, there is still another kind of competition which is a little
+more difficult to make quite clear, because it is not on the plane of
+individual life and it is not to be identified with the life of
+the community. It is a competition on the intellectual level, the
+competition between ideas, and with this one may also couple (so far
+as it does not directly concern the struggle for social existence and
+thus belong to the second class) the competition between institutions,
+including therein also habits and customs. The various institutions in
+our national life, and the various habits of our life, may be said to
+be forms which have to maintain themselves often in competition with
+other and antagonistic forms of institution. The same holds of our
+various ideas or general conceptions, whether about morality, which we
+have now specially in view, or about matters more purely intellectual.
+For instance, forty or fifty years ago, there was a fierce controversy
+amongst biologists between the group of ideas represented by Darwin's
+theory and the group of ideas represented by the traditional view of
+the fixity of species. There was a long conflict between these two
+groups of ideas, and we may now say that the Darwinian group of ideas
+has emerged from the conflict victorious.
+
+Now, when the phrase 'natural selection in morals' is used, the
+reference is commonly to a conflict of this last kind. The suggestion
+is that different ideas and also different standards of action are
+manifested at the same time within the same community, that they
+compete with one another for existence, and that gradually those which
+are better adapted to the life of the community survive, while the
+others grow weaker and in the end disappear. In this way the law of
+natural selection is made to apply to moral ideas and moral standards,
+and also to intellectual standards and to the institutions and customs
+in which our ideas are expressed.
+
+These, then, are the three ways in which the competition in man's life
+and the selection between the competing factors is carried out. And
+sometimes I think one sees a tendency to suggest that this needs
+only to be stated, and that the whole question of the application of
+evolution to ethics is then settled. You may say that such and such
+moral qualities, as for instance the quality of sympathy, do not aid
+the individual in competition with other individuals. The reply might
+be No, but they aid the group in competition with other groups. Or you
+may say, as Darwin said, that even this competition will not account
+for the civilised development of sympathy. But even so we are not at
+the end of our tether; and we can fall back on the conflict of ideas.
+The idea of sympathy or of altruism, for instance, may conflict with
+some other idea, such as that of egoism. At first the competition is a
+group-competition, in which the group with altruistic members succeeds
+at the expense of the egoistic group. By the victory of the former our
+society becomes more and more a society whose basis is sympathy and
+all that sympathy implies, while conflicting ideas lose the lead. So
+in general with the competition of ideas: the idea which fails to
+adapt itself to its conditions will disappear, and the idea which is
+thus adapted will persist; and this also (it is said) is just natural
+selection. Now I venture to ask the question, Is it? I will put the
+question whether all these three processes are really forms of the
+same process, or, in other words and to put the matter more simply, Is
+it simply natural selection that is operative in all these different
+forms of competition?
+
+For the sake of clearness I will take first this last-mentioned form
+of competition, the process by which one idea drives another out of
+the intellectual or moral currency of a community. The competition
+between the idea of fixity of species and Darwin's idea of the unity
+of life has been already cited as an instance; and it was pointed
+out that, gradually and after a controversy of some forty years, the
+former idea almost disappeared, and in the minds at any rate of those
+who know, the Darwinian theory became victorious. Was it natural
+selection that brought about the result? To test the matter let us ask
+once more how natural selection operates. Its mode of operation is
+always simply negative. And if, in the struggle of life, it selects
+the courageous man rather than the coward, the temperate man rather
+than the intemperate, the method by which this result is reached is
+simple: when it comes to a conflict the courageous man kills the
+coward or reduces him to subjection; the intemperate man has less
+vitality than the temperate: he too disappears, although perhaps
+gradually.
+
+Take again the group-competition so far as it is influenced by
+natural selection. The tribe which manifests the qualities of social
+solidarity is selected simply in this way, that when it comes into
+conflict with a tribe which has not this solidarity the latter
+is beaten, and is thus unable to obtain the pastures or the
+hunting-ground which it desires, and therefore gradually or swiftly it
+is exterminated or left behind in the race for life. Now, I ask, Did
+this process take place when Darwinism supplanted the traditional
+theory of the fixity of species? Surely it is clear that it is only in
+the rarest cases that false or inadequate ideas on such subjects have
+any tendency to shorten life or weaken health. Bishop Wilberforce was
+killed by a fall from his horse, not by the triumphant dialectic of
+Professor Huxley. Sir Richard Owen lived to a patriarchal old age, and
+did not disappear from the face of the earth because he still clung to
+an idea which the best intellect of his time had relinquished. There
+is nothing in the doctrine of the fixity of species--if you hold
+it--which will in the least degree tend to diminish vitality. Natural
+selection has practically no effect at all in exterminating those who
+adhere to this idea. There is no means of livelihood from which it
+would exclude them except indeed that it might prevent them from
+occupying Chairs of Biology. Apart from that I do not think it will
+hinder them in any of the various modes of activity in which the
+struggle for life is manifested.
+
+What was it then that led to the victory of the one idea over the
+other? The cause was intellectual. With the experts, it was logical
+conviction: one set of ideas was found to fit the facts somewhat
+better than the other set of ideas. With men in general the
+intellectual change came more slowly and in a different way: they
+adopted or imitated the ideas of those who knew. It was therefore not
+natural selection at all which led to the presence and power of the
+one idea rather than the other in the minds of thoughtful men. One
+idea was deliberately accepted and the other deliberately rejected.
+The former was accepted on grounds of which the most general account
+would be, if we may use the term, to call them subjective. But natural
+selection is a physical, external, objective process. It is carried
+out without the individual's volition: he is not aiming at the end.
+It is simply natural law which, with many varieties of living beings
+before it, exterminates the unfit individuals. Thus nature in its own
+blind way produces a result of the same kind as that which the will of
+man would bring about by subjective selection.
+
+The origin of this term 'natural selection' is overlooked when people
+talk glibly about 'natural selection' of ideas. Darwin used the term
+'natural selection' because he thought he saw an analogy between the
+tendency of nature and the selective purposes of intelligent beings.
+It was because nature, working without intelligence, produced the same
+kind of result as man does by intelligent selection, that he ventured
+to use this term 'selection' of the process of nature. Perhaps he was
+hardly justified in adopting the term, as nature does not select; she
+only passes by. At the same time, artificial selection also includes,
+although it is not limited to, this negative or weeding-out process.
+When you select a certain plant for growth in your garden you weed out
+the neighbouring plants which encroach upon it, so as to give it a
+chance to grow and thrive. By removing its competitors, you let air
+and light surround the plant, and it spreads its leaves to the sun.
+The healthy growth which results is due to the removal of obstacles
+by an external power; and it is in this way--by the removal of
+obstacles--that natural selection works.
+
+Intelligent or artificial selection is not restricted to this negative
+method of working; and its operation, positive as well as negative,
+was certainly well known long before Darwin's day. Starting with the
+familiar facts of artificial or purposive selection, Darwin showed how
+results similar to those aimed at and reached in this way might be
+brought about by the operation of certain natural laws, working
+without purpose or design. Purposive selection pursues its ends more
+directly and in general attains them far more quickly than does
+natural selection. A still more striking characteristic is the fact
+that it does not entail the waste and pain which mark the course of
+natural selection. Witness the records of natural selection in the
+vegetable and animal kingdoms, where thousands are called into
+fruitless being that one alone may survive and prosper. Wastefulness
+is the most striking feature of its method, and its path is strewn
+with wreckage. In all these respects the conflict of ideas belongs
+to the level of purposive and not of natural selection. It involves
+consciousness of the end, which natural selection never does; it is
+comparatively rapid in reaching its goal and comparatively direct in
+the route it takes; and the victory of an idea does not take effect
+through any general extermination of the individuals who cherish ideas
+'unfit' for survival.
+
+I do not deny that there may be a certain natural selection in the
+case of human beings; but that process is always clumsy and slow and
+wasteful, and the purposive intelligent selection which takes its
+place is one of the greatest possible gains to living beings:
+its presence distinguishes men from animals; its predominance
+distinguishes civilised men from savages; the higher the stage
+of civilisation, the more marked is the development of selective
+intelligence. And in the conflict of ideas, whether moral or
+intellectual, the issue is determined by a selection which is
+predominantly purposive, and only in the slightest degree natural.
+
+If we return to the conflict of groups we shall see that even there
+purposive selection enters. How (we may ask) do those qualities of
+obedience, willingness to help another, and the like, arise in a
+community and thus enable it to win the victory over a less organised
+or more savage enemy? Surely it is not a sufficient answer to say that
+these qualities have been somehow developed, and then have contributed
+to the victory of the community possessing them. All through civilised
+life, and probably throughout a great part of savage life, there is
+the keenest enquiry into and perception of the qualities which
+will make for success. These qualities are carefully selected and
+positively fostered. You drill your armies--that is, you cultivate
+the habit of discipline and all that discipline implies--so that the
+victory may be gained; in other words, the quality is not produced by
+natural selection at all. The issue may resemble the result of natural
+selection, for it leads to conflict and defeat of the unfit; but the
+conqueror is he who has foreseen the conditions of the struggle:
+has deliberately equipped his forces for the fight, and been the
+intelligent organiser of victory.
+
+Even in the case of competition between individuals, at least among
+civilised men, it is clear that natural selection is very far from
+being the only factor. A man trains himself for a profession. It does
+not just somehow come about that a number of people accidentally
+develop certain varieties of occupation, and that natural selection
+makes play with this result, cutting off the unfit and leaving only
+those who are fairly well adapted to their positions. Something of
+this sort no doubt takes place to a limited extent; but, so far as it
+does take place, our methods are denounced as defective and, perhaps,
+as old-fashioned. 'Haphazard' is a wasteful principle, and should be
+superseded by intelligent initiative and deliberate preparation. And
+this indeed is the usual process. One adapts oneself carefully and of
+set purpose to the conditions of one's life, instead of simply waiting
+for natural selection to cut one off should one happen to be unfit.
+
+Even among animals there are certain processes which cannot be brought
+under natural selection. There are the first efforts, slight as they
+may be, towards learning by experience. There are also all those facts
+which Darwin classes under sexual selection, where there is a positive
+choosing, due no doubt not to intelligent purpose but nevertheless to
+a subjective impulse. This marks the beginning of the end of the
+reign of natural selection, because in it for the purely objective or
+external factor there is substituted an internal, subjective factor;
+instead of the process of cutting off unsuitable individuals among
+chance varieties there appears the process of selecting that variety
+which pleases or attracts.
+
+The result of this whole investigation is that natural selection
+cannot be properly applied so as to explain the conflict of moral
+ideas. It is not able to account for all the phenomena of the
+competition between groups. Even in sub-human life there are
+indications of the processes which supersede natural selection. From
+this result the ethical consequence may be drawn, that there is no
+good ground for taking the lower, the less developed, method of
+selection as our guide in preference to the higher and more developed.
+Surely we are not to take natural selection as the sole factor of
+ethical import because we see it at the crude beginnings of life on
+this earth, while the process of life itself in its higher ranges
+passes beyond natural selection. The physiological interpretation
+of life and conduct put forward by Nietzsche, and by a good many
+biological philosophers, would take natural selection, and its bearing
+upon the animal nature of man, as the sole test of efficiency and
+ethical value. But this interpretation of man's life disregards the
+achievements of evolution itself for the sake of pinning its faith to
+the humble beginnings of the organic process.
+
+After this long enquiry into the nature and scope of natural
+selection, we should be better prepared to understand the degree and
+kind of ethical significance which can be rightly assigned to the
+theory of evolution. In the first place let us consider the now
+familiar claim that man must be taken as part of the cosmos, and that
+man's conduct must be regarded and studied in its place in the cosmic
+process. At the time when it was first made this claim may have seemed
+a startling one; but I think that we must admit that, keeping to their
+own ground and using the instruments that are theirs by right, the
+evolutionist writers have succeeded in showing man's connexion with
+the animal kingdom and with organic life generally, and thus his place
+in the whole cosmic process. The claim must therefore be admitted.
+
+But if man is part of the universe, then the universe is not
+intelligible apart from man, and the cosmic process is not fully
+understood unless we also have an understanding of human activity.
+This, therefore, is the counter-claim that I would suggest. The course
+and method of evolution, or of the 'cosmic process'--to use Huxley's
+term--is imperfectly described if the methods and principles of human
+action are left out of account.
+
+No doubt the reply may be made, as the reply has been made, that after
+all man occupies but a minute space in the cosmos, that he is but an
+insignificant speck on an unimportant planet. But, if this is at all
+meant to imply that we may safely leave the peculiarities of human
+activity out of account, then I say that the suggestion hardly
+deserves consideration. Surely the assumption is too gross and
+unwarrantable that material magnitude is the standard of importance,
+or that the significance of man's life can be measured by the size of
+his material organism. We must therefore never delude ourselves with
+the idea that we have a full account of the cosmos or the cosmic
+process unless we have taken account of the peculiarities of man's
+nature and man's activity.
+
+In the second place, the discussion of the principle of natural
+selection suggests a further reflexion. The process of natural
+selection is a process which always tends to some end, because by it
+some organisms are selected, and they are the organisms which are
+fittest to live. By 'fittest' is of course meant that which is
+best adapted to the environment, or, as it is simply a question of
+survival, that which so fits the conditions of the environment that it
+is able to survive. The canon of the principle of natural selection is
+on the face of it relative. No one would say that the principle can be
+interpreted as an absolute law for conduct, after the fashion of the
+absolute laws laid down by the rationalist moralists; what is involved
+is simply a gelation to one's surroundings. One must keep in touch
+with them, one must adapt oneself to them, in order to live.
+
+But I wish to point out that the principle is not only relative, but
+that its relation is limited to certain features of the environment
+which surrounds mankind, namely, to those features and those features
+only which prevent organisms unsuited to the conditions of life from
+surviving at all. The only way in which natural selection works is by
+killing off rapidly or gradually the organisms which are not fitted to
+obtain from the environment the means of life--that is to say, it
+has to do with life only, with the continuance of life as a possible
+material phenomenon. Given that the organisms are fit enough to
+survive, given that their animal vitality is not diminished, a
+question remains: what is the standard of worthy survival? and to that
+question the process and principle of natural selection can give no
+answer. To use the old distinction: even if it is able to account for
+being, it can give no standard for wellbeing.
+
+Now the environment of civilised man is a great deal larger in range
+than those material phenomena which contribute to his nourishment and
+thus to his existence as an animal organism. No doubt his first effort
+is to maintain himself as an animal--that is the condition of all
+his subsequent activity--but he seeks also to suit himself to an
+environment which is wider and subtler than merely animal conditions
+of life; to adapt himself to society, perhaps only as a member of it,
+perhaps also as a leader or reformer; to adapt himself to the dominant
+ideas of his time, absorbing them, perhaps also modifying them; to
+adapt himself to a whole region of interests which may in our life be
+built upon an animal basis, but of which the animal basis gives no
+explanation--interests social, artistic, intellectual, spiritual.
+
+It is correct, therefore, to say of man that his environment is much
+larger than the material universe; it is whatever he conceives the
+universe as being, and whatever it can be for him: whether he seeks
+from it merely intellectual understanding, whether he regards it as
+a vehicle for artistic production, or whether he may see in it an
+opportunity for realising his own being by fulfilling the will of
+God--perhaps by submerging his own individuality in deity. The
+objects of philosophy, art, and religion,--all these are parts of the
+environment of civilised man, and yet his self-adaptation to them has
+no direct effect whatever upon his continuance on the earth as an
+animal organism. In other words, the process of natural selection
+can give us no canon at all for putting a value upon these various
+activities, or upon the way in which man adapts himself to these parts
+of his environment.
+
+It is said by Mr Herbert Spencer that "we must interpret the more
+developed by the less developed";[1] and the inference would seem to
+be that, as animal existence is the basis of all higher activities, we
+must interpret these by it. But if this claim can be admitted at all,
+it can only be if our aim goes no further than to trace a historical
+process. If we desire to understand capacity or function--still more
+if we speak of worth or goodness--then it is much more correct to say
+that we must interpret the less developed by the more developed.
+If you wish to trace the growth of the oak-tree from its earliest
+beginnings to maturity, then study the acorn and the soil; but if you
+wish to know what the capacity and the function of the acorn are, then
+you must interpret the less developed by the more developed, you
+must see what an oak is like when it spreads its branches under the
+heavens.
+
+[Footnote 1: Principles of Ethics, i. 7.]
+
+In the third place, the way in which the action of natural selection
+differs according to circumstances affects its ethical significance.
+It operates as between individuals, and it operates as between
+groups,--although in the latter operation especially it is always
+mixed with other forces than natural selection. The competition
+between individuals favours egoistic qualities, the competition
+between groups favours qualities which may be called altruistic.
+
+Now no principle whatever can be got out of the theory of natural
+selection, or out of the evolution theory in general, which will
+decide between these divergent operations. The question may be put,
+Are we to cultivate the qualities which will give us success in the
+battle of individual with individual, or are we to cultivate in
+ourselves qualities which will contribute to the success of the
+community? All the answer that the evolution theory can give to this
+question is, that when individual fights with individual, the man with
+stronger egoistic qualities will succeed, and that when group fights
+group, those groups that possess stronger altruistic qualities will
+tend to success. But which set of qualities we are to cultivate, or
+whether we are to manifest a sort of balance of the two, is a question
+upon which we can get no light from the theory of evolution considered
+by itself. And consequently we find a very prevalent, though perhaps
+hardly ever definitely expressed, code of conduct according to which
+the individual takes as the guide for his own action the egoistic
+qualities which give success in the struggle between different
+individuals, but recommends to all his fellows in the same community
+that they should cultivate those altruistic qualities which will lead
+to the advantage of society.
+
+The theory of evolution makes no contribution at all to these
+questions of worth or validity or moral value which we have been
+discussing. All one can get out of it is certain canons for living,
+but none for good living. It may draw one's attention to this fact, if
+anybody's attention needs to be drawn to it, that existence is prior
+to wellbeing; but what the nature of wellbeing is--upon that it throws
+no light.
+
+We have been met by the suggestion that we should interpret by means
+of the lower or less developed, and again that we should set up a
+purely physiological standard. But the suggestion overlooks two
+things: first of all, the difficulties in the application of natural
+selection itself with its divergent tendencies; and, secondly, the
+fact that this process of evolution has itself resulted in the
+development of certain higher activities and higher tendencies, and
+that there is no good ground for holding that their worth is to be
+tested by means of the lower qualities out of which they have grown.
+
+Now a good many evolutionist moralists seem to see this, and
+accordingly restrict themselves almost entirely to what we may call
+the historical point of view. They show how moral customs and moral
+ideas adapted to them have arisen, and how these ideas and customs
+have corresponded with the institutions of the time to which they
+belonged. Their tendency, accordingly, is to restrict ethics to
+the question of origin and history and description, to deprive it
+altogether of what is sometimes called its normative character--that
+is to say, its character as a science which lays down rules or sets up
+ideals for conduct. They would take away from it altogether the power
+of determining and establishing a criterion between right and wrong.
+In other words, the fundamental ethical question would be entirely
+excluded from the scope of the science of ethics.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Cf. Green, 'Prolegomena to Ethics,' p. 7: "A philosopher
+who would reconstruct our ethical systems in conformity with the
+doctrines of evolution and descent, if he would be consistent, must
+deal less scrupulously with them than perhaps any one has yet been
+found to do. If he has the courage of his principles, having reduced
+the speculative part of them to a natural science, he must abolish the
+practical or preceptive part altogether."]
+
+That, so far as I can see, is the tendency of a good deal of quite
+recent writing from the point of view of the evolution school: in the
+face of controversy and in the face of difficulties to give up the
+attempt which they started on so confidently thirty years ago,--the
+attempt to show that evolution affords a means of deciding between
+right and wrong and of establishing an ideal for human conduct.
+Failing in this attempt, they seem to turn round and say that ethics
+should content itself with describing facts instead of laying down a
+law or setting up an ideal.
+
+Now, whatever truth there may be in the assertion of the difficulty
+of determining an ideal for conduct, there is one thing certain: that
+whether or not the ideal can be philosophically or scientifically
+defined and established, some ideal is always being set up. Human
+action implies choice, implies the selection of one course rather
+than another; and the course that is chosen is always chosen for some
+reason, because it seems better than the course which is passed by.
+Choice always follows some kind of principle. We may use different
+principles at different times, we may use badly established
+principles, we may use uncriticised principles, but principles we do
+use, and we cannot act voluntarily without using them, even when we
+are not definitely conscious of them.
+
+It is not possible, therefore, to entertain the suggestion that these
+principles should be excluded from ethics. Ethics must consider them,
+even if it should fail in reaching a correct account of them. We are
+bound to ask, for instance, what principles can decide between those
+divergent tendencies brought to light by natural selection, between
+the conditions of success for the group and the conditions of success
+for the individual? The conflict between individual development and
+group development is continually pressing to the front The individual
+cannot reach a high stage of development except in and through a
+highly developed society. But the efficiency which a highly developed
+society requires of its members is not the same as individual
+development; it more commonly implies a specialisation which tends to
+warp or cramp individual capacity. This is a long familiar opposition.
+And the theory of evolution can do nothing to reconcile it All it can
+say is that in certain cases natural selection points one way, and
+that in certain cases it points the other way. If ethical significance
+be claimed for it, it must be said that natural selection is divided
+against itself, and that it is without any principle for reconciling
+its own divergences.
+
+It is because biological evolution is essentially an historical
+doctrine that its votaries should not be too eager to apply it
+directly to ethics. It has accomplished much if able to tell us how
+things have happened in the past, without also dictating how they
+ought to take place now. It is specially absurd to say that earlier
+methods must govern later developments. That is what is done when we
+are asked to take as our guide in voluntary choice a principle which
+ignores volition. The whole progress from animal to man and from
+savage to civilised man shows a gradual supersession of the principle
+of natural selection by a principle of subjective selection which
+steadily grows in purposiveness and in intelligence. To say that
+intelligence should take nature as its guide is to ask civilised man
+to put off both his civilisation and his manhood.
+
+The course of evolution may describe the working of different
+principles; but it cannot of itself supply a test of their value. How
+then is such a test to be got? Can Metaphysics help us? I have pointed
+out that the evolutionist ethics is relative--implying always a
+relation between organism and environment--but this relativity is
+qualified by its objective character. It does do something for morals:
+it brings man's conduct into relation with the world as a whole.
+No doubt the environment which more immediately surrounds man is a
+succession of changing phenomena, so that although the basis we get is
+objective, nevertheless it is unable to give us a permanent standard
+of reference. At the same time we may trace in this theory some
+advance on the older types of ethical thinking spoken of in last
+lecture. Subjectivity adhered even to the Utilitarian type of thought:
+for what can be more subjective than the pleasant feeling upon
+which morality is made by it to depend? There was also a certain
+subjectivity attaching to the Intuitional type of thought, because the
+Intuitionists simply referred their judgments to conscience, the law
+in man, and did not connect conscience with a wider or more objective
+view of the universe.
+
+The suggestion remains that we may get a basis for morality which
+is both objective and permanent from that more complete view of the
+universe which is given or which is sought by metaphysics. Metaphysics
+aims at completeness. That is, indeed, its predominant characteristic
+as a body of knowledge. It may begin with the part, if you like, with
+the 'flower in the crannied wall'; but when that is seen in all its
+relations to the rest of the world, then you will 'know what God and
+man is,' If the universe is a whole, then, beginning at any point,
+with any detail, if you only push the enquiry far enough, you are
+bound to become metaphysical: for you are attempting to understand
+reality as a whole.
+
+In this Metaphysics resembles Religion. Both seek the ultimate, the
+final, the whole. But Metaphysics is distinguished from Religion in
+seeking the whole only by way of knowledge. So far it is like
+any other science. It is a process or the result of a process of
+knowledge. It seeks to know reality as a whole, and in knowing a part
+to know it in its relations to the whole. Religion also considers
+everything in its relation to the whole. But in religion knowledge is
+not the fundamental thing: its object is to relate man to God, in his
+consciousness, and in his life as a whole.
+
+The theory of evolution itself very often tends to become a
+metaphysical theory. It does so when it holds the course of
+development which it traces to be either itself the ultimate reality
+or the most adequate appearance of that reality. This theory is now
+commonly known by the name of Naturalism; according to it the facts
+dealt with by the natural sciences are the only reality which is
+knowable; man's nature is part of these and has to be adapted to
+them, and there is nothing further with which it can be brought into
+relation. This theory is not the same as the scientific theory of
+evolution, nor is it a necessary consequence of it; but in the
+minds of many the two go together. The conclusion of the preceding
+argument--that the ethical significance of evolution is not deep
+enough to give any answer to the fundamental question of morals--is
+not a criticism of the theory of evolution so far as restricted to
+the domain of science, but it is a criticism of the Naturalism which
+professes to be a final philosophy.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+ETHICS AND IDEALISM.
+
+
+There has been no movement of metaphysical thought in our time which
+can be compared for its widespread influence or for its general
+acceptance with the theory of evolution in biological science.
+Intimate as is its connexion with the progress of science, metaphysics
+does not keep step with it,--any more than it simply marks time as the
+former advances. It reflects the influence of each new generalisation
+of science; but if and so far as it reflects this influence only, it
+cannot be an adequate metaphysics. Metaphysics must re-think each new
+fact brought to light, each new generalisation established by science.
+It must think them in their relation to the whole, and attempt to
+understand them by setting them in their place in the complete system
+of knowledge and reality. This complete system is indeed an
+ideal, never adequately comprehended by the human mind; but it is
+nevertheless the ideal which determines all efforts of constructive
+philosophy--including those efforts which take the generalisation of
+some special science as their all-comprehending principle. An attempt
+of this kind to make a philosophy out of a scientific generalisation
+has in our own time been the obvious result of the theory of
+evolution, and has given new vogue to the philosophical system called
+Naturalism. That system draws its strength from the scientific
+doctrine of evolution; but as a philosophy it gives an extended
+application to the generalisation established by a group of sciences,
+and valid for the facts within their range. It interprets the law
+of development which rules the sequences of nature as the highest
+attainable principle for explaining the system of things. Some of the
+questions which it leaves unanswered, and some of the facts which
+it overlooks, have been pointed out in last lecture. Of this theory
+perhaps enough has already been said.
+
+In spite of the increased vogue which naturalism has obtained from its
+alliance with triumphant evolutionism, it cannot be said to represent
+the prevailing type of thought amongst the English metaphysicians
+of the last generation. That generation was remarkable for the
+reappearance in this country of a reasoned Idealism; and all forms of
+Idealism have at least this in common, that they refuse to look upon
+the material process as the ultimate character of reality--so far as
+reality is known or knowable.
+
+It may also be said--and this is a characteristic which is not merely
+negative--that all forms of Idealism agree in ascribing special
+significance to the moral and religious aspects of life. This holds
+true of the great idealists, different as their types of thought may
+be--of Plato and Aristotle, of Spinoza and Leibniz, of Kant, Fichte,
+and Hegel. It holds true also of the leading representatives of recent
+English idealism. But the ethical tone of a treatise and the ethical
+interest of its author are not always a guarantee that ethical
+conceptions have a secure position in his system of thought. This is
+the case, I think, with Spinoza; and it seems to me to hold also of
+some writers of the present day. Mr Bradley, for instance, is perhaps
+the most influential, as he is without doubt not the least brilliant,
+of contemporary metaphysicians; he carries on the tradition of a
+school of thought predominantly ethical; his first book was a defence
+of the ethical positions of that school; but, if we turn to the
+elaborate metaphysical treatise which has resulted from his mature
+reflexion, its most impressive feature will be found to be the almost
+complete bankruptcy of the system in the region of ethics.
+
+Not only had this idealist movement in its beginnings a predominantly
+ethical tone. It was really started in the interest of moral ideals as
+well as of intellectual thoroughness; and its contribution of greatest
+value to English thought was a work on ethics. The 'Prolegomena
+to Ethics' of T.H. Green was a fitting result of his unwearied
+controversies in defence of the spiritual nature of man and the
+universe. No one is more worthy than he to be called by the Platonic
+name a 'friend of ideas,' And he was a friend of ideas because he saw
+their necessity for maintaining and realising the higher capacities
+of human life. Green's 'Prolegomena' was published in 1883, the year
+after his death. And, had I been speaking twenty years ago, I should
+have had to emphasise the ethical character of the metaphysics of the
+day. His metaphysical thinking, through all its subtleties, never
+strayed far from the moral ideal. Owing to his teaching that ideal,
+and the general character of the philosophy with which it was
+associated, have permeated a great part of the better thought of the
+present day, and have influenced its practical activities in various
+directions,--social, political, and religious. But the magnetism of
+his personality has been removed; and those whose business it is to
+test intellectual notions have been impressed by the difficulties
+involved in Green's metaphysical positions and in his connexion of
+them with morality.
+
+The single word 'self-realisation' has been taken to express the view
+of the moral ideal enforced by Green. And it is as suitable as any
+single word could be. But it is clear that, in every action whatever
+of a conscious being, self-realisation may be said to be the end: some
+capacity is being developed, satisfaction is being sought for some
+desire. A man may develop his capacities, seek and to some extent
+attain satisfaction--in a manner, realise himself--not only in
+devotion to a scientific or artistic ideal or in labours for the
+common good, but also in selfish pursuit of power or even in sensual
+enjoyment. So far as the word 'self-realisation' can be made to cover
+such different activities, it is void of moral content and cannot
+express the nature of the moral ideal. Green is perfectly alive to the
+need of a distinction--and to the difficulty of drawing it. According
+to his own statement it is true not only of moral activity but of
+every act of willing that in it "a self-conscious individual directs
+himself to the realisation of some idea, as to an object in which for
+the time he seeks self-satisfaction."[1] And he proceeds to ask the
+question, "How can there be any such intrinsic difference between the
+objects willed as justifies the distinction which 'moral sense' seems
+to draw between good and bad action, between virtue and vice? And if
+there is such a difference, in what does it consist?"[2] Now we may
+define a good action as the sort of action which proceeds from a good
+man; or we may define a good man as a man who performs good actions.
+And for each method of definition something may be said. But if we
+adopt both methods together and say in one breath that good is what
+the good man does and that the good man is he who does good, is our
+logic any better than that of the ordination-candidate who defined the
+functions of an archdeacon as archdiaconal functions? And yet Green
+comes very near to describing this logical circle. "The moral good,"
+he says, is "that which satisfies the desire of amoral agent"; but
+"the question, ... What do we mean by calling ourselves moral agents?
+is one to which a final answer cannot be given without an answer to
+the question, What is moral good?"[3]
+
+[Footnote 1: Prolegomena to Ethics, § 154, p. 160.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., § 156, p. 163.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Prolegomena to Ethics, §§ 171, 172, p. 179.]
+
+When Green really grapples with the difficulty of distinguishing the
+moral from the immoral in character or in conduct, it is possible
+to distinguish different ways in which he attempts to draw the
+distinction--these different ways being, however, not independent but
+complementary to one another in his thought. The first suggestion is
+that good is distinguished from evil, or the true good from a good
+which is merely apparent, by its permanence. It gives a lasting
+satisfaction instead of a merely transient satisfaction: "the true
+good ... is an end in which the effort of a moral agent can really
+find rest."[1] In this statement two points seem to be involved which
+the use of the rather metaphorical term 'finding rest' tends to
+confuse. If we are looking for the distinction simply of a good action
+or motive from a bad one we may point to the approval of conscience in
+the former case: this has a permanence--or rather an independence of
+time--which distinguishes it from the satisfaction of some temporary
+desire. But I do not think that this is what Green means. He wished
+to avoid falling back upon mere disconnected judgments of conscience
+after the manner of the intuitional moralists. The 'true good' for him
+seems to mean the attainment, the complete realisation, of the moral
+ideal. Were this reached we should indeed 'find rest,' for moral
+activity as we know it would be at an end. But the moral ideal
+is never thus attained; its realisation, as Green holds, is only
+progressive and never completed. Consequently 'rest' is never 'found.'
+It is of the nature of the moral life to press onward constantly
+towards a goal which it cannot attain; each achievement leads to a
+further effort and a higher reach.
+
+[Footnote 1: Ibid., § 171, p. 179.]
+
+By itself, therefore, the assertion that the moral agent 'finds rest'
+in the 'true good' does not enable us to distinguish the moral agent
+or the moral action from the immoral. For we are unable to define the
+'true good.' It is not a part of experience; it is an ideal: and Green
+allows that we can give no complete account of it; he even says
+that we can give no positive account of it. At the same time this
+consideration leads to another and connected method for distinguishing
+good from evil.
+
+"Of a life of completed development," Green holds, "of activity with
+the end attained, we can only speak or think in negatives, and thus
+only can we speak or think of that state of being in which, according
+to our theory, the ultimate moral good must consist."[1] But the
+development is a real process which manifests itself in habits and
+social institutions; and from these its actual achievements we can to
+a certain extent see what the moral capability of man "has in it to
+become," and thus "know enough of ultimate moral good to guide our
+conduct." One of the most valuable portions of Green's own work is his
+description of the gradual widening and purifying of human conceptions
+regarding goodness in character and conduct. But all this implies some
+standard of discrimination and selection between what is good and
+what is evil in human achievement. Which developments are truly
+realisations of "the moral capability of man," and so tend to the
+attainment of ultimate good, and which developments are expressions
+of those capacities which seek an apparent good only and are to be
+classed as evil, as impediments to the realisation of the good,--these
+have to be discriminated; and is it so clear that from the mere record
+of human deeds we are able to draw the distinction? Do we not need
+some criterion of goodness to guide our judgment? and does not Green
+himself use such a criterion when he appeals to the tendency of
+certain institutions and habits to "make the welfare of all the
+welfare of each," and of certain arts to make nature "the friend of
+man"?[2] Common welfare and the utilisation of nature in the service
+of man seem to be taken as tests of the true development of moral
+capabilities. The criteria themselves may be excellent; but they
+are not got out of the mere record: they are brought by us to its
+contemplation. To this special question I can find no answer in Green.
+He is indeed aware that there is a difficulty; or rather he admits
+that something has been "taken for granted." He has assumed that
+there is "some best state of being for man"; that this best state is
+eternally present to a divine consciousness; and further, that this
+"eternal mind" is reproducing itself as the self of man.[3] On this
+supposition only, he says, can our moral activity be explained; and
+he holds that the supposition can be justified metaphysically and has
+been so justified by himself in the earlier part of his treatise.
+
+[Footnote 1: Prolegomena to Ethics, § 172, p. 180.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Prolegomena, § 172, p. 180.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Ibid., §§ 173, 174, p. 181.]
+
+Now I am willing to admit that Green showed a correct instinct in
+examining the nature of man before entering upon his properly ethical
+enquiry. One must know what man is before one can say what his
+'good' or his duty is; and it is only because man's nature cannot be
+accounted for as a merely natural or animal product that the way is
+open for an idealist ethics such as Green's. But perhaps Green laid
+too much stress on the problem of historical causation. What matters
+it how we came by our knowledge, provided it is the case that we can
+know ourselves and the world? If we can now distinguish right and
+wrong, can ally ourselves with the good, and follow a moral ideal, of
+what great importance are the steps by which the moral consciousness
+was attained? And the question here is whether the special results
+reached by Green in his metaphysical enquiry into human nature have
+brought us any nearer to a solution of the present ethical difficulty.
+As we have seen, the metaphysical view which Green arrives at is that
+the consciousness which is in man and which raises him above nature
+is the manifestation of--the "reproduction" of itself by--an eternal
+self-consciousness. Man's own self-consciousness in knowledge and
+volition is simply God's self--consciousness "reproduced" (to use
+Green's term) in man's animal nature: so that the animal body and
+its temporal activities become in some unexplained (and no doubt
+inexplicable) way "organic" (to use Green's terminology once more,
+where no terminology seems adequate) to a spiritual reality which is
+eternal and infinite.
+
+I am far from denying the greatness of this conception or its
+practical value. There is no stronger support to moral endeavour than
+the conviction that the moral life is a realisation of the divine
+purpose, that in all goodness the spirit of God is manifest, that the
+good man is the servant of God or even His fellow-worker. By whatever
+metaphor this may be expressed--and Green's statement that the divine
+self--consciousness 'reproduces' itself in human morality is also
+a metaphor--it betrays the assurance that moral achievement is
+permanent, and that (in spite of all apparent failures) goodness will
+prevail. He who fights for the good may be confident of victory.
+
+This is the practical value of the conception; but in order that it
+may have this practical value, the distinction of good from evil
+must be first of all made clear. Green's appeal to an eternal
+self-consciousness does nothing of itself to elucidate this
+distinction. Tendencies to exalt selfish interest over common welfare,
+and to prefer sensual to what are called higher gratifications, enter
+into the nature of man, and have fashioned his history. Green does
+not even ask the question whether these also are not to be considered
+manifestations or 'reproductions' of the eternal self-consciousness.
+But his metaphysical view does not exclude them; and if they are
+included, morality disappears for lack of any criterion between good
+and evil. If good is to be discriminated from evil, it must be by some
+other means than by describing the whole conscious activity of man as
+a reproduction of the divine. Instead of doing anything to solve the
+problem of the meaning of goodness, Green simply brings forward a new
+difficulty--that of understanding how the temporal process in which
+human morality is developed can be related to a reality which is
+defined as out of time or eternal. This difficulty cannot be avoided
+in a metaphysical theory of morality. And it does not stand alone.
+Green's own dialectics were directed against the Sensationalist and
+Hedonist theories which used to be regarded as typical of English
+thought; and on them they acted as a powerful solvent. His own views
+of the spiritual nature of man and its relation to the eternal
+self-consciousness were worked out with the confidence and enthusiasm
+of a reformer rather than with the caution of a critic. But criticism
+has followed, and not only from the representatives of opposed
+schools. Writers whose intellectual affinities are on the whole the
+same as his have let their dialectic play around his fundamental
+conceptions with a result very different from that which he
+contemplated. Mr Bradley, like Green, has faith in an eternal Reality,
+which might be called spiritual, inasmuch as it is not material; like
+Green, he looks upon man's moral activity as an appearance--what Green
+calls a reproduction--of this eternal reality. But under this general
+agreement there lies a world of difference. He refuses, by the use of
+the term self-consciousness, to liken his Absolute to the personality
+of man, and he brings out the consequence, which in Green is more or
+less concealed, that the evil equally with the good in man and in the
+world are appearances of the Absolute.
+
+Mr Bradley's whole work is ruled by the distinction between
+"Appearance" and "Reality," which gives his book a title. On the
+one hand there is the Absolute Reality, spoken of as perfect, and
+described as all--comprehensive and harmonious throughout. Neither
+change nor time nor any relation can belong to it. But intelligence
+works by discrimination and comparison; knowledge implies relations;
+it is, therefore, excluded from reality. Truth is mere appearance. The
+same judgment must be passed on our moral activity. We strive after
+and perhaps reach an ideal, or, as Mr Bradley says, we aim at
+satisfying a desire; and this, too, is a process far removed from
+reality.[1] Goodness, like truth, is mere appearance.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, pp. 402, 410.]
+
+This needs no elaboration. If all predication involves relation, and
+relation is excluded from reality,[1] then no predicate--not even
+truth or goodness--can be asserted of the real. Nay more, to be
+consistent, we ought not even to say that reality or the Absolute
+(for the two terms are here interchangeable) is perfect, or one, or
+all-comprehensive, or harmonious: for all these are predicates. _Ens
+realissimum_ is the only _ens reale_; all else is mere appearance.
+
+[Footnote 1: Ibid., pp. 32-34.]
+
+Just here, however, lies an indication of another line of thought. For
+what is an appearance, and what is it that appears? It can only be
+reality that thus appears; the 'mere' appearance is yet an 'appearance
+of reality.' It might seem that this is to catch, not at a straw, but
+at the shadow of a straw. For if we say that 'reality appears,' are
+we not thereby predicating something of reality, making it enter into
+relation? But let that pass. Among these appearances we may be able to
+distinguish degrees of significance or of adequacy, nay--strange as
+it may seem to the reader who has followed Mr Bradley's first line of
+thought--"degrees of reality." Relations are excluded from reality;
+and degree is a relation; but reality has degrees. The logic is
+unsatisfactory, but the conclusion may perhaps have a value of its
+own.
+
+Here, then, is another view of the universe--not an unchanging,
+relationless, eternal reality, but varying degrees of reality
+manifested in that complex process which we call sometimes the world
+and sometimes 'experience,' But the two views are connected. For it is
+assumed that the Absolute Reality is harmonious and all-comprehensive;
+and it is further asserted that these two characteristics of harmony
+and comprehensiveness may be taken as criteria of the "degree of
+reality" possessed by any "appearance." The more harmonious anything
+is--the fewer its internal discrepancies or contradictions--the higher
+is its degree of reality; and the greater its comprehensiveness--the
+fewer predicates left outside it--the higher also is its degree of
+reality. No attempt is made at a measured scale of degrees of reality,
+such, for example, as is offered by the Hegelian dialectic; but a sort
+of rough classification of various 'appearances' is offered. In this
+classification a place is given to goodness which is comparatively
+high, and yet "subordinate" and "self-contradictory." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 420.]
+
+Mr Bradley's Absolute, we may say, has two faces, one of which is
+described as good, while the other is inscrutable. "Obviously," he says,
+"the good is not the Whole, and the Whole, as such, is not good. And,
+viewed thus in relation to the Absolute, there is nothing either bad or
+good, there is not anything better or worse. For the Absolute is _not_
+its appearances." This is the inscrutable side. But yet "the Absolute
+appears in its phenomena and is real nowhere outside them;... it is all
+of them in unity. And so, regarded from this other side, the Absolute
+_is_ good, and it manifests itself throughout in various degrees of
+goodness and badness."[1] What would be contradiction in another writer
+is only two-sidedness in Mr Bradley. And it is this second side which
+interests us, for here "the Absolute _is_ good," and yet, good as it is,
+manifests itself in badness as well as goodness, and that in various
+degrees. If we are to follow another statement of the doctrine, however,
+we shall have to allow that the "badness" is also good, and that the
+"various degrees" are all equal. For "the Absolute is perfect in all its
+detail, it is equally true and good throughout."[2] Whether or not the
+good is contradictory, as Mr Bradley maintains,[3] we must allow that he
+succeeds in making his account of it contradictory.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 411.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 401.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 409.]
+
+I will try to put the gist of the matter in my own words. Mr Bradley's
+Absolute is eternal, relationless, ineffable. To it goodness cannot be
+ascribed; indeed no predicate can be properly applied to it, for any
+predication implies relation: in earlier language than Mr Bradley's it
+involves determination and therefore negation. Even to say that the
+Absolute appears or manifests itself is to predicate something, to
+imply relation, and thus is an offence against the absoluteness of the
+Absolute. But nevertheless there _is_ a world of phenomena, which the
+most mystical of philosophers must recognise, if only as a world
+of illusion. The sum-total of these phenomena may be called the
+appearances of the Absolute; and the Absolute, according to Mr
+Bradley, "is real nowhere outside them." In this sense of reality we
+may make predicates about it. Indeed all our predicates, Mr Bradley
+teaches in his 'Logic,' have reality--the universe of reality--for
+their ultimate subject.
+
+In this sense it may be possible to speak of reality as good (though
+it is a misapplication of the term "Absolute" to call it good). But
+the question remains what we mean by "good" in this connexion, and
+what justification we have for using the predicate. And the answer
+must be that Mr Bradley means very little, since the goodness is
+manifested "in various degrees of goodness and badness," and that the
+justification for using the term is not made clear. It seems to
+be used of reality in a somewhat vague sense, as it were _jure
+dignitatis_ and to have as little ethical significance as "right
+honourable" when applied to a politician or "reverend" to a clergyman:
+cases in which it might be consistent to say that right honourable
+gentlemen manifest various degrees of honour and dishonour, or that
+reverend gentlemen are worthy of various degrees of reverence and the
+opposite. All the details of the phenomenal world are bound together
+by chains of necessity; each is an essential part of the sum-total.[1]
+How can the distinction of good and evil apply as between these parts?
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality-Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]
+
+We may speak of parts as higher or lower; and Mr Bradley defines the
+"lower" as "that which, to be made complete, would have to undergo a
+more total transformation of its nature."[1] The meaning of this is
+not clear. The reference may be to the complete state which a thing
+may reach in process of growth. Thus an early stage of a rose-bud
+may be said to be "lower" than its later stage because it requires a
+greater transformation before it produces the bloom. But here 'lower'
+does not mean ethically lower, unless immaturity be confused with
+evil. Or the complete state may be regarded as the type of some order
+or class, from which different individuals differ in greater or less
+degree. This meaning is not suggested by the author; and it could have
+ethical implication only if the type had been first of all shown to
+have an ethical value. Or again, the completeness referred to may be
+that which is alone complete in the strict sense of the word, namely,
+the universe. And we might say that a rose-leaf would require greater
+transformation in order to become complete in this sense than a
+rose-bush, or that the act of giving a cup of cold water was less
+complete than the far-reaching activity say of the first Napoleon.
+But this difference in completeness would not entail a corresponding
+difference in moral worth or goodness.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]
+
+Where all stages are essential, it is not possible to say that one
+is good and another evil. Is not the good something that ought to be
+striven for, attained, and preserved? and is not evil something that
+ought not to be at all? And how can we say that any part ought not to
+be when every part is essential?
+
+From the monistic view of reality, as set forth by Mr Bradley, there
+is no direct route to the distinction between good and evil. If the
+distinction is reached at all, it will be found to be psychological
+rather than cosmical, to be relative to the attitude of the human mind
+which contemplates the facts, and in this strict sense to be, what Mr
+Bradley calls it, appearance.
+
+And this is the view which Mr Bradley takes when he proceeds to describe
+what he means by the 'good.' It is, he says, "that which satisfies
+desire. It is that which we approve of, and in which we can rest with a
+feeling of contentment."[1] "Desire"--"approval"--"feeling"--to these
+mental attitudes the good is relative: they are expressed in its
+definition. Mr Bradley, it will be seen, re-states Green's doctrine with
+a difference which makes it at once more logical and less ethical. Green
+had said that "the moral good is that which satisfies the desire of a
+moral agent"; and in so saying had simply walked round the difficulty,
+for he was unable to say wherein consisted the peculiarity of the moral
+agent without reference to the conception of moral good which he had
+started out to define. But Mr Bradley dispenses with the qualification,
+and says simply that the good "satisfies desire." And in so far his
+definition is more logical. The question is whether it distinguishes
+good from evil. Both the practical importance and the theoretical
+difficulty of the problem arise from the fact that evil is sometimes
+desired, and that the evil desire may be satisfied. The desire of a
+malevolent man may be satisfied by another's downfall, and his mind may
+even "rest with a feeling of contentment" in that result, much in the
+same way as the benevolent man is satisfied and content with another's
+happiness. Fortunately, the case is not so common: the dominant leanings
+of most men are in sympathy with good rather than with evil: but it is
+common enough to make the emotional characteristics of the individual an
+uncertain basis on which to rest the distinction of good from evil.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 402.]
+
+There is also another way of putting the matter: "the good is
+coextensive with approbation."[1] If by 'approbation' we mean simply
+'holding for good,' then the sentence will mean that the good is what
+we hold for good--that is to say, that our judgments about good
+are always true judgments,--a proposition which either ignores the
+divergence between different individual judgments about good, or else
+implies a complete relativity such that that is good to each man at
+any time which he at that time approves or holds to be good; and this
+latter view would make all discussion impossible. But this is not what
+Mr Bradley means. "Approbation is to be taken in its widest sense";
+in which sense "to approve is to have an idea in which we feel
+satisfaction, and to have or imagine the presence of this idea in
+existence."[2] And here the criterion is the same as before, and
+equally subjective. In desire idea and existence are separated; they
+are united in the satisfaction of desire; and approbation is said to
+be just the feeling of satisfaction in an idea which is also present
+(or imagined as present) in existence. Not only actual satisfaction of
+the desire but also imagined satisfaction is covered by "approbation";
+but this approval is still simply a feeling of some individual person.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 407]
+
+[Footnote 2: Appearance and Reality, p. 418.]
+
+We need not concern ourselves at present with the adequacy of this
+statement as an account of the way in which we come to 'approve' or
+hold something as good. The point is, that it does not advance us at
+all towards determining the validity of this approval, or towards an
+objective criterion for distinguishing 'good' from evil.
+
+Mr Bradley draws a distinction between a general and a more special
+or restricted meaning of goodness. For the former it is enough that
+existence be "_found_ to be in accordance with the idea"; for the
+latter, it is necessary that the idea itself produce the fact.[1]
+In the former sense "beauty, truth, pleasure, and sensation are all
+things that are good,"[2] quite irrespective of their origin; in the
+latter sense, only that is good which the idea has produced, or in
+which it has realised itself, which is the work, therefore, of some
+finite soul. In this narrower meaning goodness is the result of will:
+"the good, in short, will become the realised end or completed will.
+It is now an idea which not only _has_ an answering content in fact,
+but, in addition also, has _made_, and has brought about, that
+correspondence.... Goodness thus will be confined to the realm of
+ends, or of self-realisation. It will be restricted, in other words,
+to what is commonly called the sphere of morality,"[3] Even in its
+more general meaning, as we have seen, Mr Bradley has not succeeded in
+giving an objective account of good. For the correspondence of idea
+and existence in which it is said to consist is defined in relation
+to desire, and to some kind of feeling on the part of the conscious
+subject. Nor was his account successful in distinguishing good from
+evil: to that distinction feeling is a blind guide. When he goes on
+to discuss goodness in the narrower sense, in which it belongs to the
+results of finite volition, he adopts, as expressing the nature of
+goodness, that conception of 'self-realisation' which, as put forward
+by Green, has been found inadequate. The same conception was used by
+Mr Bradley, in his first work, as "the most general expression for the
+end in itself," "May we not say," he asked, "that to realise self is
+always to realise a whole, and that the question in morals is to find
+the true whole, realising which will practically realise the true
+self?"[4] It is easy to make the distinction between good and evil
+depend upon this, that in the former the true self is realised, and
+that what is realised in the latter is only a false self. But it is
+equally easy to see that this is only to substitute one unexplained
+distinction for another. This short and easy method is not that which
+Mr Bradley adopts in his later work. He has something of much greater
+interest to say regarding the nature of the self-realisation in which
+goodness is made to consist; and upon it he lays stress, "solely with
+a view to bring out the radical vice of all goodness."[5] Goodness,
+it is said, is self-realisation; and Reality--it was assumed at the
+outset--is harmonious and all-comprehensive. These last characters are
+also criteria of degrees of reality, and consequently of degrees
+of self-realisation. There are, therefore, two marks of
+self-realisation--harmony and extent; and these two may and do
+diverge. No doubt "in the end," they will come together; but "in that
+end goodness, as such, will have perished."[6] "We must admit," says
+Mr Bradley, "that two great divergent forms of moral goodness exist.
+In order to realise the idea of a perfect self a man may have to
+choose between two partially conflicting methods. Morality, in short,
+may dictate either self--sacrifice or self--assertion,"[7] "The
+conscious duplicity of the hypocrite," according to an outspoken
+adherent of Mr Bradley's, is "but the natural exaggeration of the
+unconscious duplicity which resides in the very heart of morality."[8]
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 412.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 410.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Appearance and Reality, pp. 412, 413.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Ethical Studies (1876), pp. 59, 63.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Appearance and Reality, p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Appearance and Reality, p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 415.]
+
+[Footnote 8: A.E. Taylor, Problem of Conduct (1901), p. 65.]
+
+It is worth while considering this view of the contradictions inherent
+in morality. To start with, goodness was defined by relation to
+desire: the good was said to be what satisfies desire. Desire is
+plainly a mental state in which idea and existence are separated. As
+such it cannot be attributed to the Absolute Reality. It will involve
+a contradiction, therefore, if we identify goodness with Absolute
+Reality; for goodness implies a distinction (between idea and
+existence) which cannot find place in the Absolute. But if "degrees"
+of reality be asserted, we must admit stages short of the Absolute,
+and goodness may belong to such a stage in which process or
+development is allowed as a fact. But Mr Bradley will have it not only
+that it is a contradiction to identify this process with the Absolute,
+but also that the conception of goodness is itself contradictory. "A
+satisfied desire," he says, "is, in short, inconsistent with itself.
+For, so far as it is quite satisfied, it is not a desire; and, so far
+as it is a desire, it must remain at least partly unsatisfied."[1] Of
+course, if the desire is satisfied, it ceases. It was and it is not.
+But there is no more contradiction here than in any other case of
+temporal succession. A satisfied desire is, it is true, no longer a
+desire. But the phrase is contradictory only in appearance; for it
+means that the desire has been satisfied and in its satisfaction has
+ceased to exist as a desire. A much more important discrepancy is
+asserted when it is said that "two great divergent forms of moral
+goodness exist." The fight for moral goodness is 'under two
+flags'--self-assertion and self-sacrifice. And the allies "seem
+hostile to one another," "at least in some respects and with some
+persons."[2] We have here the time-honoured opposition of egoism and
+altruism, with a difference. Mr Bradley's most notable adherent in the
+region of ethical enquiry prefers to overlook the difference and
+to return to the older opposition of conflicting ideals.[3] But Mr
+Bradley himself declines to rate the social factor in conduct so
+high. It is not altruism or social activity which is the opponent of
+self-assertion or egoism, but self-sacrifice; and both self-assertion
+and self-sacrifice are kinds of self-realisation: in the former the
+self seeks its realisation by perfecting its harmony; in the latter,
+by increasing its extent. It is not in content that the two modes of
+self-realisation differ: social factors, for instance, may enter into
+both; it is in the diverse uses made of the contents:[4] 'system' is
+aimed at in the one; 'width' in the other.[5] The harmony of these two
+methods is attained only when both morality and the individual self
+are "transcended and submerged."[6]
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 410.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Appearance and Reality, p. 415.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Taylor, Problem of Conduct, p. 179 ff.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Appearance and Reality, p. 416.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Ibid., p. 419.]
+
+This discrepancy of aim, and then coming together of the hostile
+factors only in the annulling and disappearance of both, is a process
+quite in accordance with the general dialectic of Mr Bradley. But two
+things may be noted with regard to it. In the first place the effort
+after system is called self-assertion, and the effort after width or
+expansion is called self-sacrifice. Perhaps the author may claim a
+right to give what names he likes to the processes he describes. But
+in this case the names have a recognised meaning in the literature of
+morals, and no hint is given that they are used here in any meaning
+other than the ordinary. And surely the term 'self-sacrifice' is an
+inappropriate term for describing the conduct which seeks expansion by
+multiplying the objects of desire--by the pursuit of whatever offers a
+chance of widened interests, whether social or intellectual, aesthetic
+or sensual,--even although "my individuality suffers loss" thereby,
+and "the health and harmony of my self is injured."[1] Loss may be the
+result; but aggrandisement is what is sought, though the effort fails
+through lack of organisation or system. And again 'self' is not the
+only possible centre for the systematisation of conduct. System in
+conduct may be realised in other ways than as self-assertion. It is
+sought as truly by the man of science who gives up everything for
+the pursuit of truth or by the philanthropist who forgets himself in
+promoting the social welfare. Such modes of life as these--and not
+merely self-assertive conduct--may become centres of a moral activity
+which aims at system.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p, 417.]
+
+The second remark which has to be made on this final point is, that
+neither on the method of system and self-assertion nor on the method
+of expansion and self-sacrifice has the author given or suggested any
+criterion for the distinction of good and evil. He has cast his net
+so wide as to include all conduct within it without discrimination of
+moral worth. His own result is that "the good is, as such, transcended
+and submerged."[1] But this result loses all significance if it is the
+case, as our enquiry seems to prove, that the good as such has
+never been reached at all, nor any tenable suggestion offered for
+distinguishing it from evil.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 419.]
+
+This is the fundamental question for any philosophy of ethics; but it
+receives no answer at all from the prevailing school of metaphysical
+thought. This school offers no solution of the problem which was found
+insoluble by the type of philosophy whose aim is to co-ordinate the
+results of science. A comparison of the purposes and results of the
+two schools may be instructive.
+
+Mr Herbert Spencer has told us that since the time of his first essay,
+"written as far back as 1842," his "ultimate purpose, lying behind all
+proximate purposes, has been that of finding for the principles of right
+and wrong in conduct at large a scientific basis.... Now that moral
+injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred
+origin, the secularisation of morals is becoming imperative. Few things
+can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative
+system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has
+grown up to replace it.... Those who believe that the vacuum can be
+filled, and that it must be filled, are called on to do something in
+pursuance of their belief."[1] But more than fifty years after the
+publication of this first essay, as, with the completion of the
+'Principles of Ethics,' his whole system of philosophy lay unrolled
+before him, he made the significant and pathetic confession that "the
+doctrine of evolution has not furnished guidance to the extent I had
+hoped.... Right regulation of the actions of so complex a being as man,
+living under conditions so complex as those presented by a society,
+evidently forms a subject-matter unlikely to admit of definite
+conclusions throughout its entire range."[2] And the lack of confidence
+which the author himself felt in these parts, there is good reason to
+extend to the whole structure of evolutionary ethics.
+
+[Footnote 1: Preface to Data of Ethics, 1879.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Preface to Principles of Ethics, vol. ii., 1893.]
+
+Neither the purpose of their structure nor its collapse is so
+explicitly proclaimed by the metaphysicians with whom this lecture has
+dealt. But we hardly need to read between the lines in order to see
+the prominence of the moral interest in all that Green wrote; and it
+was after he had shown the inadequacy of the empirical method in the
+hands of Hume to give any criterion or ideal for conduct that he made
+his significant appeal to "Englishmen under five-and-twenty" to leave
+"the anachronistic systems hitherto prevalent amongst us" and take up
+"the study of Kant and Hegel."[1] His call to speculation has been
+widely responded to; but, if we turn to the most important product of
+this speculative movement, we have to extract what enlightenment we
+can from the dictum that, in the only sense in which the Absolute
+is good, it "manifests itself in various degrees of goodness and
+badness."[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Green, Introduction to Hume's Treatise (1874), ii. 71.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 411.]
+
+The most notable recent systems of philosophy, idealist as well as
+naturalist, are thus presented to us, almost confessedly, as void of
+application to conduct. This result, and foresight of this result,
+have led to a widespread suspicion of any attempt at ethical
+construction which is based upon a theory of reality. In consequence,
+recourse is sometimes had to a purely empirical treatment of morality
+such as that indicated at the close of the second lecture. Such an
+account, however, can never rise from the description of conduct to
+setting up an ideal for life. And accordingly some thinkers have
+remained convinced of the necessity of ideals for the moral life,
+although unable to find an adequate ground for these ideals in their
+system of reality.
+
+This attitude was adopted by F.A. Lange, who, at the close of his
+History of Materialism, declared that there was need for an Ideal of
+Worth to supplement the deficiencies of the facts of being. "One thing
+is certain," he said, "that man needs to supplement reality by an
+Ideal World of his own creation, and that in such creations the
+highest and noblest functions of his mind co-operate. But must this
+free act of the mind bear ever and ever again the deceptive form of
+demonstrative science? If it does so, materialism will always reappear
+and destroy the over-bold speculations."[1] It would thus seem that
+moral life postulates an ideal which the mind is able to frame, but
+for which it can establish no connexion with the world of reality.
+
+[Footnote 1: Geschichte des Materialismus, 3rd ed., p. 545 f.]
+
+More recently a brilliant French writer, who has attempted to
+establish a system of "morality without obligation or sanction," has
+suggested that the place of the categorical law of duty may be taken
+by a speculative hypothesis, and that hope may serve where there is no
+ground for belief. "The speculative hypothesis is a risk taken in the
+sphere of thought; action in accordance with this hypothesis is a
+risk taken in the sphere of will; and that being is higher who will
+undertake and risk the more whether in thought or action."[1] Thus,
+"for example, if I would perform an act of charity pure and simple,
+and wish to justify this act rationally, I must imagine an eternal
+Charity at the ground of things and of myself, I must objectify the
+sentiment which leads to my action; and here the moral agent plays
+the same _rôle_ as the artist.... In every human action there is
+an element of error, of illusion": and it is conjectured that this
+element increases as the action rises above the commonplace: "the most
+loving hearts are the most often deceived, in the highest geniuses the
+greatest incoherences are often found."[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Guyau, Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction
+(1885) p. 250.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., pp. 226, 227.]
+
+This solution can hardly be regarded as other than a counsel of
+despair. Its ethical value is merely apparent. What is of importance
+for ethics is not so much the presence of some ideal: it is the kind
+of ideal that matters. It is possible to have an ideal of selfishness
+as well as an ideal of love, a sensual ideal as well as a spiritual.
+Nietzsche's over-man is an ideal; the Mohammedan paradise is an ideal;
+and conduct can be modelled on them. But it is not enough to have
+system in conduct, irrespective of the worth of the ideal which
+determines the system. Some criterion is needed for deciding between
+competing ideals. As long as they are looked upon as mere illusions,
+as expressions of doubt, or as a hazard staked on the unknowable,
+caprice takes the place of law; where all is equally uncertain there
+is no security for the worth of the ideal itself.
+
+Unsatisfactory as they are in this form, the opinions referred to are
+echoes of a pregnant doctrine of Kant's--the doctrine that the moral
+consciousness brings us into closer touch with reality than the merely
+theoretical reason can reach. Various lines of recent thought may
+be said to have been suggested by this view. Almost every idealist
+metaphysician has tended to look upon thought itself as constituting
+the inmost reality of the universe which it conceives or understands;
+and Kant's doctrine may make us pause and ask whether this tendency is
+not simply an assumption without warrant.
+
+Again, the psychological analysis of knowledge has brought out the
+fact of its constant dependence upon practical interests. It is the
+need to perform or attain something, which is the motive that leads
+to the understanding of things; and the understanding of things with
+which alone we are satisfied is commonly that which helps us so to
+describe our experience as to be able to control some practical
+result. 'Knowledge is power'; and not only so, but in its early stages
+and in most of its later developments, knowledge is _for_ power: it is
+for purposes of his own that man becomes the 'interpreter of nature.'
+
+It is to men of science rather than to philosophers that we owe the
+'descriptive theory' of scientific concepts which, within the last
+few years, has gone far to revolutionise the prevailing attitude of
+philosophy to science. Concepts, such as 'mass,' 'energy,' and the
+like, are no longer held to express realities the denial of which
+would be treason to science; they are simply descriptive notions whose
+truth consists in their utility: that is to say, in their ability to
+comprehend all the relevant facts in a simple description. And, in the
+same way, scientific principles are of the nature of postulates, whose
+justification is no necessary law of thought, but must rather be
+sought in the results of scientific investigation.
+
+These three doctrines--the descriptive theory of science, the
+practical nature of knowledge as it is brought out by psychological
+analysis, and the special claims of the moral consciousness--have
+combined to bring about a tendency strongly opposed to the older
+idealist tradition, the tendency to regard practical results as the
+sole test of truth.
+
+This conception is put forward now in philosophical literature as
+a new and independent point of view. The point of view is only in
+process of being hardened into a theory; but, under the name
+of Pragmatism, it has already become the subject of a vigorous
+propaganda. With the value of this doctrine as a general theory of
+reality we need not at present concern ourselves. In spite of the high
+claims it makes for the theoretical significance of moral ideas, its
+adherents have not as yet devoted much attention to the question of
+the worth of these moral ideas and the criteria by which that worth
+may be determined. Yet this surely is the fundamental question for
+ethical theory. On the other hand, as against a merely theoretical
+interpretation of the universe, into which the moral element enters
+only as a sort of loosely-connected appendix, the pragmatists are
+amply justified. Practical ends are prior to theoretical explanations
+of what happens. But practical ends vary, and some measure of their
+relative values is needed.
+
+There is one thing which all reasoning about morality assumes and
+must assume; and that is morality itself. The moral concept--whether
+described as worth or as duty or as goodness--cannot be distilled out
+of any knowledge about the laws of existence or of occurrence. Nor
+will speculation about the real conditions of experience yield it,
+unless adequate recognition be first of all given to the fact that the
+experience which is the subject-matter of philosophy is not merely a
+sensuous and thinking, but also a moral, experience. The approval
+of the good, the disapproval of the evil, and the preference of
+the better: these would seem to be basal facts for an adequate
+philosophical theory: and they imply the striving for a best--however
+imperfect the apprehension of that best may always remain. Only
+when these facts--the characteristic facts of moral experience--are
+recognised as constituents of the experience which is our
+subject-matter, are we in a position profitably to enquire what is
+good and what evil, and how the best is to be conceived.
+
+The recognition of these facts would only be a beginning; but it would
+be a beginning which would avoid the cardinal error fallen into not
+only by the leading exponents of evolutionist morality, but also to be
+found in much of the ethical work of idealist metaphysicians. It seems
+to have been assumed that moral principles can be reached by the
+application of scientific generalisations or of the results of a
+metaphysical analysis which has started by overlooking the facts
+of the moral consciousness. Even as a metaphysic this procedure is
+inadequate; and the interpretations of reality to which it has led
+have erred by over-intellectuality.
+
+The systems of naturalism and of idealism, whose ethical consequences
+have been passed in review, have one feature in common; and it is
+a feature which from of old has been regarded as a mark of genuine
+philosophy. They both seek the One in the many; but they seek it on
+different roads. For the naturalist the most comprehensive description
+of things may be the conception of mass-points in motion; or it may be
+some more recondite conception to which physical analysis points. In
+either case the unity reached will be mechanical. For the idealist,
+on the other hand, reason may be said to be the central principle of
+things: the unity of reality is a rational unity. I have contended in
+these lectures that neither the mechanical unity of the naturalists
+nor the rational unity of the idealists has succeeded in comprehending
+within its unifying principle the essential nature of morality with
+its deep-going dualism of good and evil. But while I have maintained
+that even the conception of reality as the reproduction of itself by
+an eternal self-consciousness is an inadequate conception, it is still
+possible to hold that reality is a connected whole, and that its true
+principle of unity is an ethical principle.
+
+If I were asked what is meant by an ethical unity, I should answer, in
+the first place, that it implies purpose. The unity of reality is not
+exhibited by a description of its present or past conditions or even
+by an account of its causal connexions. These modes of description are
+all affected by the fragmentariness which always belongs to temporal
+apprehension. But, when things are seen in the light of a purpose, a
+view of them as a whole becomes possible, and the fragmentariness of
+time is transcended. And, in the second place, I should say that an
+ethical unity implies the presence within itself of different finite
+centres of conscious activity, whose freedom is not inconsistent with
+their relation to one another and to the Whole.
+
+In his own life, so far as it is a moral life, each individual seeks
+system or unity. And this unity is realised on three different
+levels--as we may call them--which may be distinguished for clearness'
+sake, though it is not possible actually to separate them. On each
+level morality is realised through system, and system is brought about
+by the rule of the morally higher and the submission of the morally
+lower: in this goodness lies, in the opposite evil. If we isolate the
+individual and consider him apart, he may be said to attain goodness
+by the due ordering and control of his sensuous and passional
+nature by rational or spiritual ends. The result may be described,
+negatively, as the suppression of sensualism. But the positive
+description remains imperfect until we can say what the rational
+or spiritual principle is which is to weld all man's 'particular
+impulses' into an organic whole.
+
+And this cannot be done so long as we contemplate the mere individual
+in isolation. We cannot remain at the level of bare individuality.
+Personality itself is not a merely individual product: neither the
+knowledge nor the activity of the individual can be explained without
+reference to his position as a member of society; his inheritance is a
+social inheritance. Nor can the individual establish a claim to deal
+with his own personality as a merely individual end. It is a factor in
+social life; and, in systematising his own life, he must have regard
+to the social factor. In this respect he attains goodness only
+when his individual life seeks a unity higher than that of his own
+individuality, and not centred in his selfish interests. From this
+point of view we may say, again negatively, that goodness consists in
+the suppression of selfishness. But once again there is a difficulty
+about the positive description. Many moralists, undoubtedly, are
+content to rest with the social aspect: to regard the 'health' or
+'vitality' of society as the final expression of morality. But a life
+which is simply absorbed by society cannot be said to be a perfect
+unity. Society itself is a process; and its changes are determined in
+large measure by the moral ideals of its members. For its unity we
+must look to an end--an ideal--of which its actual forms can offer
+indications only. Both man and society are factors in a universal
+order; and their perfection cannot be independent of the purpose of
+this order. When the consciousness of it fills man's life, morality is
+merged in religion.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+Absolute, the, 101 ff.
+  as good, 105.
+  as not good, 104.
+Altruism, 15 ff., 74 f., 118.
+Appearance, 101 ff.
+Approbation, 111 ff.
+Aristotle, 87.
+Artificial selection, 61 ff.
+Austen, Jane, 4 n.
+
+Benevolence, 16.
+Bentham, J., 4 n.
+Bradley, F.H., 88, 100 ff.
+Browning, R., 31.
+
+Characteristics of goodness, 113.
+  reality, 103.
+Competition between groups, 52 f., 58, 74, 79.
+  ideas, 53 ff.
+  individuals, 52, 74, 79.
+Content of morality, agreement as to, 7.
+Christian morality, 7, 18, 20.
+Cosmic process and moral order, 46 ff.
+
+Darwin, C., 35 ff., 39 ff., 57, 60, 62.
+Degrees of reality, 103 ff.
+Descriptive ethics, 76 ff.
+  theory of science, 129.
+Desire and goodness, 90 ff., 102, 110 ff.
+Distinction of good and evil, 93 ff., 113.
+
+Egoism, 15 ff., 74 f., 118.
+Empiricism, 3.
+_Ens reale_, 102.
+  _realissimum_, 102.
+Environment, moral, 70 ff.
+Epicurus, 17.
+Eternal mind, the, 96 ff.
+Ethical controversies at present day, 13 ff.
+  in nineteenth century, 1 ff.
+Ethical unity of things, 133 ff.
+Ethics of evolution, 36 ff.
+Evolution, ethical significance of, 51, 67 ff.
+Evolution of ethics, 36 ff.
+Evolution, theory of, 33 ff., 36 ff.
+Exceptional cases, 11.
+Experiments in morality, 50.
+
+Fichte, J.G., 87.
+Fittest, survival of the, 35, 69 ff.
+
+Galt, J., 4 n.
+Good, the true, 92 ff.
+Goodness as appearance, 102 ff.
+Goodness as contradictory, 117.
+Green, T.H., 77 n., 89 ff., 123.
+Guyau, 125 f.
+
+Halévy, E., 4 n.
+Hedonism, 100.
+Hegel, 87, 104, 123.
+Higher and lower, 107 ff.
+Huxley, T.H., 45 ff., 68.
+
+Ibsen, 31.
+Idealism, 87 ff.
+Ideals, need of, 125.
+Illusions as ideals, 127.
+Immoralist, 24.
+Individual and group, 40 ff.
+Influences forming ethical thought:
+  current morality, 26 ff.
+  science and philosophy, 32 ff.
+Intelligent selection, 61 ff., 80.
+Intuitionism, 2 ff., 81.
+
+Kant, 87, 123, 127 f.
+
+Lange, F.A., 125.
+Leibniz, 87.
+
+Material and moral progress, 29 f.
+Mechanical unity, 133.
+Metaphysics, 82, 85 ff.
+Mill, J.S., 3 n., 8 ff., 28.
+Modifications of general rules, 9.
+Monism and ethics, 109.
+Moral consciousness and reality, 128.
+  environment, 70 ff.
+  experience, 131.
+  ideas, origin of, 1 ff.
+  order and cosmic process, 46 ff.
+  value, criterion of, 1 ff., 75.
+
+Natural selection, 35, 43 ff., 49.
+  in morals, 55.
+Naturalism, 83 f., 86 f.
+Nietzsche, F., 18 ff., 31 f.,
+  47 ff., 67., 127.
+Nobles, morality of, 20.
+
+Origin and validity, 37, 97.
+Over-man, the, 22, 31.
+Owen, Sir R., 59.
+
+Physiological interpretation
+  of life, 67, 76.
+Plato, 31, 87.
+Practical nature of knowledge, 128.
+Pragmatism, 130.
+Progress of life, 34.
+Progressive morality, 9.
+Psychological ethics, 109 ff.
+Purposive selection, 61 ff., 80.
+
+Rational unity, 133.
+Religion, 82 f., 136.
+Renaissance, 33.
+
+Science and metaphysics, 85.
+Self-assertion, 116 ff.
+Self-love, 17.
+Self-realisation, 90 ff., 113 ff.
+Self-sacrifice, 116 ff.
+Selfishness, suppression of, 136.
+Sensationalism, 100.
+Sensualism, suppression of, 135.
+Servile morality, 20.
+Sexual selection, 66.
+Sidgwick, H., 16 f.
+Social qualities, 40 ff.
+Sophists, the, 27.
+Spencer, H., 44, 47, 51, 73, 122.
+Spinoza, 87 f.
+Stephen, Sir L., 44.
+Subjective selection, 60, 66, 80.
+Subjectivity in ethics, 81.
+
+Taylor, A.E., 116, 118.
+Tennyson, 31.
+Tille, A., 25 n.
+Transvaluation, 21.
+Truth as appearance, 101.
+  as moral law, 9 ff., 22 f.
+
+Uebermensch, the, 22, 25 n.
+Unity of life, 34.
+Utilitarianism, the term, 3 n.
+  the theory, 2 ff., 81.
+
+Variation, 49.
+Volz, J., 24 n.
+
+Wellbeing, 71, 75.
+Wilberforce, S., 59.
+
+Zola, 31.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12492 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Recent Tendencies in Ethics, by William
+Ritchie Sorley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+
+
+Title: Recent Tendencies in Ethics
+
+Author: William Ritchie Sorley
+
+Release Date: June 2, 2004  [eBook #12492]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECENT TENDENCIES IN ETHICS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team from images provided by the Million Book Project
+
+
+
+RECENT TENDENCIES IN ETHICS
+
+Three Lectures to Clergy Given at Cambridge
+
+BY
+
+W. R. SORLEY, M.A. HON. LL.D. EDIN.
+
+Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy
+
+MCMIV
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+These lectures were given to a summer meeting of clergy, held at
+Cambridge in the month of July last. Some passages have been added as
+they were written out for the press, and the crudities of the spoken
+word have, I hope, been pruned away; but, in other respects, the
+original plan of the lectures has been retained. They are now
+published in the hope that they may prove of interest to those who
+heard them, and to others who may desire an account, in short compass
+and in popular form, of some leading features of the ethical thought
+of the present day.
+
+It is inevitable for such an account to be controversial: otherwise it
+could not give a true picture of contemporary opinion. Intellectual
+and social causes have conspired to accentuate traditional differences
+in ethics, and to make the questions in dispute penetrate to the very
+heart of morality. It has been my aim to trace the new influences
+which are at work, and to estimate the value of the ethical doctrines
+to which they have seemed to lead. The estimate has taken the form of
+a criticism, but the criticism is in the interests of construction.
+
+W.R. SORLEY.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, 7th March, 1904.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+  I. CHARACTERISTICS
+ II. ETHICS AND EVOLUTION
+III. ETHICS AND IDEALISM
+
+INDEX
+
+
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+CHARACTERISTICS.
+
+
+A survey of ethical thought, especially English ethical thought,
+during the last century would have to lay stress upon one
+characteristic feature. It was limited in range,--limited, one may
+say, by its regard for the importance of the facts with which it
+had to deal. The thought of the period was certainly not without
+controversy; it was indeed controversial almost to a fault. But
+the controversies of the time centred almost exclusively round two
+questions: the question of the origin of moral ideas, and the question
+of the criterion of moral value. These questions were of course
+traditional in the schools of philosophy; and for more than a century
+English moralists were mainly occupied with inherited topics of
+debate. They gave precision to the questions under discussion; and
+their controversies defined the traditional opposition of ethical
+opinion, and separated moralists into two hostile schools known as
+Utilitarian and Intuitionist.
+
+As regards the former question--that of the origin of moral ideas--the
+Utilitarian School held that they could be traced to experience; and
+by 'experience' they meant in the last resort sense-perceptions
+and the feelings of pleasure and of pain which accompany or follow
+sense-perception. All the facts of our moral consciousness,
+therefore,--the knowledge of right and wrong, the judgments of
+conscience, the recognition of duty and responsibility, the feelings
+of reverence, remorse, and moral indignation,--all these could be
+traced, they thought, to an origin in experience, to an origin which
+in the last resort was sensuous, that is, due to the perceptions of
+the senses and the feelings of pleasure and pain which accompany or
+follow them.
+
+With regard to the criterion or standard of morality,--the second
+question to which I have to call attention,--they held that the
+distinction between right and wrong depended upon the consequences of
+an action in the way of pleasure and pain. That action was right which
+on the whole and in the long run would bring pleasure or happiness to
+those whom it affected: that action was wrong which on the whole and
+in the long run would bring pain rather than pleasure to those whom it
+affected.
+
+From their view as to the origin of moral ideas, the school might more
+properly be called the Empirical School. It is from their views on the
+question of the standard of value, or the criterion of morality, that
+it claimed, and that it received, the name Utilitarian[1]. On both
+these points the Utilitarian School was opposed by an energetic but
+less compact body of writers, known as Intuitionists.
+
+[Footnote 1: It seems to have been through J.S. Mill's influence
+that the term obtained currency. It was used by him as the name of a
+"little society to be composed of young men agreeing in fundamental
+principles" which he formed in the winter of 1822-23. He "did not
+invent the word, but found in one of Galt's novels, the 'Annals of the
+Parish.'" "With a boy's fondness for a name and a banner I seized
+on the word, and for some years called myself and others by it as
+a sectarian appellation" ('Autobiography,' pp. 79, 80; cf.
+'Utilitarianism,' p. 9 n.) A couple of sentences from Galt may be
+quoted: "As there was at the time a bruit and a sound about universal
+benevolence, philanthropy, utility, and all the other disguises with
+which an infidel philosophy appropriated to itself the charity,
+brotherly love, and well-doing inculcated by our holy religion, I set
+myself to task upon these heads.... With well-doing, however, I went
+more roundly to work. I told my people that I thought they had more
+sense than to secede from Christianity to become Utilitarians, for
+that it would be a confession of ignorance of the faith they deserted,
+seeing that it was the main duty inculcated by our religion to do all
+in morals and manners to which the new-fangled doctrine of utility
+pretended." Mill is wrong in supposing that his use of the term "was
+the first time that any one had taken the title of Utilitarian"; and
+Galt, who represents his annalist as writing of the year 1794,
+is historically justified. Writing in 1781 Bentham uses the word
+'utilitarian,' and again in 1802 he definitely asserts that it is the
+only name of his creed ('Works,' x. 92, 392). M. Halévy ('L'évolution
+de la doctrine utilitaire,' p. 300) draws attention to the presence of
+the word in Jane Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility,' published in 1811.]
+
+The Intuitionists maintained--to put the matter briefly--that the
+moral consciousness of man could not be entirely accounted for by
+experiences of the kind laid stress on by the Utilitarians. They
+maintained that moral ideas were in their origin spiritual, although
+they might be called into definite consciousness by the experience of
+the facts to which they could be applied. Experience might call them
+forth into the light of day; but it was held that they belonged, in
+nature and origin, to the constitution of man's mind. On this ground,
+therefore, the school was properly called Intuitional: they held that
+moral ideas were received by direct vision or intuition, as it were,
+not by a process of induction from particular facts.
+
+And, in the second place, with regard to the criterion of morality,
+that also (they held) was not dependent on the consequences in the
+way of happiness and misery which the Utilitarians emphasised. On the
+contrary, moral ideas themselves had an independent validity; they had
+a worth and authority for conduct which could not be accounted for by
+any consequences in which action resulted: belonging as they did to
+the essence of the human spirit, they also had authority over the
+conduct of man's life.
+
+Now the ethical controversies of last century were almost entirely
+about these two points and between these two opposed schools. No doubt
+the two questions thus discussed did go very near to the root of the
+whole matter. They pointed to the consideration of the question of
+man's place in the universe and his spiritual nature as determining
+the part which it was his to play in the world. They suggested, if
+they did not always raise, the question whether man is entirely a
+product of nature or whether he has a spiritual essence to which
+nature may be subdued. But the larger issues suggested were not
+followed out. Common consent seemed to limit the discussion to the two
+questions described; and this limitation of the controversy tended to
+a precision and clearness in method, which is often wanting in the
+ethical thought of the present day, disturbed as it is by new and more
+far-reaching problems.
+
+This limitation of scope, which I venture to select as the leading
+characteristic of last century's ethical enquiries, may be further
+seen in the large amount of agreement between the two schools
+regarding the content of morality. The Utilitarians no more than
+the Intuitionists were opponents of the traditional--as we may call
+it--the Christian morality of modern civilisation. They both adopted
+and defended the well-recognised virtues of truth and justice, of
+temperance and benevolence, which have been accepted by the common
+tradition of ages as the expression of man's moral consciousness. The
+Intuitionists no doubt were sometimes regarded--they may indeed have
+sometimes regarded themselves--as in a peculiar way the guardians of
+the traditional morality, and as interested more than their opponents
+in defending a view in harmony with man's spiritual essence and
+inheritance. But we do not find any attack upon the main content
+of morality by the Utilitarian writers. On the contrary, they were
+interested in vindicating their own full acceptance of the traditional
+morality. This is, in particular, the case with John Stuart Mill, the
+high-minded representative of the Utilitarian philosophy in the middle
+of last century. "In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth," he says,
+"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."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Utilitarianism, 9th ed., pp. 24, 25.]
+
+No doubt Mill was a practical reformer as well as a philosophical
+thinker, and he wished on certain special points to revise the
+accepted code. He says that "the received code of ethics is by no
+means of divine right, that mankind has still much to learn as to the
+effects of actions on the general happiness."[1] He would even take
+this point--the modifiability of the ordinary moral code--as a sort
+of test question distinguishing his own system from that of the
+intuitional moralists; and in one place he says that "the contest
+between the morality which appeals to an external standard, and
+that which grounds itself on internal conviction, is the contest
+of progressive morality against stationary--of reason and argument
+against the deification of mere opinion and habit. The doctrine that
+the existing order of things is the natural order, and that, being
+natural, all innovation upon it is criminal, is as vicious in morals
+as it is now at last admitted to be in physics and in society and
+government."[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 35.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Dissertations, ii. 472.]
+
+A passage such as this leads us to ask, What exactly is the extent of
+the modifications which Mill seeks to make in the ordinary scale of
+values? Does he, for instance, wish to invert any ordinary moral
+rules? Would he do away with, or in any important respect modify, the
+duties of truth or justice, temperance or benevolence? Far from it He
+only suggests, as many moralists of both parties have suggested, that
+in the application of moral law to the details of experience certain
+modifications are required. How far he goes in this direction may be
+seen from his own instance, that of truth. He would admit certain
+exceptions to the law of truth; he would give the less rigorous
+answers to the time-honoured questions as to whether one should tell
+the truth to an invalid in a dangerous illness or to a would-be
+criminal. But Mill always asserts the sanctity of the general
+principle; and, on this account, he holds that "in order that the
+exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have the
+least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought
+to be recognised and, if possible, its limits defined; and if the
+principle of utility is good for anything, it must be good for
+weighing these conflicting utilities against one another, and marking
+out the region within which one or the other preponderates[1]." He
+holds that there are such limits to veracity. He even thinks--though
+here he is not quite correct--that such limits have been acknowledged
+by all moralists[2]. He would have been correct if he had said that
+they had been acknowledged by moralists of all schools: the admission
+of these limits is not peculiar to Utilitarians. But he vigorously
+defends the validity of the general rule, and maintains that, in
+considering any possible exception, we have to take account not merely
+of the present utility of the falsehood, but of its effect upon the
+sanctity of the general principle in the minds of men. The Utilitarian
+doctrine is expressly used by him to confirm the ordinary general laws
+of the moral consciousness. Nay, these rules--such as the duties of
+being temperate and just and benevolent--were, according to Mill,
+themselves the result of experiences of utility on the part of our
+predecessors, and from them handed down to us by the tradition of the
+race. No doubt in this Mill is applying a theoretical view too easily
+to a question of history. It is one thing to maintain, as he does,
+that utility is the correct test of morality; it is another thing
+altogether to say that our ordinary moral rules are the records or
+expressions of earlier judgments of utility. The former statement
+is made as a controversial statement which is admitted to be so
+far doubtful that most men need to be convinced of it. The latter
+statement could only be true if nobody had ever doubted the former--if
+everybody in past ages had accepted utility as the standard of
+morality. But, for our present purpose, his attitude to this question
+is of interest only as bringing out the point that the different
+schools of ethical thought during last century had a large basis of
+common agreement, and that this basis of common agreement was their
+acknowledgment of the validity of the moral rules recognised by the
+ordinary conscience.
+
+[Footnote 1: Utilitarianism, p. 34.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 33.]
+
+The Utilitarians no more than the Intuitionists sought to make
+any fundamental change in the content of right and of wrong as
+acknowledged by modern society. Their controversies were almost
+entirely of what may be called an academic kind, and, however decided,
+would have little effect upon a man's practical attitude. But it would
+not be possible to make any such confident assertion regarding the
+ethical controversies of the present day. We have no longer the same
+common basis of agreement to rely upon that our predecessors had a
+generation ago. There are many indications in recent literature that
+the suggestion is now made more readily than it was twenty or thirty
+years ago that the scale of moral values may have to be revised; and
+it seems to me that the ethical controversies of the coming generation
+will not be restricted to academic opponents whose disputes concern
+nothing more than the origin of moral ideas and their ultimate
+criterion. Modern controversy will involve these questions, but it
+will go deeper and it will spread its results wider: it appears as
+if it would not hesitate to call in question the received code of
+morality, and to revise our standard of right and wrong. One school at
+any rate has already made a claim of this sort, and the extravagance
+of its teaching has not prevented it from attracting adherents.
+
+It is on this ground, therefore,--because I believe that the ethical
+question is no longer so purely an academic question as it was some
+years ago, because it affects not only the philosophic thinker but the
+practical man who is concerned with the problems of his day,--that I
+have selected the topic for these lectures. It is not merely that many
+modern writers assert some general doctrine as to the relativity of
+right and wrong. So much was implied, though it was not much laid
+stress upon, in the utilitarian doctrine. For the utilitarian conduct
+is right according to the amount of happiness it produces: goodness
+is relative to its tendency to produce happiness. But a much greater
+importance may attach to the assertion of the relativity of morals
+when one couples that doctrine with the idea now prevalent of the
+indefinitely great changes which the progress of the race brings
+about, not only in the social order but also in the structure and
+faculties of man himself.
+
+Hence it is not surprising to find that there are at the present day
+some writers who ask for nothing less than a revision of the whole
+traditional morality, and in whose minds that demand is connected with
+the dominant doctrine of progress as it is expressed in the theory of
+evolution.
+
+Perhaps we might trace the beginnings of this controversy as to the
+content of what is right and what is wrong to an older opposition
+in ethical thought, an opposition which especially affects the
+utilitarian doctrine--the controversy of Egoism and Altruism. If
+we look at these two conceptions of egoism and altruism as the
+Utilitarians did, if we regard the conception of egoism as having
+to do with one's own personal happiness, and that of altruism as
+describing the general happiness, the happiness of others rather than
+of oneself, then obviously the questions arise whether the conduct
+which produces the greatest happiness of others will or will not also
+produce the greatest happiness of the individual agent, and which
+should be chosen in the event of their disagreement. Is my happiness
+and that which will tend to it always to be got on the same lines of
+conduct as those which will bring about the greatest happiness of the
+greatest number?
+
+The Utilitarian writers of last century were of course conscious of
+this problem, conscious that there was a possible discrepancy between
+egoistic conduct and altruistic conduct; but they agreed to lay stress
+upon altruistic results as determining moral quality. Their tendency
+was to minimise the difference between the egoistic and the altruistic
+effects of action, and in so far as a difference had to be allowed to
+emphasise the importance of the claims of the community at large, that
+is, roughly speaking, to take the altruistic standpoint. Recent and
+more careful investigators have brought out more exactly the extent
+and significance of the divergence. In particular this was done with
+perfect clearness and precision by the late Professor Sidgwick.
+He showed that the difference--although it might be easily
+exaggerated--was yet real and important, that the two systems did not
+mean the same thing, that we could not rely upon altruistic conduct
+always being for individual benefit, that there was no 'natural
+identity' between egoism and altruism. He held that morality, to
+save it from an unsolved dualism, required a principle capable of
+reconciling the discrepancy between the conduct in accordance with the
+axiom of Benevolence and the conduct in accordance with the equally
+rational axiom of Self-love.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Professor Sidgwick's last words on the question are as
+follows: "If then the reconciliation of duty and self-interest is to
+be regarded as a hypothesis logically necessary to avoid a fundamental
+contradiction in one chief department of our thought, it remains
+to ask how far this necessity constitutes a sufficient reason for
+accepting this hypothesis.... Those who hold that the edifice of
+physical science is really constructed of conclusions logically
+inferred from self-evident premises, may reasonably demand that any
+practical judgments claiming philosophic certainty should be based on
+an equally firm foundation. If, on the other hand, we find that in our
+supposed knowledge of the world of nature propositions are commonly
+taken to be universally true, which yet seem to rest on no other
+grounds than that we have a strong disposition to accept them, and
+that they are indispensable to the systematic coherence of our
+beliefs,--it will be more difficult to reject a similarly supported
+assumption in ethics, without opening the door to universal
+scepticism" ('Methods of Ethics,' 6th ed., pp. 506, 507).]
+
+But while this question of egoism and altruism has thus been
+recognised as a possible source of perplexity, affecting the ethical
+standard itself, both egoists and orthodox utilitarians have commonly
+agreed--though for different reasons--to insist that morality means
+the same for them both, and to hold with Epicurus that "we cannot lead
+a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honour, and
+justice." It is only in quite recent days that a thoroughgoing attempt
+has been made to revalue all the old standards of morality. And
+the attempt is made from a point of view which is certainly not
+altruistic. The Utilitarian writers of last generation, if they
+admitted the conflict of egoism and altruism, weighted every
+consideration on the side of altruism. They emphasised therefore the
+agreement between their own utilitarian doctrine and the Christian
+morality in which altruism is fundamental. On the other hand, the more
+recent tendency to which I refer emphasises and exalts the egoistic
+side, and thus accentuates the difference between the new moral
+code--if we may call it moral--and the Christian morality.
+
+The boldest and most brilliant exponent of this tendency is Friedrich
+Nietzsche[1], already the object of a cult in Germany, and an author
+to be reckoned with as one of the new forces in European thought. It
+is true that some of the most characteristic products of his genius
+are closely akin to the insanity which clouded his later years. Yet it
+is impossible to read his writings without recognising his penetrating
+insight as well as his abundance of virile passion. Besides, in
+spite of all his extravagances--or, perhaps, because of them--he is
+symptomatic of certain tendencies of the age. Nietzsche's demand
+is for nothing less than a revision of the whole moral code and a
+reversal of its most characteristic provisions. And he has the rare
+distinction of being a writer on morality who disclaims the title of
+'moralist.'
+
+[Footnote 1: Friedrich Nietzsche, the son of a clergyman, was born in
+Saxony in 1844. In 1869 he became Professor of Classical Philology
+in Basel, and held this post for ten years, though his work was
+interrupted by ill-health for a long period. His first book was
+published in 1871; the preface to the last was dated "on the 30th of
+September 1888, the day on which the first book of the Transvaluation
+of all Values was completed." He became hopelessly insane in 1889, and
+died in 1900. The reader will find a luminous estimate of his work
+in the essay on "The Life and Opinions of Friedrich Nietzsche" in
+Pringle-Pattison's 'Man's Place in the Cosmos,' 2nd ed., 1902.]
+
+The ideas which Nietzsche expresses go to the root of the matter. In
+the first place, he drew a distinction between what he regarded as two
+different types of morality. One of these he called the morality of
+masters or nobles, and he called the other the morality of slaves.
+Self-reliance and courage may be cited as the qualities typical of the
+noble morality, for they are the qualities which tend to make the man
+who possesses them a master over others, to give him a prominent and
+powerful place in the world, and to help him to subjugate to his will
+both nature and his fellow-men. On the other hand, there are the
+qualities which form the characteristic features of Christian
+morality--such as benevolence or love of one's neighbour, the
+fundamental precept of the Gospels, and the humility and obedience
+which have been perhaps unduly emphasised in ecclesiastical ethics.
+These are the qualities which he means when he speaks of the morality
+of the slave.
+
+In the second place, therefore, what is distinctive of Nietzsche is
+this: that he explicitly rejects the Christian morality, in particular
+the virtues of benevolence, of obedience, of humility: these are
+regarded by him as belonging to a type of morality which is to be
+overcome and which he calls the servile morality. He deliberately sets
+in antithesis to one another what he calls Christian and what he calls
+noble virtues: meaning by the latter the qualities allied to courage,
+force of will, and strength of arm, such as were manifested in certain
+Pagan races, but above all in the heroes of the Roman Republic. He
+would, therefore, deliberately prefer the older Pagan valuation of
+conduct to the Christian valuation.
+
+In the third place, he attempts what he calls a transvaluation of
+all values. Every moral idea needs revision, every moral idea, every
+suggestion of value or worth in conduct, must be tried and tested
+afresh, and a new morality substituted for the old. And with this
+claim for revision is connected his idea that the egoistic principle
+which underlies the Pagan virtues preferred to the Christian, and the
+higher development of the self-capacities to which it will lead, will
+evolve a superior kind of men--"Over-men" or "Uebermenschen"--to whom,
+therefore, we may look as setting the tone and giving the rule for
+subsequent conduct.
+
+Nietzsche is an unsystematic writer, though none the less powerful on
+that account. He is apt to be perplexing to the reader who looks for
+system or a definite and reasoned statement of doctrine; but his
+aphorisms are all the more fitted to impress readers who are not
+inclined to criticism, and might shirk an elaborate argument. It is
+difficult, accordingly, to select from him a series of propositions
+that would give a general idea of the complete transmutation of
+morality which he demands. So far as I can make out, there is only one
+point in which he still agrees with the old traditional morality, and
+that point seems to cause him no little difficulty. No thinker can
+afford to question the binding nature of the law of Truth, least of
+all a thinker so obviously in earnest about his own prophetic message
+as Nietzsche was. All his investigations presuppose the validity of
+this law for his own thought; all his utterances imply an appeal to
+it; and his influence depends on the confidence which others have in
+his veracity. And on this one point only Nietzsche has to confess
+himself a child of the older morality. "This book," he says in the
+preface to one of the least paradoxical of his works, 'Dawn of Day,'
+"This book ... implies a contradiction and is not afraid of it: in it
+we break with the faith in morals--why? In obedience to morality! Or
+what name shall we give to that which passes therein? We should prefer
+more modest names. But it is past all doubt that even to us a 'thou
+shalt' is still speaking, even we still obey a stern law above us--and
+this is the last moral precept which impresses itself even upon
+us, which even we obey: in this respect, if in any, we are still
+conscientious people--viz., we do not wish to return to that which we
+consider outlived and decayed, to something 'not worthy of belief,' be
+it called God, virtue, truth, justice, charity; we do not approve of
+any deceptive bridges to old ideals, we are radically hostile to all
+that wants to mediate and to amalgamate with us; hostile to any actual
+religion and Christianity; hostile to all the vague, romantic, and
+patriotic feelings; hostile also to the love of pleasure and want of
+principle of the artists who would fain persuade us to worship when we
+no longer believe--for we are artists; hostile, in short, to the whole
+European Femininism (or Idealism, if you prefer this name), which
+is ever 'elevating' and consequently 'degrading.' Yet, as such
+conscientious people, we immoralists and atheists of this day still
+feel subject to the German honesty and piety of thousands of years'
+standing, though as their most doubtful and last descendants; nay, in
+a certain sense, as their heirs, as executors of their inmost will, a
+pessimist will, as aforesaid, which is not afraid of denying itself,
+because it delights in taking a negative position. We ourselves
+are--suppose you want a formula--the consummate self-dissolution of
+morals." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Nietzsche, 'Werke,' iv. pp. 8, 9 (1899). The translation
+is taken (with corrections) from the English version by Johanna Volz
+(1903). Nietzsche has so shocked and confused the English printer that
+when the author writes himself an 'immoralist' the compositor has
+made him call himself an 'immortalist.' And errors of the sort do not
+affect the printer only. Nietzsche's sneer at 'Femininism' is deftly
+turned aside by Miss Volz, by the simple device of substituting for
+it the word Pessimism. And Dr Tille, the translator of his best-known
+work, 'Thus spake Zarathustra' (1896, p. xix), has been bemused in
+an even more wonderful manner. He enumerates "the best known
+representatives" of Anarchic tendencies in political thought as
+"Humboldt, Dunoyer, Stirner, Bakounine, and Auberon Spencer"! The
+vision of Mr Auberon Herbert and Mr Herbert Spencer doubled up into a
+single individual is 'a thing imagination boggles at.' Perhaps it is
+the translator's idea of the _Uebermensch_.]
+
+Perhaps it is impossible to understand Nietzsche unless one admits
+that his writings show traces of the disease which very soon prevented
+his writing at all. But at the same time, while that is true, there is
+much more in his work than the ravings of a distempered mind. There
+may have been little method, but there was a great deal of genius, in
+his madness. While he always overstates his case,--his colossal egoism
+leads him to exaggerate any doctrine,--and while I do not think that
+the actual doctrines of Nietzsche in the way he puts them will ever
+gain any general acceptance, while his system of morality may not have
+any chance of being the moral code of the next generation or even of
+being regarded as the serious alternative to Christian morality, yet
+it is not too much to say that he is symptomatic of a new tendency in
+ethical thought, a tendency of which he is the greatest, if also the
+most extravagant exponent, but which has its roots in certain new
+influences which have come to this generation with the ideas and the
+triumphs, scientific and material, of the preceding generation.
+
+There are two quite different kinds of influence to which the
+formation of an ethical doctrine may be due. In the first place, there
+are the moral sentiments and opinions of the community and of the
+moralist himself; and, in the second place, there are the scientific
+and philosophical doctrines accepted by the writer or inspiring what
+is loosely called the spirit of the time. In most ethical movements
+the two kinds of influence will be found co-operating, though the
+latter is almost entirely absent in some cases. The incoherence of
+popular opinions about morality is a potent stimulus to reflexion, and
+may of itself give rise to systematic ethical enquiry. This is more
+particularly the case when a change of social conditions, or contact
+with alien modes of life, force into light the inadequacy of the
+conventional morality. In such a case the new ethical reflexion may
+have a disintegrating effect upon the traditional code, and give
+to the movement the character and importance of a revolution. The
+reflective activity of the Sophists in ancient Greece--a movement of
+the deepest ethical significance--was in the main of this nature.
+It consisted in a radical sifting and criticism of current moral
+standards, and was due almost entirely to the first class of
+influences, being affected only in the slightest degree by scientific
+or philosophical ideas.
+
+Influences of the same kind combine with science and philosophy in
+moulding the ethical thought of the present day. Contemporary ethical
+speculation is by no means exclusively due to the thinkers who attempt
+to arrive at a consistent interpretation of the nature of reality; and
+it has features which constantly remind us how closely moral reflexion
+is connected with the order and changes of social conditions.
+
+Every age is no doubt apt to exaggerate its own claims to mark an
+epoch. But, after a century of achievements in applied science, there
+seems little risk of error in asserting that the world is now becoming
+conscious as it never was before of the vast power given by material
+resources when under the control of a cool intelligence. And in the
+competition of nations it is not surprising that there should be an
+imperious demand for the most alert and well-trained minds to utilise
+these resources in war and in industry. It is not surprising; nor
+would it be a fit subject for regret, did not the concentration of the
+outlook upon material success tend to the neglect of 'things which
+are more excellent.' Writing many years ago J.S. Mill remarked that
+"hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made
+have lightened the day's toil of any human being." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Political Economy, Book iv. chap. vi. § 2.]
+
+There is a further question which ought to be asked of every new
+advance in material civilisation, Does it foster, or at least does
+it leave unimpeded, the development of man's spiritual inheritance?
+Certainly, the control of nature by mind is not necessarily hostile
+to the ideals which give dignity to the arts and sciences and to man
+himself. And yet it does not always favour their presence. The weak
+nations of the world in arms and commerce have contributed their full
+share to the higher life of the race; and the triumphs of a country on
+the battlefield or in business give no security for the presence among
+its people of the ideals which illumine or of the righteousness which
+exalts. The history of Germany herself might point the moral. A
+century ago, when she lay crushed beneath the heel of Napoleon, her
+poets and philosophers were the prophets of ideals which helped to
+bind her scattered states into a powerful nation, and which enriched
+the mind of man. To-day we are forced to ask whether military and
+industrial success have changed the national bent: for poetry seems
+to have deserted her, and her philosophy betrays the dominance of
+material interests.
+
+Material success and the struggle for it are apt to monopolise the
+attention; and perhaps the greatest danger of the new social order
+is the growing materialisation of the mental outlook. It would
+be needless to point to the evidence, amongst all classes in the
+mercantile nations, of the feverish haste to be rich and to enjoy. For
+to point to this has been common with the moralists of all ages. This
+age like others--perhaps more than most--is strewn with the victims of
+the struggle. But it can also boast a product largely its own--the new
+race of victors who have emerged triumphant, with wealth beyond the
+dreams of avarice of the past generation. Their interests make them
+cosmopolitan; they are unrestrained by the traditional obligations of
+ancient lineage; and the world seems to lie before them as something
+to be bought and sold. Neither they nor others have quite realised as
+yet the power which colossal wealth gives in modern conditions. And it
+remains to be seen whether the multimillionaire will claim to figure
+as Nietzsche's 'over-man,' spurning ordinary moral conventions, and
+will play the _rôle_, in future moral discourses, which the ethical
+dialogues of Plato assign to the 'tyrant,'
+
+General literature, even in its highest forms, seems to reflect a
+corresponding change of view as to what is of most worth in life.
+Already the strong hold on duty and the spiritual world which Tennyson
+unfalteringly displayed, even the deeper insight into motive and the
+faith in goodness which are shown by Browning, are read by us as
+utterances of a past age. We have grown used to a presentment of human
+life such as Ibsen's in which the customary morality is regarded as
+a thin veneer of convention which hardly covers the selfishness in
+grain, or to the description of life as a tangled mass of animal
+passions,--a description which, in spite of the genius of Zola, does
+not fail to weary and disgust,--or perhaps as only a spectacle in
+which what men call good and evil are the light and shade of a picture
+which may serve to produce some artistic emotion. An attitude akin
+to these becomes an ethical point of view in Nietzsche, the _enfant
+terrible_ of modern thought, who maintains that man's life must be
+interpreted physiologically only and not spiritually, and who would
+replace philanthropy by a boundless egoism.
+
+Influences of the second kind are usually more prominent than the
+preceding in the case of the philosophical moralist, and they are
+not always avoided by the moralist who boasts his independence of
+philosophy. The former influences are more constantly at work: they
+supply the facts for all ethical reflexion. Ethical thought is not
+so uniformly influenced by the conceptions arrived at in science
+or philosophy. But there are certain periods of history in which
+conceptions regarding the truth of things--whether arrived at by
+scientific methods or not--have had a profound influence upon men's
+views of good and evil. At the beginning of our era, for instance, the
+view of God and man introduced by Christianity, resulted in a deepened
+and, to some extent, in a distinctive morality. Again, at the time of
+the Renaissance, the new knowledge and new interests combined with the
+weakening of the Church's and of the Empire's authority to bring about
+the demand for a revision of the ecclesiastical morality, and led to
+some not very successful attempts to find a firmer basis for conduct.
+
+At the present day also it is the case that philosophers of different
+schools are for the most part agreed in claiming ethical importance
+for their conceptions about reality. In particular, the scientific
+thought of the last generation has been reformed under the, influence
+of the group of ideas which constitute the theory of evolution. There
+is hardly a department of thought which this new doctrine has not
+touched; and upon morality its influence may seem to be peculiarly
+important and direct. The theory of evolution, as put forward by
+Darwin, has established certain positions which have been regarded as
+of special significance for ethics.
+
+In the first place, it is an assertion of the unity of life. And we
+must not limit the generality of this proposition. It is not merely
+a denial of the fixity of species, an assertion that there are no
+natural kinds so inseparable from one another that each must be the
+result of a distinct creative act. It is also an assertion that human
+life must be treated as a part in the larger whole of organic being,
+that the mind of man is continuous with animal perception, that moral
+activity is continuous with non-moral impulse. And the assertion of
+the unity of life is at the same time an assertion of the progress of
+life. What we call the higher forms are in all cases developments from
+simpler and lower forms.
+
+Further, the method of this progress has been described. Herein indeed
+lay Darwin's most important achievement. He detected and demonstrated
+the operation of a factor hitherto unsuspected. This new factor to
+which he drew attention as the chief agent in organic development was
+called by him 'natural selection,' The name has a positive sound and
+suggests a process of active choice. But Darwin was fully aware that
+the process to which he gave this name was a negative and not a
+positive operation; and as such it was clearly recognised by him. The
+name was, no doubt, chosen simply to bring out the fact that the
+same kind of results as those which man produces by conscious and
+artificial selection may be arrived at without conscious purpose by
+the operation of merely natural forces. Instead of the 'fit' being
+directly chosen or encouraged, what happens is simply that the 'unfit'
+die out or are exterminated, so that room to live and means of life
+are left for the survivors.
+
+What may be meant by this idea of 'fitness'--which meets us in the
+famous phrase that the 'survival of the fittest' in the struggle for
+life is the goal of evolution--is a question which brings us at once
+to the consideration of the ethical significance of the theory. For
+it seems to lay claim to give both an explanation of progress and an
+interpretation of what constitutes worth in conduct.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+ETHICS AND EVOLUTION.
+
+
+There are two things which are not always kept distinct,--what may be
+called the 'evolution of ethics' and the 'ethics of evolution,' The
+former might more correctly be called the evolution of morality,--the
+account of the way in which moral customs, moral institutions, and
+moral ideas have been developed and have come to take their place in
+the life of mankind. Clearly these are all features of human life;
+and, if the theory of evolution applies to human life, we must expect
+it also to have some contribution to make to this portion of man's
+development,--to the growth of the customs, institutions, and ideas
+which enter into and make up his morality.
+
+But by the 'ethics of evolution' is meant something more than the
+'evolution of ethics' or development of morality. It signifies a
+theory which turns the facts of evolution to account in determining
+the value for man of different kinds of conduct and feeling and idea.
+When one speaks of the ethics of evolution one must be understood to
+mean that the evolution theory does something more than trace the
+history of things, that it gives us somehow or other a standard or
+criterion of moral worth or value. This additional point may be
+expressed by the technical distinction between origin and validity.
+Clearly there is a very great difference between showing how something
+has come to be what it is and assigning to it worth or validity for
+the guidance of life or thought It may be that the former enquiry has
+some bearing upon the latter; but only confusion will result if the
+two problems are not clearly distinguished at the outset,--as they
+very seldom are distinguished by writers on the theory of evolution in
+its application to ethics.
+
+It may be said that the evolutionist writers on ethics seek to base an
+ethics of evolution upon the evolution of ethics, but that they are
+not always aware of the real nature and difficulties of their task.
+Sometimes they seem to think that in tracing the evolution of ethics
+they are also and at the same time determining and establishing a
+theory of the ethics of evolution. We must avoid this error, and keep
+the two problems distinct in our minds. Yet from the nature of the
+case it holds true that it is only through the facts which the theory
+of evolution establishes or can establish as to the development of
+morality that it is able to make any contribution to the solution of
+the further question as to the criterion of morality--the question,
+that is to say, of moral worth or value.
+
+We cannot, therefore, avoid dealing with the evolution of ethics. But
+in what follows I am not considering it for its own sake--though it
+is an interesting and important question. In order to simplify
+the argument, we may allow what is claimed for it, and give the
+evolutionist credit for even greater success on the field of
+historical investigation--which is his own field--than he would, if
+fair-minded, claim for himself. The problem I have in view lies beyond
+this historical question. It is the problem how far the known facts
+and probable theories regarding the development of morality can make
+any contribution towards determining the standard of worth for our
+ideas, our sentiments, and our conduct. Now if we read the accredited
+exponents of the doctrine of evolution we shall find amongst them a
+considerable variety of view regarding the bearing of the theory of
+evolution upon this properly ethical problem--the problem of the
+criterion or standard of goodness.
+
+In the first place, it is desirable to characterise briefly Darwin's
+own contribution to this matter. The suggestion made by him deals
+almost entirely with what I have called the development of morality,
+not with the ethics of evolution; and perhaps it may seem to us now
+a rather obvious suggestion. But he was the first to make this
+suggestion; and it comes from him as a direct application of the
+theory he had established with regard to animal development. His
+suggestion is simply this--that moral qualities are selected in the
+struggle for existence in much the same way as purely physical or
+animal excellences are selected, that is, by their contributing to the
+continued and more efficient life of the organism. But Darwin saw very
+clearly that the qualities which are recognised as moral are not
+by any means in all cases contributory to individual success and
+efficiency. They are not all of them qualities that contribute to the
+success of one individual in his struggle with other individuals
+for the means of subsistence. We may say that courage, prudence,
+self-reliance, will have that effect, and that consequently in the
+struggle for life the individuals who show such qualities will have
+a better chance of survival than those without them. But what about
+qualities such as sympathy, willingness to help another, obedience,
+and faithfulness to a community or to a cause? Clearly, these are not
+qualities which are of special assistance to the individual. But they
+are qualities which are or may be of very great importance to the
+tribe or community of individuals. Supposing such qualities of mutual
+help, of willingness even to sacrifice oneself for others--the
+qualities which are commonly grouped as expressions of the social
+instinct,--supposing these to have been somehow developed in the
+members of a tribe, that tribe would, other things being equal, have
+an advantage in a struggle with another tribe whose members did not
+possess these qualities. Now the advantage thus gained in the struggle
+would be a case of the operation of natural selection: it would
+exterminate or weaken the tribe without these social qualities, and it
+would thus give opportunity for the growing efficiency of the tribe
+that possessed them.
+
+Put in the briefest way, this is the explanation which Darwin gave
+of the growth of the social qualities in mankind; and the social
+qualities make up, to a large extent at any rate, what we call moral
+qualities. Darwin, however, saw further than this: he saw that, while
+this might account for the development of what we may call savage and
+barbarian virtues, there was in civilised mankind a development of
+sympathy which went far beyond this, and which one could not with good
+reason account for by asserting that it rendered assistance to the
+community in its struggle for existence with other communities.
+
+Thus, with regard to the former question, he says: "A tribe including
+many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of
+patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always
+ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common
+good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be
+natural selection[1]."
+
+[Footnote 1: Descent of Man, Part I. chap. v. p. 203 (new ed., 1901).]
+
+But when he comes to the case of civilised men he finds a difficulty.
+"With savages," he says, "the weak in body or mind are soon
+eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state
+of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check
+the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the
+maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men
+exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last
+moment.... The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is
+mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was
+originally acquired as part of the social instincts.... Nor could
+we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without
+deterioration in the noblest part of our nature[1]." This sympathy,
+which natural selection cannot preserve or vindicate even in the
+struggle of communities, is nevertheless recognised by Darwin as
+having a moral value outside of and above natural selection and the
+struggle for existence,--a value of which these have no right to
+judge. He thinks that if we followed hard reason--and by 'hard reason'
+he obviously means an imitation on our part of the action of natural
+selection--we should be led to sweep away all those institutions by
+which civilised mankind guards its weaker members. But this, he says,
+would be only to deteriorate the "noblest part of our nature." What is
+noblest in our nature, then, is not that which natural selection has
+favoured or maintained. There is, therefore, implied in his view a
+limitation of the ethical significance of the principle of natural
+selection. For, when we come to this crucial question of conduct,
+it is not allowed to give any criterion of moral validity. More
+comprehensive attempts on the same lines as Darwin's have been made
+subsequently; and various writers have tried to show how the moral
+criterion may be resolved into social efficiency, or how it may be
+derived from a problematic future state of the human race on this
+earth when the need for struggle has disappeared and all things
+go smoothly. The former view may be found in Sir Leslie Stephen's
+'Science of Ethics'; the latter is the peculiar property of Mr Herbert
+Spencer. Somewhat unwillingly I must for the present leave these
+special views without consideration,[2] because I wish to bring out
+still more plainly the various attitudes of the evolutionists to
+morality, and especially to draw attention to a view very different
+from those just mentioned, though not altogether without support in
+Darwin, which, as put forward some years ago by the late Professor
+Huxley[3], produced no little flutter in scientific dovecots.
+
+[Footnote 1: Descent of Man, pp. 205, 206.]
+
+[Footnote 2: For a discussion of these views I may be allowed to
+refer to my' Ethics of Naturalism,' chap. viii. (chap. ix. in the new
+edition). The same volume contains a more exhaustive examination than
+is possible in this lecture of the whole subject of evolutionist
+ethics.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The Romanes Lecture, 1893, "Evolution and Ethics." In
+1894 this was republished, with prolegomena, in vol. ix. of 'Collected
+Essays,' with the title, "Evolution and Ethics, and other Essays."]
+
+Professor Huxley reviewed what he called the cosmic process as it was
+guided by the law of evolution. He showed how at each step of that
+process new results were only attained by enormous waste and pain on
+the part of those living creatures which were thrust aside as unfit
+for their surroundings, and he held consequently that the whole cosmic
+process is of an entirely different character from what we must mean
+when we use the term 'moral.' According to him morality is opposed
+to the method of evolution, and cannot be based upon the theory of
+evolution. It is of independent worth; but Professor Huxley, perhaps
+wisely, refrained from investigating its justification, while
+enforcing "the apparent paradox that ethical nature, while born of
+cosmic nature, is necessarily at enmity with its parent"
+
+"The practice of that which is ethically best--what we call goodness
+or virtue--involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is
+opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle
+for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands
+self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all
+competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect,
+but shall help, his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to
+the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible
+to survive. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence....
+Let us understand once for all that the ethical progress of society
+depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running
+away from it, but in combating it."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Evolution and Ethics, pp. 81-83.]
+
+Here, then, is a view very different from the easy optimism of Mr
+Herbert Spencer. The cosmic order has nothing to say to the moral
+order, except that, somehow or other, it has given it birth; the
+moral order has nothing to say to the cosmic order, except that it
+is certainly bad. Morality is occupied in opposing the methods of
+evolution.
+
+Still another view is possible. It may be held that the morality of
+self-restraint and self-sacrifice are opposed--as Huxley says they are
+opposed--to the methods of cosmic evolution; and yet the "gladiatorial
+theory of existence" may not be repudiated; but morality may be
+modified to suit the claims of evolution. This is the position adopted
+by the philosopher Nietzsche, whose whole thought is permeated by the
+idea of evolution. Like Professor Huxley, Nietzsche might say that
+morality is opposed to the cosmic process. But by morality he would
+mean something that is not to be encouraged, but that is to be shed
+from human life, or at least fundamentally transformed, just because
+it is in opposition to the laws of cosmic progress. On the other hand,
+the morality--if we may use the term--which the cosmic process teaches
+us will be a development of the conceptions of self-assertion and
+self-reliance, qualities which, according to ordinary morality--the
+morality, for instance, of Professor Huxley--require to be permeated
+and even superseded by self-restraint and possibly self-sacrifice in
+order that the moral law may be satisfied. Not obedience, not mutual
+help, not benevolence, but the will to rule or desire of power, is
+with Nietzsche fundamental, the primary impulse in the history of the
+whole progress of the world, and still of first importance for the
+further development of mankind.
+
+This view is at the opposite extreme from Huxley's, for it overlooks
+the advantages mankind has gained by means of the social instinct and
+the social solidarity which it secures. But there is a further
+point in Nietzsche's reflexions which is suggested by the theory
+of development. Natural selection is not the sole agent in the
+development of organic life: it cannot be too often enforced that
+natural selection produces nothing, that its operation is purely
+negative. It does not properly select at all, it only excludes. What
+it does is to cut off the unfit specimens of living beings which
+nature supplies. It would have no field of operation were it not
+for the variety of nature. While individuals tend to repeat the
+characteristics of their parents, they do not repeat them without
+change: the principle of heredity is counterbalanced by a principle
+of variety equally hard to explain. All organic life exhibits this
+tendency to variation; and one variation proves better adapted than
+another to the environment. It is this which makes possible the
+operation of 'natural selection.' Unfit varieties are exterminated by
+natural selection, and room is thus left for varieties which are fit
+to perpetuate themselves and to increase in efficiency.
+
+Now, if we apply this conception to human conduct, should we not
+encourage all varieties to carry on their experiments in living and
+in morality so that we may see whether success will justify them? An
+affirmative answer to this question is sometimes vaguely hinted at; by
+Nietzsche it is proclaimed from the housetops.
+
+"There is no monopoly of morals, and every morality which exclusively
+asserts itself destroys too much good strength, and is too dearly
+bought by mankind. The straying ones, who so often are the inventive
+and productive ones, shall no longer be sacrificed; it shall not even
+be deemed a disgrace to stray from morals either in deeds or thoughts;
+numerous new experiments shall be made in matters of life and society;
+an enormous incubus of bad conscience shall be removed from the
+world--these are the general aims which ought to be recognised and
+furthered by all honest and truth-seeking people."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Nietzsche, Werke, iv. 161, 162; Dawn of Day, § 164.]
+
+Reflecting for a moment on what precedes, we may observe that, from
+the mouths of the evolutionists themselves, we have encountered three
+different views regarding the ethical significance of evolution. In
+the first place, there is the view of Darwin that natural selection is
+a criterion of moral fitness only up to a certain stage, and that the
+noblest part of man's morality is independent of this test; in the
+second place, there is the view of Huxley that morality is entirely
+opposed to the cosmic process as ruled by natural selection; and, in
+the third place, there is the view of Nietzsche that the principles
+of biological development (variation, that is to say, and natural
+selection) should be allowed free play so that, in the future as
+in the past, successful variations may be struck out by triumphant
+egoism. Neither these views, nor the still more elaborate treatment of
+Spencer, do I propose to examine in detail. But I wish to offer some
+reflexions upon the fundamental conception underlying them all,
+accounting in this way, perhaps, for the differences of opinion
+between Darwin and Spencer, Huxley and Nietzsche. The conception of
+natural selection and of evolution by natural selection is applied by
+men of science and by philosophers in three very different spheres, to
+three very different kinds of struggle or competition. There may be
+many different kinds of competition: it will be sufficient here to
+consider the three following:--
+
+First, there is the competition between individuals for individual
+life and success. Now, so far as we are dealing with this competition,
+the only qualities which natural selection will favour are of course
+the qualities which lead to the continuance and efficiency of the
+individual organism. The qualities 'selected' in this process are
+therefore only the self-assertive qualities,--the qualities of
+strength, of courage, of prudence, and also of temperance.
+
+But in the second place there is also, as I have already indicated and
+as was seen by Darwin (though he did not draw this distinction), a
+second kind of competition, the competition between groups. Now the
+group competition has as its end the continuance and efficiency of
+the group, be it horde or tribe or nation, or be it one of those
+subsidiary groups which enter into national life. In this competition
+between groups it is clear that those qualities will be favoured by
+natural selection which contribute to the efficiency of the group; and
+the qualities which contribute to the efficiency of the group are not
+those only which contribute to the efficiency of the individual, but
+also qualities implying self-restraint and even self-sacrifice on the
+part of one member of the group for the sake of other members of the
+group or of the group as a whole. The habit of obedience, for example,
+obedience to the authority of the group or its representative, may be
+of fundamental importance in maintaining the existence of the group
+as a group, although that habit of obedience has no place at all in
+promoting the interests of the individual when he is competing with
+other individuals.
+
+Thirdly, there is still another kind of competition which is a little
+more difficult to make quite clear, because it is not on the plane of
+individual life and it is not to be identified with the life of
+the community. It is a competition on the intellectual level, the
+competition between ideas, and with this one may also couple (so far
+as it does not directly concern the struggle for social existence and
+thus belong to the second class) the competition between institutions,
+including therein also habits and customs. The various institutions in
+our national life, and the various habits of our life, may be said to
+be forms which have to maintain themselves often in competition with
+other and antagonistic forms of institution. The same holds of our
+various ideas or general conceptions, whether about morality, which we
+have now specially in view, or about matters more purely intellectual.
+For instance, forty or fifty years ago, there was a fierce controversy
+amongst biologists between the group of ideas represented by Darwin's
+theory and the group of ideas represented by the traditional view of
+the fixity of species. There was a long conflict between these two
+groups of ideas, and we may now say that the Darwinian group of ideas
+has emerged from the conflict victorious.
+
+Now, when the phrase 'natural selection in morals' is used, the
+reference is commonly to a conflict of this last kind. The suggestion
+is that different ideas and also different standards of action are
+manifested at the same time within the same community, that they
+compete with one another for existence, and that gradually those which
+are better adapted to the life of the community survive, while the
+others grow weaker and in the end disappear. In this way the law of
+natural selection is made to apply to moral ideas and moral standards,
+and also to intellectual standards and to the institutions and customs
+in which our ideas are expressed.
+
+These, then, are the three ways in which the competition in man's life
+and the selection between the competing factors is carried out. And
+sometimes I think one sees a tendency to suggest that this needs
+only to be stated, and that the whole question of the application of
+evolution to ethics is then settled. You may say that such and such
+moral qualities, as for instance the quality of sympathy, do not aid
+the individual in competition with other individuals. The reply might
+be No, but they aid the group in competition with other groups. Or you
+may say, as Darwin said, that even this competition will not account
+for the civilised development of sympathy. But even so we are not at
+the end of our tether; and we can fall back on the conflict of ideas.
+The idea of sympathy or of altruism, for instance, may conflict with
+some other idea, such as that of egoism. At first the competition is a
+group-competition, in which the group with altruistic members succeeds
+at the expense of the egoistic group. By the victory of the former our
+society becomes more and more a society whose basis is sympathy and
+all that sympathy implies, while conflicting ideas lose the lead. So
+in general with the competition of ideas: the idea which fails to
+adapt itself to its conditions will disappear, and the idea which is
+thus adapted will persist; and this also (it is said) is just natural
+selection. Now I venture to ask the question, Is it? I will put the
+question whether all these three processes are really forms of the
+same process, or, in other words and to put the matter more simply, Is
+it simply natural selection that is operative in all these different
+forms of competition?
+
+For the sake of clearness I will take first this last-mentioned form
+of competition, the process by which one idea drives another out of
+the intellectual or moral currency of a community. The competition
+between the idea of fixity of species and Darwin's idea of the unity
+of life has been already cited as an instance; and it was pointed
+out that, gradually and after a controversy of some forty years, the
+former idea almost disappeared, and in the minds at any rate of those
+who know, the Darwinian theory became victorious. Was it natural
+selection that brought about the result? To test the matter let us ask
+once more how natural selection operates. Its mode of operation is
+always simply negative. And if, in the struggle of life, it selects
+the courageous man rather than the coward, the temperate man rather
+than the intemperate, the method by which this result is reached is
+simple: when it comes to a conflict the courageous man kills the
+coward or reduces him to subjection; the intemperate man has less
+vitality than the temperate: he too disappears, although perhaps
+gradually.
+
+Take again the group-competition so far as it is influenced by
+natural selection. The tribe which manifests the qualities of social
+solidarity is selected simply in this way, that when it comes into
+conflict with a tribe which has not this solidarity the latter
+is beaten, and is thus unable to obtain the pastures or the
+hunting-ground which it desires, and therefore gradually or swiftly it
+is exterminated or left behind in the race for life. Now, I ask, Did
+this process take place when Darwinism supplanted the traditional
+theory of the fixity of species? Surely it is clear that it is only in
+the rarest cases that false or inadequate ideas on such subjects have
+any tendency to shorten life or weaken health. Bishop Wilberforce was
+killed by a fall from his horse, not by the triumphant dialectic of
+Professor Huxley. Sir Richard Owen lived to a patriarchal old age, and
+did not disappear from the face of the earth because he still clung to
+an idea which the best intellect of his time had relinquished. There
+is nothing in the doctrine of the fixity of species--if you hold
+it--which will in the least degree tend to diminish vitality. Natural
+selection has practically no effect at all in exterminating those who
+adhere to this idea. There is no means of livelihood from which it
+would exclude them except indeed that it might prevent them from
+occupying Chairs of Biology. Apart from that I do not think it will
+hinder them in any of the various modes of activity in which the
+struggle for life is manifested.
+
+What was it then that led to the victory of the one idea over the
+other? The cause was intellectual. With the experts, it was logical
+conviction: one set of ideas was found to fit the facts somewhat
+better than the other set of ideas. With men in general the
+intellectual change came more slowly and in a different way: they
+adopted or imitated the ideas of those who knew. It was therefore not
+natural selection at all which led to the presence and power of the
+one idea rather than the other in the minds of thoughtful men. One
+idea was deliberately accepted and the other deliberately rejected.
+The former was accepted on grounds of which the most general account
+would be, if we may use the term, to call them subjective. But natural
+selection is a physical, external, objective process. It is carried
+out without the individual's volition: he is not aiming at the end.
+It is simply natural law which, with many varieties of living beings
+before it, exterminates the unfit individuals. Thus nature in its own
+blind way produces a result of the same kind as that which the will of
+man would bring about by subjective selection.
+
+The origin of this term 'natural selection' is overlooked when people
+talk glibly about 'natural selection' of ideas. Darwin used the term
+'natural selection' because he thought he saw an analogy between the
+tendency of nature and the selective purposes of intelligent beings.
+It was because nature, working without intelligence, produced the same
+kind of result as man does by intelligent selection, that he ventured
+to use this term 'selection' of the process of nature. Perhaps he was
+hardly justified in adopting the term, as nature does not select; she
+only passes by. At the same time, artificial selection also includes,
+although it is not limited to, this negative or weeding-out process.
+When you select a certain plant for growth in your garden you weed out
+the neighbouring plants which encroach upon it, so as to give it a
+chance to grow and thrive. By removing its competitors, you let air
+and light surround the plant, and it spreads its leaves to the sun.
+The healthy growth which results is due to the removal of obstacles
+by an external power; and it is in this way--by the removal of
+obstacles--that natural selection works.
+
+Intelligent or artificial selection is not restricted to this negative
+method of working; and its operation, positive as well as negative,
+was certainly well known long before Darwin's day. Starting with the
+familiar facts of artificial or purposive selection, Darwin showed how
+results similar to those aimed at and reached in this way might be
+brought about by the operation of certain natural laws, working
+without purpose or design. Purposive selection pursues its ends more
+directly and in general attains them far more quickly than does
+natural selection. A still more striking characteristic is the fact
+that it does not entail the waste and pain which mark the course of
+natural selection. Witness the records of natural selection in the
+vegetable and animal kingdoms, where thousands are called into
+fruitless being that one alone may survive and prosper. Wastefulness
+is the most striking feature of its method, and its path is strewn
+with wreckage. In all these respects the conflict of ideas belongs
+to the level of purposive and not of natural selection. It involves
+consciousness of the end, which natural selection never does; it is
+comparatively rapid in reaching its goal and comparatively direct in
+the route it takes; and the victory of an idea does not take effect
+through any general extermination of the individuals who cherish ideas
+'unfit' for survival.
+
+I do not deny that there may be a certain natural selection in the
+case of human beings; but that process is always clumsy and slow and
+wasteful, and the purposive intelligent selection which takes its
+place is one of the greatest possible gains to living beings:
+its presence distinguishes men from animals; its predominance
+distinguishes civilised men from savages; the higher the stage
+of civilisation, the more marked is the development of selective
+intelligence. And in the conflict of ideas, whether moral or
+intellectual, the issue is determined by a selection which is
+predominantly purposive, and only in the slightest degree natural.
+
+If we return to the conflict of groups we shall see that even there
+purposive selection enters. How (we may ask) do those qualities of
+obedience, willingness to help another, and the like, arise in a
+community and thus enable it to win the victory over a less organised
+or more savage enemy? Surely it is not a sufficient answer to say that
+these qualities have been somehow developed, and then have contributed
+to the victory of the community possessing them. All through civilised
+life, and probably throughout a great part of savage life, there is
+the keenest enquiry into and perception of the qualities which
+will make for success. These qualities are carefully selected and
+positively fostered. You drill your armies--that is, you cultivate
+the habit of discipline and all that discipline implies--so that the
+victory may be gained; in other words, the quality is not produced by
+natural selection at all. The issue may resemble the result of natural
+selection, for it leads to conflict and defeat of the unfit; but the
+conqueror is he who has foreseen the conditions of the struggle:
+has deliberately equipped his forces for the fight, and been the
+intelligent organiser of victory.
+
+Even in the case of competition between individuals, at least among
+civilised men, it is clear that natural selection is very far from
+being the only factor. A man trains himself for a profession. It does
+not just somehow come about that a number of people accidentally
+develop certain varieties of occupation, and that natural selection
+makes play with this result, cutting off the unfit and leaving only
+those who are fairly well adapted to their positions. Something of
+this sort no doubt takes place to a limited extent; but, so far as it
+does take place, our methods are denounced as defective and, perhaps,
+as old-fashioned. 'Haphazard' is a wasteful principle, and should be
+superseded by intelligent initiative and deliberate preparation. And
+this indeed is the usual process. One adapts oneself carefully and of
+set purpose to the conditions of one's life, instead of simply waiting
+for natural selection to cut one off should one happen to be unfit.
+
+Even among animals there are certain processes which cannot be brought
+under natural selection. There are the first efforts, slight as they
+may be, towards learning by experience. There are also all those facts
+which Darwin classes under sexual selection, where there is a positive
+choosing, due no doubt not to intelligent purpose but nevertheless to
+a subjective impulse. This marks the beginning of the end of the
+reign of natural selection, because in it for the purely objective or
+external factor there is substituted an internal, subjective factor;
+instead of the process of cutting off unsuitable individuals among
+chance varieties there appears the process of selecting that variety
+which pleases or attracts.
+
+The result of this whole investigation is that natural selection
+cannot be properly applied so as to explain the conflict of moral
+ideas. It is not able to account for all the phenomena of the
+competition between groups. Even in sub-human life there are
+indications of the processes which supersede natural selection. From
+this result the ethical consequence may be drawn, that there is no
+good ground for taking the lower, the less developed, method of
+selection as our guide in preference to the higher and more developed.
+Surely we are not to take natural selection as the sole factor of
+ethical import because we see it at the crude beginnings of life on
+this earth, while the process of life itself in its higher ranges
+passes beyond natural selection. The physiological interpretation
+of life and conduct put forward by Nietzsche, and by a good many
+biological philosophers, would take natural selection, and its bearing
+upon the animal nature of man, as the sole test of efficiency and
+ethical value. But this interpretation of man's life disregards the
+achievements of evolution itself for the sake of pinning its faith to
+the humble beginnings of the organic process.
+
+After this long enquiry into the nature and scope of natural
+selection, we should be better prepared to understand the degree and
+kind of ethical significance which can be rightly assigned to the
+theory of evolution. In the first place let us consider the now
+familiar claim that man must be taken as part of the cosmos, and that
+man's conduct must be regarded and studied in its place in the cosmic
+process. At the time when it was first made this claim may have seemed
+a startling one; but I think that we must admit that, keeping to their
+own ground and using the instruments that are theirs by right, the
+evolutionist writers have succeeded in showing man's connexion with
+the animal kingdom and with organic life generally, and thus his place
+in the whole cosmic process. The claim must therefore be admitted.
+
+But if man is part of the universe, then the universe is not
+intelligible apart from man, and the cosmic process is not fully
+understood unless we also have an understanding of human activity.
+This, therefore, is the counter-claim that I would suggest. The course
+and method of evolution, or of the 'cosmic process'--to use Huxley's
+term--is imperfectly described if the methods and principles of human
+action are left out of account.
+
+No doubt the reply may be made, as the reply has been made, that after
+all man occupies but a minute space in the cosmos, that he is but an
+insignificant speck on an unimportant planet. But, if this is at all
+meant to imply that we may safely leave the peculiarities of human
+activity out of account, then I say that the suggestion hardly
+deserves consideration. Surely the assumption is too gross and
+unwarrantable that material magnitude is the standard of importance,
+or that the significance of man's life can be measured by the size of
+his material organism. We must therefore never delude ourselves with
+the idea that we have a full account of the cosmos or the cosmic
+process unless we have taken account of the peculiarities of man's
+nature and man's activity.
+
+In the second place, the discussion of the principle of natural
+selection suggests a further reflexion. The process of natural
+selection is a process which always tends to some end, because by it
+some organisms are selected, and they are the organisms which are
+fittest to live. By 'fittest' is of course meant that which is
+best adapted to the environment, or, as it is simply a question of
+survival, that which so fits the conditions of the environment that it
+is able to survive. The canon of the principle of natural selection is
+on the face of it relative. No one would say that the principle can be
+interpreted as an absolute law for conduct, after the fashion of the
+absolute laws laid down by the rationalist moralists; what is involved
+is simply a gelation to one's surroundings. One must keep in touch
+with them, one must adapt oneself to them, in order to live.
+
+But I wish to point out that the principle is not only relative, but
+that its relation is limited to certain features of the environment
+which surrounds mankind, namely, to those features and those features
+only which prevent organisms unsuited to the conditions of life from
+surviving at all. The only way in which natural selection works is by
+killing off rapidly or gradually the organisms which are not fitted to
+obtain from the environment the means of life--that is to say, it
+has to do with life only, with the continuance of life as a possible
+material phenomenon. Given that the organisms are fit enough to
+survive, given that their animal vitality is not diminished, a
+question remains: what is the standard of worthy survival? and to that
+question the process and principle of natural selection can give no
+answer. To use the old distinction: even if it is able to account for
+being, it can give no standard for wellbeing.
+
+Now the environment of civilised man is a great deal larger in range
+than those material phenomena which contribute to his nourishment and
+thus to his existence as an animal organism. No doubt his first effort
+is to maintain himself as an animal--that is the condition of all
+his subsequent activity--but he seeks also to suit himself to an
+environment which is wider and subtler than merely animal conditions
+of life; to adapt himself to society, perhaps only as a member of it,
+perhaps also as a leader or reformer; to adapt himself to the dominant
+ideas of his time, absorbing them, perhaps also modifying them; to
+adapt himself to a whole region of interests which may in our life be
+built upon an animal basis, but of which the animal basis gives no
+explanation--interests social, artistic, intellectual, spiritual.
+
+It is correct, therefore, to say of man that his environment is much
+larger than the material universe; it is whatever he conceives the
+universe as being, and whatever it can be for him: whether he seeks
+from it merely intellectual understanding, whether he regards it as
+a vehicle for artistic production, or whether he may see in it an
+opportunity for realising his own being by fulfilling the will of
+God--perhaps by submerging his own individuality in deity. The
+objects of philosophy, art, and religion,--all these are parts of the
+environment of civilised man, and yet his self-adaptation to them has
+no direct effect whatever upon his continuance on the earth as an
+animal organism. In other words, the process of natural selection
+can give us no canon at all for putting a value upon these various
+activities, or upon the way in which man adapts himself to these parts
+of his environment.
+
+It is said by Mr Herbert Spencer that "we must interpret the more
+developed by the less developed";[1] and the inference would seem to
+be that, as animal existence is the basis of all higher activities, we
+must interpret these by it. But if this claim can be admitted at all,
+it can only be if our aim goes no further than to trace a historical
+process. If we desire to understand capacity or function--still more
+if we speak of worth or goodness--then it is much more correct to say
+that we must interpret the less developed by the more developed.
+If you wish to trace the growth of the oak-tree from its earliest
+beginnings to maturity, then study the acorn and the soil; but if you
+wish to know what the capacity and the function of the acorn are, then
+you must interpret the less developed by the more developed, you
+must see what an oak is like when it spreads its branches under the
+heavens.
+
+[Footnote 1: Principles of Ethics, i. 7.]
+
+In the third place, the way in which the action of natural selection
+differs according to circumstances affects its ethical significance.
+It operates as between individuals, and it operates as between
+groups,--although in the latter operation especially it is always
+mixed with other forces than natural selection. The competition
+between individuals favours egoistic qualities, the competition
+between groups favours qualities which may be called altruistic.
+
+Now no principle whatever can be got out of the theory of natural
+selection, or out of the evolution theory in general, which will
+decide between these divergent operations. The question may be put,
+Are we to cultivate the qualities which will give us success in the
+battle of individual with individual, or are we to cultivate in
+ourselves qualities which will contribute to the success of the
+community? All the answer that the evolution theory can give to this
+question is, that when individual fights with individual, the man with
+stronger egoistic qualities will succeed, and that when group fights
+group, those groups that possess stronger altruistic qualities will
+tend to success. But which set of qualities we are to cultivate, or
+whether we are to manifest a sort of balance of the two, is a question
+upon which we can get no light from the theory of evolution considered
+by itself. And consequently we find a very prevalent, though perhaps
+hardly ever definitely expressed, code of conduct according to which
+the individual takes as the guide for his own action the egoistic
+qualities which give success in the struggle between different
+individuals, but recommends to all his fellows in the same community
+that they should cultivate those altruistic qualities which will lead
+to the advantage of society.
+
+The theory of evolution makes no contribution at all to these
+questions of worth or validity or moral value which we have been
+discussing. All one can get out of it is certain canons for living,
+but none for good living. It may draw one's attention to this fact, if
+anybody's attention needs to be drawn to it, that existence is prior
+to wellbeing; but what the nature of wellbeing is--upon that it throws
+no light.
+
+We have been met by the suggestion that we should interpret by means
+of the lower or less developed, and again that we should set up a
+purely physiological standard. But the suggestion overlooks two
+things: first of all, the difficulties in the application of natural
+selection itself with its divergent tendencies; and, secondly, the
+fact that this process of evolution has itself resulted in the
+development of certain higher activities and higher tendencies, and
+that there is no good ground for holding that their worth is to be
+tested by means of the lower qualities out of which they have grown.
+
+Now a good many evolutionist moralists seem to see this, and
+accordingly restrict themselves almost entirely to what we may call
+the historical point of view. They show how moral customs and moral
+ideas adapted to them have arisen, and how these ideas and customs
+have corresponded with the institutions of the time to which they
+belonged. Their tendency, accordingly, is to restrict ethics to
+the question of origin and history and description, to deprive it
+altogether of what is sometimes called its normative character--that
+is to say, its character as a science which lays down rules or sets up
+ideals for conduct. They would take away from it altogether the power
+of determining and establishing a criterion between right and wrong.
+In other words, the fundamental ethical question would be entirely
+excluded from the scope of the science of ethics.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Cf. Green, 'Prolegomena to Ethics,' p. 7: "A philosopher
+who would reconstruct our ethical systems in conformity with the
+doctrines of evolution and descent, if he would be consistent, must
+deal less scrupulously with them than perhaps any one has yet been
+found to do. If he has the courage of his principles, having reduced
+the speculative part of them to a natural science, he must abolish the
+practical or preceptive part altogether."]
+
+That, so far as I can see, is the tendency of a good deal of quite
+recent writing from the point of view of the evolution school: in the
+face of controversy and in the face of difficulties to give up the
+attempt which they started on so confidently thirty years ago,--the
+attempt to show that evolution affords a means of deciding between
+right and wrong and of establishing an ideal for human conduct.
+Failing in this attempt, they seem to turn round and say that ethics
+should content itself with describing facts instead of laying down a
+law or setting up an ideal.
+
+Now, whatever truth there may be in the assertion of the difficulty
+of determining an ideal for conduct, there is one thing certain: that
+whether or not the ideal can be philosophically or scientifically
+defined and established, some ideal is always being set up. Human
+action implies choice, implies the selection of one course rather
+than another; and the course that is chosen is always chosen for some
+reason, because it seems better than the course which is passed by.
+Choice always follows some kind of principle. We may use different
+principles at different times, we may use badly established
+principles, we may use uncriticised principles, but principles we do
+use, and we cannot act voluntarily without using them, even when we
+are not definitely conscious of them.
+
+It is not possible, therefore, to entertain the suggestion that these
+principles should be excluded from ethics. Ethics must consider them,
+even if it should fail in reaching a correct account of them. We are
+bound to ask, for instance, what principles can decide between those
+divergent tendencies brought to light by natural selection, between
+the conditions of success for the group and the conditions of success
+for the individual? The conflict between individual development and
+group development is continually pressing to the front The individual
+cannot reach a high stage of development except in and through a
+highly developed society. But the efficiency which a highly developed
+society requires of its members is not the same as individual
+development; it more commonly implies a specialisation which tends to
+warp or cramp individual capacity. This is a long familiar opposition.
+And the theory of evolution can do nothing to reconcile it All it can
+say is that in certain cases natural selection points one way, and
+that in certain cases it points the other way. If ethical significance
+be claimed for it, it must be said that natural selection is divided
+against itself, and that it is without any principle for reconciling
+its own divergences.
+
+It is because biological evolution is essentially an historical
+doctrine that its votaries should not be too eager to apply it
+directly to ethics. It has accomplished much if able to tell us how
+things have happened in the past, without also dictating how they
+ought to take place now. It is specially absurd to say that earlier
+methods must govern later developments. That is what is done when we
+are asked to take as our guide in voluntary choice a principle which
+ignores volition. The whole progress from animal to man and from
+savage to civilised man shows a gradual supersession of the principle
+of natural selection by a principle of subjective selection which
+steadily grows in purposiveness and in intelligence. To say that
+intelligence should take nature as its guide is to ask civilised man
+to put off both his civilisation and his manhood.
+
+The course of evolution may describe the working of different
+principles; but it cannot of itself supply a test of their value. How
+then is such a test to be got? Can Metaphysics help us? I have pointed
+out that the evolutionist ethics is relative--implying always a
+relation between organism and environment--but this relativity is
+qualified by its objective character. It does do something for morals:
+it brings man's conduct into relation with the world as a whole.
+No doubt the environment which more immediately surrounds man is a
+succession of changing phenomena, so that although the basis we get is
+objective, nevertheless it is unable to give us a permanent standard
+of reference. At the same time we may trace in this theory some
+advance on the older types of ethical thinking spoken of in last
+lecture. Subjectivity adhered even to the Utilitarian type of thought:
+for what can be more subjective than the pleasant feeling upon
+which morality is made by it to depend? There was also a certain
+subjectivity attaching to the Intuitional type of thought, because the
+Intuitionists simply referred their judgments to conscience, the law
+in man, and did not connect conscience with a wider or more objective
+view of the universe.
+
+The suggestion remains that we may get a basis for morality which
+is both objective and permanent from that more complete view of the
+universe which is given or which is sought by metaphysics. Metaphysics
+aims at completeness. That is, indeed, its predominant characteristic
+as a body of knowledge. It may begin with the part, if you like, with
+the 'flower in the crannied wall'; but when that is seen in all its
+relations to the rest of the world, then you will 'know what God and
+man is,' If the universe is a whole, then, beginning at any point,
+with any detail, if you only push the enquiry far enough, you are
+bound to become metaphysical: for you are attempting to understand
+reality as a whole.
+
+In this Metaphysics resembles Religion. Both seek the ultimate, the
+final, the whole. But Metaphysics is distinguished from Religion in
+seeking the whole only by way of knowledge. So far it is like
+any other science. It is a process or the result of a process of
+knowledge. It seeks to know reality as a whole, and in knowing a part
+to know it in its relations to the whole. Religion also considers
+everything in its relation to the whole. But in religion knowledge is
+not the fundamental thing: its object is to relate man to God, in his
+consciousness, and in his life as a whole.
+
+The theory of evolution itself very often tends to become a
+metaphysical theory. It does so when it holds the course of
+development which it traces to be either itself the ultimate reality
+or the most adequate appearance of that reality. This theory is now
+commonly known by the name of Naturalism; according to it the facts
+dealt with by the natural sciences are the only reality which is
+knowable; man's nature is part of these and has to be adapted to
+them, and there is nothing further with which it can be brought into
+relation. This theory is not the same as the scientific theory of
+evolution, nor is it a necessary consequence of it; but in the
+minds of many the two go together. The conclusion of the preceding
+argument--that the ethical significance of evolution is not deep
+enough to give any answer to the fundamental question of morals--is
+not a criticism of the theory of evolution so far as restricted to
+the domain of science, but it is a criticism of the Naturalism which
+professes to be a final philosophy.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+ETHICS AND IDEALISM.
+
+
+There has been no movement of metaphysical thought in our time which
+can be compared for its widespread influence or for its general
+acceptance with the theory of evolution in biological science.
+Intimate as is its connexion with the progress of science, metaphysics
+does not keep step with it,--any more than it simply marks time as the
+former advances. It reflects the influence of each new generalisation
+of science; but if and so far as it reflects this influence only, it
+cannot be an adequate metaphysics. Metaphysics must re-think each new
+fact brought to light, each new generalisation established by science.
+It must think them in their relation to the whole, and attempt to
+understand them by setting them in their place in the complete system
+of knowledge and reality. This complete system is indeed an
+ideal, never adequately comprehended by the human mind; but it is
+nevertheless the ideal which determines all efforts of constructive
+philosophy--including those efforts which take the generalisation of
+some special science as their all-comprehending principle. An attempt
+of this kind to make a philosophy out of a scientific generalisation
+has in our own time been the obvious result of the theory of
+evolution, and has given new vogue to the philosophical system called
+Naturalism. That system draws its strength from the scientific
+doctrine of evolution; but as a philosophy it gives an extended
+application to the generalisation established by a group of sciences,
+and valid for the facts within their range. It interprets the law
+of development which rules the sequences of nature as the highest
+attainable principle for explaining the system of things. Some of the
+questions which it leaves unanswered, and some of the facts which
+it overlooks, have been pointed out in last lecture. Of this theory
+perhaps enough has already been said.
+
+In spite of the increased vogue which naturalism has obtained from its
+alliance with triumphant evolutionism, it cannot be said to represent
+the prevailing type of thought amongst the English metaphysicians
+of the last generation. That generation was remarkable for the
+reappearance in this country of a reasoned Idealism; and all forms of
+Idealism have at least this in common, that they refuse to look upon
+the material process as the ultimate character of reality--so far as
+reality is known or knowable.
+
+It may also be said--and this is a characteristic which is not merely
+negative--that all forms of Idealism agree in ascribing special
+significance to the moral and religious aspects of life. This holds
+true of the great idealists, different as their types of thought may
+be--of Plato and Aristotle, of Spinoza and Leibniz, of Kant, Fichte,
+and Hegel. It holds true also of the leading representatives of recent
+English idealism. But the ethical tone of a treatise and the ethical
+interest of its author are not always a guarantee that ethical
+conceptions have a secure position in his system of thought. This is
+the case, I think, with Spinoza; and it seems to me to hold also of
+some writers of the present day. Mr Bradley, for instance, is perhaps
+the most influential, as he is without doubt not the least brilliant,
+of contemporary metaphysicians; he carries on the tradition of a
+school of thought predominantly ethical; his first book was a defence
+of the ethical positions of that school; but, if we turn to the
+elaborate metaphysical treatise which has resulted from his mature
+reflexion, its most impressive feature will be found to be the almost
+complete bankruptcy of the system in the region of ethics.
+
+Not only had this idealist movement in its beginnings a predominantly
+ethical tone. It was really started in the interest of moral ideals as
+well as of intellectual thoroughness; and its contribution of greatest
+value to English thought was a work on ethics. The 'Prolegomena
+to Ethics' of T.H. Green was a fitting result of his unwearied
+controversies in defence of the spiritual nature of man and the
+universe. No one is more worthy than he to be called by the Platonic
+name a 'friend of ideas,' And he was a friend of ideas because he saw
+their necessity for maintaining and realising the higher capacities
+of human life. Green's 'Prolegomena' was published in 1883, the year
+after his death. And, had I been speaking twenty years ago, I should
+have had to emphasise the ethical character of the metaphysics of the
+day. His metaphysical thinking, through all its subtleties, never
+strayed far from the moral ideal. Owing to his teaching that ideal,
+and the general character of the philosophy with which it was
+associated, have permeated a great part of the better thought of the
+present day, and have influenced its practical activities in various
+directions,--social, political, and religious. But the magnetism of
+his personality has been removed; and those whose business it is to
+test intellectual notions have been impressed by the difficulties
+involved in Green's metaphysical positions and in his connexion of
+them with morality.
+
+The single word 'self-realisation' has been taken to express the view
+of the moral ideal enforced by Green. And it is as suitable as any
+single word could be. But it is clear that, in every action whatever
+of a conscious being, self-realisation may be said to be the end: some
+capacity is being developed, satisfaction is being sought for some
+desire. A man may develop his capacities, seek and to some extent
+attain satisfaction--in a manner, realise himself--not only in
+devotion to a scientific or artistic ideal or in labours for the
+common good, but also in selfish pursuit of power or even in sensual
+enjoyment. So far as the word 'self-realisation' can be made to cover
+such different activities, it is void of moral content and cannot
+express the nature of the moral ideal. Green is perfectly alive to the
+need of a distinction--and to the difficulty of drawing it. According
+to his own statement it is true not only of moral activity but of
+every act of willing that in it "a self-conscious individual directs
+himself to the realisation of some idea, as to an object in which for
+the time he seeks self-satisfaction."[1] And he proceeds to ask the
+question, "How can there be any such intrinsic difference between the
+objects willed as justifies the distinction which 'moral sense' seems
+to draw between good and bad action, between virtue and vice? And if
+there is such a difference, in what does it consist?"[2] Now we may
+define a good action as the sort of action which proceeds from a good
+man; or we may define a good man as a man who performs good actions.
+And for each method of definition something may be said. But if we
+adopt both methods together and say in one breath that good is what
+the good man does and that the good man is he who does good, is our
+logic any better than that of the ordination-candidate who defined the
+functions of an archdeacon as archdiaconal functions? And yet Green
+comes very near to describing this logical circle. "The moral good,"
+he says, is "that which satisfies the desire of amoral agent"; but
+"the question, ... What do we mean by calling ourselves moral agents?
+is one to which a final answer cannot be given without an answer to
+the question, What is moral good?"[3]
+
+[Footnote 1: Prolegomena to Ethics, § 154, p. 160.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., § 156, p. 163.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Prolegomena to Ethics, §§ 171, 172, p. 179.]
+
+When Green really grapples with the difficulty of distinguishing the
+moral from the immoral in character or in conduct, it is possible
+to distinguish different ways in which he attempts to draw the
+distinction--these different ways being, however, not independent but
+complementary to one another in his thought. The first suggestion is
+that good is distinguished from evil, or the true good from a good
+which is merely apparent, by its permanence. It gives a lasting
+satisfaction instead of a merely transient satisfaction: "the true
+good ... is an end in which the effort of a moral agent can really
+find rest."[1] In this statement two points seem to be involved which
+the use of the rather metaphorical term 'finding rest' tends to
+confuse. If we are looking for the distinction simply of a good action
+or motive from a bad one we may point to the approval of conscience in
+the former case: this has a permanence--or rather an independence of
+time--which distinguishes it from the satisfaction of some temporary
+desire. But I do not think that this is what Green means. He wished
+to avoid falling back upon mere disconnected judgments of conscience
+after the manner of the intuitional moralists. The 'true good' for him
+seems to mean the attainment, the complete realisation, of the moral
+ideal. Were this reached we should indeed 'find rest,' for moral
+activity as we know it would be at an end. But the moral ideal
+is never thus attained; its realisation, as Green holds, is only
+progressive and never completed. Consequently 'rest' is never 'found.'
+It is of the nature of the moral life to press onward constantly
+towards a goal which it cannot attain; each achievement leads to a
+further effort and a higher reach.
+
+[Footnote 1: Ibid., § 171, p. 179.]
+
+By itself, therefore, the assertion that the moral agent 'finds rest'
+in the 'true good' does not enable us to distinguish the moral agent
+or the moral action from the immoral. For we are unable to define the
+'true good.' It is not a part of experience; it is an ideal: and Green
+allows that we can give no complete account of it; he even says
+that we can give no positive account of it. At the same time this
+consideration leads to another and connected method for distinguishing
+good from evil.
+
+"Of a life of completed development," Green holds, "of activity with
+the end attained, we can only speak or think in negatives, and thus
+only can we speak or think of that state of being in which, according
+to our theory, the ultimate moral good must consist."[1] But the
+development is a real process which manifests itself in habits and
+social institutions; and from these its actual achievements we can to
+a certain extent see what the moral capability of man "has in it to
+become," and thus "know enough of ultimate moral good to guide our
+conduct." One of the most valuable portions of Green's own work is his
+description of the gradual widening and purifying of human conceptions
+regarding goodness in character and conduct. But all this implies some
+standard of discrimination and selection between what is good and
+what is evil in human achievement. Which developments are truly
+realisations of "the moral capability of man," and so tend to the
+attainment of ultimate good, and which developments are expressions
+of those capacities which seek an apparent good only and are to be
+classed as evil, as impediments to the realisation of the good,--these
+have to be discriminated; and is it so clear that from the mere record
+of human deeds we are able to draw the distinction? Do we not need
+some criterion of goodness to guide our judgment? and does not Green
+himself use such a criterion when he appeals to the tendency of
+certain institutions and habits to "make the welfare of all the
+welfare of each," and of certain arts to make nature "the friend of
+man"?[2] Common welfare and the utilisation of nature in the service
+of man seem to be taken as tests of the true development of moral
+capabilities. The criteria themselves may be excellent; but they
+are not got out of the mere record: they are brought by us to its
+contemplation. To this special question I can find no answer in Green.
+He is indeed aware that there is a difficulty; or rather he admits
+that something has been "taken for granted." He has assumed that
+there is "some best state of being for man"; that this best state is
+eternally present to a divine consciousness; and further, that this
+"eternal mind" is reproducing itself as the self of man.[3] On this
+supposition only, he says, can our moral activity be explained; and
+he holds that the supposition can be justified metaphysically and has
+been so justified by himself in the earlier part of his treatise.
+
+[Footnote 1: Prolegomena to Ethics, § 172, p. 180.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Prolegomena, § 172, p. 180.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Ibid., §§ 173, 174, p. 181.]
+
+Now I am willing to admit that Green showed a correct instinct in
+examining the nature of man before entering upon his properly ethical
+enquiry. One must know what man is before one can say what his
+'good' or his duty is; and it is only because man's nature cannot be
+accounted for as a merely natural or animal product that the way is
+open for an idealist ethics such as Green's. But perhaps Green laid
+too much stress on the problem of historical causation. What matters
+it how we came by our knowledge, provided it is the case that we can
+know ourselves and the world? If we can now distinguish right and
+wrong, can ally ourselves with the good, and follow a moral ideal, of
+what great importance are the steps by which the moral consciousness
+was attained? And the question here is whether the special results
+reached by Green in his metaphysical enquiry into human nature have
+brought us any nearer to a solution of the present ethical difficulty.
+As we have seen, the metaphysical view which Green arrives at is that
+the consciousness which is in man and which raises him above nature
+is the manifestation of--the "reproduction" of itself by--an eternal
+self-consciousness. Man's own self-consciousness in knowledge and
+volition is simply God's self--consciousness "reproduced" (to use
+Green's term) in man's animal nature: so that the animal body and
+its temporal activities become in some unexplained (and no doubt
+inexplicable) way "organic" (to use Green's terminology once more,
+where no terminology seems adequate) to a spiritual reality which is
+eternal and infinite.
+
+I am far from denying the greatness of this conception or its
+practical value. There is no stronger support to moral endeavour than
+the conviction that the moral life is a realisation of the divine
+purpose, that in all goodness the spirit of God is manifest, that the
+good man is the servant of God or even His fellow-worker. By whatever
+metaphor this may be expressed--and Green's statement that the divine
+self--consciousness 'reproduces' itself in human morality is also
+a metaphor--it betrays the assurance that moral achievement is
+permanent, and that (in spite of all apparent failures) goodness will
+prevail. He who fights for the good may be confident of victory.
+
+This is the practical value of the conception; but in order that it
+may have this practical value, the distinction of good from evil
+must be first of all made clear. Green's appeal to an eternal
+self-consciousness does nothing of itself to elucidate this
+distinction. Tendencies to exalt selfish interest over common welfare,
+and to prefer sensual to what are called higher gratifications, enter
+into the nature of man, and have fashioned his history. Green does
+not even ask the question whether these also are not to be considered
+manifestations or 'reproductions' of the eternal self-consciousness.
+But his metaphysical view does not exclude them; and if they are
+included, morality disappears for lack of any criterion between good
+and evil. If good is to be discriminated from evil, it must be by some
+other means than by describing the whole conscious activity of man as
+a reproduction of the divine. Instead of doing anything to solve the
+problem of the meaning of goodness, Green simply brings forward a new
+difficulty--that of understanding how the temporal process in which
+human morality is developed can be related to a reality which is
+defined as out of time or eternal. This difficulty cannot be avoided
+in a metaphysical theory of morality. And it does not stand alone.
+Green's own dialectics were directed against the Sensationalist and
+Hedonist theories which used to be regarded as typical of English
+thought; and on them they acted as a powerful solvent. His own views
+of the spiritual nature of man and its relation to the eternal
+self-consciousness were worked out with the confidence and enthusiasm
+of a reformer rather than with the caution of a critic. But criticism
+has followed, and not only from the representatives of opposed
+schools. Writers whose intellectual affinities are on the whole the
+same as his have let their dialectic play around his fundamental
+conceptions with a result very different from that which he
+contemplated. Mr Bradley, like Green, has faith in an eternal Reality,
+which might be called spiritual, inasmuch as it is not material; like
+Green, he looks upon man's moral activity as an appearance--what Green
+calls a reproduction--of this eternal reality. But under this general
+agreement there lies a world of difference. He refuses, by the use of
+the term self-consciousness, to liken his Absolute to the personality
+of man, and he brings out the consequence, which in Green is more or
+less concealed, that the evil equally with the good in man and in the
+world are appearances of the Absolute.
+
+Mr Bradley's whole work is ruled by the distinction between
+"Appearance" and "Reality," which gives his book a title. On the
+one hand there is the Absolute Reality, spoken of as perfect, and
+described as all--comprehensive and harmonious throughout. Neither
+change nor time nor any relation can belong to it. But intelligence
+works by discrimination and comparison; knowledge implies relations;
+it is, therefore, excluded from reality. Truth is mere appearance. The
+same judgment must be passed on our moral activity. We strive after
+and perhaps reach an ideal, or, as Mr Bradley says, we aim at
+satisfying a desire; and this, too, is a process far removed from
+reality.[1] Goodness, like truth, is mere appearance.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, pp. 402, 410.]
+
+This needs no elaboration. If all predication involves relation, and
+relation is excluded from reality,[1] then no predicate--not even
+truth or goodness--can be asserted of the real. Nay more, to be
+consistent, we ought not even to say that reality or the Absolute
+(for the two terms are here interchangeable) is perfect, or one, or
+all-comprehensive, or harmonious: for all these are predicates. _Ens
+realissimum_ is the only _ens reale_; all else is mere appearance.
+
+[Footnote 1: Ibid., pp. 32-34.]
+
+Just here, however, lies an indication of another line of thought. For
+what is an appearance, and what is it that appears? It can only be
+reality that thus appears; the 'mere' appearance is yet an 'appearance
+of reality.' It might seem that this is to catch, not at a straw, but
+at the shadow of a straw. For if we say that 'reality appears,' are
+we not thereby predicating something of reality, making it enter into
+relation? But let that pass. Among these appearances we may be able to
+distinguish degrees of significance or of adequacy, nay--strange as
+it may seem to the reader who has followed Mr Bradley's first line of
+thought--"degrees of reality." Relations are excluded from reality;
+and degree is a relation; but reality has degrees. The logic is
+unsatisfactory, but the conclusion may perhaps have a value of its
+own.
+
+Here, then, is another view of the universe--not an unchanging,
+relationless, eternal reality, but varying degrees of reality
+manifested in that complex process which we call sometimes the world
+and sometimes 'experience,' But the two views are connected. For it is
+assumed that the Absolute Reality is harmonious and all-comprehensive;
+and it is further asserted that these two characteristics of harmony
+and comprehensiveness may be taken as criteria of the "degree of
+reality" possessed by any "appearance." The more harmonious anything
+is--the fewer its internal discrepancies or contradictions--the higher
+is its degree of reality; and the greater its comprehensiveness--the
+fewer predicates left outside it--the higher also is its degree of
+reality. No attempt is made at a measured scale of degrees of reality,
+such, for example, as is offered by the Hegelian dialectic; but a sort
+of rough classification of various 'appearances' is offered. In this
+classification a place is given to goodness which is comparatively
+high, and yet "subordinate" and "self-contradictory." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 420.]
+
+Mr Bradley's Absolute, we may say, has two faces, one of which is
+described as good, while the other is inscrutable. "Obviously," he says,
+"the good is not the Whole, and the Whole, as such, is not good. And,
+viewed thus in relation to the Absolute, there is nothing either bad or
+good, there is not anything better or worse. For the Absolute is _not_
+its appearances." This is the inscrutable side. But yet "the Absolute
+appears in its phenomena and is real nowhere outside them;... it is all
+of them in unity. And so, regarded from this other side, the Absolute
+_is_ good, and it manifests itself throughout in various degrees of
+goodness and badness."[1] What would be contradiction in another writer
+is only two-sidedness in Mr Bradley. And it is this second side which
+interests us, for here "the Absolute _is_ good," and yet, good as it is,
+manifests itself in badness as well as goodness, and that in various
+degrees. If we are to follow another statement of the doctrine, however,
+we shall have to allow that the "badness" is also good, and that the
+"various degrees" are all equal. For "the Absolute is perfect in all its
+detail, it is equally true and good throughout."[2] Whether or not the
+good is contradictory, as Mr Bradley maintains,[3] we must allow that he
+succeeds in making his account of it contradictory.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 411.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 401.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 409.]
+
+I will try to put the gist of the matter in my own words. Mr Bradley's
+Absolute is eternal, relationless, ineffable. To it goodness cannot be
+ascribed; indeed no predicate can be properly applied to it, for any
+predication implies relation: in earlier language than Mr Bradley's it
+involves determination and therefore negation. Even to say that the
+Absolute appears or manifests itself is to predicate something, to
+imply relation, and thus is an offence against the absoluteness of the
+Absolute. But nevertheless there _is_ a world of phenomena, which the
+most mystical of philosophers must recognise, if only as a world
+of illusion. The sum-total of these phenomena may be called the
+appearances of the Absolute; and the Absolute, according to Mr
+Bradley, "is real nowhere outside them." In this sense of reality we
+may make predicates about it. Indeed all our predicates, Mr Bradley
+teaches in his 'Logic,' have reality--the universe of reality--for
+their ultimate subject.
+
+In this sense it may be possible to speak of reality as good (though
+it is a misapplication of the term "Absolute" to call it good). But
+the question remains what we mean by "good" in this connexion, and
+what justification we have for using the predicate. And the answer
+must be that Mr Bradley means very little, since the goodness is
+manifested "in various degrees of goodness and badness," and that the
+justification for using the term is not made clear. It seems to
+be used of reality in a somewhat vague sense, as it were _jure
+dignitatis_ and to have as little ethical significance as "right
+honourable" when applied to a politician or "reverend" to a clergyman:
+cases in which it might be consistent to say that right honourable
+gentlemen manifest various degrees of honour and dishonour, or that
+reverend gentlemen are worthy of various degrees of reverence and the
+opposite. All the details of the phenomenal world are bound together
+by chains of necessity; each is an essential part of the sum-total.[1]
+How can the distinction of good and evil apply as between these parts?
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality-Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]
+
+We may speak of parts as higher or lower; and Mr Bradley defines the
+"lower" as "that which, to be made complete, would have to undergo a
+more total transformation of its nature."[1] The meaning of this is
+not clear. The reference may be to the complete state which a thing
+may reach in process of growth. Thus an early stage of a rose-bud
+may be said to be "lower" than its later stage because it requires a
+greater transformation before it produces the bloom. But here 'lower'
+does not mean ethically lower, unless immaturity be confused with
+evil. Or the complete state may be regarded as the type of some order
+or class, from which different individuals differ in greater or less
+degree. This meaning is not suggested by the author; and it could have
+ethical implication only if the type had been first of all shown to
+have an ethical value. Or again, the completeness referred to may be
+that which is alone complete in the strict sense of the word, namely,
+the universe. And we might say that a rose-leaf would require greater
+transformation in order to become complete in this sense than a
+rose-bush, or that the act of giving a cup of cold water was less
+complete than the far-reaching activity say of the first Napoleon.
+But this difference in completeness would not entail a corresponding
+difference in moral worth or goodness.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]
+
+Where all stages are essential, it is not possible to say that one
+is good and another evil. Is not the good something that ought to be
+striven for, attained, and preserved? and is not evil something that
+ought not to be at all? And how can we say that any part ought not to
+be when every part is essential?
+
+From the monistic view of reality, as set forth by Mr Bradley, there
+is no direct route to the distinction between good and evil. If the
+distinction is reached at all, it will be found to be psychological
+rather than cosmical, to be relative to the attitude of the human mind
+which contemplates the facts, and in this strict sense to be, what Mr
+Bradley calls it, appearance.
+
+And this is the view which Mr Bradley takes when he proceeds to describe
+what he means by the 'good.' It is, he says, "that which satisfies
+desire. It is that which we approve of, and in which we can rest with a
+feeling of contentment."[1] "Desire"--"approval"--"feeling"--to these
+mental attitudes the good is relative: they are expressed in its
+definition. Mr Bradley, it will be seen, re-states Green's doctrine with
+a difference which makes it at once more logical and less ethical. Green
+had said that "the moral good is that which satisfies the desire of a
+moral agent"; and in so saying had simply walked round the difficulty,
+for he was unable to say wherein consisted the peculiarity of the moral
+agent without reference to the conception of moral good which he had
+started out to define. But Mr Bradley dispenses with the qualification,
+and says simply that the good "satisfies desire." And in so far his
+definition is more logical. The question is whether it distinguishes
+good from evil. Both the practical importance and the theoretical
+difficulty of the problem arise from the fact that evil is sometimes
+desired, and that the evil desire may be satisfied. The desire of a
+malevolent man may be satisfied by another's downfall, and his mind may
+even "rest with a feeling of contentment" in that result, much in the
+same way as the benevolent man is satisfied and content with another's
+happiness. Fortunately, the case is not so common: the dominant leanings
+of most men are in sympathy with good rather than with evil: but it is
+common enough to make the emotional characteristics of the individual an
+uncertain basis on which to rest the distinction of good from evil.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 402.]
+
+There is also another way of putting the matter: "the good is
+coextensive with approbation."[1] If by 'approbation' we mean simply
+'holding for good,' then the sentence will mean that the good is what
+we hold for good--that is to say, that our judgments about good
+are always true judgments,--a proposition which either ignores the
+divergence between different individual judgments about good, or else
+implies a complete relativity such that that is good to each man at
+any time which he at that time approves or holds to be good; and this
+latter view would make all discussion impossible. But this is not what
+Mr Bradley means. "Approbation is to be taken in its widest sense";
+in which sense "to approve is to have an idea in which we feel
+satisfaction, and to have or imagine the presence of this idea in
+existence."[2] And here the criterion is the same as before, and
+equally subjective. In desire idea and existence are separated; they
+are united in the satisfaction of desire; and approbation is said to
+be just the feeling of satisfaction in an idea which is also present
+(or imagined as present) in existence. Not only actual satisfaction of
+the desire but also imagined satisfaction is covered by "approbation";
+but this approval is still simply a feeling of some individual person.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 407]
+
+[Footnote 2: Appearance and Reality, p. 418.]
+
+We need not concern ourselves at present with the adequacy of this
+statement as an account of the way in which we come to 'approve' or
+hold something as good. The point is, that it does not advance us at
+all towards determining the validity of this approval, or towards an
+objective criterion for distinguishing 'good' from evil.
+
+Mr Bradley draws a distinction between a general and a more special
+or restricted meaning of goodness. For the former it is enough that
+existence be "_found_ to be in accordance with the idea"; for the
+latter, it is necessary that the idea itself produce the fact.[1]
+In the former sense "beauty, truth, pleasure, and sensation are all
+things that are good,"[2] quite irrespective of their origin; in the
+latter sense, only that is good which the idea has produced, or in
+which it has realised itself, which is the work, therefore, of some
+finite soul. In this narrower meaning goodness is the result of will:
+"the good, in short, will become the realised end or completed will.
+It is now an idea which not only _has_ an answering content in fact,
+but, in addition also, has _made_, and has brought about, that
+correspondence.... Goodness thus will be confined to the realm of
+ends, or of self-realisation. It will be restricted, in other words,
+to what is commonly called the sphere of morality,"[3] Even in its
+more general meaning, as we have seen, Mr Bradley has not succeeded in
+giving an objective account of good. For the correspondence of idea
+and existence in which it is said to consist is defined in relation
+to desire, and to some kind of feeling on the part of the conscious
+subject. Nor was his account successful in distinguishing good from
+evil: to that distinction feeling is a blind guide. When he goes on
+to discuss goodness in the narrower sense, in which it belongs to the
+results of finite volition, he adopts, as expressing the nature of
+goodness, that conception of 'self-realisation' which, as put forward
+by Green, has been found inadequate. The same conception was used by
+Mr Bradley, in his first work, as "the most general expression for the
+end in itself," "May we not say," he asked, "that to realise self is
+always to realise a whole, and that the question in morals is to find
+the true whole, realising which will practically realise the true
+self?"[4] It is easy to make the distinction between good and evil
+depend upon this, that in the former the true self is realised, and
+that what is realised in the latter is only a false self. But it is
+equally easy to see that this is only to substitute one unexplained
+distinction for another. This short and easy method is not that which
+Mr Bradley adopts in his later work. He has something of much greater
+interest to say regarding the nature of the self-realisation in which
+goodness is made to consist; and upon it he lays stress, "solely with
+a view to bring out the radical vice of all goodness."[5] Goodness,
+it is said, is self-realisation; and Reality--it was assumed at the
+outset--is harmonious and all-comprehensive. These last characters are
+also criteria of degrees of reality, and consequently of degrees
+of self-realisation. There are, therefore, two marks of
+self-realisation--harmony and extent; and these two may and do
+diverge. No doubt "in the end," they will come together; but "in that
+end goodness, as such, will have perished."[6] "We must admit," says
+Mr Bradley, "that two great divergent forms of moral goodness exist.
+In order to realise the idea of a perfect self a man may have to
+choose between two partially conflicting methods. Morality, in short,
+may dictate either self--sacrifice or self--assertion,"[7] "The
+conscious duplicity of the hypocrite," according to an outspoken
+adherent of Mr Bradley's, is "but the natural exaggeration of the
+unconscious duplicity which resides in the very heart of morality."[8]
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 412.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 410.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Appearance and Reality, pp. 412, 413.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Ethical Studies (1876), pp. 59, 63.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Appearance and Reality, p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Appearance and Reality, p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 415.]
+
+[Footnote 8: A.E. Taylor, Problem of Conduct (1901), p. 65.]
+
+It is worth while considering this view of the contradictions inherent
+in morality. To start with, goodness was defined by relation to
+desire: the good was said to be what satisfies desire. Desire is
+plainly a mental state in which idea and existence are separated. As
+such it cannot be attributed to the Absolute Reality. It will involve
+a contradiction, therefore, if we identify goodness with Absolute
+Reality; for goodness implies a distinction (between idea and
+existence) which cannot find place in the Absolute. But if "degrees"
+of reality be asserted, we must admit stages short of the Absolute,
+and goodness may belong to such a stage in which process or
+development is allowed as a fact. But Mr Bradley will have it not only
+that it is a contradiction to identify this process with the Absolute,
+but also that the conception of goodness is itself contradictory. "A
+satisfied desire," he says, "is, in short, inconsistent with itself.
+For, so far as it is quite satisfied, it is not a desire; and, so far
+as it is a desire, it must remain at least partly unsatisfied."[1] Of
+course, if the desire is satisfied, it ceases. It was and it is not.
+But there is no more contradiction here than in any other case of
+temporal succession. A satisfied desire is, it is true, no longer a
+desire. But the phrase is contradictory only in appearance; for it
+means that the desire has been satisfied and in its satisfaction has
+ceased to exist as a desire. A much more important discrepancy is
+asserted when it is said that "two great divergent forms of moral
+goodness exist." The fight for moral goodness is 'under two
+flags'--self-assertion and self-sacrifice. And the allies "seem
+hostile to one another," "at least in some respects and with some
+persons."[2] We have here the time-honoured opposition of egoism and
+altruism, with a difference. Mr Bradley's most notable adherent in the
+region of ethical enquiry prefers to overlook the difference and
+to return to the older opposition of conflicting ideals.[3] But Mr
+Bradley himself declines to rate the social factor in conduct so
+high. It is not altruism or social activity which is the opponent of
+self-assertion or egoism, but self-sacrifice; and both self-assertion
+and self-sacrifice are kinds of self-realisation: in the former the
+self seeks its realisation by perfecting its harmony; in the latter,
+by increasing its extent. It is not in content that the two modes of
+self-realisation differ: social factors, for instance, may enter into
+both; it is in the diverse uses made of the contents:[4] 'system' is
+aimed at in the one; 'width' in the other.[5] The harmony of these two
+methods is attained only when both morality and the individual self
+are "transcended and submerged."[6]
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 410.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Appearance and Reality, p. 415.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Taylor, Problem of Conduct, p. 179 ff.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Appearance and Reality, p. 416.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Ibid., p. 419.]
+
+This discrepancy of aim, and then coming together of the hostile
+factors only in the annulling and disappearance of both, is a process
+quite in accordance with the general dialectic of Mr Bradley. But two
+things may be noted with regard to it. In the first place the effort
+after system is called self-assertion, and the effort after width or
+expansion is called self-sacrifice. Perhaps the author may claim a
+right to give what names he likes to the processes he describes. But
+in this case the names have a recognised meaning in the literature of
+morals, and no hint is given that they are used here in any meaning
+other than the ordinary. And surely the term 'self-sacrifice' is an
+inappropriate term for describing the conduct which seeks expansion by
+multiplying the objects of desire--by the pursuit of whatever offers a
+chance of widened interests, whether social or intellectual, aesthetic
+or sensual,--even although "my individuality suffers loss" thereby,
+and "the health and harmony of my self is injured."[1] Loss may be the
+result; but aggrandisement is what is sought, though the effort fails
+through lack of organisation or system. And again 'self' is not the
+only possible centre for the systematisation of conduct. System in
+conduct may be realised in other ways than as self-assertion. It is
+sought as truly by the man of science who gives up everything for
+the pursuit of truth or by the philanthropist who forgets himself in
+promoting the social welfare. Such modes of life as these--and not
+merely self-assertive conduct--may become centres of a moral activity
+which aims at system.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p, 417.]
+
+The second remark which has to be made on this final point is, that
+neither on the method of system and self-assertion nor on the method
+of expansion and self-sacrifice has the author given or suggested any
+criterion for the distinction of good and evil. He has cast his net
+so wide as to include all conduct within it without discrimination of
+moral worth. His own result is that "the good is, as such, transcended
+and submerged."[1] But this result loses all significance if it is the
+case, as our enquiry seems to prove, that the good as such has
+never been reached at all, nor any tenable suggestion offered for
+distinguishing it from evil.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 419.]
+
+This is the fundamental question for any philosophy of ethics; but it
+receives no answer at all from the prevailing school of metaphysical
+thought. This school offers no solution of the problem which was found
+insoluble by the type of philosophy whose aim is to co-ordinate the
+results of science. A comparison of the purposes and results of the
+two schools may be instructive.
+
+Mr Herbert Spencer has told us that since the time of his first essay,
+"written as far back as 1842," his "ultimate purpose, lying behind all
+proximate purposes, has been that of finding for the principles of right
+and wrong in conduct at large a scientific basis.... Now that moral
+injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred
+origin, the secularisation of morals is becoming imperative. Few things
+can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative
+system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has
+grown up to replace it.... Those who believe that the vacuum can be
+filled, and that it must be filled, are called on to do something in
+pursuance of their belief."[1] But more than fifty years after the
+publication of this first essay, as, with the completion of the
+'Principles of Ethics,' his whole system of philosophy lay unrolled
+before him, he made the significant and pathetic confession that "the
+doctrine of evolution has not furnished guidance to the extent I had
+hoped.... Right regulation of the actions of so complex a being as man,
+living under conditions so complex as those presented by a society,
+evidently forms a subject-matter unlikely to admit of definite
+conclusions throughout its entire range."[2] And the lack of confidence
+which the author himself felt in these parts, there is good reason to
+extend to the whole structure of evolutionary ethics.
+
+[Footnote 1: Preface to Data of Ethics, 1879.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Preface to Principles of Ethics, vol. ii., 1893.]
+
+Neither the purpose of their structure nor its collapse is so
+explicitly proclaimed by the metaphysicians with whom this lecture has
+dealt. But we hardly need to read between the lines in order to see
+the prominence of the moral interest in all that Green wrote; and it
+was after he had shown the inadequacy of the empirical method in the
+hands of Hume to give any criterion or ideal for conduct that he made
+his significant appeal to "Englishmen under five-and-twenty" to leave
+"the anachronistic systems hitherto prevalent amongst us" and take up
+"the study of Kant and Hegel."[1] His call to speculation has been
+widely responded to; but, if we turn to the most important product of
+this speculative movement, we have to extract what enlightenment we
+can from the dictum that, in the only sense in which the Absolute
+is good, it "manifests itself in various degrees of goodness and
+badness."[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Green, Introduction to Hume's Treatise (1874), ii. 71.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 411.]
+
+The most notable recent systems of philosophy, idealist as well as
+naturalist, are thus presented to us, almost confessedly, as void of
+application to conduct. This result, and foresight of this result,
+have led to a widespread suspicion of any attempt at ethical
+construction which is based upon a theory of reality. In consequence,
+recourse is sometimes had to a purely empirical treatment of morality
+such as that indicated at the close of the second lecture. Such an
+account, however, can never rise from the description of conduct to
+setting up an ideal for life. And accordingly some thinkers have
+remained convinced of the necessity of ideals for the moral life,
+although unable to find an adequate ground for these ideals in their
+system of reality.
+
+This attitude was adopted by F.A. Lange, who, at the close of his
+History of Materialism, declared that there was need for an Ideal of
+Worth to supplement the deficiencies of the facts of being. "One thing
+is certain," he said, "that man needs to supplement reality by an
+Ideal World of his own creation, and that in such creations the
+highest and noblest functions of his mind co-operate. But must this
+free act of the mind bear ever and ever again the deceptive form of
+demonstrative science? If it does so, materialism will always reappear
+and destroy the over-bold speculations."[1] It would thus seem that
+moral life postulates an ideal which the mind is able to frame, but
+for which it can establish no connexion with the world of reality.
+
+[Footnote 1: Geschichte des Materialismus, 3rd ed., p. 545 f.]
+
+More recently a brilliant French writer, who has attempted to
+establish a system of "morality without obligation or sanction," has
+suggested that the place of the categorical law of duty may be taken
+by a speculative hypothesis, and that hope may serve where there is no
+ground for belief. "The speculative hypothesis is a risk taken in the
+sphere of thought; action in accordance with this hypothesis is a
+risk taken in the sphere of will; and that being is higher who will
+undertake and risk the more whether in thought or action."[1] Thus,
+"for example, if I would perform an act of charity pure and simple,
+and wish to justify this act rationally, I must imagine an eternal
+Charity at the ground of things and of myself, I must objectify the
+sentiment which leads to my action; and here the moral agent plays
+the same _rôle_ as the artist.... In every human action there is
+an element of error, of illusion": and it is conjectured that this
+element increases as the action rises above the commonplace: "the most
+loving hearts are the most often deceived, in the highest geniuses the
+greatest incoherences are often found."[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Guyau, Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction
+(1885) p. 250.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., pp. 226, 227.]
+
+This solution can hardly be regarded as other than a counsel of
+despair. Its ethical value is merely apparent. What is of importance
+for ethics is not so much the presence of some ideal: it is the kind
+of ideal that matters. It is possible to have an ideal of selfishness
+as well as an ideal of love, a sensual ideal as well as a spiritual.
+Nietzsche's over-man is an ideal; the Mohammedan paradise is an ideal;
+and conduct can be modelled on them. But it is not enough to have
+system in conduct, irrespective of the worth of the ideal which
+determines the system. Some criterion is needed for deciding between
+competing ideals. As long as they are looked upon as mere illusions,
+as expressions of doubt, or as a hazard staked on the unknowable,
+caprice takes the place of law; where all is equally uncertain there
+is no security for the worth of the ideal itself.
+
+Unsatisfactory as they are in this form, the opinions referred to are
+echoes of a pregnant doctrine of Kant's--the doctrine that the moral
+consciousness brings us into closer touch with reality than the merely
+theoretical reason can reach. Various lines of recent thought may
+be said to have been suggested by this view. Almost every idealist
+metaphysician has tended to look upon thought itself as constituting
+the inmost reality of the universe which it conceives or understands;
+and Kant's doctrine may make us pause and ask whether this tendency is
+not simply an assumption without warrant.
+
+Again, the psychological analysis of knowledge has brought out the
+fact of its constant dependence upon practical interests. It is the
+need to perform or attain something, which is the motive that leads
+to the understanding of things; and the understanding of things with
+which alone we are satisfied is commonly that which helps us so to
+describe our experience as to be able to control some practical
+result. 'Knowledge is power'; and not only so, but in its early stages
+and in most of its later developments, knowledge is _for_ power: it is
+for purposes of his own that man becomes the 'interpreter of nature.'
+
+It is to men of science rather than to philosophers that we owe the
+'descriptive theory' of scientific concepts which, within the last
+few years, has gone far to revolutionise the prevailing attitude of
+philosophy to science. Concepts, such as 'mass,' 'energy,' and the
+like, are no longer held to express realities the denial of which
+would be treason to science; they are simply descriptive notions whose
+truth consists in their utility: that is to say, in their ability to
+comprehend all the relevant facts in a simple description. And, in the
+same way, scientific principles are of the nature of postulates, whose
+justification is no necessary law of thought, but must rather be
+sought in the results of scientific investigation.
+
+These three doctrines--the descriptive theory of science, the
+practical nature of knowledge as it is brought out by psychological
+analysis, and the special claims of the moral consciousness--have
+combined to bring about a tendency strongly opposed to the older
+idealist tradition, the tendency to regard practical results as the
+sole test of truth.
+
+This conception is put forward now in philosophical literature as
+a new and independent point of view. The point of view is only in
+process of being hardened into a theory; but, under the name
+of Pragmatism, it has already become the subject of a vigorous
+propaganda. With the value of this doctrine as a general theory of
+reality we need not at present concern ourselves. In spite of the high
+claims it makes for the theoretical significance of moral ideas, its
+adherents have not as yet devoted much attention to the question of
+the worth of these moral ideas and the criteria by which that worth
+may be determined. Yet this surely is the fundamental question for
+ethical theory. On the other hand, as against a merely theoretical
+interpretation of the universe, into which the moral element enters
+only as a sort of loosely-connected appendix, the pragmatists are
+amply justified. Practical ends are prior to theoretical explanations
+of what happens. But practical ends vary, and some measure of their
+relative values is needed.
+
+There is one thing which all reasoning about morality assumes and
+must assume; and that is morality itself. The moral concept--whether
+described as worth or as duty or as goodness--cannot be distilled out
+of any knowledge about the laws of existence or of occurrence. Nor
+will speculation about the real conditions of experience yield it,
+unless adequate recognition be first of all given to the fact that the
+experience which is the subject-matter of philosophy is not merely a
+sensuous and thinking, but also a moral, experience. The approval
+of the good, the disapproval of the evil, and the preference of
+the better: these would seem to be basal facts for an adequate
+philosophical theory: and they imply the striving for a best--however
+imperfect the apprehension of that best may always remain. Only
+when these facts--the characteristic facts of moral experience--are
+recognised as constituents of the experience which is our
+subject-matter, are we in a position profitably to enquire what is
+good and what evil, and how the best is to be conceived.
+
+The recognition of these facts would only be a beginning; but it would
+be a beginning which would avoid the cardinal error fallen into not
+only by the leading exponents of evolutionist morality, but also to be
+found in much of the ethical work of idealist metaphysicians. It seems
+to have been assumed that moral principles can be reached by the
+application of scientific generalisations or of the results of a
+metaphysical analysis which has started by overlooking the facts
+of the moral consciousness. Even as a metaphysic this procedure is
+inadequate; and the interpretations of reality to which it has led
+have erred by over-intellectuality.
+
+The systems of naturalism and of idealism, whose ethical consequences
+have been passed in review, have one feature in common; and it is
+a feature which from of old has been regarded as a mark of genuine
+philosophy. They both seek the One in the many; but they seek it on
+different roads. For the naturalist the most comprehensive description
+of things may be the conception of mass-points in motion; or it may be
+some more recondite conception to which physical analysis points. In
+either case the unity reached will be mechanical. For the idealist,
+on the other hand, reason may be said to be the central principle of
+things: the unity of reality is a rational unity. I have contended in
+these lectures that neither the mechanical unity of the naturalists
+nor the rational unity of the idealists has succeeded in comprehending
+within its unifying principle the essential nature of morality with
+its deep-going dualism of good and evil. But while I have maintained
+that even the conception of reality as the reproduction of itself by
+an eternal self-consciousness is an inadequate conception, it is still
+possible to hold that reality is a connected whole, and that its true
+principle of unity is an ethical principle.
+
+If I were asked what is meant by an ethical unity, I should answer, in
+the first place, that it implies purpose. The unity of reality is not
+exhibited by a description of its present or past conditions or even
+by an account of its causal connexions. These modes of description are
+all affected by the fragmentariness which always belongs to temporal
+apprehension. But, when things are seen in the light of a purpose, a
+view of them as a whole becomes possible, and the fragmentariness of
+time is transcended. And, in the second place, I should say that an
+ethical unity implies the presence within itself of different finite
+centres of conscious activity, whose freedom is not inconsistent with
+their relation to one another and to the Whole.
+
+In his own life, so far as it is a moral life, each individual seeks
+system or unity. And this unity is realised on three different
+levels--as we may call them--which may be distinguished for clearness'
+sake, though it is not possible actually to separate them. On each
+level morality is realised through system, and system is brought about
+by the rule of the morally higher and the submission of the morally
+lower: in this goodness lies, in the opposite evil. If we isolate the
+individual and consider him apart, he may be said to attain goodness
+by the due ordering and control of his sensuous and passional
+nature by rational or spiritual ends. The result may be described,
+negatively, as the suppression of sensualism. But the positive
+description remains imperfect until we can say what the rational
+or spiritual principle is which is to weld all man's 'particular
+impulses' into an organic whole.
+
+And this cannot be done so long as we contemplate the mere individual
+in isolation. We cannot remain at the level of bare individuality.
+Personality itself is not a merely individual product: neither the
+knowledge nor the activity of the individual can be explained without
+reference to his position as a member of society; his inheritance is a
+social inheritance. Nor can the individual establish a claim to deal
+with his own personality as a merely individual end. It is a factor in
+social life; and, in systematising his own life, he must have regard
+to the social factor. In this respect he attains goodness only
+when his individual life seeks a unity higher than that of his own
+individuality, and not centred in his selfish interests. From this
+point of view we may say, again negatively, that goodness consists in
+the suppression of selfishness. But once again there is a difficulty
+about the positive description. Many moralists, undoubtedly, are
+content to rest with the social aspect: to regard the 'health' or
+'vitality' of society as the final expression of morality. But a life
+which is simply absorbed by society cannot be said to be a perfect
+unity. Society itself is a process; and its changes are determined in
+large measure by the moral ideals of its members. For its unity we
+must look to an end--an ideal--of which its actual forms can offer
+indications only. Both man and society are factors in a universal
+order; and their perfection cannot be independent of the purpose of
+this order. When the consciousness of it fills man's life, morality is
+merged in religion.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+Absolute, the, 101 ff.
+  as good, 105.
+  as not good, 104.
+Altruism, 15 ff., 74 f., 118.
+Appearance, 101 ff.
+Approbation, 111 ff.
+Aristotle, 87.
+Artificial selection, 61 ff.
+Austen, Jane, 4 n.
+
+Benevolence, 16.
+Bentham, J., 4 n.
+Bradley, F.H., 88, 100 ff.
+Browning, R., 31.
+
+Characteristics of goodness, 113.
+  reality, 103.
+Competition between groups, 52 f., 58, 74, 79.
+  ideas, 53 ff.
+  individuals, 52, 74, 79.
+Content of morality, agreement as to, 7.
+Christian morality, 7, 18, 20.
+Cosmic process and moral order, 46 ff.
+
+Darwin, C., 35 ff., 39 ff., 57, 60, 62.
+Degrees of reality, 103 ff.
+Descriptive ethics, 76 ff.
+  theory of science, 129.
+Desire and goodness, 90 ff., 102, 110 ff.
+Distinction of good and evil, 93 ff., 113.
+
+Egoism, 15 ff., 74 f., 118.
+Empiricism, 3.
+_Ens reale_, 102.
+  _realissimum_, 102.
+Environment, moral, 70 ff.
+Epicurus, 17.
+Eternal mind, the, 96 ff.
+Ethical controversies at present day, 13 ff.
+  in nineteenth century, 1 ff.
+Ethical unity of things, 133 ff.
+Ethics of evolution, 36 ff.
+Evolution, ethical significance of, 51, 67 ff.
+Evolution of ethics, 36 ff.
+Evolution, theory of, 33 ff., 36 ff.
+Exceptional cases, 11.
+Experiments in morality, 50.
+
+Fichte, J.G., 87.
+Fittest, survival of the, 35, 69 ff.
+
+Galt, J., 4 n.
+Good, the true, 92 ff.
+Goodness as appearance, 102 ff.
+Goodness as contradictory, 117.
+Green, T.H., 77 n., 89 ff., 123.
+Guyau, 125 f.
+
+Halévy, E., 4 n.
+Hedonism, 100.
+Hegel, 87, 104, 123.
+Higher and lower, 107 ff.
+Huxley, T.H., 45 ff., 68.
+
+Ibsen, 31.
+Idealism, 87 ff.
+Ideals, need of, 125.
+Illusions as ideals, 127.
+Immoralist, 24.
+Individual and group, 40 ff.
+Influences forming ethical thought:
+  current morality, 26 ff.
+  science and philosophy, 32 ff.
+Intelligent selection, 61 ff., 80.
+Intuitionism, 2 ff., 81.
+
+Kant, 87, 123, 127 f.
+
+Lange, F.A., 125.
+Leibniz, 87.
+
+Material and moral progress, 29 f.
+Mechanical unity, 133.
+Metaphysics, 82, 85 ff.
+Mill, J.S., 3 n., 8 ff., 28.
+Modifications of general rules, 9.
+Monism and ethics, 109.
+Moral consciousness and reality, 128.
+  environment, 70 ff.
+  experience, 131.
+  ideas, origin of, 1 ff.
+  order and cosmic process, 46 ff.
+  value, criterion of, 1 ff., 75.
+
+Natural selection, 35, 43 ff., 49.
+  in morals, 55.
+Naturalism, 83 f., 86 f.
+Nietzsche, F., 18 ff., 31 f.,
+  47 ff., 67., 127.
+Nobles, morality of, 20.
+
+Origin and validity, 37, 97.
+Over-man, the, 22, 31.
+Owen, Sir R., 59.
+
+Physiological interpretation
+  of life, 67, 76.
+Plato, 31, 87.
+Practical nature of knowledge, 128.
+Pragmatism, 130.
+Progress of life, 34.
+Progressive morality, 9.
+Psychological ethics, 109 ff.
+Purposive selection, 61 ff., 80.
+
+Rational unity, 133.
+Religion, 82 f., 136.
+Renaissance, 33.
+
+Science and metaphysics, 85.
+Self-assertion, 116 ff.
+Self-love, 17.
+Self-realisation, 90 ff., 113 ff.
+Self-sacrifice, 116 ff.
+Selfishness, suppression of, 136.
+Sensationalism, 100.
+Sensualism, suppression of, 135.
+Servile morality, 20.
+Sexual selection, 66.
+Sidgwick, H., 16 f.
+Social qualities, 40 ff.
+Sophists, the, 27.
+Spencer, H., 44, 47, 51, 73, 122.
+Spinoza, 87 f.
+Stephen, Sir L., 44.
+Subjective selection, 60, 66, 80.
+Subjectivity in ethics, 81.
+
+Taylor, A.E., 116, 118.
+Tennyson, 31.
+Tille, A., 25 n.
+Transvaluation, 21.
+Truth as appearance, 101.
+  as moral law, 9 ff., 22 f.
+
+Uebermensch, the, 22, 25 n.
+Unity of life, 34.
+Utilitarianism, the term, 3 n.
+  the theory, 2 ff., 81.
+
+Variation, 49.
+Volz, J., 24 n.
+
+Wellbeing, 71, 75.
+Wilberforce, S., 59.
+
+Zola, 31.
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Recent Tendencies in Ethics, by William
+Ritchie Sorley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Recent Tendencies in Ethics
+
+Author: William Ritchie Sorley
+
+Release Date: June 2, 2004  [eBook #12492]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECENT TENDENCIES IN ETHICS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team from images provided by the Million Book Project
+
+
+
+RECENT TENDENCIES IN ETHICS
+
+Three Lectures to Clergy Given at Cambridge
+
+BY
+
+W. R. SORLEY, M.A. HON. LL.D. EDIN.
+
+Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy
+
+MCMIV
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+These lectures were given to a summer meeting of clergy, held at
+Cambridge in the month of July last. Some passages have been added as
+they were written out for the press, and the crudities of the spoken
+word have, I hope, been pruned away; but, in other respects, the
+original plan of the lectures has been retained. They are now
+published in the hope that they may prove of interest to those who
+heard them, and to others who may desire an account, in short compass
+and in popular form, of some leading features of the ethical thought
+of the present day.
+
+It is inevitable for such an account to be controversial: otherwise it
+could not give a true picture of contemporary opinion. Intellectual
+and social causes have conspired to accentuate traditional differences
+in ethics, and to make the questions in dispute penetrate to the very
+heart of morality. It has been my aim to trace the new influences
+which are at work, and to estimate the value of the ethical doctrines
+to which they have seemed to lead. The estimate has taken the form of
+a criticism, but the criticism is in the interests of construction.
+
+W.R. SORLEY.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, 7th March, 1904.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+  I. CHARACTERISTICS
+ II. ETHICS AND EVOLUTION
+III. ETHICS AND IDEALISM
+
+INDEX
+
+
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+CHARACTERISTICS.
+
+
+A survey of ethical thought, especially English ethical thought,
+during the last century would have to lay stress upon one
+characteristic feature. It was limited in range,--limited, one may
+say, by its regard for the importance of the facts with which it
+had to deal. The thought of the period was certainly not without
+controversy; it was indeed controversial almost to a fault. But
+the controversies of the time centred almost exclusively round two
+questions: the question of the origin of moral ideas, and the question
+of the criterion of moral value. These questions were of course
+traditional in the schools of philosophy; and for more than a century
+English moralists were mainly occupied with inherited topics of
+debate. They gave precision to the questions under discussion; and
+their controversies defined the traditional opposition of ethical
+opinion, and separated moralists into two hostile schools known as
+Utilitarian and Intuitionist.
+
+As regards the former question--that of the origin of moral ideas--the
+Utilitarian School held that they could be traced to experience; and
+by 'experience' they meant in the last resort sense-perceptions
+and the feelings of pleasure and of pain which accompany or follow
+sense-perception. All the facts of our moral consciousness,
+therefore,--the knowledge of right and wrong, the judgments of
+conscience, the recognition of duty and responsibility, the feelings
+of reverence, remorse, and moral indignation,--all these could be
+traced, they thought, to an origin in experience, to an origin which
+in the last resort was sensuous, that is, due to the perceptions of
+the senses and the feelings of pleasure and pain which accompany or
+follow them.
+
+With regard to the criterion or standard of morality,--the second
+question to which I have to call attention,--they held that the
+distinction between right and wrong depended upon the consequences of
+an action in the way of pleasure and pain. That action was right which
+on the whole and in the long run would bring pleasure or happiness to
+those whom it affected: that action was wrong which on the whole and
+in the long run would bring pain rather than pleasure to those whom it
+affected.
+
+From their view as to the origin of moral ideas, the school might more
+properly be called the Empirical School. It is from their views on the
+question of the standard of value, or the criterion of morality, that
+it claimed, and that it received, the name Utilitarian[1]. On both
+these points the Utilitarian School was opposed by an energetic but
+less compact body of writers, known as Intuitionists.
+
+[Footnote 1: It seems to have been through J.S. Mill's influence
+that the term obtained currency. It was used by him as the name of a
+"little society to be composed of young men agreeing in fundamental
+principles" which he formed in the winter of 1822-23. He "did not
+invent the word, but found in one of Galt's novels, the 'Annals of the
+Parish.'" "With a boy's fondness for a name and a banner I seized
+on the word, and for some years called myself and others by it as
+a sectarian appellation" ('Autobiography,' pp. 79, 80; cf.
+'Utilitarianism,' p. 9 n.) A couple of sentences from Galt may be
+quoted: "As there was at the time a bruit and a sound about universal
+benevolence, philanthropy, utility, and all the other disguises with
+which an infidel philosophy appropriated to itself the charity,
+brotherly love, and well-doing inculcated by our holy religion, I set
+myself to task upon these heads.... With well-doing, however, I went
+more roundly to work. I told my people that I thought they had more
+sense than to secede from Christianity to become Utilitarians, for
+that it would be a confession of ignorance of the faith they deserted,
+seeing that it was the main duty inculcated by our religion to do all
+in morals and manners to which the new-fangled doctrine of utility
+pretended." Mill is wrong in supposing that his use of the term "was
+the first time that any one had taken the title of Utilitarian"; and
+Galt, who represents his annalist as writing of the year 1794,
+is historically justified. Writing in 1781 Bentham uses the word
+'utilitarian,' and again in 1802 he definitely asserts that it is the
+only name of his creed ('Works,' x. 92, 392). M. Halevy ('L'evolution
+de la doctrine utilitaire,' p. 300) draws attention to the presence of
+the word in Jane Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility,' published in 1811.]
+
+The Intuitionists maintained--to put the matter briefly--that the
+moral consciousness of man could not be entirely accounted for by
+experiences of the kind laid stress on by the Utilitarians. They
+maintained that moral ideas were in their origin spiritual, although
+they might be called into definite consciousness by the experience of
+the facts to which they could be applied. Experience might call them
+forth into the light of day; but it was held that they belonged, in
+nature and origin, to the constitution of man's mind. On this ground,
+therefore, the school was properly called Intuitional: they held that
+moral ideas were received by direct vision or intuition, as it were,
+not by a process of induction from particular facts.
+
+And, in the second place, with regard to the criterion of morality,
+that also (they held) was not dependent on the consequences in the
+way of happiness and misery which the Utilitarians emphasised. On the
+contrary, moral ideas themselves had an independent validity; they had
+a worth and authority for conduct which could not be accounted for by
+any consequences in which action resulted: belonging as they did to
+the essence of the human spirit, they also had authority over the
+conduct of man's life.
+
+Now the ethical controversies of last century were almost entirely
+about these two points and between these two opposed schools. No doubt
+the two questions thus discussed did go very near to the root of the
+whole matter. They pointed to the consideration of the question of
+man's place in the universe and his spiritual nature as determining
+the part which it was his to play in the world. They suggested, if
+they did not always raise, the question whether man is entirely a
+product of nature or whether he has a spiritual essence to which
+nature may be subdued. But the larger issues suggested were not
+followed out. Common consent seemed to limit the discussion to the two
+questions described; and this limitation of the controversy tended to
+a precision and clearness in method, which is often wanting in the
+ethical thought of the present day, disturbed as it is by new and more
+far-reaching problems.
+
+This limitation of scope, which I venture to select as the leading
+characteristic of last century's ethical enquiries, may be further
+seen in the large amount of agreement between the two schools
+regarding the content of morality. The Utilitarians no more than
+the Intuitionists were opponents of the traditional--as we may call
+it--the Christian morality of modern civilisation. They both adopted
+and defended the well-recognised virtues of truth and justice, of
+temperance and benevolence, which have been accepted by the common
+tradition of ages as the expression of man's moral consciousness. The
+Intuitionists no doubt were sometimes regarded--they may indeed have
+sometimes regarded themselves--as in a peculiar way the guardians of
+the traditional morality, and as interested more than their opponents
+in defending a view in harmony with man's spiritual essence and
+inheritance. But we do not find any attack upon the main content
+of morality by the Utilitarian writers. On the contrary, they were
+interested in vindicating their own full acceptance of the traditional
+morality. This is, in particular, the case with John Stuart Mill, the
+high-minded representative of the Utilitarian philosophy in the middle
+of last century. "In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth," he says,
+"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."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Utilitarianism, 9th ed., pp. 24, 25.]
+
+No doubt Mill was a practical reformer as well as a philosophical
+thinker, and he wished on certain special points to revise the
+accepted code. He says that "the received code of ethics is by no
+means of divine right, that mankind has still much to learn as to the
+effects of actions on the general happiness."[1] He would even take
+this point--the modifiability of the ordinary moral code--as a sort
+of test question distinguishing his own system from that of the
+intuitional moralists; and in one place he says that "the contest
+between the morality which appeals to an external standard, and
+that which grounds itself on internal conviction, is the contest
+of progressive morality against stationary--of reason and argument
+against the deification of mere opinion and habit. The doctrine that
+the existing order of things is the natural order, and that, being
+natural, all innovation upon it is criminal, is as vicious in morals
+as it is now at last admitted to be in physics and in society and
+government."[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 35.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Dissertations, ii. 472.]
+
+A passage such as this leads us to ask, What exactly is the extent of
+the modifications which Mill seeks to make in the ordinary scale of
+values? Does he, for instance, wish to invert any ordinary moral
+rules? Would he do away with, or in any important respect modify, the
+duties of truth or justice, temperance or benevolence? Far from it He
+only suggests, as many moralists of both parties have suggested, that
+in the application of moral law to the details of experience certain
+modifications are required. How far he goes in this direction may be
+seen from his own instance, that of truth. He would admit certain
+exceptions to the law of truth; he would give the less rigorous
+answers to the time-honoured questions as to whether one should tell
+the truth to an invalid in a dangerous illness or to a would-be
+criminal. But Mill always asserts the sanctity of the general
+principle; and, on this account, he holds that "in order that the
+exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have the
+least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought
+to be recognised and, if possible, its limits defined; and if the
+principle of utility is good for anything, it must be good for
+weighing these conflicting utilities against one another, and marking
+out the region within which one or the other preponderates[1]." He
+holds that there are such limits to veracity. He even thinks--though
+here he is not quite correct--that such limits have been acknowledged
+by all moralists[2]. He would have been correct if he had said that
+they had been acknowledged by moralists of all schools: the admission
+of these limits is not peculiar to Utilitarians. But he vigorously
+defends the validity of the general rule, and maintains that, in
+considering any possible exception, we have to take account not merely
+of the present utility of the falsehood, but of its effect upon the
+sanctity of the general principle in the minds of men. The Utilitarian
+doctrine is expressly used by him to confirm the ordinary general laws
+of the moral consciousness. Nay, these rules--such as the duties of
+being temperate and just and benevolent--were, according to Mill,
+themselves the result of experiences of utility on the part of our
+predecessors, and from them handed down to us by the tradition of the
+race. No doubt in this Mill is applying a theoretical view too easily
+to a question of history. It is one thing to maintain, as he does,
+that utility is the correct test of morality; it is another thing
+altogether to say that our ordinary moral rules are the records or
+expressions of earlier judgments of utility. The former statement
+is made as a controversial statement which is admitted to be so
+far doubtful that most men need to be convinced of it. The latter
+statement could only be true if nobody had ever doubted the former--if
+everybody in past ages had accepted utility as the standard of
+morality. But, for our present purpose, his attitude to this question
+is of interest only as bringing out the point that the different
+schools of ethical thought during last century had a large basis of
+common agreement, and that this basis of common agreement was their
+acknowledgment of the validity of the moral rules recognised by the
+ordinary conscience.
+
+[Footnote 1: Utilitarianism, p. 34.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 33.]
+
+The Utilitarians no more than the Intuitionists sought to make
+any fundamental change in the content of right and of wrong as
+acknowledged by modern society. Their controversies were almost
+entirely of what may be called an academic kind, and, however decided,
+would have little effect upon a man's practical attitude. But it would
+not be possible to make any such confident assertion regarding the
+ethical controversies of the present day. We have no longer the same
+common basis of agreement to rely upon that our predecessors had a
+generation ago. There are many indications in recent literature that
+the suggestion is now made more readily than it was twenty or thirty
+years ago that the scale of moral values may have to be revised; and
+it seems to me that the ethical controversies of the coming generation
+will not be restricted to academic opponents whose disputes concern
+nothing more than the origin of moral ideas and their ultimate
+criterion. Modern controversy will involve these questions, but it
+will go deeper and it will spread its results wider: it appears as
+if it would not hesitate to call in question the received code of
+morality, and to revise our standard of right and wrong. One school at
+any rate has already made a claim of this sort, and the extravagance
+of its teaching has not prevented it from attracting adherents.
+
+It is on this ground, therefore,--because I believe that the ethical
+question is no longer so purely an academic question as it was some
+years ago, because it affects not only the philosophic thinker but the
+practical man who is concerned with the problems of his day,--that I
+have selected the topic for these lectures. It is not merely that many
+modern writers assert some general doctrine as to the relativity of
+right and wrong. So much was implied, though it was not much laid
+stress upon, in the utilitarian doctrine. For the utilitarian conduct
+is right according to the amount of happiness it produces: goodness
+is relative to its tendency to produce happiness. But a much greater
+importance may attach to the assertion of the relativity of morals
+when one couples that doctrine with the idea now prevalent of the
+indefinitely great changes which the progress of the race brings
+about, not only in the social order but also in the structure and
+faculties of man himself.
+
+Hence it is not surprising to find that there are at the present day
+some writers who ask for nothing less than a revision of the whole
+traditional morality, and in whose minds that demand is connected with
+the dominant doctrine of progress as it is expressed in the theory of
+evolution.
+
+Perhaps we might trace the beginnings of this controversy as to the
+content of what is right and what is wrong to an older opposition
+in ethical thought, an opposition which especially affects the
+utilitarian doctrine--the controversy of Egoism and Altruism. If
+we look at these two conceptions of egoism and altruism as the
+Utilitarians did, if we regard the conception of egoism as having
+to do with one's own personal happiness, and that of altruism as
+describing the general happiness, the happiness of others rather than
+of oneself, then obviously the questions arise whether the conduct
+which produces the greatest happiness of others will or will not also
+produce the greatest happiness of the individual agent, and which
+should be chosen in the event of their disagreement. Is my happiness
+and that which will tend to it always to be got on the same lines of
+conduct as those which will bring about the greatest happiness of the
+greatest number?
+
+The Utilitarian writers of last century were of course conscious of
+this problem, conscious that there was a possible discrepancy between
+egoistic conduct and altruistic conduct; but they agreed to lay stress
+upon altruistic results as determining moral quality. Their tendency
+was to minimise the difference between the egoistic and the altruistic
+effects of action, and in so far as a difference had to be allowed to
+emphasise the importance of the claims of the community at large, that
+is, roughly speaking, to take the altruistic standpoint. Recent and
+more careful investigators have brought out more exactly the extent
+and significance of the divergence. In particular this was done with
+perfect clearness and precision by the late Professor Sidgwick.
+He showed that the difference--although it might be easily
+exaggerated--was yet real and important, that the two systems did not
+mean the same thing, that we could not rely upon altruistic conduct
+always being for individual benefit, that there was no 'natural
+identity' between egoism and altruism. He held that morality, to
+save it from an unsolved dualism, required a principle capable of
+reconciling the discrepancy between the conduct in accordance with the
+axiom of Benevolence and the conduct in accordance with the equally
+rational axiom of Self-love.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Professor Sidgwick's last words on the question are as
+follows: "If then the reconciliation of duty and self-interest is to
+be regarded as a hypothesis logically necessary to avoid a fundamental
+contradiction in one chief department of our thought, it remains
+to ask how far this necessity constitutes a sufficient reason for
+accepting this hypothesis.... Those who hold that the edifice of
+physical science is really constructed of conclusions logically
+inferred from self-evident premises, may reasonably demand that any
+practical judgments claiming philosophic certainty should be based on
+an equally firm foundation. If, on the other hand, we find that in our
+supposed knowledge of the world of nature propositions are commonly
+taken to be universally true, which yet seem to rest on no other
+grounds than that we have a strong disposition to accept them, and
+that they are indispensable to the systematic coherence of our
+beliefs,--it will be more difficult to reject a similarly supported
+assumption in ethics, without opening the door to universal
+scepticism" ('Methods of Ethics,' 6th ed., pp. 506, 507).]
+
+But while this question of egoism and altruism has thus been
+recognised as a possible source of perplexity, affecting the ethical
+standard itself, both egoists and orthodox utilitarians have commonly
+agreed--though for different reasons--to insist that morality means
+the same for them both, and to hold with Epicurus that "we cannot lead
+a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honour, and
+justice." It is only in quite recent days that a thoroughgoing attempt
+has been made to revalue all the old standards of morality. And
+the attempt is made from a point of view which is certainly not
+altruistic. The Utilitarian writers of last generation, if they
+admitted the conflict of egoism and altruism, weighted every
+consideration on the side of altruism. They emphasised therefore the
+agreement between their own utilitarian doctrine and the Christian
+morality in which altruism is fundamental. On the other hand, the more
+recent tendency to which I refer emphasises and exalts the egoistic
+side, and thus accentuates the difference between the new moral
+code--if we may call it moral--and the Christian morality.
+
+The boldest and most brilliant exponent of this tendency is Friedrich
+Nietzsche[1], already the object of a cult in Germany, and an author
+to be reckoned with as one of the new forces in European thought. It
+is true that some of the most characteristic products of his genius
+are closely akin to the insanity which clouded his later years. Yet it
+is impossible to read his writings without recognising his penetrating
+insight as well as his abundance of virile passion. Besides, in
+spite of all his extravagances--or, perhaps, because of them--he is
+symptomatic of certain tendencies of the age. Nietzsche's demand
+is for nothing less than a revision of the whole moral code and a
+reversal of its most characteristic provisions. And he has the rare
+distinction of being a writer on morality who disclaims the title of
+'moralist.'
+
+[Footnote 1: Friedrich Nietzsche, the son of a clergyman, was born in
+Saxony in 1844. In 1869 he became Professor of Classical Philology
+in Basel, and held this post for ten years, though his work was
+interrupted by ill-health for a long period. His first book was
+published in 1871; the preface to the last was dated "on the 30th of
+September 1888, the day on which the first book of the Transvaluation
+of all Values was completed." He became hopelessly insane in 1889, and
+died in 1900. The reader will find a luminous estimate of his work
+in the essay on "The Life and Opinions of Friedrich Nietzsche" in
+Pringle-Pattison's 'Man's Place in the Cosmos,' 2nd ed., 1902.]
+
+The ideas which Nietzsche expresses go to the root of the matter. In
+the first place, he drew a distinction between what he regarded as two
+different types of morality. One of these he called the morality of
+masters or nobles, and he called the other the morality of slaves.
+Self-reliance and courage may be cited as the qualities typical of the
+noble morality, for they are the qualities which tend to make the man
+who possesses them a master over others, to give him a prominent and
+powerful place in the world, and to help him to subjugate to his will
+both nature and his fellow-men. On the other hand, there are the
+qualities which form the characteristic features of Christian
+morality--such as benevolence or love of one's neighbour, the
+fundamental precept of the Gospels, and the humility and obedience
+which have been perhaps unduly emphasised in ecclesiastical ethics.
+These are the qualities which he means when he speaks of the morality
+of the slave.
+
+In the second place, therefore, what is distinctive of Nietzsche is
+this: that he explicitly rejects the Christian morality, in particular
+the virtues of benevolence, of obedience, of humility: these are
+regarded by him as belonging to a type of morality which is to be
+overcome and which he calls the servile morality. He deliberately sets
+in antithesis to one another what he calls Christian and what he calls
+noble virtues: meaning by the latter the qualities allied to courage,
+force of will, and strength of arm, such as were manifested in certain
+Pagan races, but above all in the heroes of the Roman Republic. He
+would, therefore, deliberately prefer the older Pagan valuation of
+conduct to the Christian valuation.
+
+In the third place, he attempts what he calls a transvaluation of
+all values. Every moral idea needs revision, every moral idea, every
+suggestion of value or worth in conduct, must be tried and tested
+afresh, and a new morality substituted for the old. And with this
+claim for revision is connected his idea that the egoistic principle
+which underlies the Pagan virtues preferred to the Christian, and the
+higher development of the self-capacities to which it will lead, will
+evolve a superior kind of men--"Over-men" or "Uebermenschen"--to whom,
+therefore, we may look as setting the tone and giving the rule for
+subsequent conduct.
+
+Nietzsche is an unsystematic writer, though none the less powerful on
+that account. He is apt to be perplexing to the reader who looks for
+system or a definite and reasoned statement of doctrine; but his
+aphorisms are all the more fitted to impress readers who are not
+inclined to criticism, and might shirk an elaborate argument. It is
+difficult, accordingly, to select from him a series of propositions
+that would give a general idea of the complete transmutation of
+morality which he demands. So far as I can make out, there is only one
+point in which he still agrees with the old traditional morality, and
+that point seems to cause him no little difficulty. No thinker can
+afford to question the binding nature of the law of Truth, least of
+all a thinker so obviously in earnest about his own prophetic message
+as Nietzsche was. All his investigations presuppose the validity of
+this law for his own thought; all his utterances imply an appeal to
+it; and his influence depends on the confidence which others have in
+his veracity. And on this one point only Nietzsche has to confess
+himself a child of the older morality. "This book," he says in the
+preface to one of the least paradoxical of his works, 'Dawn of Day,'
+"This book ... implies a contradiction and is not afraid of it: in it
+we break with the faith in morals--why? In obedience to morality! Or
+what name shall we give to that which passes therein? We should prefer
+more modest names. But it is past all doubt that even to us a 'thou
+shalt' is still speaking, even we still obey a stern law above us--and
+this is the last moral precept which impresses itself even upon
+us, which even we obey: in this respect, if in any, we are still
+conscientious people--viz., we do not wish to return to that which we
+consider outlived and decayed, to something 'not worthy of belief,' be
+it called God, virtue, truth, justice, charity; we do not approve of
+any deceptive bridges to old ideals, we are radically hostile to all
+that wants to mediate and to amalgamate with us; hostile to any actual
+religion and Christianity; hostile to all the vague, romantic, and
+patriotic feelings; hostile also to the love of pleasure and want of
+principle of the artists who would fain persuade us to worship when we
+no longer believe--for we are artists; hostile, in short, to the whole
+European Femininism (or Idealism, if you prefer this name), which
+is ever 'elevating' and consequently 'degrading.' Yet, as such
+conscientious people, we immoralists and atheists of this day still
+feel subject to the German honesty and piety of thousands of years'
+standing, though as their most doubtful and last descendants; nay, in
+a certain sense, as their heirs, as executors of their inmost will, a
+pessimist will, as aforesaid, which is not afraid of denying itself,
+because it delights in taking a negative position. We ourselves
+are--suppose you want a formula--the consummate self-dissolution of
+morals." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Nietzsche, 'Werke,' iv. pp. 8, 9 (1899). The translation
+is taken (with corrections) from the English version by Johanna Volz
+(1903). Nietzsche has so shocked and confused the English printer that
+when the author writes himself an 'immoralist' the compositor has
+made him call himself an 'immortalist.' And errors of the sort do not
+affect the printer only. Nietzsche's sneer at 'Femininism' is deftly
+turned aside by Miss Volz, by the simple device of substituting for
+it the word Pessimism. And Dr Tille, the translator of his best-known
+work, 'Thus spake Zarathustra' (1896, p. xix), has been bemused in
+an even more wonderful manner. He enumerates "the best known
+representatives" of Anarchic tendencies in political thought as
+"Humboldt, Dunoyer, Stirner, Bakounine, and Auberon Spencer"! The
+vision of Mr Auberon Herbert and Mr Herbert Spencer doubled up into a
+single individual is 'a thing imagination boggles at.' Perhaps it is
+the translator's idea of the _Uebermensch_.]
+
+Perhaps it is impossible to understand Nietzsche unless one admits
+that his writings show traces of the disease which very soon prevented
+his writing at all. But at the same time, while that is true, there is
+much more in his work than the ravings of a distempered mind. There
+may have been little method, but there was a great deal of genius, in
+his madness. While he always overstates his case,--his colossal egoism
+leads him to exaggerate any doctrine,--and while I do not think that
+the actual doctrines of Nietzsche in the way he puts them will ever
+gain any general acceptance, while his system of morality may not have
+any chance of being the moral code of the next generation or even of
+being regarded as the serious alternative to Christian morality, yet
+it is not too much to say that he is symptomatic of a new tendency in
+ethical thought, a tendency of which he is the greatest, if also the
+most extravagant exponent, but which has its roots in certain new
+influences which have come to this generation with the ideas and the
+triumphs, scientific and material, of the preceding generation.
+
+There are two quite different kinds of influence to which the
+formation of an ethical doctrine may be due. In the first place, there
+are the moral sentiments and opinions of the community and of the
+moralist himself; and, in the second place, there are the scientific
+and philosophical doctrines accepted by the writer or inspiring what
+is loosely called the spirit of the time. In most ethical movements
+the two kinds of influence will be found co-operating, though the
+latter is almost entirely absent in some cases. The incoherence of
+popular opinions about morality is a potent stimulus to reflexion, and
+may of itself give rise to systematic ethical enquiry. This is more
+particularly the case when a change of social conditions, or contact
+with alien modes of life, force into light the inadequacy of the
+conventional morality. In such a case the new ethical reflexion may
+have a disintegrating effect upon the traditional code, and give
+to the movement the character and importance of a revolution. The
+reflective activity of the Sophists in ancient Greece--a movement of
+the deepest ethical significance--was in the main of this nature.
+It consisted in a radical sifting and criticism of current moral
+standards, and was due almost entirely to the first class of
+influences, being affected only in the slightest degree by scientific
+or philosophical ideas.
+
+Influences of the same kind combine with science and philosophy in
+moulding the ethical thought of the present day. Contemporary ethical
+speculation is by no means exclusively due to the thinkers who attempt
+to arrive at a consistent interpretation of the nature of reality; and
+it has features which constantly remind us how closely moral reflexion
+is connected with the order and changes of social conditions.
+
+Every age is no doubt apt to exaggerate its own claims to mark an
+epoch. But, after a century of achievements in applied science, there
+seems little risk of error in asserting that the world is now becoming
+conscious as it never was before of the vast power given by material
+resources when under the control of a cool intelligence. And in the
+competition of nations it is not surprising that there should be an
+imperious demand for the most alert and well-trained minds to utilise
+these resources in war and in industry. It is not surprising; nor
+would it be a fit subject for regret, did not the concentration of the
+outlook upon material success tend to the neglect of 'things which
+are more excellent.' Writing many years ago J.S. Mill remarked that
+"hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made
+have lightened the day's toil of any human being." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Political Economy, Book iv. chap. vi. sec. 2.]
+
+There is a further question which ought to be asked of every new
+advance in material civilisation, Does it foster, or at least does
+it leave unimpeded, the development of man's spiritual inheritance?
+Certainly, the control of nature by mind is not necessarily hostile
+to the ideals which give dignity to the arts and sciences and to man
+himself. And yet it does not always favour their presence. The weak
+nations of the world in arms and commerce have contributed their full
+share to the higher life of the race; and the triumphs of a country on
+the battlefield or in business give no security for the presence among
+its people of the ideals which illumine or of the righteousness which
+exalts. The history of Germany herself might point the moral. A
+century ago, when she lay crushed beneath the heel of Napoleon, her
+poets and philosophers were the prophets of ideals which helped to
+bind her scattered states into a powerful nation, and which enriched
+the mind of man. To-day we are forced to ask whether military and
+industrial success have changed the national bent: for poetry seems
+to have deserted her, and her philosophy betrays the dominance of
+material interests.
+
+Material success and the struggle for it are apt to monopolise the
+attention; and perhaps the greatest danger of the new social order
+is the growing materialisation of the mental outlook. It would
+be needless to point to the evidence, amongst all classes in the
+mercantile nations, of the feverish haste to be rich and to enjoy. For
+to point to this has been common with the moralists of all ages. This
+age like others--perhaps more than most--is strewn with the victims of
+the struggle. But it can also boast a product largely its own--the new
+race of victors who have emerged triumphant, with wealth beyond the
+dreams of avarice of the past generation. Their interests make them
+cosmopolitan; they are unrestrained by the traditional obligations of
+ancient lineage; and the world seems to lie before them as something
+to be bought and sold. Neither they nor others have quite realised as
+yet the power which colossal wealth gives in modern conditions. And it
+remains to be seen whether the multimillionaire will claim to figure
+as Nietzsche's 'over-man,' spurning ordinary moral conventions, and
+will play the _role_, in future moral discourses, which the ethical
+dialogues of Plato assign to the 'tyrant,'
+
+General literature, even in its highest forms, seems to reflect a
+corresponding change of view as to what is of most worth in life.
+Already the strong hold on duty and the spiritual world which Tennyson
+unfalteringly displayed, even the deeper insight into motive and the
+faith in goodness which are shown by Browning, are read by us as
+utterances of a past age. We have grown used to a presentment of human
+life such as Ibsen's in which the customary morality is regarded as
+a thin veneer of convention which hardly covers the selfishness in
+grain, or to the description of life as a tangled mass of animal
+passions,--a description which, in spite of the genius of Zola, does
+not fail to weary and disgust,--or perhaps as only a spectacle in
+which what men call good and evil are the light and shade of a picture
+which may serve to produce some artistic emotion. An attitude akin
+to these becomes an ethical point of view in Nietzsche, the _enfant
+terrible_ of modern thought, who maintains that man's life must be
+interpreted physiologically only and not spiritually, and who would
+replace philanthropy by a boundless egoism.
+
+Influences of the second kind are usually more prominent than the
+preceding in the case of the philosophical moralist, and they are
+not always avoided by the moralist who boasts his independence of
+philosophy. The former influences are more constantly at work: they
+supply the facts for all ethical reflexion. Ethical thought is not
+so uniformly influenced by the conceptions arrived at in science
+or philosophy. But there are certain periods of history in which
+conceptions regarding the truth of things--whether arrived at by
+scientific methods or not--have had a profound influence upon men's
+views of good and evil. At the beginning of our era, for instance, the
+view of God and man introduced by Christianity, resulted in a deepened
+and, to some extent, in a distinctive morality. Again, at the time of
+the Renaissance, the new knowledge and new interests combined with the
+weakening of the Church's and of the Empire's authority to bring about
+the demand for a revision of the ecclesiastical morality, and led to
+some not very successful attempts to find a firmer basis for conduct.
+
+At the present day also it is the case that philosophers of different
+schools are for the most part agreed in claiming ethical importance
+for their conceptions about reality. In particular, the scientific
+thought of the last generation has been reformed under the, influence
+of the group of ideas which constitute the theory of evolution. There
+is hardly a department of thought which this new doctrine has not
+touched; and upon morality its influence may seem to be peculiarly
+important and direct. The theory of evolution, as put forward by
+Darwin, has established certain positions which have been regarded as
+of special significance for ethics.
+
+In the first place, it is an assertion of the unity of life. And we
+must not limit the generality of this proposition. It is not merely
+a denial of the fixity of species, an assertion that there are no
+natural kinds so inseparable from one another that each must be the
+result of a distinct creative act. It is also an assertion that human
+life must be treated as a part in the larger whole of organic being,
+that the mind of man is continuous with animal perception, that moral
+activity is continuous with non-moral impulse. And the assertion of
+the unity of life is at the same time an assertion of the progress of
+life. What we call the higher forms are in all cases developments from
+simpler and lower forms.
+
+Further, the method of this progress has been described. Herein indeed
+lay Darwin's most important achievement. He detected and demonstrated
+the operation of a factor hitherto unsuspected. This new factor to
+which he drew attention as the chief agent in organic development was
+called by him 'natural selection,' The name has a positive sound and
+suggests a process of active choice. But Darwin was fully aware that
+the process to which he gave this name was a negative and not a
+positive operation; and as such it was clearly recognised by him. The
+name was, no doubt, chosen simply to bring out the fact that the
+same kind of results as those which man produces by conscious and
+artificial selection may be arrived at without conscious purpose by
+the operation of merely natural forces. Instead of the 'fit' being
+directly chosen or encouraged, what happens is simply that the 'unfit'
+die out or are exterminated, so that room to live and means of life
+are left for the survivors.
+
+What may be meant by this idea of 'fitness'--which meets us in the
+famous phrase that the 'survival of the fittest' in the struggle for
+life is the goal of evolution--is a question which brings us at once
+to the consideration of the ethical significance of the theory. For
+it seems to lay claim to give both an explanation of progress and an
+interpretation of what constitutes worth in conduct.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+ETHICS AND EVOLUTION.
+
+
+There are two things which are not always kept distinct,--what may be
+called the 'evolution of ethics' and the 'ethics of evolution,' The
+former might more correctly be called the evolution of morality,--the
+account of the way in which moral customs, moral institutions, and
+moral ideas have been developed and have come to take their place in
+the life of mankind. Clearly these are all features of human life;
+and, if the theory of evolution applies to human life, we must expect
+it also to have some contribution to make to this portion of man's
+development,--to the growth of the customs, institutions, and ideas
+which enter into and make up his morality.
+
+But by the 'ethics of evolution' is meant something more than the
+'evolution of ethics' or development of morality. It signifies a
+theory which turns the facts of evolution to account in determining
+the value for man of different kinds of conduct and feeling and idea.
+When one speaks of the ethics of evolution one must be understood to
+mean that the evolution theory does something more than trace the
+history of things, that it gives us somehow or other a standard or
+criterion of moral worth or value. This additional point may be
+expressed by the technical distinction between origin and validity.
+Clearly there is a very great difference between showing how something
+has come to be what it is and assigning to it worth or validity for
+the guidance of life or thought It may be that the former enquiry has
+some bearing upon the latter; but only confusion will result if the
+two problems are not clearly distinguished at the outset,--as they
+very seldom are distinguished by writers on the theory of evolution in
+its application to ethics.
+
+It may be said that the evolutionist writers on ethics seek to base an
+ethics of evolution upon the evolution of ethics, but that they are
+not always aware of the real nature and difficulties of their task.
+Sometimes they seem to think that in tracing the evolution of ethics
+they are also and at the same time determining and establishing a
+theory of the ethics of evolution. We must avoid this error, and keep
+the two problems distinct in our minds. Yet from the nature of the
+case it holds true that it is only through the facts which the theory
+of evolution establishes or can establish as to the development of
+morality that it is able to make any contribution to the solution of
+the further question as to the criterion of morality--the question,
+that is to say, of moral worth or value.
+
+We cannot, therefore, avoid dealing with the evolution of ethics. But
+in what follows I am not considering it for its own sake--though it
+is an interesting and important question. In order to simplify
+the argument, we may allow what is claimed for it, and give the
+evolutionist credit for even greater success on the field of
+historical investigation--which is his own field--than he would, if
+fair-minded, claim for himself. The problem I have in view lies beyond
+this historical question. It is the problem how far the known facts
+and probable theories regarding the development of morality can make
+any contribution towards determining the standard of worth for our
+ideas, our sentiments, and our conduct. Now if we read the accredited
+exponents of the doctrine of evolution we shall find amongst them a
+considerable variety of view regarding the bearing of the theory of
+evolution upon this properly ethical problem--the problem of the
+criterion or standard of goodness.
+
+In the first place, it is desirable to characterise briefly Darwin's
+own contribution to this matter. The suggestion made by him deals
+almost entirely with what I have called the development of morality,
+not with the ethics of evolution; and perhaps it may seem to us now
+a rather obvious suggestion. But he was the first to make this
+suggestion; and it comes from him as a direct application of the
+theory he had established with regard to animal development. His
+suggestion is simply this--that moral qualities are selected in the
+struggle for existence in much the same way as purely physical or
+animal excellences are selected, that is, by their contributing to the
+continued and more efficient life of the organism. But Darwin saw very
+clearly that the qualities which are recognised as moral are not
+by any means in all cases contributory to individual success and
+efficiency. They are not all of them qualities that contribute to the
+success of one individual in his struggle with other individuals
+for the means of subsistence. We may say that courage, prudence,
+self-reliance, will have that effect, and that consequently in the
+struggle for life the individuals who show such qualities will have
+a better chance of survival than those without them. But what about
+qualities such as sympathy, willingness to help another, obedience,
+and faithfulness to a community or to a cause? Clearly, these are not
+qualities which are of special assistance to the individual. But they
+are qualities which are or may be of very great importance to the
+tribe or community of individuals. Supposing such qualities of mutual
+help, of willingness even to sacrifice oneself for others--the
+qualities which are commonly grouped as expressions of the social
+instinct,--supposing these to have been somehow developed in the
+members of a tribe, that tribe would, other things being equal, have
+an advantage in a struggle with another tribe whose members did not
+possess these qualities. Now the advantage thus gained in the struggle
+would be a case of the operation of natural selection: it would
+exterminate or weaken the tribe without these social qualities, and it
+would thus give opportunity for the growing efficiency of the tribe
+that possessed them.
+
+Put in the briefest way, this is the explanation which Darwin gave
+of the growth of the social qualities in mankind; and the social
+qualities make up, to a large extent at any rate, what we call moral
+qualities. Darwin, however, saw further than this: he saw that, while
+this might account for the development of what we may call savage and
+barbarian virtues, there was in civilised mankind a development of
+sympathy which went far beyond this, and which one could not with good
+reason account for by asserting that it rendered assistance to the
+community in its struggle for existence with other communities.
+
+Thus, with regard to the former question, he says: "A tribe including
+many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of
+patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always
+ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common
+good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be
+natural selection[1]."
+
+[Footnote 1: Descent of Man, Part I. chap. v. p. 203 (new ed., 1901).]
+
+But when he comes to the case of civilised men he finds a difficulty.
+"With savages," he says, "the weak in body or mind are soon
+eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state
+of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check
+the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the
+maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men
+exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last
+moment.... The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is
+mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was
+originally acquired as part of the social instincts.... Nor could
+we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without
+deterioration in the noblest part of our nature[1]." This sympathy,
+which natural selection cannot preserve or vindicate even in the
+struggle of communities, is nevertheless recognised by Darwin as
+having a moral value outside of and above natural selection and the
+struggle for existence,--a value of which these have no right to
+judge. He thinks that if we followed hard reason--and by 'hard reason'
+he obviously means an imitation on our part of the action of natural
+selection--we should be led to sweep away all those institutions by
+which civilised mankind guards its weaker members. But this, he says,
+would be only to deteriorate the "noblest part of our nature." What is
+noblest in our nature, then, is not that which natural selection has
+favoured or maintained. There is, therefore, implied in his view a
+limitation of the ethical significance of the principle of natural
+selection. For, when we come to this crucial question of conduct,
+it is not allowed to give any criterion of moral validity. More
+comprehensive attempts on the same lines as Darwin's have been made
+subsequently; and various writers have tried to show how the moral
+criterion may be resolved into social efficiency, or how it may be
+derived from a problematic future state of the human race on this
+earth when the need for struggle has disappeared and all things
+go smoothly. The former view may be found in Sir Leslie Stephen's
+'Science of Ethics'; the latter is the peculiar property of Mr Herbert
+Spencer. Somewhat unwillingly I must for the present leave these
+special views without consideration,[2] because I wish to bring out
+still more plainly the various attitudes of the evolutionists to
+morality, and especially to draw attention to a view very different
+from those just mentioned, though not altogether without support in
+Darwin, which, as put forward some years ago by the late Professor
+Huxley[3], produced no little flutter in scientific dovecots.
+
+[Footnote 1: Descent of Man, pp. 205, 206.]
+
+[Footnote 2: For a discussion of these views I may be allowed to
+refer to my' Ethics of Naturalism,' chap. viii. (chap. ix. in the new
+edition). The same volume contains a more exhaustive examination than
+is possible in this lecture of the whole subject of evolutionist
+ethics.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The Romanes Lecture, 1893, "Evolution and Ethics." In
+1894 this was republished, with prolegomena, in vol. ix. of 'Collected
+Essays,' with the title, "Evolution and Ethics, and other Essays."]
+
+Professor Huxley reviewed what he called the cosmic process as it was
+guided by the law of evolution. He showed how at each step of that
+process new results were only attained by enormous waste and pain on
+the part of those living creatures which were thrust aside as unfit
+for their surroundings, and he held consequently that the whole cosmic
+process is of an entirely different character from what we must mean
+when we use the term 'moral.' According to him morality is opposed
+to the method of evolution, and cannot be based upon the theory of
+evolution. It is of independent worth; but Professor Huxley, perhaps
+wisely, refrained from investigating its justification, while
+enforcing "the apparent paradox that ethical nature, while born of
+cosmic nature, is necessarily at enmity with its parent"
+
+"The practice of that which is ethically best--what we call goodness
+or virtue--involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is
+opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle
+for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands
+self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all
+competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect,
+but shall help, his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to
+the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible
+to survive. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence....
+Let us understand once for all that the ethical progress of society
+depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running
+away from it, but in combating it."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Evolution and Ethics, pp. 81-83.]
+
+Here, then, is a view very different from the easy optimism of Mr
+Herbert Spencer. The cosmic order has nothing to say to the moral
+order, except that, somehow or other, it has given it birth; the
+moral order has nothing to say to the cosmic order, except that it
+is certainly bad. Morality is occupied in opposing the methods of
+evolution.
+
+Still another view is possible. It may be held that the morality of
+self-restraint and self-sacrifice are opposed--as Huxley says they are
+opposed--to the methods of cosmic evolution; and yet the "gladiatorial
+theory of existence" may not be repudiated; but morality may be
+modified to suit the claims of evolution. This is the position adopted
+by the philosopher Nietzsche, whose whole thought is permeated by the
+idea of evolution. Like Professor Huxley, Nietzsche might say that
+morality is opposed to the cosmic process. But by morality he would
+mean something that is not to be encouraged, but that is to be shed
+from human life, or at least fundamentally transformed, just because
+it is in opposition to the laws of cosmic progress. On the other hand,
+the morality--if we may use the term--which the cosmic process teaches
+us will be a development of the conceptions of self-assertion and
+self-reliance, qualities which, according to ordinary morality--the
+morality, for instance, of Professor Huxley--require to be permeated
+and even superseded by self-restraint and possibly self-sacrifice in
+order that the moral law may be satisfied. Not obedience, not mutual
+help, not benevolence, but the will to rule or desire of power, is
+with Nietzsche fundamental, the primary impulse in the history of the
+whole progress of the world, and still of first importance for the
+further development of mankind.
+
+This view is at the opposite extreme from Huxley's, for it overlooks
+the advantages mankind has gained by means of the social instinct and
+the social solidarity which it secures. But there is a further
+point in Nietzsche's reflexions which is suggested by the theory
+of development. Natural selection is not the sole agent in the
+development of organic life: it cannot be too often enforced that
+natural selection produces nothing, that its operation is purely
+negative. It does not properly select at all, it only excludes. What
+it does is to cut off the unfit specimens of living beings which
+nature supplies. It would have no field of operation were it not
+for the variety of nature. While individuals tend to repeat the
+characteristics of their parents, they do not repeat them without
+change: the principle of heredity is counterbalanced by a principle
+of variety equally hard to explain. All organic life exhibits this
+tendency to variation; and one variation proves better adapted than
+another to the environment. It is this which makes possible the
+operation of 'natural selection.' Unfit varieties are exterminated by
+natural selection, and room is thus left for varieties which are fit
+to perpetuate themselves and to increase in efficiency.
+
+Now, if we apply this conception to human conduct, should we not
+encourage all varieties to carry on their experiments in living and
+in morality so that we may see whether success will justify them? An
+affirmative answer to this question is sometimes vaguely hinted at; by
+Nietzsche it is proclaimed from the housetops.
+
+"There is no monopoly of morals, and every morality which exclusively
+asserts itself destroys too much good strength, and is too dearly
+bought by mankind. The straying ones, who so often are the inventive
+and productive ones, shall no longer be sacrificed; it shall not even
+be deemed a disgrace to stray from morals either in deeds or thoughts;
+numerous new experiments shall be made in matters of life and society;
+an enormous incubus of bad conscience shall be removed from the
+world--these are the general aims which ought to be recognised and
+furthered by all honest and truth-seeking people."[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Nietzsche, Werke, iv. 161, 162; Dawn of Day, sec. 164.]
+
+Reflecting for a moment on what precedes, we may observe that, from
+the mouths of the evolutionists themselves, we have encountered three
+different views regarding the ethical significance of evolution. In
+the first place, there is the view of Darwin that natural selection is
+a criterion of moral fitness only up to a certain stage, and that the
+noblest part of man's morality is independent of this test; in the
+second place, there is the view of Huxley that morality is entirely
+opposed to the cosmic process as ruled by natural selection; and, in
+the third place, there is the view of Nietzsche that the principles
+of biological development (variation, that is to say, and natural
+selection) should be allowed free play so that, in the future as
+in the past, successful variations may be struck out by triumphant
+egoism. Neither these views, nor the still more elaborate treatment of
+Spencer, do I propose to examine in detail. But I wish to offer some
+reflexions upon the fundamental conception underlying them all,
+accounting in this way, perhaps, for the differences of opinion
+between Darwin and Spencer, Huxley and Nietzsche. The conception of
+natural selection and of evolution by natural selection is applied by
+men of science and by philosophers in three very different spheres, to
+three very different kinds of struggle or competition. There may be
+many different kinds of competition: it will be sufficient here to
+consider the three following:--
+
+First, there is the competition between individuals for individual
+life and success. Now, so far as we are dealing with this competition,
+the only qualities which natural selection will favour are of course
+the qualities which lead to the continuance and efficiency of the
+individual organism. The qualities 'selected' in this process are
+therefore only the self-assertive qualities,--the qualities of
+strength, of courage, of prudence, and also of temperance.
+
+But in the second place there is also, as I have already indicated and
+as was seen by Darwin (though he did not draw this distinction), a
+second kind of competition, the competition between groups. Now the
+group competition has as its end the continuance and efficiency of
+the group, be it horde or tribe or nation, or be it one of those
+subsidiary groups which enter into national life. In this competition
+between groups it is clear that those qualities will be favoured by
+natural selection which contribute to the efficiency of the group; and
+the qualities which contribute to the efficiency of the group are not
+those only which contribute to the efficiency of the individual, but
+also qualities implying self-restraint and even self-sacrifice on the
+part of one member of the group for the sake of other members of the
+group or of the group as a whole. The habit of obedience, for example,
+obedience to the authority of the group or its representative, may be
+of fundamental importance in maintaining the existence of the group
+as a group, although that habit of obedience has no place at all in
+promoting the interests of the individual when he is competing with
+other individuals.
+
+Thirdly, there is still another kind of competition which is a little
+more difficult to make quite clear, because it is not on the plane of
+individual life and it is not to be identified with the life of
+the community. It is a competition on the intellectual level, the
+competition between ideas, and with this one may also couple (so far
+as it does not directly concern the struggle for social existence and
+thus belong to the second class) the competition between institutions,
+including therein also habits and customs. The various institutions in
+our national life, and the various habits of our life, may be said to
+be forms which have to maintain themselves often in competition with
+other and antagonistic forms of institution. The same holds of our
+various ideas or general conceptions, whether about morality, which we
+have now specially in view, or about matters more purely intellectual.
+For instance, forty or fifty years ago, there was a fierce controversy
+amongst biologists between the group of ideas represented by Darwin's
+theory and the group of ideas represented by the traditional view of
+the fixity of species. There was a long conflict between these two
+groups of ideas, and we may now say that the Darwinian group of ideas
+has emerged from the conflict victorious.
+
+Now, when the phrase 'natural selection in morals' is used, the
+reference is commonly to a conflict of this last kind. The suggestion
+is that different ideas and also different standards of action are
+manifested at the same time within the same community, that they
+compete with one another for existence, and that gradually those which
+are better adapted to the life of the community survive, while the
+others grow weaker and in the end disappear. In this way the law of
+natural selection is made to apply to moral ideas and moral standards,
+and also to intellectual standards and to the institutions and customs
+in which our ideas are expressed.
+
+These, then, are the three ways in which the competition in man's life
+and the selection between the competing factors is carried out. And
+sometimes I think one sees a tendency to suggest that this needs
+only to be stated, and that the whole question of the application of
+evolution to ethics is then settled. You may say that such and such
+moral qualities, as for instance the quality of sympathy, do not aid
+the individual in competition with other individuals. The reply might
+be No, but they aid the group in competition with other groups. Or you
+may say, as Darwin said, that even this competition will not account
+for the civilised development of sympathy. But even so we are not at
+the end of our tether; and we can fall back on the conflict of ideas.
+The idea of sympathy or of altruism, for instance, may conflict with
+some other idea, such as that of egoism. At first the competition is a
+group-competition, in which the group with altruistic members succeeds
+at the expense of the egoistic group. By the victory of the former our
+society becomes more and more a society whose basis is sympathy and
+all that sympathy implies, while conflicting ideas lose the lead. So
+in general with the competition of ideas: the idea which fails to
+adapt itself to its conditions will disappear, and the idea which is
+thus adapted will persist; and this also (it is said) is just natural
+selection. Now I venture to ask the question, Is it? I will put the
+question whether all these three processes are really forms of the
+same process, or, in other words and to put the matter more simply, Is
+it simply natural selection that is operative in all these different
+forms of competition?
+
+For the sake of clearness I will take first this last-mentioned form
+of competition, the process by which one idea drives another out of
+the intellectual or moral currency of a community. The competition
+between the idea of fixity of species and Darwin's idea of the unity
+of life has been already cited as an instance; and it was pointed
+out that, gradually and after a controversy of some forty years, the
+former idea almost disappeared, and in the minds at any rate of those
+who know, the Darwinian theory became victorious. Was it natural
+selection that brought about the result? To test the matter let us ask
+once more how natural selection operates. Its mode of operation is
+always simply negative. And if, in the struggle of life, it selects
+the courageous man rather than the coward, the temperate man rather
+than the intemperate, the method by which this result is reached is
+simple: when it comes to a conflict the courageous man kills the
+coward or reduces him to subjection; the intemperate man has less
+vitality than the temperate: he too disappears, although perhaps
+gradually.
+
+Take again the group-competition so far as it is influenced by
+natural selection. The tribe which manifests the qualities of social
+solidarity is selected simply in this way, that when it comes into
+conflict with a tribe which has not this solidarity the latter
+is beaten, and is thus unable to obtain the pastures or the
+hunting-ground which it desires, and therefore gradually or swiftly it
+is exterminated or left behind in the race for life. Now, I ask, Did
+this process take place when Darwinism supplanted the traditional
+theory of the fixity of species? Surely it is clear that it is only in
+the rarest cases that false or inadequate ideas on such subjects have
+any tendency to shorten life or weaken health. Bishop Wilberforce was
+killed by a fall from his horse, not by the triumphant dialectic of
+Professor Huxley. Sir Richard Owen lived to a patriarchal old age, and
+did not disappear from the face of the earth because he still clung to
+an idea which the best intellect of his time had relinquished. There
+is nothing in the doctrine of the fixity of species--if you hold
+it--which will in the least degree tend to diminish vitality. Natural
+selection has practically no effect at all in exterminating those who
+adhere to this idea. There is no means of livelihood from which it
+would exclude them except indeed that it might prevent them from
+occupying Chairs of Biology. Apart from that I do not think it will
+hinder them in any of the various modes of activity in which the
+struggle for life is manifested.
+
+What was it then that led to the victory of the one idea over the
+other? The cause was intellectual. With the experts, it was logical
+conviction: one set of ideas was found to fit the facts somewhat
+better than the other set of ideas. With men in general the
+intellectual change came more slowly and in a different way: they
+adopted or imitated the ideas of those who knew. It was therefore not
+natural selection at all which led to the presence and power of the
+one idea rather than the other in the minds of thoughtful men. One
+idea was deliberately accepted and the other deliberately rejected.
+The former was accepted on grounds of which the most general account
+would be, if we may use the term, to call them subjective. But natural
+selection is a physical, external, objective process. It is carried
+out without the individual's volition: he is not aiming at the end.
+It is simply natural law which, with many varieties of living beings
+before it, exterminates the unfit individuals. Thus nature in its own
+blind way produces a result of the same kind as that which the will of
+man would bring about by subjective selection.
+
+The origin of this term 'natural selection' is overlooked when people
+talk glibly about 'natural selection' of ideas. Darwin used the term
+'natural selection' because he thought he saw an analogy between the
+tendency of nature and the selective purposes of intelligent beings.
+It was because nature, working without intelligence, produced the same
+kind of result as man does by intelligent selection, that he ventured
+to use this term 'selection' of the process of nature. Perhaps he was
+hardly justified in adopting the term, as nature does not select; she
+only passes by. At the same time, artificial selection also includes,
+although it is not limited to, this negative or weeding-out process.
+When you select a certain plant for growth in your garden you weed out
+the neighbouring plants which encroach upon it, so as to give it a
+chance to grow and thrive. By removing its competitors, you let air
+and light surround the plant, and it spreads its leaves to the sun.
+The healthy growth which results is due to the removal of obstacles
+by an external power; and it is in this way--by the removal of
+obstacles--that natural selection works.
+
+Intelligent or artificial selection is not restricted to this negative
+method of working; and its operation, positive as well as negative,
+was certainly well known long before Darwin's day. Starting with the
+familiar facts of artificial or purposive selection, Darwin showed how
+results similar to those aimed at and reached in this way might be
+brought about by the operation of certain natural laws, working
+without purpose or design. Purposive selection pursues its ends more
+directly and in general attains them far more quickly than does
+natural selection. A still more striking characteristic is the fact
+that it does not entail the waste and pain which mark the course of
+natural selection. Witness the records of natural selection in the
+vegetable and animal kingdoms, where thousands are called into
+fruitless being that one alone may survive and prosper. Wastefulness
+is the most striking feature of its method, and its path is strewn
+with wreckage. In all these respects the conflict of ideas belongs
+to the level of purposive and not of natural selection. It involves
+consciousness of the end, which natural selection never does; it is
+comparatively rapid in reaching its goal and comparatively direct in
+the route it takes; and the victory of an idea does not take effect
+through any general extermination of the individuals who cherish ideas
+'unfit' for survival.
+
+I do not deny that there may be a certain natural selection in the
+case of human beings; but that process is always clumsy and slow and
+wasteful, and the purposive intelligent selection which takes its
+place is one of the greatest possible gains to living beings:
+its presence distinguishes men from animals; its predominance
+distinguishes civilised men from savages; the higher the stage
+of civilisation, the more marked is the development of selective
+intelligence. And in the conflict of ideas, whether moral or
+intellectual, the issue is determined by a selection which is
+predominantly purposive, and only in the slightest degree natural.
+
+If we return to the conflict of groups we shall see that even there
+purposive selection enters. How (we may ask) do those qualities of
+obedience, willingness to help another, and the like, arise in a
+community and thus enable it to win the victory over a less organised
+or more savage enemy? Surely it is not a sufficient answer to say that
+these qualities have been somehow developed, and then have contributed
+to the victory of the community possessing them. All through civilised
+life, and probably throughout a great part of savage life, there is
+the keenest enquiry into and perception of the qualities which
+will make for success. These qualities are carefully selected and
+positively fostered. You drill your armies--that is, you cultivate
+the habit of discipline and all that discipline implies--so that the
+victory may be gained; in other words, the quality is not produced by
+natural selection at all. The issue may resemble the result of natural
+selection, for it leads to conflict and defeat of the unfit; but the
+conqueror is he who has foreseen the conditions of the struggle:
+has deliberately equipped his forces for the fight, and been the
+intelligent organiser of victory.
+
+Even in the case of competition between individuals, at least among
+civilised men, it is clear that natural selection is very far from
+being the only factor. A man trains himself for a profession. It does
+not just somehow come about that a number of people accidentally
+develop certain varieties of occupation, and that natural selection
+makes play with this result, cutting off the unfit and leaving only
+those who are fairly well adapted to their positions. Something of
+this sort no doubt takes place to a limited extent; but, so far as it
+does take place, our methods are denounced as defective and, perhaps,
+as old-fashioned. 'Haphazard' is a wasteful principle, and should be
+superseded by intelligent initiative and deliberate preparation. And
+this indeed is the usual process. One adapts oneself carefully and of
+set purpose to the conditions of one's life, instead of simply waiting
+for natural selection to cut one off should one happen to be unfit.
+
+Even among animals there are certain processes which cannot be brought
+under natural selection. There are the first efforts, slight as they
+may be, towards learning by experience. There are also all those facts
+which Darwin classes under sexual selection, where there is a positive
+choosing, due no doubt not to intelligent purpose but nevertheless to
+a subjective impulse. This marks the beginning of the end of the
+reign of natural selection, because in it for the purely objective or
+external factor there is substituted an internal, subjective factor;
+instead of the process of cutting off unsuitable individuals among
+chance varieties there appears the process of selecting that variety
+which pleases or attracts.
+
+The result of this whole investigation is that natural selection
+cannot be properly applied so as to explain the conflict of moral
+ideas. It is not able to account for all the phenomena of the
+competition between groups. Even in sub-human life there are
+indications of the processes which supersede natural selection. From
+this result the ethical consequence may be drawn, that there is no
+good ground for taking the lower, the less developed, method of
+selection as our guide in preference to the higher and more developed.
+Surely we are not to take natural selection as the sole factor of
+ethical import because we see it at the crude beginnings of life on
+this earth, while the process of life itself in its higher ranges
+passes beyond natural selection. The physiological interpretation
+of life and conduct put forward by Nietzsche, and by a good many
+biological philosophers, would take natural selection, and its bearing
+upon the animal nature of man, as the sole test of efficiency and
+ethical value. But this interpretation of man's life disregards the
+achievements of evolution itself for the sake of pinning its faith to
+the humble beginnings of the organic process.
+
+After this long enquiry into the nature and scope of natural
+selection, we should be better prepared to understand the degree and
+kind of ethical significance which can be rightly assigned to the
+theory of evolution. In the first place let us consider the now
+familiar claim that man must be taken as part of the cosmos, and that
+man's conduct must be regarded and studied in its place in the cosmic
+process. At the time when it was first made this claim may have seemed
+a startling one; but I think that we must admit that, keeping to their
+own ground and using the instruments that are theirs by right, the
+evolutionist writers have succeeded in showing man's connexion with
+the animal kingdom and with organic life generally, and thus his place
+in the whole cosmic process. The claim must therefore be admitted.
+
+But if man is part of the universe, then the universe is not
+intelligible apart from man, and the cosmic process is not fully
+understood unless we also have an understanding of human activity.
+This, therefore, is the counter-claim that I would suggest. The course
+and method of evolution, or of the 'cosmic process'--to use Huxley's
+term--is imperfectly described if the methods and principles of human
+action are left out of account.
+
+No doubt the reply may be made, as the reply has been made, that after
+all man occupies but a minute space in the cosmos, that he is but an
+insignificant speck on an unimportant planet. But, if this is at all
+meant to imply that we may safely leave the peculiarities of human
+activity out of account, then I say that the suggestion hardly
+deserves consideration. Surely the assumption is too gross and
+unwarrantable that material magnitude is the standard of importance,
+or that the significance of man's life can be measured by the size of
+his material organism. We must therefore never delude ourselves with
+the idea that we have a full account of the cosmos or the cosmic
+process unless we have taken account of the peculiarities of man's
+nature and man's activity.
+
+In the second place, the discussion of the principle of natural
+selection suggests a further reflexion. The process of natural
+selection is a process which always tends to some end, because by it
+some organisms are selected, and they are the organisms which are
+fittest to live. By 'fittest' is of course meant that which is
+best adapted to the environment, or, as it is simply a question of
+survival, that which so fits the conditions of the environment that it
+is able to survive. The canon of the principle of natural selection is
+on the face of it relative. No one would say that the principle can be
+interpreted as an absolute law for conduct, after the fashion of the
+absolute laws laid down by the rationalist moralists; what is involved
+is simply a gelation to one's surroundings. One must keep in touch
+with them, one must adapt oneself to them, in order to live.
+
+But I wish to point out that the principle is not only relative, but
+that its relation is limited to certain features of the environment
+which surrounds mankind, namely, to those features and those features
+only which prevent organisms unsuited to the conditions of life from
+surviving at all. The only way in which natural selection works is by
+killing off rapidly or gradually the organisms which are not fitted to
+obtain from the environment the means of life--that is to say, it
+has to do with life only, with the continuance of life as a possible
+material phenomenon. Given that the organisms are fit enough to
+survive, given that their animal vitality is not diminished, a
+question remains: what is the standard of worthy survival? and to that
+question the process and principle of natural selection can give no
+answer. To use the old distinction: even if it is able to account for
+being, it can give no standard for wellbeing.
+
+Now the environment of civilised man is a great deal larger in range
+than those material phenomena which contribute to his nourishment and
+thus to his existence as an animal organism. No doubt his first effort
+is to maintain himself as an animal--that is the condition of all
+his subsequent activity--but he seeks also to suit himself to an
+environment which is wider and subtler than merely animal conditions
+of life; to adapt himself to society, perhaps only as a member of it,
+perhaps also as a leader or reformer; to adapt himself to the dominant
+ideas of his time, absorbing them, perhaps also modifying them; to
+adapt himself to a whole region of interests which may in our life be
+built upon an animal basis, but of which the animal basis gives no
+explanation--interests social, artistic, intellectual, spiritual.
+
+It is correct, therefore, to say of man that his environment is much
+larger than the material universe; it is whatever he conceives the
+universe as being, and whatever it can be for him: whether he seeks
+from it merely intellectual understanding, whether he regards it as
+a vehicle for artistic production, or whether he may see in it an
+opportunity for realising his own being by fulfilling the will of
+God--perhaps by submerging his own individuality in deity. The
+objects of philosophy, art, and religion,--all these are parts of the
+environment of civilised man, and yet his self-adaptation to them has
+no direct effect whatever upon his continuance on the earth as an
+animal organism. In other words, the process of natural selection
+can give us no canon at all for putting a value upon these various
+activities, or upon the way in which man adapts himself to these parts
+of his environment.
+
+It is said by Mr Herbert Spencer that "we must interpret the more
+developed by the less developed";[1] and the inference would seem to
+be that, as animal existence is the basis of all higher activities, we
+must interpret these by it. But if this claim can be admitted at all,
+it can only be if our aim goes no further than to trace a historical
+process. If we desire to understand capacity or function--still more
+if we speak of worth or goodness--then it is much more correct to say
+that we must interpret the less developed by the more developed.
+If you wish to trace the growth of the oak-tree from its earliest
+beginnings to maturity, then study the acorn and the soil; but if you
+wish to know what the capacity and the function of the acorn are, then
+you must interpret the less developed by the more developed, you
+must see what an oak is like when it spreads its branches under the
+heavens.
+
+[Footnote 1: Principles of Ethics, i. 7.]
+
+In the third place, the way in which the action of natural selection
+differs according to circumstances affects its ethical significance.
+It operates as between individuals, and it operates as between
+groups,--although in the latter operation especially it is always
+mixed with other forces than natural selection. The competition
+between individuals favours egoistic qualities, the competition
+between groups favours qualities which may be called altruistic.
+
+Now no principle whatever can be got out of the theory of natural
+selection, or out of the evolution theory in general, which will
+decide between these divergent operations. The question may be put,
+Are we to cultivate the qualities which will give us success in the
+battle of individual with individual, or are we to cultivate in
+ourselves qualities which will contribute to the success of the
+community? All the answer that the evolution theory can give to this
+question is, that when individual fights with individual, the man with
+stronger egoistic qualities will succeed, and that when group fights
+group, those groups that possess stronger altruistic qualities will
+tend to success. But which set of qualities we are to cultivate, or
+whether we are to manifest a sort of balance of the two, is a question
+upon which we can get no light from the theory of evolution considered
+by itself. And consequently we find a very prevalent, though perhaps
+hardly ever definitely expressed, code of conduct according to which
+the individual takes as the guide for his own action the egoistic
+qualities which give success in the struggle between different
+individuals, but recommends to all his fellows in the same community
+that they should cultivate those altruistic qualities which will lead
+to the advantage of society.
+
+The theory of evolution makes no contribution at all to these
+questions of worth or validity or moral value which we have been
+discussing. All one can get out of it is certain canons for living,
+but none for good living. It may draw one's attention to this fact, if
+anybody's attention needs to be drawn to it, that existence is prior
+to wellbeing; but what the nature of wellbeing is--upon that it throws
+no light.
+
+We have been met by the suggestion that we should interpret by means
+of the lower or less developed, and again that we should set up a
+purely physiological standard. But the suggestion overlooks two
+things: first of all, the difficulties in the application of natural
+selection itself with its divergent tendencies; and, secondly, the
+fact that this process of evolution has itself resulted in the
+development of certain higher activities and higher tendencies, and
+that there is no good ground for holding that their worth is to be
+tested by means of the lower qualities out of which they have grown.
+
+Now a good many evolutionist moralists seem to see this, and
+accordingly restrict themselves almost entirely to what we may call
+the historical point of view. They show how moral customs and moral
+ideas adapted to them have arisen, and how these ideas and customs
+have corresponded with the institutions of the time to which they
+belonged. Their tendency, accordingly, is to restrict ethics to
+the question of origin and history and description, to deprive it
+altogether of what is sometimes called its normative character--that
+is to say, its character as a science which lays down rules or sets up
+ideals for conduct. They would take away from it altogether the power
+of determining and establishing a criterion between right and wrong.
+In other words, the fundamental ethical question would be entirely
+excluded from the scope of the science of ethics.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Cf. Green, 'Prolegomena to Ethics,' p. 7: "A philosopher
+who would reconstruct our ethical systems in conformity with the
+doctrines of evolution and descent, if he would be consistent, must
+deal less scrupulously with them than perhaps any one has yet been
+found to do. If he has the courage of his principles, having reduced
+the speculative part of them to a natural science, he must abolish the
+practical or preceptive part altogether."]
+
+That, so far as I can see, is the tendency of a good deal of quite
+recent writing from the point of view of the evolution school: in the
+face of controversy and in the face of difficulties to give up the
+attempt which they started on so confidently thirty years ago,--the
+attempt to show that evolution affords a means of deciding between
+right and wrong and of establishing an ideal for human conduct.
+Failing in this attempt, they seem to turn round and say that ethics
+should content itself with describing facts instead of laying down a
+law or setting up an ideal.
+
+Now, whatever truth there may be in the assertion of the difficulty
+of determining an ideal for conduct, there is one thing certain: that
+whether or not the ideal can be philosophically or scientifically
+defined and established, some ideal is always being set up. Human
+action implies choice, implies the selection of one course rather
+than another; and the course that is chosen is always chosen for some
+reason, because it seems better than the course which is passed by.
+Choice always follows some kind of principle. We may use different
+principles at different times, we may use badly established
+principles, we may use uncriticised principles, but principles we do
+use, and we cannot act voluntarily without using them, even when we
+are not definitely conscious of them.
+
+It is not possible, therefore, to entertain the suggestion that these
+principles should be excluded from ethics. Ethics must consider them,
+even if it should fail in reaching a correct account of them. We are
+bound to ask, for instance, what principles can decide between those
+divergent tendencies brought to light by natural selection, between
+the conditions of success for the group and the conditions of success
+for the individual? The conflict between individual development and
+group development is continually pressing to the front The individual
+cannot reach a high stage of development except in and through a
+highly developed society. But the efficiency which a highly developed
+society requires of its members is not the same as individual
+development; it more commonly implies a specialisation which tends to
+warp or cramp individual capacity. This is a long familiar opposition.
+And the theory of evolution can do nothing to reconcile it All it can
+say is that in certain cases natural selection points one way, and
+that in certain cases it points the other way. If ethical significance
+be claimed for it, it must be said that natural selection is divided
+against itself, and that it is without any principle for reconciling
+its own divergences.
+
+It is because biological evolution is essentially an historical
+doctrine that its votaries should not be too eager to apply it
+directly to ethics. It has accomplished much if able to tell us how
+things have happened in the past, without also dictating how they
+ought to take place now. It is specially absurd to say that earlier
+methods must govern later developments. That is what is done when we
+are asked to take as our guide in voluntary choice a principle which
+ignores volition. The whole progress from animal to man and from
+savage to civilised man shows a gradual supersession of the principle
+of natural selection by a principle of subjective selection which
+steadily grows in purposiveness and in intelligence. To say that
+intelligence should take nature as its guide is to ask civilised man
+to put off both his civilisation and his manhood.
+
+The course of evolution may describe the working of different
+principles; but it cannot of itself supply a test of their value. How
+then is such a test to be got? Can Metaphysics help us? I have pointed
+out that the evolutionist ethics is relative--implying always a
+relation between organism and environment--but this relativity is
+qualified by its objective character. It does do something for morals:
+it brings man's conduct into relation with the world as a whole.
+No doubt the environment which more immediately surrounds man is a
+succession of changing phenomena, so that although the basis we get is
+objective, nevertheless it is unable to give us a permanent standard
+of reference. At the same time we may trace in this theory some
+advance on the older types of ethical thinking spoken of in last
+lecture. Subjectivity adhered even to the Utilitarian type of thought:
+for what can be more subjective than the pleasant feeling upon
+which morality is made by it to depend? There was also a certain
+subjectivity attaching to the Intuitional type of thought, because the
+Intuitionists simply referred their judgments to conscience, the law
+in man, and did not connect conscience with a wider or more objective
+view of the universe.
+
+The suggestion remains that we may get a basis for morality which
+is both objective and permanent from that more complete view of the
+universe which is given or which is sought by metaphysics. Metaphysics
+aims at completeness. That is, indeed, its predominant characteristic
+as a body of knowledge. It may begin with the part, if you like, with
+the 'flower in the crannied wall'; but when that is seen in all its
+relations to the rest of the world, then you will 'know what God and
+man is,' If the universe is a whole, then, beginning at any point,
+with any detail, if you only push the enquiry far enough, you are
+bound to become metaphysical: for you are attempting to understand
+reality as a whole.
+
+In this Metaphysics resembles Religion. Both seek the ultimate, the
+final, the whole. But Metaphysics is distinguished from Religion in
+seeking the whole only by way of knowledge. So far it is like
+any other science. It is a process or the result of a process of
+knowledge. It seeks to know reality as a whole, and in knowing a part
+to know it in its relations to the whole. Religion also considers
+everything in its relation to the whole. But in religion knowledge is
+not the fundamental thing: its object is to relate man to God, in his
+consciousness, and in his life as a whole.
+
+The theory of evolution itself very often tends to become a
+metaphysical theory. It does so when it holds the course of
+development which it traces to be either itself the ultimate reality
+or the most adequate appearance of that reality. This theory is now
+commonly known by the name of Naturalism; according to it the facts
+dealt with by the natural sciences are the only reality which is
+knowable; man's nature is part of these and has to be adapted to
+them, and there is nothing further with which it can be brought into
+relation. This theory is not the same as the scientific theory of
+evolution, nor is it a necessary consequence of it; but in the
+minds of many the two go together. The conclusion of the preceding
+argument--that the ethical significance of evolution is not deep
+enough to give any answer to the fundamental question of morals--is
+not a criticism of the theory of evolution so far as restricted to
+the domain of science, but it is a criticism of the Naturalism which
+professes to be a final philosophy.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+ETHICS AND IDEALISM.
+
+
+There has been no movement of metaphysical thought in our time which
+can be compared for its widespread influence or for its general
+acceptance with the theory of evolution in biological science.
+Intimate as is its connexion with the progress of science, metaphysics
+does not keep step with it,--any more than it simply marks time as the
+former advances. It reflects the influence of each new generalisation
+of science; but if and so far as it reflects this influence only, it
+cannot be an adequate metaphysics. Metaphysics must re-think each new
+fact brought to light, each new generalisation established by science.
+It must think them in their relation to the whole, and attempt to
+understand them by setting them in their place in the complete system
+of knowledge and reality. This complete system is indeed an
+ideal, never adequately comprehended by the human mind; but it is
+nevertheless the ideal which determines all efforts of constructive
+philosophy--including those efforts which take the generalisation of
+some special science as their all-comprehending principle. An attempt
+of this kind to make a philosophy out of a scientific generalisation
+has in our own time been the obvious result of the theory of
+evolution, and has given new vogue to the philosophical system called
+Naturalism. That system draws its strength from the scientific
+doctrine of evolution; but as a philosophy it gives an extended
+application to the generalisation established by a group of sciences,
+and valid for the facts within their range. It interprets the law
+of development which rules the sequences of nature as the highest
+attainable principle for explaining the system of things. Some of the
+questions which it leaves unanswered, and some of the facts which
+it overlooks, have been pointed out in last lecture. Of this theory
+perhaps enough has already been said.
+
+In spite of the increased vogue which naturalism has obtained from its
+alliance with triumphant evolutionism, it cannot be said to represent
+the prevailing type of thought amongst the English metaphysicians
+of the last generation. That generation was remarkable for the
+reappearance in this country of a reasoned Idealism; and all forms of
+Idealism have at least this in common, that they refuse to look upon
+the material process as the ultimate character of reality--so far as
+reality is known or knowable.
+
+It may also be said--and this is a characteristic which is not merely
+negative--that all forms of Idealism agree in ascribing special
+significance to the moral and religious aspects of life. This holds
+true of the great idealists, different as their types of thought may
+be--of Plato and Aristotle, of Spinoza and Leibniz, of Kant, Fichte,
+and Hegel. It holds true also of the leading representatives of recent
+English idealism. But the ethical tone of a treatise and the ethical
+interest of its author are not always a guarantee that ethical
+conceptions have a secure position in his system of thought. This is
+the case, I think, with Spinoza; and it seems to me to hold also of
+some writers of the present day. Mr Bradley, for instance, is perhaps
+the most influential, as he is without doubt not the least brilliant,
+of contemporary metaphysicians; he carries on the tradition of a
+school of thought predominantly ethical; his first book was a defence
+of the ethical positions of that school; but, if we turn to the
+elaborate metaphysical treatise which has resulted from his mature
+reflexion, its most impressive feature will be found to be the almost
+complete bankruptcy of the system in the region of ethics.
+
+Not only had this idealist movement in its beginnings a predominantly
+ethical tone. It was really started in the interest of moral ideals as
+well as of intellectual thoroughness; and its contribution of greatest
+value to English thought was a work on ethics. The 'Prolegomena
+to Ethics' of T.H. Green was a fitting result of his unwearied
+controversies in defence of the spiritual nature of man and the
+universe. No one is more worthy than he to be called by the Platonic
+name a 'friend of ideas,' And he was a friend of ideas because he saw
+their necessity for maintaining and realising the higher capacities
+of human life. Green's 'Prolegomena' was published in 1883, the year
+after his death. And, had I been speaking twenty years ago, I should
+have had to emphasise the ethical character of the metaphysics of the
+day. His metaphysical thinking, through all its subtleties, never
+strayed far from the moral ideal. Owing to his teaching that ideal,
+and the general character of the philosophy with which it was
+associated, have permeated a great part of the better thought of the
+present day, and have influenced its practical activities in various
+directions,--social, political, and religious. But the magnetism of
+his personality has been removed; and those whose business it is to
+test intellectual notions have been impressed by the difficulties
+involved in Green's metaphysical positions and in his connexion of
+them with morality.
+
+The single word 'self-realisation' has been taken to express the view
+of the moral ideal enforced by Green. And it is as suitable as any
+single word could be. But it is clear that, in every action whatever
+of a conscious being, self-realisation may be said to be the end: some
+capacity is being developed, satisfaction is being sought for some
+desire. A man may develop his capacities, seek and to some extent
+attain satisfaction--in a manner, realise himself--not only in
+devotion to a scientific or artistic ideal or in labours for the
+common good, but also in selfish pursuit of power or even in sensual
+enjoyment. So far as the word 'self-realisation' can be made to cover
+such different activities, it is void of moral content and cannot
+express the nature of the moral ideal. Green is perfectly alive to the
+need of a distinction--and to the difficulty of drawing it. According
+to his own statement it is true not only of moral activity but of
+every act of willing that in it "a self-conscious individual directs
+himself to the realisation of some idea, as to an object in which for
+the time he seeks self-satisfaction."[1] And he proceeds to ask the
+question, "How can there be any such intrinsic difference between the
+objects willed as justifies the distinction which 'moral sense' seems
+to draw between good and bad action, between virtue and vice? And if
+there is such a difference, in what does it consist?"[2] Now we may
+define a good action as the sort of action which proceeds from a good
+man; or we may define a good man as a man who performs good actions.
+And for each method of definition something may be said. But if we
+adopt both methods together and say in one breath that good is what
+the good man does and that the good man is he who does good, is our
+logic any better than that of the ordination-candidate who defined the
+functions of an archdeacon as archdiaconal functions? And yet Green
+comes very near to describing this logical circle. "The moral good,"
+he says, is "that which satisfies the desire of amoral agent"; but
+"the question, ... What do we mean by calling ourselves moral agents?
+is one to which a final answer cannot be given without an answer to
+the question, What is moral good?"[3]
+
+[Footnote 1: Prolegomena to Ethics, sec. 154, p. 160.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., sec. 156, p. 163.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Prolegomena to Ethics, secs. 171, 172, p. 179.]
+
+When Green really grapples with the difficulty of distinguishing the
+moral from the immoral in character or in conduct, it is possible
+to distinguish different ways in which he attempts to draw the
+distinction--these different ways being, however, not independent but
+complementary to one another in his thought. The first suggestion is
+that good is distinguished from evil, or the true good from a good
+which is merely apparent, by its permanence. It gives a lasting
+satisfaction instead of a merely transient satisfaction: "the true
+good ... is an end in which the effort of a moral agent can really
+find rest."[1] In this statement two points seem to be involved which
+the use of the rather metaphorical term 'finding rest' tends to
+confuse. If we are looking for the distinction simply of a good action
+or motive from a bad one we may point to the approval of conscience in
+the former case: this has a permanence--or rather an independence of
+time--which distinguishes it from the satisfaction of some temporary
+desire. But I do not think that this is what Green means. He wished
+to avoid falling back upon mere disconnected judgments of conscience
+after the manner of the intuitional moralists. The 'true good' for him
+seems to mean the attainment, the complete realisation, of the moral
+ideal. Were this reached we should indeed 'find rest,' for moral
+activity as we know it would be at an end. But the moral ideal
+is never thus attained; its realisation, as Green holds, is only
+progressive and never completed. Consequently 'rest' is never 'found.'
+It is of the nature of the moral life to press onward constantly
+towards a goal which it cannot attain; each achievement leads to a
+further effort and a higher reach.
+
+[Footnote 1: Ibid., sec. 171, p. 179.]
+
+By itself, therefore, the assertion that the moral agent 'finds rest'
+in the 'true good' does not enable us to distinguish the moral agent
+or the moral action from the immoral. For we are unable to define the
+'true good.' It is not a part of experience; it is an ideal: and Green
+allows that we can give no complete account of it; he even says
+that we can give no positive account of it. At the same time this
+consideration leads to another and connected method for distinguishing
+good from evil.
+
+"Of a life of completed development," Green holds, "of activity with
+the end attained, we can only speak or think in negatives, and thus
+only can we speak or think of that state of being in which, according
+to our theory, the ultimate moral good must consist."[1] But the
+development is a real process which manifests itself in habits and
+social institutions; and from these its actual achievements we can to
+a certain extent see what the moral capability of man "has in it to
+become," and thus "know enough of ultimate moral good to guide our
+conduct." One of the most valuable portions of Green's own work is his
+description of the gradual widening and purifying of human conceptions
+regarding goodness in character and conduct. But all this implies some
+standard of discrimination and selection between what is good and
+what is evil in human achievement. Which developments are truly
+realisations of "the moral capability of man," and so tend to the
+attainment of ultimate good, and which developments are expressions
+of those capacities which seek an apparent good only and are to be
+classed as evil, as impediments to the realisation of the good,--these
+have to be discriminated; and is it so clear that from the mere record
+of human deeds we are able to draw the distinction? Do we not need
+some criterion of goodness to guide our judgment? and does not Green
+himself use such a criterion when he appeals to the tendency of
+certain institutions and habits to "make the welfare of all the
+welfare of each," and of certain arts to make nature "the friend of
+man"?[2] Common welfare and the utilisation of nature in the service
+of man seem to be taken as tests of the true development of moral
+capabilities. The criteria themselves may be excellent; but they
+are not got out of the mere record: they are brought by us to its
+contemplation. To this special question I can find no answer in Green.
+He is indeed aware that there is a difficulty; or rather he admits
+that something has been "taken for granted." He has assumed that
+there is "some best state of being for man"; that this best state is
+eternally present to a divine consciousness; and further, that this
+"eternal mind" is reproducing itself as the self of man.[3] On this
+supposition only, he says, can our moral activity be explained; and
+he holds that the supposition can be justified metaphysically and has
+been so justified by himself in the earlier part of his treatise.
+
+[Footnote 1: Prolegomena to Ethics, sec. 172, p. 180.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Prolegomena, sec. 172, p. 180.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Ibid., secs. 173, 174, p. 181.]
+
+Now I am willing to admit that Green showed a correct instinct in
+examining the nature of man before entering upon his properly ethical
+enquiry. One must know what man is before one can say what his
+'good' or his duty is; and it is only because man's nature cannot be
+accounted for as a merely natural or animal product that the way is
+open for an idealist ethics such as Green's. But perhaps Green laid
+too much stress on the problem of historical causation. What matters
+it how we came by our knowledge, provided it is the case that we can
+know ourselves and the world? If we can now distinguish right and
+wrong, can ally ourselves with the good, and follow a moral ideal, of
+what great importance are the steps by which the moral consciousness
+was attained? And the question here is whether the special results
+reached by Green in his metaphysical enquiry into human nature have
+brought us any nearer to a solution of the present ethical difficulty.
+As we have seen, the metaphysical view which Green arrives at is that
+the consciousness which is in man and which raises him above nature
+is the manifestation of--the "reproduction" of itself by--an eternal
+self-consciousness. Man's own self-consciousness in knowledge and
+volition is simply God's self--consciousness "reproduced" (to use
+Green's term) in man's animal nature: so that the animal body and
+its temporal activities become in some unexplained (and no doubt
+inexplicable) way "organic" (to use Green's terminology once more,
+where no terminology seems adequate) to a spiritual reality which is
+eternal and infinite.
+
+I am far from denying the greatness of this conception or its
+practical value. There is no stronger support to moral endeavour than
+the conviction that the moral life is a realisation of the divine
+purpose, that in all goodness the spirit of God is manifest, that the
+good man is the servant of God or even His fellow-worker. By whatever
+metaphor this may be expressed--and Green's statement that the divine
+self--consciousness 'reproduces' itself in human morality is also
+a metaphor--it betrays the assurance that moral achievement is
+permanent, and that (in spite of all apparent failures) goodness will
+prevail. He who fights for the good may be confident of victory.
+
+This is the practical value of the conception; but in order that it
+may have this practical value, the distinction of good from evil
+must be first of all made clear. Green's appeal to an eternal
+self-consciousness does nothing of itself to elucidate this
+distinction. Tendencies to exalt selfish interest over common welfare,
+and to prefer sensual to what are called higher gratifications, enter
+into the nature of man, and have fashioned his history. Green does
+not even ask the question whether these also are not to be considered
+manifestations or 'reproductions' of the eternal self-consciousness.
+But his metaphysical view does not exclude them; and if they are
+included, morality disappears for lack of any criterion between good
+and evil. If good is to be discriminated from evil, it must be by some
+other means than by describing the whole conscious activity of man as
+a reproduction of the divine. Instead of doing anything to solve the
+problem of the meaning of goodness, Green simply brings forward a new
+difficulty--that of understanding how the temporal process in which
+human morality is developed can be related to a reality which is
+defined as out of time or eternal. This difficulty cannot be avoided
+in a metaphysical theory of morality. And it does not stand alone.
+Green's own dialectics were directed against the Sensationalist and
+Hedonist theories which used to be regarded as typical of English
+thought; and on them they acted as a powerful solvent. His own views
+of the spiritual nature of man and its relation to the eternal
+self-consciousness were worked out with the confidence and enthusiasm
+of a reformer rather than with the caution of a critic. But criticism
+has followed, and not only from the representatives of opposed
+schools. Writers whose intellectual affinities are on the whole the
+same as his have let their dialectic play around his fundamental
+conceptions with a result very different from that which he
+contemplated. Mr Bradley, like Green, has faith in an eternal Reality,
+which might be called spiritual, inasmuch as it is not material; like
+Green, he looks upon man's moral activity as an appearance--what Green
+calls a reproduction--of this eternal reality. But under this general
+agreement there lies a world of difference. He refuses, by the use of
+the term self-consciousness, to liken his Absolute to the personality
+of man, and he brings out the consequence, which in Green is more or
+less concealed, that the evil equally with the good in man and in the
+world are appearances of the Absolute.
+
+Mr Bradley's whole work is ruled by the distinction between
+"Appearance" and "Reality," which gives his book a title. On the
+one hand there is the Absolute Reality, spoken of as perfect, and
+described as all--comprehensive and harmonious throughout. Neither
+change nor time nor any relation can belong to it. But intelligence
+works by discrimination and comparison; knowledge implies relations;
+it is, therefore, excluded from reality. Truth is mere appearance. The
+same judgment must be passed on our moral activity. We strive after
+and perhaps reach an ideal, or, as Mr Bradley says, we aim at
+satisfying a desire; and this, too, is a process far removed from
+reality.[1] Goodness, like truth, is mere appearance.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, pp. 402, 410.]
+
+This needs no elaboration. If all predication involves relation, and
+relation is excluded from reality,[1] then no predicate--not even
+truth or goodness--can be asserted of the real. Nay more, to be
+consistent, we ought not even to say that reality or the Absolute
+(for the two terms are here interchangeable) is perfect, or one, or
+all-comprehensive, or harmonious: for all these are predicates. _Ens
+realissimum_ is the only _ens reale_; all else is mere appearance.
+
+[Footnote 1: Ibid., pp. 32-34.]
+
+Just here, however, lies an indication of another line of thought. For
+what is an appearance, and what is it that appears? It can only be
+reality that thus appears; the 'mere' appearance is yet an 'appearance
+of reality.' It might seem that this is to catch, not at a straw, but
+at the shadow of a straw. For if we say that 'reality appears,' are
+we not thereby predicating something of reality, making it enter into
+relation? But let that pass. Among these appearances we may be able to
+distinguish degrees of significance or of adequacy, nay--strange as
+it may seem to the reader who has followed Mr Bradley's first line of
+thought--"degrees of reality." Relations are excluded from reality;
+and degree is a relation; but reality has degrees. The logic is
+unsatisfactory, but the conclusion may perhaps have a value of its
+own.
+
+Here, then, is another view of the universe--not an unchanging,
+relationless, eternal reality, but varying degrees of reality
+manifested in that complex process which we call sometimes the world
+and sometimes 'experience,' But the two views are connected. For it is
+assumed that the Absolute Reality is harmonious and all-comprehensive;
+and it is further asserted that these two characteristics of harmony
+and comprehensiveness may be taken as criteria of the "degree of
+reality" possessed by any "appearance." The more harmonious anything
+is--the fewer its internal discrepancies or contradictions--the higher
+is its degree of reality; and the greater its comprehensiveness--the
+fewer predicates left outside it--the higher also is its degree of
+reality. No attempt is made at a measured scale of degrees of reality,
+such, for example, as is offered by the Hegelian dialectic; but a sort
+of rough classification of various 'appearances' is offered. In this
+classification a place is given to goodness which is comparatively
+high, and yet "subordinate" and "self-contradictory." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 420.]
+
+Mr Bradley's Absolute, we may say, has two faces, one of which is
+described as good, while the other is inscrutable. "Obviously," he says,
+"the good is not the Whole, and the Whole, as such, is not good. And,
+viewed thus in relation to the Absolute, there is nothing either bad or
+good, there is not anything better or worse. For the Absolute is _not_
+its appearances." This is the inscrutable side. But yet "the Absolute
+appears in its phenomena and is real nowhere outside them;... it is all
+of them in unity. And so, regarded from this other side, the Absolute
+_is_ good, and it manifests itself throughout in various degrees of
+goodness and badness."[1] What would be contradiction in another writer
+is only two-sidedness in Mr Bradley. And it is this second side which
+interests us, for here "the Absolute _is_ good," and yet, good as it is,
+manifests itself in badness as well as goodness, and that in various
+degrees. If we are to follow another statement of the doctrine, however,
+we shall have to allow that the "badness" is also good, and that the
+"various degrees" are all equal. For "the Absolute is perfect in all its
+detail, it is equally true and good throughout."[2] Whether or not the
+good is contradictory, as Mr Bradley maintains,[3] we must allow that he
+succeeds in making his account of it contradictory.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 411.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 401.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 409.]
+
+I will try to put the gist of the matter in my own words. Mr Bradley's
+Absolute is eternal, relationless, ineffable. To it goodness cannot be
+ascribed; indeed no predicate can be properly applied to it, for any
+predication implies relation: in earlier language than Mr Bradley's it
+involves determination and therefore negation. Even to say that the
+Absolute appears or manifests itself is to predicate something, to
+imply relation, and thus is an offence against the absoluteness of the
+Absolute. But nevertheless there _is_ a world of phenomena, which the
+most mystical of philosophers must recognise, if only as a world
+of illusion. The sum-total of these phenomena may be called the
+appearances of the Absolute; and the Absolute, according to Mr
+Bradley, "is real nowhere outside them." In this sense of reality we
+may make predicates about it. Indeed all our predicates, Mr Bradley
+teaches in his 'Logic,' have reality--the universe of reality--for
+their ultimate subject.
+
+In this sense it may be possible to speak of reality as good (though
+it is a misapplication of the term "Absolute" to call it good). But
+the question remains what we mean by "good" in this connexion, and
+what justification we have for using the predicate. And the answer
+must be that Mr Bradley means very little, since the goodness is
+manifested "in various degrees of goodness and badness," and that the
+justification for using the term is not made clear. It seems to
+be used of reality in a somewhat vague sense, as it were _jure
+dignitatis_ and to have as little ethical significance as "right
+honourable" when applied to a politician or "reverend" to a clergyman:
+cases in which it might be consistent to say that right honourable
+gentlemen manifest various degrees of honour and dishonour, or that
+reverend gentlemen are worthy of various degrees of reverence and the
+opposite. All the details of the phenomenal world are bound together
+by chains of necessity; each is an essential part of the sum-total.[1]
+How can the distinction of good and evil apply as between these parts?
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality-Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]
+
+We may speak of parts as higher or lower; and Mr Bradley defines the
+"lower" as "that which, to be made complete, would have to undergo a
+more total transformation of its nature."[1] The meaning of this is
+not clear. The reference may be to the complete state which a thing
+may reach in process of growth. Thus an early stage of a rose-bud
+may be said to be "lower" than its later stage because it requires a
+greater transformation before it produces the bloom. But here 'lower'
+does not mean ethically lower, unless immaturity be confused with
+evil. Or the complete state may be regarded as the type of some order
+or class, from which different individuals differ in greater or less
+degree. This meaning is not suggested by the author; and it could have
+ethical implication only if the type had been first of all shown to
+have an ethical value. Or again, the completeness referred to may be
+that which is alone complete in the strict sense of the word, namely,
+the universe. And we might say that a rose-leaf would require greater
+transformation in order to become complete in this sense than a
+rose-bush, or that the act of giving a cup of cold water was less
+complete than the far-reaching activity say of the first Napoleon.
+But this difference in completeness would not entail a corresponding
+difference in moral worth or goodness.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]
+
+Where all stages are essential, it is not possible to say that one
+is good and another evil. Is not the good something that ought to be
+striven for, attained, and preserved? and is not evil something that
+ought not to be at all? And how can we say that any part ought not to
+be when every part is essential?
+
+From the monistic view of reality, as set forth by Mr Bradley, there
+is no direct route to the distinction between good and evil. If the
+distinction is reached at all, it will be found to be psychological
+rather than cosmical, to be relative to the attitude of the human mind
+which contemplates the facts, and in this strict sense to be, what Mr
+Bradley calls it, appearance.
+
+And this is the view which Mr Bradley takes when he proceeds to describe
+what he means by the 'good.' It is, he says, "that which satisfies
+desire. It is that which we approve of, and in which we can rest with a
+feeling of contentment."[1] "Desire"--"approval"--"feeling"--to these
+mental attitudes the good is relative: they are expressed in its
+definition. Mr Bradley, it will be seen, re-states Green's doctrine with
+a difference which makes it at once more logical and less ethical. Green
+had said that "the moral good is that which satisfies the desire of a
+moral agent"; and in so saying had simply walked round the difficulty,
+for he was unable to say wherein consisted the peculiarity of the moral
+agent without reference to the conception of moral good which he had
+started out to define. But Mr Bradley dispenses with the qualification,
+and says simply that the good "satisfies desire." And in so far his
+definition is more logical. The question is whether it distinguishes
+good from evil. Both the practical importance and the theoretical
+difficulty of the problem arise from the fact that evil is sometimes
+desired, and that the evil desire may be satisfied. The desire of a
+malevolent man may be satisfied by another's downfall, and his mind may
+even "rest with a feeling of contentment" in that result, much in the
+same way as the benevolent man is satisfied and content with another's
+happiness. Fortunately, the case is not so common: the dominant leanings
+of most men are in sympathy with good rather than with evil: but it is
+common enough to make the emotional characteristics of the individual an
+uncertain basis on which to rest the distinction of good from evil.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 402.]
+
+There is also another way of putting the matter: "the good is
+coextensive with approbation."[1] If by 'approbation' we mean simply
+'holding for good,' then the sentence will mean that the good is what
+we hold for good--that is to say, that our judgments about good
+are always true judgments,--a proposition which either ignores the
+divergence between different individual judgments about good, or else
+implies a complete relativity such that that is good to each man at
+any time which he at that time approves or holds to be good; and this
+latter view would make all discussion impossible. But this is not what
+Mr Bradley means. "Approbation is to be taken in its widest sense";
+in which sense "to approve is to have an idea in which we feel
+satisfaction, and to have or imagine the presence of this idea in
+existence."[2] And here the criterion is the same as before, and
+equally subjective. In desire idea and existence are separated; they
+are united in the satisfaction of desire; and approbation is said to
+be just the feeling of satisfaction in an idea which is also present
+(or imagined as present) in existence. Not only actual satisfaction of
+the desire but also imagined satisfaction is covered by "approbation";
+but this approval is still simply a feeling of some individual person.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 407]
+
+[Footnote 2: Appearance and Reality, p. 418.]
+
+We need not concern ourselves at present with the adequacy of this
+statement as an account of the way in which we come to 'approve' or
+hold something as good. The point is, that it does not advance us at
+all towards determining the validity of this approval, or towards an
+objective criterion for distinguishing 'good' from evil.
+
+Mr Bradley draws a distinction between a general and a more special
+or restricted meaning of goodness. For the former it is enough that
+existence be "_found_ to be in accordance with the idea"; for the
+latter, it is necessary that the idea itself produce the fact.[1]
+In the former sense "beauty, truth, pleasure, and sensation are all
+things that are good,"[2] quite irrespective of their origin; in the
+latter sense, only that is good which the idea has produced, or in
+which it has realised itself, which is the work, therefore, of some
+finite soul. In this narrower meaning goodness is the result of will:
+"the good, in short, will become the realised end or completed will.
+It is now an idea which not only _has_ an answering content in fact,
+but, in addition also, has _made_, and has brought about, that
+correspondence.... Goodness thus will be confined to the realm of
+ends, or of self-realisation. It will be restricted, in other words,
+to what is commonly called the sphere of morality,"[3] Even in its
+more general meaning, as we have seen, Mr Bradley has not succeeded in
+giving an objective account of good. For the correspondence of idea
+and existence in which it is said to consist is defined in relation
+to desire, and to some kind of feeling on the part of the conscious
+subject. Nor was his account successful in distinguishing good from
+evil: to that distinction feeling is a blind guide. When he goes on
+to discuss goodness in the narrower sense, in which it belongs to the
+results of finite volition, he adopts, as expressing the nature of
+goodness, that conception of 'self-realisation' which, as put forward
+by Green, has been found inadequate. The same conception was used by
+Mr Bradley, in his first work, as "the most general expression for the
+end in itself," "May we not say," he asked, "that to realise self is
+always to realise a whole, and that the question in morals is to find
+the true whole, realising which will practically realise the true
+self?"[4] It is easy to make the distinction between good and evil
+depend upon this, that in the former the true self is realised, and
+that what is realised in the latter is only a false self. But it is
+equally easy to see that this is only to substitute one unexplained
+distinction for another. This short and easy method is not that which
+Mr Bradley adopts in his later work. He has something of much greater
+interest to say regarding the nature of the self-realisation in which
+goodness is made to consist; and upon it he lays stress, "solely with
+a view to bring out the radical vice of all goodness."[5] Goodness,
+it is said, is self-realisation; and Reality--it was assumed at the
+outset--is harmonious and all-comprehensive. These last characters are
+also criteria of degrees of reality, and consequently of degrees
+of self-realisation. There are, therefore, two marks of
+self-realisation--harmony and extent; and these two may and do
+diverge. No doubt "in the end," they will come together; but "in that
+end goodness, as such, will have perished."[6] "We must admit," says
+Mr Bradley, "that two great divergent forms of moral goodness exist.
+In order to realise the idea of a perfect self a man may have to
+choose between two partially conflicting methods. Morality, in short,
+may dictate either self--sacrifice or self--assertion,"[7] "The
+conscious duplicity of the hypocrite," according to an outspoken
+adherent of Mr Bradley's, is "but the natural exaggeration of the
+unconscious duplicity which resides in the very heart of morality."[8]
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 412.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 410.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Appearance and Reality, pp. 412, 413.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Ethical Studies (1876), pp. 59, 63.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Appearance and Reality, p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Appearance and Reality, p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 415.]
+
+[Footnote 8: A.E. Taylor, Problem of Conduct (1901), p. 65.]
+
+It is worth while considering this view of the contradictions inherent
+in morality. To start with, goodness was defined by relation to
+desire: the good was said to be what satisfies desire. Desire is
+plainly a mental state in which idea and existence are separated. As
+such it cannot be attributed to the Absolute Reality. It will involve
+a contradiction, therefore, if we identify goodness with Absolute
+Reality; for goodness implies a distinction (between idea and
+existence) which cannot find place in the Absolute. But if "degrees"
+of reality be asserted, we must admit stages short of the Absolute,
+and goodness may belong to such a stage in which process or
+development is allowed as a fact. But Mr Bradley will have it not only
+that it is a contradiction to identify this process with the Absolute,
+but also that the conception of goodness is itself contradictory. "A
+satisfied desire," he says, "is, in short, inconsistent with itself.
+For, so far as it is quite satisfied, it is not a desire; and, so far
+as it is a desire, it must remain at least partly unsatisfied."[1] Of
+course, if the desire is satisfied, it ceases. It was and it is not.
+But there is no more contradiction here than in any other case of
+temporal succession. A satisfied desire is, it is true, no longer a
+desire. But the phrase is contradictory only in appearance; for it
+means that the desire has been satisfied and in its satisfaction has
+ceased to exist as a desire. A much more important discrepancy is
+asserted when it is said that "two great divergent forms of moral
+goodness exist." The fight for moral goodness is 'under two
+flags'--self-assertion and self-sacrifice. And the allies "seem
+hostile to one another," "at least in some respects and with some
+persons."[2] We have here the time-honoured opposition of egoism and
+altruism, with a difference. Mr Bradley's most notable adherent in the
+region of ethical enquiry prefers to overlook the difference and
+to return to the older opposition of conflicting ideals.[3] But Mr
+Bradley himself declines to rate the social factor in conduct so
+high. It is not altruism or social activity which is the opponent of
+self-assertion or egoism, but self-sacrifice; and both self-assertion
+and self-sacrifice are kinds of self-realisation: in the former the
+self seeks its realisation by perfecting its harmony; in the latter,
+by increasing its extent. It is not in content that the two modes of
+self-realisation differ: social factors, for instance, may enter into
+both; it is in the diverse uses made of the contents:[4] 'system' is
+aimed at in the one; 'width' in the other.[5] The harmony of these two
+methods is attained only when both morality and the individual self
+are "transcended and submerged."[6]
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 410.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Appearance and Reality, p. 415.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Taylor, Problem of Conduct, p. 179 ff.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Appearance and Reality, p. 416.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Ibid., p. 419.]
+
+This discrepancy of aim, and then coming together of the hostile
+factors only in the annulling and disappearance of both, is a process
+quite in accordance with the general dialectic of Mr Bradley. But two
+things may be noted with regard to it. In the first place the effort
+after system is called self-assertion, and the effort after width or
+expansion is called self-sacrifice. Perhaps the author may claim a
+right to give what names he likes to the processes he describes. But
+in this case the names have a recognised meaning in the literature of
+morals, and no hint is given that they are used here in any meaning
+other than the ordinary. And surely the term 'self-sacrifice' is an
+inappropriate term for describing the conduct which seeks expansion by
+multiplying the objects of desire--by the pursuit of whatever offers a
+chance of widened interests, whether social or intellectual, aesthetic
+or sensual,--even although "my individuality suffers loss" thereby,
+and "the health and harmony of my self is injured."[1] Loss may be the
+result; but aggrandisement is what is sought, though the effort fails
+through lack of organisation or system. And again 'self' is not the
+only possible centre for the systematisation of conduct. System in
+conduct may be realised in other ways than as self-assertion. It is
+sought as truly by the man of science who gives up everything for
+the pursuit of truth or by the philanthropist who forgets himself in
+promoting the social welfare. Such modes of life as these--and not
+merely self-assertive conduct--may become centres of a moral activity
+which aims at system.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p, 417.]
+
+The second remark which has to be made on this final point is, that
+neither on the method of system and self-assertion nor on the method
+of expansion and self-sacrifice has the author given or suggested any
+criterion for the distinction of good and evil. He has cast his net
+so wide as to include all conduct within it without discrimination of
+moral worth. His own result is that "the good is, as such, transcended
+and submerged."[1] But this result loses all significance if it is the
+case, as our enquiry seems to prove, that the good as such has
+never been reached at all, nor any tenable suggestion offered for
+distinguishing it from evil.
+
+[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 419.]
+
+This is the fundamental question for any philosophy of ethics; but it
+receives no answer at all from the prevailing school of metaphysical
+thought. This school offers no solution of the problem which was found
+insoluble by the type of philosophy whose aim is to co-ordinate the
+results of science. A comparison of the purposes and results of the
+two schools may be instructive.
+
+Mr Herbert Spencer has told us that since the time of his first essay,
+"written as far back as 1842," his "ultimate purpose, lying behind all
+proximate purposes, has been that of finding for the principles of right
+and wrong in conduct at large a scientific basis.... Now that moral
+injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred
+origin, the secularisation of morals is becoming imperative. Few things
+can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative
+system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has
+grown up to replace it.... Those who believe that the vacuum can be
+filled, and that it must be filled, are called on to do something in
+pursuance of their belief."[1] But more than fifty years after the
+publication of this first essay, as, with the completion of the
+'Principles of Ethics,' his whole system of philosophy lay unrolled
+before him, he made the significant and pathetic confession that "the
+doctrine of evolution has not furnished guidance to the extent I had
+hoped.... Right regulation of the actions of so complex a being as man,
+living under conditions so complex as those presented by a society,
+evidently forms a subject-matter unlikely to admit of definite
+conclusions throughout its entire range."[2] And the lack of confidence
+which the author himself felt in these parts, there is good reason to
+extend to the whole structure of evolutionary ethics.
+
+[Footnote 1: Preface to Data of Ethics, 1879.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Preface to Principles of Ethics, vol. ii., 1893.]
+
+Neither the purpose of their structure nor its collapse is so
+explicitly proclaimed by the metaphysicians with whom this lecture has
+dealt. But we hardly need to read between the lines in order to see
+the prominence of the moral interest in all that Green wrote; and it
+was after he had shown the inadequacy of the empirical method in the
+hands of Hume to give any criterion or ideal for conduct that he made
+his significant appeal to "Englishmen under five-and-twenty" to leave
+"the anachronistic systems hitherto prevalent amongst us" and take up
+"the study of Kant and Hegel."[1] His call to speculation has been
+widely responded to; but, if we turn to the most important product of
+this speculative movement, we have to extract what enlightenment we
+can from the dictum that, in the only sense in which the Absolute
+is good, it "manifests itself in various degrees of goodness and
+badness."[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Green, Introduction to Hume's Treatise (1874), ii. 71.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 411.]
+
+The most notable recent systems of philosophy, idealist as well as
+naturalist, are thus presented to us, almost confessedly, as void of
+application to conduct. This result, and foresight of this result,
+have led to a widespread suspicion of any attempt at ethical
+construction which is based upon a theory of reality. In consequence,
+recourse is sometimes had to a purely empirical treatment of morality
+such as that indicated at the close of the second lecture. Such an
+account, however, can never rise from the description of conduct to
+setting up an ideal for life. And accordingly some thinkers have
+remained convinced of the necessity of ideals for the moral life,
+although unable to find an adequate ground for these ideals in their
+system of reality.
+
+This attitude was adopted by F.A. Lange, who, at the close of his
+History of Materialism, declared that there was need for an Ideal of
+Worth to supplement the deficiencies of the facts of being. "One thing
+is certain," he said, "that man needs to supplement reality by an
+Ideal World of his own creation, and that in such creations the
+highest and noblest functions of his mind co-operate. But must this
+free act of the mind bear ever and ever again the deceptive form of
+demonstrative science? If it does so, materialism will always reappear
+and destroy the over-bold speculations."[1] It would thus seem that
+moral life postulates an ideal which the mind is able to frame, but
+for which it can establish no connexion with the world of reality.
+
+[Footnote 1: Geschichte des Materialismus, 3rd ed., p. 545 f.]
+
+More recently a brilliant French writer, who has attempted to
+establish a system of "morality without obligation or sanction," has
+suggested that the place of the categorical law of duty may be taken
+by a speculative hypothesis, and that hope may serve where there is no
+ground for belief. "The speculative hypothesis is a risk taken in the
+sphere of thought; action in accordance with this hypothesis is a
+risk taken in the sphere of will; and that being is higher who will
+undertake and risk the more whether in thought or action."[1] Thus,
+"for example, if I would perform an act of charity pure and simple,
+and wish to justify this act rationally, I must imagine an eternal
+Charity at the ground of things and of myself, I must objectify the
+sentiment which leads to my action; and here the moral agent plays
+the same _role_ as the artist.... In every human action there is
+an element of error, of illusion": and it is conjectured that this
+element increases as the action rises above the commonplace: "the most
+loving hearts are the most often deceived, in the highest geniuses the
+greatest incoherences are often found."[2]
+
+[Footnote 1: Guyau, Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction
+(1885) p. 250.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Ibid., pp. 226, 227.]
+
+This solution can hardly be regarded as other than a counsel of
+despair. Its ethical value is merely apparent. What is of importance
+for ethics is not so much the presence of some ideal: it is the kind
+of ideal that matters. It is possible to have an ideal of selfishness
+as well as an ideal of love, a sensual ideal as well as a spiritual.
+Nietzsche's over-man is an ideal; the Mohammedan paradise is an ideal;
+and conduct can be modelled on them. But it is not enough to have
+system in conduct, irrespective of the worth of the ideal which
+determines the system. Some criterion is needed for deciding between
+competing ideals. As long as they are looked upon as mere illusions,
+as expressions of doubt, or as a hazard staked on the unknowable,
+caprice takes the place of law; where all is equally uncertain there
+is no security for the worth of the ideal itself.
+
+Unsatisfactory as they are in this form, the opinions referred to are
+echoes of a pregnant doctrine of Kant's--the doctrine that the moral
+consciousness brings us into closer touch with reality than the merely
+theoretical reason can reach. Various lines of recent thought may
+be said to have been suggested by this view. Almost every idealist
+metaphysician has tended to look upon thought itself as constituting
+the inmost reality of the universe which it conceives or understands;
+and Kant's doctrine may make us pause and ask whether this tendency is
+not simply an assumption without warrant.
+
+Again, the psychological analysis of knowledge has brought out the
+fact of its constant dependence upon practical interests. It is the
+need to perform or attain something, which is the motive that leads
+to the understanding of things; and the understanding of things with
+which alone we are satisfied is commonly that which helps us so to
+describe our experience as to be able to control some practical
+result. 'Knowledge is power'; and not only so, but in its early stages
+and in most of its later developments, knowledge is _for_ power: it is
+for purposes of his own that man becomes the 'interpreter of nature.'
+
+It is to men of science rather than to philosophers that we owe the
+'descriptive theory' of scientific concepts which, within the last
+few years, has gone far to revolutionise the prevailing attitude of
+philosophy to science. Concepts, such as 'mass,' 'energy,' and the
+like, are no longer held to express realities the denial of which
+would be treason to science; they are simply descriptive notions whose
+truth consists in their utility: that is to say, in their ability to
+comprehend all the relevant facts in a simple description. And, in the
+same way, scientific principles are of the nature of postulates, whose
+justification is no necessary law of thought, but must rather be
+sought in the results of scientific investigation.
+
+These three doctrines--the descriptive theory of science, the
+practical nature of knowledge as it is brought out by psychological
+analysis, and the special claims of the moral consciousness--have
+combined to bring about a tendency strongly opposed to the older
+idealist tradition, the tendency to regard practical results as the
+sole test of truth.
+
+This conception is put forward now in philosophical literature as
+a new and independent point of view. The point of view is only in
+process of being hardened into a theory; but, under the name
+of Pragmatism, it has already become the subject of a vigorous
+propaganda. With the value of this doctrine as a general theory of
+reality we need not at present concern ourselves. In spite of the high
+claims it makes for the theoretical significance of moral ideas, its
+adherents have not as yet devoted much attention to the question of
+the worth of these moral ideas and the criteria by which that worth
+may be determined. Yet this surely is the fundamental question for
+ethical theory. On the other hand, as against a merely theoretical
+interpretation of the universe, into which the moral element enters
+only as a sort of loosely-connected appendix, the pragmatists are
+amply justified. Practical ends are prior to theoretical explanations
+of what happens. But practical ends vary, and some measure of their
+relative values is needed.
+
+There is one thing which all reasoning about morality assumes and
+must assume; and that is morality itself. The moral concept--whether
+described as worth or as duty or as goodness--cannot be distilled out
+of any knowledge about the laws of existence or of occurrence. Nor
+will speculation about the real conditions of experience yield it,
+unless adequate recognition be first of all given to the fact that the
+experience which is the subject-matter of philosophy is not merely a
+sensuous and thinking, but also a moral, experience. The approval
+of the good, the disapproval of the evil, and the preference of
+the better: these would seem to be basal facts for an adequate
+philosophical theory: and they imply the striving for a best--however
+imperfect the apprehension of that best may always remain. Only
+when these facts--the characteristic facts of moral experience--are
+recognised as constituents of the experience which is our
+subject-matter, are we in a position profitably to enquire what is
+good and what evil, and how the best is to be conceived.
+
+The recognition of these facts would only be a beginning; but it would
+be a beginning which would avoid the cardinal error fallen into not
+only by the leading exponents of evolutionist morality, but also to be
+found in much of the ethical work of idealist metaphysicians. It seems
+to have been assumed that moral principles can be reached by the
+application of scientific generalisations or of the results of a
+metaphysical analysis which has started by overlooking the facts
+of the moral consciousness. Even as a metaphysic this procedure is
+inadequate; and the interpretations of reality to which it has led
+have erred by over-intellectuality.
+
+The systems of naturalism and of idealism, whose ethical consequences
+have been passed in review, have one feature in common; and it is
+a feature which from of old has been regarded as a mark of genuine
+philosophy. They both seek the One in the many; but they seek it on
+different roads. For the naturalist the most comprehensive description
+of things may be the conception of mass-points in motion; or it may be
+some more recondite conception to which physical analysis points. In
+either case the unity reached will be mechanical. For the idealist,
+on the other hand, reason may be said to be the central principle of
+things: the unity of reality is a rational unity. I have contended in
+these lectures that neither the mechanical unity of the naturalists
+nor the rational unity of the idealists has succeeded in comprehending
+within its unifying principle the essential nature of morality with
+its deep-going dualism of good and evil. But while I have maintained
+that even the conception of reality as the reproduction of itself by
+an eternal self-consciousness is an inadequate conception, it is still
+possible to hold that reality is a connected whole, and that its true
+principle of unity is an ethical principle.
+
+If I were asked what is meant by an ethical unity, I should answer, in
+the first place, that it implies purpose. The unity of reality is not
+exhibited by a description of its present or past conditions or even
+by an account of its causal connexions. These modes of description are
+all affected by the fragmentariness which always belongs to temporal
+apprehension. But, when things are seen in the light of a purpose, a
+view of them as a whole becomes possible, and the fragmentariness of
+time is transcended. And, in the second place, I should say that an
+ethical unity implies the presence within itself of different finite
+centres of conscious activity, whose freedom is not inconsistent with
+their relation to one another and to the Whole.
+
+In his own life, so far as it is a moral life, each individual seeks
+system or unity. And this unity is realised on three different
+levels--as we may call them--which may be distinguished for clearness'
+sake, though it is not possible actually to separate them. On each
+level morality is realised through system, and system is brought about
+by the rule of the morally higher and the submission of the morally
+lower: in this goodness lies, in the opposite evil. If we isolate the
+individual and consider him apart, he may be said to attain goodness
+by the due ordering and control of his sensuous and passional
+nature by rational or spiritual ends. The result may be described,
+negatively, as the suppression of sensualism. But the positive
+description remains imperfect until we can say what the rational
+or spiritual principle is which is to weld all man's 'particular
+impulses' into an organic whole.
+
+And this cannot be done so long as we contemplate the mere individual
+in isolation. We cannot remain at the level of bare individuality.
+Personality itself is not a merely individual product: neither the
+knowledge nor the activity of the individual can be explained without
+reference to his position as a member of society; his inheritance is a
+social inheritance. Nor can the individual establish a claim to deal
+with his own personality as a merely individual end. It is a factor in
+social life; and, in systematising his own life, he must have regard
+to the social factor. In this respect he attains goodness only
+when his individual life seeks a unity higher than that of his own
+individuality, and not centred in his selfish interests. From this
+point of view we may say, again negatively, that goodness consists in
+the suppression of selfishness. But once again there is a difficulty
+about the positive description. Many moralists, undoubtedly, are
+content to rest with the social aspect: to regard the 'health' or
+'vitality' of society as the final expression of morality. But a life
+which is simply absorbed by society cannot be said to be a perfect
+unity. Society itself is a process; and its changes are determined in
+large measure by the moral ideals of its members. For its unity we
+must look to an end--an ideal--of which its actual forms can offer
+indications only. Both man and society are factors in a universal
+order; and their perfection cannot be independent of the purpose of
+this order. When the consciousness of it fills man's life, morality is
+merged in religion.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+Absolute, the, 101 ff.
+  as good, 105.
+  as not good, 104.
+Altruism, 15 ff., 74 f., 118.
+Appearance, 101 ff.
+Approbation, 111 ff.
+Aristotle, 87.
+Artificial selection, 61 ff.
+Austen, Jane, 4 n.
+
+Benevolence, 16.
+Bentham, J., 4 n.
+Bradley, F.H., 88, 100 ff.
+Browning, R., 31.
+
+Characteristics of goodness, 113.
+  reality, 103.
+Competition between groups, 52 f., 58, 74, 79.
+  ideas, 53 ff.
+  individuals, 52, 74, 79.
+Content of morality, agreement as to, 7.
+Christian morality, 7, 18, 20.
+Cosmic process and moral order, 46 ff.
+
+Darwin, C., 35 ff., 39 ff., 57, 60, 62.
+Degrees of reality, 103 ff.
+Descriptive ethics, 76 ff.
+  theory of science, 129.
+Desire and goodness, 90 ff., 102, 110 ff.
+Distinction of good and evil, 93 ff., 113.
+
+Egoism, 15 ff., 74 f., 118.
+Empiricism, 3.
+_Ens reale_, 102.
+  _realissimum_, 102.
+Environment, moral, 70 ff.
+Epicurus, 17.
+Eternal mind, the, 96 ff.
+Ethical controversies at present day, 13 ff.
+  in nineteenth century, 1 ff.
+Ethical unity of things, 133 ff.
+Ethics of evolution, 36 ff.
+Evolution, ethical significance of, 51, 67 ff.
+Evolution of ethics, 36 ff.
+Evolution, theory of, 33 ff., 36 ff.
+Exceptional cases, 11.
+Experiments in morality, 50.
+
+Fichte, J.G., 87.
+Fittest, survival of the, 35, 69 ff.
+
+Galt, J., 4 n.
+Good, the true, 92 ff.
+Goodness as appearance, 102 ff.
+Goodness as contradictory, 117.
+Green, T.H., 77 n., 89 ff., 123.
+Guyau, 125 f.
+
+Halevy, E., 4 n.
+Hedonism, 100.
+Hegel, 87, 104, 123.
+Higher and lower, 107 ff.
+Huxley, T.H., 45 ff., 68.
+
+Ibsen, 31.
+Idealism, 87 ff.
+Ideals, need of, 125.
+Illusions as ideals, 127.
+Immoralist, 24.
+Individual and group, 40 ff.
+Influences forming ethical thought:
+  current morality, 26 ff.
+  science and philosophy, 32 ff.
+Intelligent selection, 61 ff., 80.
+Intuitionism, 2 ff., 81.
+
+Kant, 87, 123, 127 f.
+
+Lange, F.A., 125.
+Leibniz, 87.
+
+Material and moral progress, 29 f.
+Mechanical unity, 133.
+Metaphysics, 82, 85 ff.
+Mill, J.S., 3 n., 8 ff., 28.
+Modifications of general rules, 9.
+Monism and ethics, 109.
+Moral consciousness and reality, 128.
+  environment, 70 ff.
+  experience, 131.
+  ideas, origin of, 1 ff.
+  order and cosmic process, 46 ff.
+  value, criterion of, 1 ff., 75.
+
+Natural selection, 35, 43 ff., 49.
+  in morals, 55.
+Naturalism, 83 f., 86 f.
+Nietzsche, F., 18 ff., 31 f.,
+  47 ff., 67., 127.
+Nobles, morality of, 20.
+
+Origin and validity, 37, 97.
+Over-man, the, 22, 31.
+Owen, Sir R., 59.
+
+Physiological interpretation
+  of life, 67, 76.
+Plato, 31, 87.
+Practical nature of knowledge, 128.
+Pragmatism, 130.
+Progress of life, 34.
+Progressive morality, 9.
+Psychological ethics, 109 ff.
+Purposive selection, 61 ff., 80.
+
+Rational unity, 133.
+Religion, 82 f., 136.
+Renaissance, 33.
+
+Science and metaphysics, 85.
+Self-assertion, 116 ff.
+Self-love, 17.
+Self-realisation, 90 ff., 113 ff.
+Self-sacrifice, 116 ff.
+Selfishness, suppression of, 136.
+Sensationalism, 100.
+Sensualism, suppression of, 135.
+Servile morality, 20.
+Sexual selection, 66.
+Sidgwick, H., 16 f.
+Social qualities, 40 ff.
+Sophists, the, 27.
+Spencer, H., 44, 47, 51, 73, 122.
+Spinoza, 87 f.
+Stephen, Sir L., 44.
+Subjective selection, 60, 66, 80.
+Subjectivity in ethics, 81.
+
+Taylor, A.E., 116, 118.
+Tennyson, 31.
+Tille, A., 25 n.
+Transvaluation, 21.
+Truth as appearance, 101.
+  as moral law, 9 ff., 22 f.
+
+Uebermensch, the, 22, 25 n.
+Unity of life, 34.
+Utilitarianism, the term, 3 n.
+  the theory, 2 ff., 81.
+
+Variation, 49.
+Volz, J., 24 n.
+
+Wellbeing, 71, 75.
+Wilberforce, S., 59.
+
+Zola, 31.
+
+
+
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